The British Mandate Authority had estimated in 1939 that about four hundred and forty-five thousand out of one-and-a-half million residents of the Mandate were Jews.

Israeli officials estimate that as of May 15, 1948, about six hundred and fifty thousand Jews live in the area scheduled to become Israel under the November 1947 UN partition proposal.

Ben-Gurion announces the formation of a Provisional Council of State, actually a transformed executive committee of the Jewish Agency with himself as prime minister.

Chaim Weizmann becomes president of the council, although Ben-Gurion is careful to make the presidency a distinctly ceremonial position.

The provisional government will hold elections no later than October 1948 for the Constituent Assembly to draw up a formal constitution.

The first legislative act of the Provisional Council of State is the Law and Administrative Ordinance of 1948 that declares null and void the restrictions on Jewish immigration imposed by British authorities.

Moshe Sharett, who in 1947 had successfully campaigned for the United Nations to adopt the Palestinian partition plan, is made the country's first foreign minister.

Shimon Peres, who had immigrated with his family to Palestine in 1934, in 1947 had joined the Haganah under the direction of Ben-Gurion, who soon became his political mentor and, in 1948, appoints the twenty-four-year-old Peres head of Israel's navy.

The creation of the State of Israel brings about the (first) Arab-Israeli war: early on May 15, units of the regular armies of Syria, Transjordan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Egypt cross the frontiers of Palestine.

Initially these forces consist of approximately eight thousand to ten thousand Egyptians, two thousand to four thousand Iraqis, four thousand to five thousand Transjordanians, three thousand to four thousand Syrians, one thousand to two thousand Lebanese, and smaller numbers of Saudi Arabian and Yemeni troops; about twenty-five thousand in all.

Goldie Myerson, a signatory of Israel's independence declaration and newly appointed minister to Moscow, had personally attempted to dissuade King Abdullah of Transjordan from joining the invasion of Israel decided on by other Arab states.

Israeli forces composed of the Haganah, such irregular units as the Irgun and the Stern Gang, and women's auxiliaries, number thirty-five thousand or more, armed with Czechoslovakian weapons sent at the behest of the Soviet Union.

Moshe Dayan commands the Jerusalem area; Yitzhak Rabin directs the defense of Jerusalem (and also fights the Egyptians in the Negev).

The invading Arab League forces occupy the areas in southern and eastern Palestine not apportioned to the Jews, then capture the small Jewish quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem.

The Israelis, meanwhile, win control of the main road to Jerusalem through the Yehuda Mountains (Judaean Hills) and successfully beat off Arab attacks.

The Arab League has fielded only a few well-trained units.

In addition, some Arab logistical lines are long, making resupply and communication difficult.

The most formidable Arab force is Transjordan's Arab Legion, commanded by Glubb Pasha, but Abdullah has secret relations with the Zionists and strongly opposes a Palestinian state led by his enemy al-Husseini.

Other states, such as Egypt and Iraq, also have different objectives, and this internal strife, disorganization, and military ineptitude prevents the Arabs from mounting a coordinated attack.

Abdullah's primary purpose, which he has spelled out in secret discussions with Jewish envoys, is to extend his rule to include the area allotted to the Palestinian Arabs under the United Nations partition resolution of November 1947.

Accordingly, he engages his forces in the area of Palestine popularly known as the West Bank and expels Jewish forces from East Jerusalem (the Old City).

Israel's Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, surrounded by enemies and having to integrate thousands of immigrants into the new state, has attempted to make the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) the new unifying symbol of the fledgling state.

He realizes that the socialism of the Histadrut is ill suited to solving the problems facing the new state.

Above all, Israel needs a unity of purpose, which in Ben-Gurion's thinking can only be provided by a strong army that will defend the country against its enemies and help assimilate its culturally diverse immigrants.

Thus, Ben-Gurion adds to the socialist ethos of the Histadrut and kibbutz movements an aggressive Israeli nationalism spearheaded by the IDF.

To carry out this new orientation, he cultivates a "new guard" Mapai leadership headed by technocrat Shimon Peres, appointed deputy director general of the Defense Ministry and dynamic young General Moshe Dayan. (Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s the Dayan-Peres supporters in Mapai and the "old guard" Labor establishment will compete for power.)

Ben-Gurion appoints as minister of finance his long-time colleague Levi Eshkol, who had worked untiringly for the future Israeli state, and had been instrumental during the Second World War in the movement of people and goods from Germany to Palestine.

The commission authorized to investigate the Lavon affair becomes embroiled in a test of strength between the young military establishment—including Moshe Dayan and Shimon Peres—and the Mapai old guard, whose support Lavon solicits.

The war with Egypt has served to spur Ben-Gurion's drive toward greater militarization.

Although Israel is forced to withdraw from Sinai in March 1957, Ben-Gurion deems the war a success.

Israel has not won freedom to use the canal, but it does regain shipping rights in the Straits of Tiran.

The raids from Gaza cease, UN peacekeeping forces separate Egypt and Israel, greater cooperation with France leads to more arms sales to Israel (and the building of a nuclear reactor), and, most important, the army's near-perfect performance vindicates his view on the centrality of the IDF. (The American-brokered arrangements ending the Suez crisis do not lead to peace negotiations, but they do impose a calm over Israel's southern border that will last for nearly a decade).

A regional arms race begins in the absence of any movement toward peace, and deputy defense minister Peres finds France to be a willing supplier.

David Ben-Gurion returns from two years of retirement to again seek the prime ministry, but Levi Eshkol easily wins the election.

Ben-Gurion gathers about him a group of younger leaders in 1965, notably Shimon Peres and Moshe Dayan, and organizes a new splinter party, Rafi, an acronym for Reshimat Po'ale Yisra'el ("Israel Workers List").

As a Rafi member, Dayan is again elected to the Knesset.

Yigal Allon, deputy prime minister of the Eshkol government, formulates a settlement plan during the summer of 1965.

The Allon plan, dictated primarily by security concerns, calls for rural and urban settlements to be erected in a sparsely Arab-populated strip twelve to fifteen kilometers wide along the western bank of the Jordan River and the western shores of the Dead Sea.

Yitzhak Shamir, who had returned to Israel in May 1948, has until now served as a Mossad secret-service operative in Europe.

The Rafi Party had been unsuccessful, and in 1967 Shimon Peres had initiated merger negotiations between the Mapai and the Ahdut Avodah, a more leftist workers' party, that lead in 1968 to the establishment of the Israel Labor Party, of which he becomes deputy secretary-general.

Yitzhak Rabin wins election to the Knesset as a member of the Labor Party in late December, narrowly defeating his chief rival Shimon Peres in bitterly fought internal elections.

Defense Minister Shimon Peres has forced Israel into a less flexible posture by blocking any concessions proposed by Yitzhak Rabin.

In addition, the issuing of the Agranat Commission report and the return from the front of reservists mobilized for the war further fuels public clamor for a stronger defense posture.

Israel's lack of readiness for the war has stunned the nation, and exhausted and discredited the government.

Golda Meir forms a new coalition government only with great difficulty in March 1974; Rabin joins Meir's cabinet as minister of labor.

Meir remains in power as head of a caretaker government until a new one is formed in June, when the Labor Party manages to win a narrow election victory by selecting Rabin to lead its list.

The first native-born Israeli to become prime minister, Rabin predicts a period of "seven lean years" until the West, including the United States, will end its heavy dependence on Arab oil.

He argues that Israel therefore needs to trade space for time, to coordinate closely with Washington, and to encourage Egypt's new pro-American policy.

Dayan, who has administered the territories occupied by Israel since 1967, had gained increasing influence over Israel's conduct of foreign affairs in the early 1970s, but after the Yom Kippur War, he had been pilloried for the country's lack of preparedness.

Rabin drops Dayan from his Cabinet and appoints Peres defense minister.