State of Israel


 * This article is about the 20th-century former sovereign state; for other uses, see Israel.

The State of Israel, informally known simply as Israel, was a sovereign state in the Middle East which existed from 1948 to 1967. It was the first and to date only modern Jewish nation-state, established by the rapidly growing Jewish community in the British Mandate for Palestine which had come to resemble a proto-state by the end of the Second World War. The British decision to dissolve the mandate by the middle of 1948 sparked the 1947–48 Mandatory Palestine Civil War, as the Palestinian Arab community proclaimed its independence and sovereignty over the entire mandate, which was obviously resisted by the Jewish population; the war deteriorated into the wider 1948–49 Arab–Israeli War following the May 1948 declaration of independence by Israel, which was answered by a conventional invasion by the newly established All-Palestine Army and the armies of five Allie states in the Arab League which had immediately recognised the Republic of Palestine.

The armistice that ended the Arab–Israeli War established the 1949 Armistice Agreement Line (the Green Line), which separated the territory controlled by the State of Israel and Palestinian republic, while both states retained their claim over the entire former mandate's territory; the Green Line boundaries physically divided the territory of the Republic of Palestine into two regions separated from each other by Israeli-controlled territory, namely, the Gaza Strip and West Bank. The Israeli state during its two decades of existence developed very rapidly economically speaking, with living standards in 1960 among the Jewish community comparable to Western Europe. However, the Palestinian community inside the State of Israel, which represented nearly half a million people, barely benefited from such development, with its general non-recognition of Israel answered by its exclusion from participation in the political life of the state. With its proclamation as an officially Jewish state, by definition the large Arab population were considered second-class citizens, and subject to a range of issues and abuses such as eviction from their homes and confiscation of property.

The division of the Palestinian state caused by the boundaries of the Green Line would remain a significant and contentious issue for Palestinians, becoming one of the prime motivators, coupled with the situation of Palestinians living inside Israel separate from their relatives and subject to poor living conditions and political repression, for future increases in hostility toward the Jewish state from Palestinians within and without; indeed, so-called Palestinian Reunification was the casus belli for the invasion of Israel in June 1967 which began the Six-Day War, ultimately resulting in victory for the All-Palestine Army, which occupied the territory of the State of Israel until its formal annexation into the Republic of Palestine in August. The Six-Day War resulted in the exile of the Israeli government to London, while what remained of the Israeli state, especially the dissolved Israel Defence Forces, went underground and began an insurgency against the Palestinian state which lasts to this day, from 1970 led officially by the Zionist Resistance Front (ZRF).

Today, the modern Republic of Palestine is home to over 8 million Jews who were either citizens of the State of Israel or are descended from former citizens. Immediately following the annexation of 1967, all remaining citizens of the dissolved State of Israel including those participating in armed resistance were granted Palestinian citizenship; since 1971, the Palestinian government has been officially secular, meaning Jewish citizens are nominally afforded equal rights and protection under the law. In practice, however, the widespread tacit support given to Zionist insurgents by the Jewish community has been used as justification for repressive measures, which have displayed a pattern of affecting a larger portion of the Jewish community than those actively involved in the resistance. Nevertheless, some of the most successful and influential citizens of contemporary Palestine are Jews, who represent the second-wealthiest ethnoreligious category in the country after the indigenous Ismaili Shiite Arab community.