State of Israel

The State of Israel was declared on May 14, 1948, by David Ben-Gurion in the Tel Aviv Museum on Rothschild Boulevard, as the British Mandate ended and following the UN Partition Plan of 1947. From a Jewish perspective, this marked the restoration of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel after nearly two thousand years without an independent Jewish state. Immediately after independence, Israel was invaded by the armies of Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, but survived and established itself as a new nation. The state became a refuge for Holocaust survivors and for Jews expelled or fleeing from Arab and Muslim countries.

Israel's history since 1948 has included wars, immigration waves, territorial changes, peace treaties, and ongoing conflict with neighboring states and with armed groups such as the PLO, Hamas and Hezbollah. Major moments include the Six-Day War of 1967, when Israel captured East Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria/West Bank, Gaza, Sinai, and the Golan Heights; the Yom Kippur War of 1973; peace with Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994; and continuing debates over security, borders, religion, democracy, and identity. The State of Israel represents the modern return of Jewish political independence, the revival of Hebrew as a national language, and the central stage of Jewish history in the modern era.