The End of Empire

The Declaration of Independence of the state of Israel on 14 May 1948 was one brief episode in an unravelling drama of survival for Palestine's Jews who were engaged in an increasingly bitter conflict with the Arab world. In his diary, Ben-Gurion wrote:

The ceremony at the Tel Aviv museum was hastily arranged. There was even indecision about the name of the new state, perhaps Judea, perhaps Ivriya. Eventually, the designation of ‘a state of Israel' in the Land of Israel was agreed. The previous day Yigal Yadin, the head of operations for the Haganah, had told the National Administration that despite the arrival of Czech arms, in the absence of heavy weapons the prospects of the Jewish state surviving an invasion of Arab states were fifty-fifty. Israel Galili, the head of the Haganah's territorial command, was similarly not optimistic about the future. Golda Meir had reported on her meeting with King Abdullah of Jordan and informed the National Administration that he now aligned himself with popular forces in the Arab world, calling for an invasion. As Mordechai Bentov later wrote in his memoirs: ‘To most of us, it was not clear we would win, whereas if we were to fail – we, the members of the government, would be the first the Arabs would hang in the middle of Allenby Square.'