Israeli History: The State Period, 1948 to 1995

Mass absorption and austerity, 1948 to 1955

Israel declared independence in May 1948 and admitted Jewish immigrants during and after the war that followed. According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, some 687,000 immigrants arrived between 1948 and 1951. The peak came in 1949, when about 240,000 people arrived, a rate of about 266 for every 1,000 Jews already in the country. [1] The newcomers came from two main regions. One group was Holocaust survivors from displaced-persons camps and from countries such as Poland and Romania. The other came from the Middle East and North Africa, including almost the whole Jewish communities of Iraq and Yemen. The state could not house or feed this number of people. Many immigrants lived first in reception camps and then in transit settlements called ma'abarot, built of tents, canvas and tin. The government imposed a regime of rationing and price controls known as tzena (austerity). Food, clothing and furniture were sold against coupons. The Law of Return gave every Jew the right to settle in Israel, so the government had no legal means to slow immigration even when it could not pay for it. Foreign currency was the central shortage. Israel imported far more than it exported and had almost no reserves. In this setting the government negotiated directly with West Germany. The agreement signed in Luxembourg on 10 September 1952 obliged the Federal Republic of Germany to pay Israel 3,000 million Deutsche Mark. Its preamble based Israel's claim on the cost of resettling uprooted and destitute Jewish refugees from Germany and from lands formerly under German rule. Israel registered the agreement with the United Nations on 27 March 1953. [2] A De Gruyter collection of Knesset and cabinet records states that the sum equalled close to three-quarters of a billion US dollars, paid in goods and services over 12 years, for the rehabilitation of about half a million survivors of Nazi persecution living in Israel. [3] The agreement divided the country. Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion argued that the money was owed and needed. Menachem Begin and his Herut party argued that no dealings with Germany were acceptable, and a Herut-led crowd clashed with police outside the Knesset during the debate. The payments arrived largely as ships, rail equipment, machinery and fuel, which went into ports, power stations and a merchant fleet. By the mid-1950s most rationing had been lifted. Many ma'abarot remained for years, however, and the gap in housing, jobs and schooling between older residents and new immigrants, especially those from Arab countries, became a lasting issue in Israeli politics.

War with Egypt and the Eichmann trial, 1956 to 1962

Tension on the Egyptian border rose through the mid-1950s. Armed infiltrators crossed from the Gaza Strip, Israel carried out reprisal raids, and Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. After Egypt nationalised the Suez Canal Company, Britain and France planned military action and secretly coordinated it with Israel. Israeli forces entered Sinai at the end of October 1956, and British and French forces then attacked the canal zone. The United Nations acted within days. General Assembly resolution 997 (ES-I), adopted on 2 November 1956, noted that Israeli forces had penetrated deeply into Egyptian territory in breach of the 1949 armistice and that France and Britain were conducting military operations against Egypt. It urged an immediate ceasefire, the withdrawal of all forces behind the armistice lines and, once fighting stopped, the reopening of the Suez Canal. [4] Resolution 998 (ES-I) then asked the Secretary-General for a plan for an emergency international United Nations force, and resolution 1000 (ES-I) established a United Nations Command for that force. [5] Under pressure from the United States and the Soviet Union, Israel withdrew from Sinai and Gaza. The United Nations Emergency Force deployed on the Egyptian side of the line, and the Straits of Tiran reopened to Israeli ships. The Egyptian border then stayed largely quiet for about a decade. The next defining event was a trial. Israeli agents seized Adolf Eichmann, who had organised the deportation of Jews to the death camps, in Argentina and brought him to Israel. He was charged under the Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law. Yad Vashem records that the trial, criminal case 40/61 of the Jerusalem District Court, opened on 11 April 1961 at Beit Ha'am. Police investigators selected 1,600 documents, most bearing Eichmann's signature, and prepared a list of 108 survivor witnesses. The judges were Moshe Landau, who presided, Benjamin Halevy and Yitzhak Raveh. The court found Eichmann guilty on 13 December 1961 and sentenced him to death on 15 December. The Supreme Court upheld the verdict on 29 May 1962, President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi rejected a plea for clemency, and Eichmann was hanged at Ramla prison during the night between 31 May and 1 June 1962. [6] The trial mattered beyond its verdict. For many Israelis it was the first time survivors described the ghettos and camps in public, in detail, over many weeks. The proceedings were broadcast on radio. Before the trial, survivors often met silence or suspicion in Israeli society. The testimony changed how the Holocaust was taught and discussed in Israel. Eichmann remains the only person executed under a civilian court sentence in the state's history.

Attrition, Munich and Entebbe, 1967 to 1976

After the June 1967 war Israel held all of Sinai up to the east bank of the Suez Canal. Egypt rejected the new line. Artillery duels across the canal grew into a sustained campaign that Egypt called a war of attrition. Israel built fortified positions along the canal and answered with air strikes, including raids deep inside Egypt. The Soviet Union then sent air-defence units and pilots to Egypt, and the fighting became a direct concern of both superpowers. The United States proposed a ceasefire. In a letter dated 4 August 1970, the Israeli government informed Secretary of State William Rogers that it had decided to reply affirmatively to the latest US peace initiative. [7] Under the ceasefire and standstill terms, Israel and Egypt were to stop firing at 2200 hours GMT on Friday 7 August. Both sides were to leave the military status quo unchanged within zones extending 50 kilometres east and west of the ceasefire line and to build no new military installations there. [8] The canal front then stayed quiet until October 1973. In September 1972 the conflict reached the Olympic Games in West Germany. Gunmen of the Palestinian group Black September entered the Israeli team's quarters in Munich and took athletes and coaches hostage. A West German rescue attempt at a military airfield failed. Speaking at the Security Council in 1976, Israel's ambassador stated that 11 Israeli athletes had been murdered at Munich in 1972. [9] In Israel's account to the Security Council, an Air France Airbus flying from Tel Aviv to Paris was hijacked on 27 June 1976 after a stop in Athens, with 256 passengers and 12 crew aboard. It landed at Entebbe in Uganda on 28 June. The hijackers demanded the release of 53 prisoners held in Israel, West Germany, France, Switzerland and Kenya. They freed 47 hostages on 30 June and later another 100, and freed passengers reported that Jewish passengers had been separated from the others. [9] Israeli commandos landed at Entebbe on the night of 3 to 4 July. Ambassador Chaim Herzog told the Council that three hostages were killed by the hijackers before the hijackers were shot, that a senior Israeli officer was killed, and that the operation saved more than 100 people. He added that Uganda had not released Dora Bloch, a 75-year-old passenger held under guard in a Kampala hospital. [9] The officer killed was Lieutenant Colonel Yonatan Netanyahu. Bloch did not return alive. Other governments described the raid differently. Uganda's foreign minister told the same meeting that the Israeli force had killed Ugandan soldiers as well as the hijackers and some hostages, and he demanded full compensation. The Secretary-General said the landing appeared to be a serious violation of the sovereignty of a member state. [9] A draft resolution on the complaint came to a vote on 14 July 1976 and was not adopted, with six votes in favour, none against and two abstentions. [10]

The 1977 upheaval and peace with Egypt, 1977 to 1979

For the first 29 years of statehood, Mapai and its successor, the Alignment, led every government. That changed at the election of 17 May 1977. The Israel Democracy Institute records that the Alignment lost 19 seats and fell to 32, its smallest number to that point, while the new Democratic Movement for Change (Dash) won 15 seats. The Likud and Ariel Sharon's Shlomzion list together won 45 seats. [11] The institute lists the explanations offered for the shift: the gradual acceptance of Herut as a legitimate party, the social unrest that followed the Yom Kippur War, corruption scandals linked to the ruling party, and the appearance of Dash as a new alternative. [11] Menachem Begin, who had led the opposition since the state's founding, became prime minister. Israelis still call the result "the upheaval" (ha-mahapach). Begin's government pursued peace with Egypt. After President Anwar Sadat travelled to Jerusalem and addressed the Knesset, the two leaders met US President Jimmy Carter at the presidential retreat at Camp David in Maryland. The talks produced two documents signed in Washington on 17 September 1978: a Framework for Peace in the Middle East and a Framework for the Conclusion of a Peace Treaty between Egypt and Israel. [12] The treaty was signed in Washington on 26 March 1979 and came into force on 25 April 1979, when the two states exchanged instruments of ratification. Article I ended the state of war and committed Israel to withdraw all its armed forces and civilians from Sinai behind the international boundary with mandated Palestine. [12] Article II made the recognised international boundary the permanent border, without prejudice to the status of the Gaza Strip, and both sides declared it inviolable. [12] Annex I required Israel to complete its withdrawal within three years of ratification. [12] A letter agreement signed with the treaty concerned the establishment of full autonomy in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. [12] The autonomy talks that followed produced no agreement. The treaty carried costs on both sides. Israel dismantled its Sinai settlements, including the town of Yamit, and gave up airfields and oil fields it had developed there. Egypt was suspended from the Arab League, and Sadat was later assassinated in Cairo by Islamist army officers. The treaty itself has held through every later war in the region.

Lebanon, Sabra and Shatila, 1982 to 1983

During Lebanon's civil war the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) built its main military base in the south of the country, and its rocket and artillery fire reached northern Israel. The Kahan Commission's report records that the war Israel named Peace for the Galilee began on 6 June 1982. Israeli forces reached the suburbs of Beirut on 12 to 14 June and completed the encirclement of West Beirut on 25 June. The evacuation of PLO fighters and Syrian forces from West Beirut was completed on 1 September. Bashir Gemayel, leader of the Phalangist militia and an ally of Israel, had been elected president of Lebanon on 23 August. [13] On 14 September a bomb killed Gemayel. Israeli forces began entering West Beirut early on 15 September, and Israel's defence minister and chief of staff agreed that the Phalangists, not Israeli troops, would enter the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Phalangist units entered Shatila at about 18:00 on 16 September. That night Israeli officers received reports of killings, including a cable stating that about 300 people, terrorists and civilians, had been killed. The last Phalangist forces left the camps at about 08:00 on 18 September. [13] The number of dead is disputed, and the figures below come from different bodies. They are reported separately and not combined. Israel's official commission of inquiry put the number killed at between 700 and 800 people, as Time reported when the report appeared in February 1983. [14] The Palestinian historian Bayan Nuwayhid al-Hout, working from survivor testimonies, established the names of nearly 1,400 victims and concluded that the full total was higher because the militia abducted many people who were never found. [15] The cited page does not state when her testimonies were collected. Both figures count persons killed. The Israeli cabinet set up the commission on 28 September 1982 under the Commissions of Inquiry Law of 1968. Supreme Court President Yitzhak Kahan chaired it, with Justice Aharon Barak and Major General (res.) Yona Efrat; it held 60 sessions and heard 58 witnesses. It found that a Phalangist unit carried out the massacre and that no Israeli was directly responsible, but that Israel bore indirect responsibility. It found Defence Minister Ariel Sharon responsible for ignoring the danger of bloodshed and revenge, and it recommended that he resign and that the director of military intelligence not continue in his post. [13] On 16 December 1982 the UN General Assembly, in resolution 37/123 D, condemned the large-scale massacre of Palestinian civilians in the camps and resolved that it was an act of genocide. [16]

Madrid, Jordan and the Rabin assassination, 1991 to 1995

The end of the Cold War and the Gulf War changed the diplomatic setting. The United States and the Soviet Union jointly invited Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and the Palestinians to a peace conference convened in Madrid on 30 October 1991. The invitation proposed direct negotiations on two tracks, between Israel and the Arab states and between Israel and the Palestinians, based on Security Council resolutions 242 and 338. Bilateral talks were to start four days after the opening and multilateral talks on arms control and regional security, water, refugees, the environment and economic development two weeks after it. Palestinians attended as part of a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation. [17] Madrid was the first conference at which Israel negotiated in public with all of these parties at once. The bilateral talks moved slowly, and a separate secret channel in Oslo led to the Israel-PLO agreements. That breakthrough cleared the way for Jordan. Israel and Jordan had declared the end of the state of belligerency between them in the Washington Declaration of 25 July 1994. They signed the Treaty of Peace at the Arava/Araba crossing point on 26 October 1994, witnessed by the United States and the Russian Federation. The preamble based the peace on Security Council resolutions 242 and 338. [18] The treaty fixed the international boundary, and in Article 9 Israel undertook to respect Jordan's present special role in the Muslim holy shrines in Jerusalem [18]. For people displaced in 1967 the parties agreed to seek solutions in a four-party committee with Egypt and the Palestinians, and for refugees in the multilateral working group on refugees and in the permanent status negotiations. [18] Inside Israel, opposition to the Oslo agreements grew intense, with mass protests and posters attacking Prime Minister Rabin. Rabin was shot after addressing a peace rally in Tel Aviv. He was killed on 4 November 1995 by Yigal Amir, a right-wing religious student who later confessed and is serving a life sentence. The Shamgar Commission, the official inquiry, concluded that there had been no conspiracy. A classified section of its report dealt with Shin Bet efforts to infiltrate the extreme right. Carmi Gillon, head of the Shin Bet in November 1995, later confirmed that Avishai Raviv, a right-wing activist who knew Amir, had been an agent of the service for eight years. [19] Shimon Peres succeeded Rabin as prime minister. The Jordan treaty has remained in force since 1994.

In One Paragraph

From 1948 to 1995 Israel moved from mass immigration and rationing to peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan. About 687,000 immigrants arrived from 1948 to 1951, and a 1952 agreement brought 3,000 million Deutsche Mark from West Germany. Israel fought Egypt in 1956 and withdrew under UN pressure, tried Eichmann in 1961 and executed him in 1962, and accepted the ceasefire that ended the War of Attrition on 7 August 1970. Palestinian gunmen killed 11 Israeli athletes at Munich in 1972, and Israeli commandos rescued hostages at Entebbe on 4 July 1976. The Likud's victory on 17 May 1977 led to the Camp David frameworks and the treaty with Egypt of 26 March 1979. The 1982 Lebanon war included the Sabra and Shatila massacre, whose death toll remains disputed. The Madrid Conference of 30 October 1991 led toward the Jordan treaty of 26 October 1994, and Rabin was assassinated on 4 November 1995.

Sources

1. Encyclopaedia Judaica. “Land of Israel: Population.” In Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed., edited by Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007. Section on immigration after 1948.https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/land-israel-population.
2. “Agreement between the State of Israel and the Federal Republic of Germany. Signed at Luxembourg, on 10 September 1952.” United Nations Treaty Series 162, no. 2137 (1953): 206. Preamble and article 1(a).https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%20162/volume-162-I-2137-English.pdf.
3. Sharett, Yaakov, ed. The Reparations Controversy: The Jewish State and German Money in the Shadow of the Holocaust, 1951–1952. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011. Preface.https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/id/1a0c0963-8634-490e-a4b8-88e25e734fe6/9783110982534.pdf.
4. United Nations General Assembly. “Resolution 997 (ES-I).” November 2, 1956. Preamble and paragraphs 1–4. United Nations Information System on the Question of Palestine.https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-184373/.
5. United Nations General Assembly. “Resolutions 998 (ES-I), 999 (ES-I), and 1000 (ES-I).” November 1956. Official Records, First Emergency Special Session, pp. 2–3.https://documents.un.org/doc/resolution/gen/nr0/037/44/pdf/nr003744.pdf.
6. Yad Vashem. “Eichmann’s Trial in Jerusalem.” The Eichmann Trial, online exhibition. Sections “Preparing for Trial,” “Verdict,” and “Execution of the Verdict.”https://wwv.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/eichmann/eichmann-trial.asp.
7. “Telegram from the Department of State to the Embassy in Israel,” August 4, 1970. Document 140 in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, vol. XXIII, Arab-Israeli Dispute, 1969–1972. Washington, DC: Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State. Paragraph 4.https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v23/d140.
8. “The Ceasefire/Standstill Proposal, as Communicated in the Letter by the US Secretary of State William Rogers to Mahmoud Riad and Zaid Rifai, 19 June 1970.” United Nations Information System on the Question of Palestine (UNISPAL), dated August 7, 1970. Paragraphs A–C.https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-209696/.
9. United Nations Security Council. Official Records, Thirty-First Year, 1939th Meeting, July 9, 1976. S/PV.1939. Paragraphs 13, 31, 37, 70, 79–81, 83, 89, 99–100, 130, and 133.https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/86947/files/S_PV-1939-EN.pdf.
10. United Nations Security Council. Official Records, Thirty-First Year, 1943rd Meeting, July 14, 1976. S/PV.1943. UN Digital Library.https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/86951?ln=en.
11. Israel Democracy Institute. “1977: About the 1977 Elections.” Israeli Elections and Parties. Paragraphs 2–4.https://en.idi.org.il/israeli-elections-and-parties/elections/1977/.
12. “Egypt and Israel: Treaty of Peace (with Annexes, Maps and Agreed Minutes). Signed at Washington on 26 March 1979.” United Nations Treaty Series 1136, no. 17813 (1979). Title note listing the Camp David frameworks of September 17, 1978; articles I and II; footnote 1 on entry into force; and annex I, article I.https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%201136/volume-1136-I-17813-English.pdf.
13. Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Events at the Refugee Camps in Beirut, 8 February 1983.” In Israel’s Foreign Relations: Selected Documents, vol. 8, 1982–1984, document 104. PDF pp. 1, 6–8, 12–15, and 25.https://syriaaccountability.org/content/images/wordpress/ISRAELMFA_Commission-Inquiry-Beirut_1983_EN.pdf.
14. Smith, William E. “The Verdict Is Guilty: An Israeli Commission and the Beirut Massacre.” Time, February 21, 1983.https://time.com/archive/6859765/the-verdict-is-guilty-an-israeli-commission-and-the-beirut-massacre/.
15. Institute for Palestine Studies. “Sabra and Shatila Massacre: Evidence from the Kahan Papers.” Paragraph on Bayan Nuwayhid al-Hout’s count.https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/232060/1000.
16. United Nations General Assembly. “The Situation in the Middle East.” Resolution 37/123(D), December 16, 1982. UN Digital Library.https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/605931.
17. “Invitation to the Middle East Peace Conference.” Joint text issued by the United States and the Soviet Union, October 19, 1991. United Nations Information System on the Question of Palestine (UNISPAL).https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-206738/.
18. “Treaty of Peace between the State of Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, 26 October 1994.” Enclosure to letter dated January 9, 1995, from the Permanent Representatives of Israel, Jordan, the Russian Federation, and the United States of America to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General. UNISPAL. Covering letter, preamble, articles 3, 8, and 9.https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-179122/.
19. Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “Assassination Report Charges Shin Bet Mishandled Informer.” November 14, 1997.https://www.jta.org/archive/assassination-report-charges-shin-bet-mishandled-informer-2.