May 17, 1948 The Soviet Union officially recognizes the State of Israel three days after Israel declared independence and the United States immediately offered de facto recognition of the new state’s provisional government. The Soviet…
On Friday afternoon in the Tel Aviv Museum, David Ben-Gurion, chairman of the Provisional State Council, declares Israel’s independence. The United States is the first country to recognize the new and already besieged state of Israel.
The second secret meeting between the two is a last-ditch effort to persuade Transjordan to stay out of an impending war with the soon-to-be declared State of Israel.
April 22, 1948 As communal violence increases with the approaching departure of British troops and expected declaration of Israeli independence, the Haganah seizes Haifa, and as many as 25,000 Arabs flee the city, possibly in…
Arab forces ambush a medical convoy en route to Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus, Jerusalem. Seventy-nine people, mostly doctors and nurses are killed in the attack.
March 13, 1948 The Davidka, a mortar designed and manufactured at the Mikveh Israel agricultural school for use in Israel’s fight for independence, is used in combat for the first time in an attack on…
February 29, 1948 Jewish militants from the Lehi underground group mine train cars carrying British troops on the Cairo-Haifa line north of Rehovot. The attack uses one or more bombs placed on the tracks and…
February 22, 1948 Arab militants disguised as British troops, joined by a pair of British deserters, detonate bombs in three British military trucks and an armored car in the morning along the shopping district of…
The U.N. General Assembly vote the previous day for the partition of Palestine sparks between Jews and Arabs in the British Mandate of Palestine and riots against Jews in Arab cities around the Middle East
The United Nations General Assembly passes Resolution 181 by a vote of 33-13 with 10 abstentions. The Resolution recommended the creation of separate Arab and Jewish states in Palestine, linked by an economic union.
The Aliyah Bet ship Kadima arrives in Haifa under British escort. All of its passengers are arrested and moved to detention camps in Cyprus.
Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko proposes a unitary state for Palestine, but vows to support partition if it is deemed the only workable solution.
April 2, 1947 The British government notifies the United Nations of its intent to bring the question of Palestine’s future before the next U.N. General Assembly. The United Kingdom also requests a special General Assembly…
November 1, 1945 The newly formed Jewish Resistance Movement sets off explosions at more than 150 sites along the railway system of British Mandatory Palestine and blows up three British gunboats in the Jaffa and…
March 9, 1932 Pinhas Rutenberg and the Palestine Electric Co. open a hydroelectric power plant at Naharayim. It supplies much of the electricity in Palestine until its destruction by Iraqi troops during the 1948 War…
Ariel Sharon, Israel’s 11th Prime Minister, is born in K’far Malal (near Hod Hasharon). Born Ariel Scheinerman to political, socialist parents who had come to Eretz Yisrael during the Second Aliyah, Sharon joined the Haganah in 1945, serving in the War of Independence.
December 25, 1925 Politician and activist Geulah Cohen, the founder of the Tehiya party, is born in Tel Aviv. Cohen becomes involved with political movements in Mandatory Palestine when she is young, and she joins…
November 16, 1924 Haim Bar-Lev, an Israel Defense Forces chief of staff, is born in Vienna, Austria. His family moves to Yugoslavia before settling in Palestine in 1939. He studies at the Mikveh Israel agricultural…
Yitzhak Rabin, Israel’s 5th Prime Minister, is born in Jerusalem to parents who came to Israel during the Third Aliyah. He is the first Israeli Prime Minister to be born in Eretz Yisrael.
Shmuel Katz, a leader of Revisionist Zionism and a founder of the Herut Party in Israel, is born in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Charles Winters, an American who helps Israel acquire fighter planes in 1948, is born in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Ralph Bunche is born in Detroit, Michigan. He is appointed to the UN Special Committee on Palestine in 1947, which is charged with devising a partition plan.
November 11, 1902 Yisrael Amir, the first commander in chief of the Israeli Air Force, is born in Vilna in the Russian Empire as Yisrael Zabludovsky. He makes aliyah in 1923 and that year joins…
Moshe Sharett is born as Moshe Shertok in Kherson, Ukraine. Sharett’s parents were early Zionists, having been involved in the BILU movement in the early 1880’s.
