Israel Independence Day is celebrated annually on 5 Iyar, the anniversary of the establishment of the State of Israel (May 14, 1948).
Today the Associated Press reported the following:
Bitter Palestinian rivals marched together Saturday in a rare show of unity as they marked 62 years of displacement in the war surrounding Israel’s creation.
Loyalists of rival groups Hamas and Fatah held Palestinian flags and a giant key symbolic of their hoped-for return as part of annual commemorations of what they call the “catastrophe,” or “nakba” in Arabic. The names of the villages and towns emptied during the war were written across the key, alongside the slogan “We will return.”
The plight of the refugees — who fled or were driven from their homes during the 1948 Israeli-Arab war — is one of the most emotionally charged issues for Palestinians and Israel to resolve.
From Wikipedia is this account of the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. My personal knowledge confirms much of the information. More in depth information here.
Fighting between the Arab and Jewish communities of Palestine began in November 1947, immediately after the UN decision to create a Jewish state. The Arab States declared they would greet any attempt to form a Jewish state with war.[46] Dr Izzat Tannous, the Palestinian Arab representative to the UN declared that
“We are now at war, a war in which no quarter will be asked and none will be given. It will be a battle of life and death and woe to the vanquished.”[47]
Fighting spread as the British gradually withdrew (the area had been a British Protectorate since the end of World War I). The Arab League could not invade until the British completed their withdrawal, and planned an invasion for the day after. In this phase, before the British departure, the struggle was a civil war. Arab forces consisted of village militias buttressed by the Arab Liberation Army, a force composed largely of Arab volunteers from across the Middle-East but which included European mercenaries including British deserters, German Nazis[48] and veterans of the (Bosnian Moslem) Croatian Waffen SS (whose commander had been the Palestinian Mufti of Jerusalem). The Jews had their militias (including many World War II veterans) and a several thousand strong professional force called the Palmach.
Initially the Arabs had the advantage as the British maintained an embargo on Palestine’s seas preventing the Jews from importing arms or manpower while Arab states could supply local Arabs who also occupied more strategic areas and outnumbered the Jews. The Jews, however, were better organized and believed themselves to be fighting for their lives. Jewish taxes had funded both the British army in Palestine and British support for the Arab population so the Jewish economy benefited from the British departure while the Arab economy collapsed as the war expanded. The Jews had an elected government (the Va’ad Leumi) already in place with an independent taxation system.
In the early stages 100,000 Palestinian Arabs, mainly the upper classes and the better off fled to neighbouring states.[49] Before May 1948, 150,000 more fled or were evicted during fighting as the Jews slowly overpowered the Arab forces. Jewish preparation for the Arab invasion led to the eviction of hostile Arab communities who controlled access routes. In Haifa the Arab Higher Committee (who were based in Syria) refused to allow a negotiated cease fire with the Jews or allow the Arab population to remain under Jewish control thus contributing to the departure of the city’s Arab population.[50] There was particularly heavy fighting on the road to Jerusalem, whose 100,000 strong Jewish community was cut off from the rest of the country, and this led the Jews to destroy most of the Arab villages along the narrow route they eventually established between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
In March 1949, after many months of battle, a permanent ceasefire went into effect and Israel’s interim borders, later known as the Green Line, were established.
The current population of Israel is 7.5 million people, of whom 5.7 million are Jewish.
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