Editing David Ben-Gurion (section)

== Founding of Israel ==
[[File:Declaration of State of Israel 1948 2.jpg|thumb|left|David Ben-Gurion proclaiming independence beneath a portrait of [[Theodor Herzl]], founder of modern [[Zionism]]]]

On 14 May 1948, on the last day of the [[Mandatory Palestine|British Mandate]], Ben-Gurion declared [[Israeli Declaration of Independence|the independence of the State of Israel]].<ref>{{cite journal |last=Sherzer |first=Adi |date=January 2021 |title=The Jewish past and the 'birth' of the Israeli nation state: The case of Ben-Gurion's Independence Day speeches |editor1-last=Kedourie |editor1-first=Helen |editor2-last=Kelly |editor2-first=Saul |journal=[[Middle Eastern Studies (journal)|Middle Eastern Studies]] |publisher=[[Taylor & Francis]] |volume=57 |issue=2 |pages=310–326 |doi=10.1080/00263206.2020.1862801 |s2cid=231741621 |eissn=1743-7881 |issn=0026-3206 |lccn=65009869 |oclc=875122033}}</ref> In the Israeli declaration of independence, he stated that the new nation would "uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of religion, race".

In his War Diaries in February 1948, Ben-Gurion wrote: "The war shall give us the land. The concepts of 'ours' and 'not ours' are peace concepts only, and they lose their meaning during war."<ref name="Mêrôn Benveniśtî 1948, p. 120">Mêrôn Benveniśtî, ''Sacred landscape: the buried history of the Holy Land since 1948'', p. 120</ref> Also later he confirmed this by stating that, "In the Negev we shall not buy the land. We shall conquer it. You forget that we are at war."<ref name="Mêrôn Benveniśtî 1948, p. 120"/> The Arabs, meanwhile, also vied with Israel over the control of territory by means of war, while the Jordanian ''[[Arab Legion]]'' had decided to concentrate its forces in [[Bethlehem]] and in [[Hebron]] in order to save that district for its Arab inhabitants, and to prevent territorial gains for Israel.<ref>Sir [[John Bagot Glubb]], ''A Soldier with the Arabs'', London 1957, p. 200</ref> Israeli historian [[Benny Morris]] has written of the massacres of Palestinian Arabs in 1948, and has stated that Ben-Gurion "covered up for the officers who did the massacres."<ref>[[Ari Shavit]][http://www.haaretz.com/survival-of-the-fittest-1.61345 'Survival of the fittest,'] [[Haaretz]] 8 January 2004:"The worst cases were [[Saliha]] (70–80 killed), [[Deir Yassin]] (100–110), Lod (250), [[Dawayima]] (hundreds) and perhaps [[Abu Shusha]] (70). There is no unequivocal proof of a large-scale massacre at [[Tantura]], but war crimes were perpetrated there. At Jaffa there was a massacre about which nothing had been known until now. The same at Arab al Muwassi, in the north. About half of the acts of massacre were part of [[Operation Hiram]] [in the north, in October 1948]: at [[Safsaf]], Saliha, [[Jish]], [[Eilaboun]], Arab al Muwasi, [[Deir al-Asad|Deir al Asad]], [[Majd al-Krum|Majdal Krum]], [[Sa'sa'|Sasa]]. In [[Operation Hiram]] there was a unusually high concentration of executions of people against a wall or next to a well in an orderly fashion.That can't be chance. It's a pattern. Apparently, various officers who took part in the operation understood that the expulsion order they received permitted them to do these deeds in order to encourage the population to take to the roads. The fact is that no one was punished for these acts of murder. ''Ben-Gurion silenced the matter. He '''covered up''' for the officers who did the massacres''."</ref>

[[File:Truman receives menorah.jpg|thumb|U.S. President [[Harry S. Truman]] in the Oval Office, receiving a [[Menorah (Hanukkah)|Menorah]] as a gift from the Prime Minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion (center). To the right is [[Abba Eban]], the Ambassador of Israel to the United States.]]

===First tenure as prime minister===
After leading Israel during the [[1948 Arab–Israeli War]], Ben-Gurion was elected [[Prime Minister of Israel]] when his Mapai (Labour) party won the largest number of [[Knesset]] seats in the first national election, held on 14 February 1949. He remained in that post until 1963, except for a period of nearly two years between 1954 and 1955. As prime minister, he oversaw the establishment of the state's institutions. He presided over various national projects aimed at the rapid development of the country and its population: [[Operation Magic Carpet (Yemen)|Operation Magic Carpet]], the airlift of Jews from Arab countries, the construction of the [[National Water Carrier of Israel|National Water Carrier]], rural development projects and the establishment of new towns and cities. In particular, he called for pioneering settlement in outlying areas, especially in the [[Negev]]. Ben-Gurion saw the struggle to make the Negev desert bloom as an area where the Jewish people could make a major contribution to humanity as a whole.<ref name=bgarchives/> He believed that the sparsely populated and barren Negev desert offered a great opportunity for the Jews to settle in Palestine with minimal obstruction of the Arab population,{{dubious|I moved this sentence from "Zionist leadership" paragraph. It seems to fit here, except for the "obstruction of the Arab population" bit, and the URL leads to dead link...|date=May 2015}} and set a personal example by settling in kibbutz [[Sde Boker]] at the center of the Negev.<ref name=bgarchives>{{Cite web |url=http://bgarchives.bgu.ac.il/moreshet/ben_gurion/mash.html |title=Importance of the Negev |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070223082404/http://bgarchives.bgu.ac.il/moreshet/ben_gurion/mash.html |archive-date=23 February 2007 |author=David Ben-Gurion |date=17 January 1955|language=he}}</ref>

====Reprisal operations====
{{See also|Reprisal operations|Qibya massacre}}

[[File:Haifa (997008136360005171).jpg|thumb|right|Ben-Gurion at the Parade of the Israel Defense Forces in 1953, Haifa]]

During this period, [[Palestinian fedayeen]] repeatedly infiltrated into Israel from Arab territory. In 1953, after a handful of unsuccessful retaliatory actions, Ben-Gurion charged [[Ariel Sharon]], then security chief of the northern region, with setting up a new commando unit designed to respond to fedayeen infiltrations. Ben-Gurion told Sharon, "The Palestinians must learn that they will pay a high price for Israeli lives." Sharon formed [[Unit 101]], a small commando unit answerable directly to the [[General Staff (Israel)|IDF General Staff]] tasked with retaliating for fedayeen raids. During its five months of existence, the unit launched repeated raids against military targets and villages used as bases by the fedayeen.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://en.specwar.info/special-forces/israel/unit-101/ |title=Unit 101 (Israel) &#124; Specwar.info &#124;&#124; |publisher=En.specwar.info |access-date=9 September 2012}}</ref> These attacks became known as the [[reprisal operations]]. One such operation gained international condemnation of Israel, after an Israeli army attack on the village of [[Qibya]] in the then Jordanian-ruled [[West Bank]], ended with a massacre of 69 Palestinian villagers, two thirds of them women and children.<ref name=uneasy>{{citation|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=G820rBq299AC&pg=PA191|page=191|title=An Uneasy Relationship: American Jewish Leadership And Israel, 1948–1957|first=Zvi|last=Ganin|publisher=Syracuse University Press|year=2005|isbn=978-0-8156-3051-7}}</ref><ref name="autogenerated1">{{cite book| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CW7GbiUkri0C&pg=PA91| last = Shlaim| first = Avi| title = The Iron Wall| publisher = Norton  | year = 1999  | isbn = 978-0-393-04816-2|page=91}}</ref><ref name="Benny Morris 1993, pp. 258-9">Benny Morris, ''Israel's Border Wars, 1949–1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation and the Countdown to the Suez War'', Oxford University Press, 1993, pp. 258–9.</ref> Ben Gurion denied involvement of the army and placed blame on Israeli civilians, a fabrication which was repeated by him at the UN. He was seen as having protected involved subordinates in the military from accountability.<ref name="BG">{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bcAwCwAAQBAJ|title=The International Diplomacy of Israel's Founders|author=John Quigley|year=2016|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-1-107-13873-5 }}</ref>

===Acting prime minister===
In 1953, Ben-Gurion announced his intention to withdraw from government and was replaced by [[Moshe Sharett]], who was elected the second Prime Minister of Israel in January 1954. However, Ben-Gurion temporarily served as acting prime minister when Sharett visited the United States in 1955. During Ben-Gurion's tenure as acting prime minister, the IDF carried out [[Operation Olive Leaves]], a successful attack on fortified Syrian emplacements near the northeastern shores of the [[Sea of Galilee]]. The operation was a response to Syrian attacks on Israeli fishermen. Ben-Gurion had ordered the operation without consulting the [[Cabinet of Israel|Israeli cabinet]] and seeking a vote on the matter, and Sharett would later bitterly complain that Ben-Gurion had exceeded his authority.<ref>Vital (2001), p. 182</ref>

===Second tenure as prime minister===
[[File:Ben Gurion 1959.jpg|thumb|Ben-Gurion in 1959]]
[[File:Kennedy&Gurion.jpg|thumb|[[John F. Kennedy|Kennedy]] and Ben-Gurion in 1961]]
[[File:דוד בן גוריון נואם בועידת רפ'"י 1965, צלם משה פרידן לע"מ.jpg|thumb|Ben-Gurion addressing an election meeting of [[Rafi (political party)|Rafi]] party in [[Hadar Yosef]] in 1965]]

Ben-Gurion returned to government in 1955. He assumed the post of defence minister and was soon re-elected prime minister. When he returned to government, Israeli forces began responding more aggressively to Egyptian-sponsored Palestinian guerrilla attacks from Gaza, which was under Egyptian rule. Egypt's President [[Gamal Abdel Nasser]] signed the [[Egyptian-Czech arms deal]] and purchased a large number of modern arms. The Israelis responded by arming themselves with help from France. Nasser blocked the passage of Israeli ships through the [[Straits of Tiran]] and the Suez Canal. In July 1956, the United States and Britain withdrew their offer to fund the Aswan High Dam project on the Nile and a week later, Nasser ordered the nationalisation of the French and British-controlled Suez Canal. In late 1956, the bellicosity of Arab statements prompted Israel to remove the threat of the concentrated Egyptian forces in the Sinai, and Israel invaded the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula. Other Israeli aims were elimination of the fedayeen incursions into Israel that made life unbearable for its southern population and opening the blockaded [[Straits of Tiran]] for Israeli ships.<ref name="ShemeshTroen2005p5"/><ref name="Alteras1993p192"/><ref name="Caraccilo2011p113"/><ref name="Dowty2005p102"/><ref name="Bickerton2009p101"/> Israel occupied much of the peninsula within a few days. As agreed beforehand, within a couple of days, Britain and France invaded too, aiming at regaining Western control of the [[Suez Canal]] and removing the Egyptian president Nasser. The United States pressure forced the British and French to back down and Israel to withdraw from Sinai in return for free Israeli navigation through the Red Sea. The United Nations responded by establishing its first peacekeeping force, ([[United Nations Emergency Force|UNEF]]).  It was stationed between Egypt and Israel and for the next decade it maintained peace and stopped the fedayeen incursions into Israel.

In 1957, Ben-Gurion was injured by a grenade thrown into the Knesset plenum by a troubled Jewish immigrant from Syria, [[Moshe Dwek]], who claimed that nobody was being attentive to his needs.<ref>[https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-12-07/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/newly-recovered-historic-treasure-reveals-david-ben-gurions-unlikely-correspondence/00000193-9fb4-ddde-addb-ffb6cedc0000 Newly Recovered Historic Treasure Reveals David Ben-Gurion's Unlikely Correspondence With His Would-be Assassin]</ref> 

In 1959, Ben-Gurion learned from West German officials of reports that the notorious Nazi war criminal, [[Adolf Eichmann]], was likely living in hiding in Argentina. In response, Ben-Gurion ordered the Israel foreign intelligence service, the [[Mossad]], to capture the international fugitive alive for trial in Israel. In 1960, the mission was accomplished, and Eichmann was tried and convicted in an internationally publicised [[Eichmann trial|trial]] for various offences including [[crimes against humanity]] and was subsequently executed in 1962.

Ben-Gurion is said to have been "nearly obsessed" with Israel's obtaining [[nuclear weapon]]s, feeling that a nuclear arsenal was the only way to counter the Arabs' superiority in numbers, space, and financial resources, and that it was the only sure guarantee of Israel's survival and the prevention of another [[Holocaust]].<ref>Zaki Shalom, ''Israel's Nuclear Option: Behind the Scenes Diplomacy Between Dimona and Washington'', (Portland, Ore.: Sussex Academic Press, 2005), p. 44</ref> During his final months as premier Ben-Gurion was engaged in a, now declassified, diplomatic standoff with the United States.<ref name="Haaretz2019">{{Cite news | url=https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-how-a-standoff-with-the-u-s-almost-blew-up-israel-s-nuclear-program-1.7193419 |title = How a Standoff with the U.S. Almost Blew up Israel's Nuclear Program|newspaper = Haaretz|date = 3 May 2019|last1 = Cohen|first1 = Avner}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web | url=https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2019-05-02/battle-letters-1963-john-f-kennedy-david-ben-gurion-levi-eshkol-us-inspections-dimona | title=The Battle of the Letters, 1963: John F. Kennedy, David Ben-Gurion, Levi Eshkol, and the U.S. Inspections of Dimona &#124; National Security Archive| date=29 April 2019}}</ref>

Ben-Gurion stepped down as prime minister on 16 June 1963. According to historian Yechiam Weitz, when he unexpectedly resigned:

<blockquote>He was asked to reconsider his decision by the cabinet. The country, however, seemed to have anticipated his move and, unlike the response to his resignation in 1953, no serious efforts were made to dissuade him from resigning.... [His reasons include] his political isolation, suspicion of colleagues and rivals, apparent inability to interact with the full spectrum of reality, and belief that his life's work was disintegrating. His resignation was not an act of farewell but another act of his personal struggle and possibly an indication of his mental state.<ref>Yechiam Weitz,  "Taking Leave of the'Founding Father': Ben-Gurion's Resignation as Prime Minister in 1963". ''Middle Eastern Studies'' 37.2 (2001): 131–152, from Abstract at {{doi|10.1080/714004392}}</ref></blockquote>

Ben-Gurion chose [[Levi Eshkol]] as his successor. A year later a bitter rivalry developed between the two on the issue of the [[Lavon Affair]], a failed 1954 Israeli covert operation in Egypt. Ben-Gurion had insisted that the operation be properly investigated, while Eshkol refused. After failing to unseat Eshkol as Mapai party leader in the [[1965 Mapai leadership election]], Ben-Gurion subsequently broke with Mapai in June 1965 and formed a new party, [[Rafi (political party)|Rafi]], while Mapai merged with [[Ahdut HaAvoda]] to form [[Alignment (political party)|Alignment]], with Eshkol as its head. Alignment defeated Rafi in the November 1965 [[1965 Israeli legislative election|election]], establishing Eshkol as the country's leader.