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Israel
PROBLEMS OF THE NEW STATE, 1948-67
Etatism
The War of Independence was the most costly war Israel has fought;
more than 6,000 Jewish fighters and civilians died. At the war's
end in 1949, the fledgling state was burdened with a number of
difficult problems. These included reacting to the absorption
of hundreds of thousands of new immigrants and to a festering
refugee problem on its borders, maintaining a defense against
a hostile and numerically superior Arab world, keeping a war-torn
economy afloat, and managing foreign policy alignments. Faced
with such intractable problems, Ben-Gurion sought to ensure a
fluid transition from existing prestate institutions to the new
state apparatus. He announced the formation of a Provisional Council
of State, actually a transformed executive committee of the Jewish
Agency with himself as prime minister. Weizmann became president
of the council, although Ben-Gurion was careful to make the presidency
a distinctly ceremonial position. The provisional government would
hold elections no later than October 1948 for the Constituent
Assembly to draw up a formal constitution. The proposed constitution
was never ratified, however, and on February 16, 1949 the Constituent
Assembly became Israel's first parliament or Knesset (see Glossary).
A key element of Ben-Gurion's etatism was the integration of
Israel's independent military forces into a unified military structure.
On May 28, 1948, Ben-Gurion 's provisional government created
the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the Hebrew name of which, Zvah
Haganah Le Yisrael, is commonly abbreviated to Zahal, and prohibited
maintenance of any other armed force. This proclamation was challenged
by the Irgun, which sailed the Altalena, a ship carrying
arms, into Tel Aviv harbor. Ben-Gurion ordered Haganah troops
to fire on the ship, which was set aflame on the beach in Tel
Aviv. With the two camps on the verge of civil war, Begin, the
leader of the Irgun, ordered his troops not to fire on the Haganah.
Although the Altalena affair unified the IDF, it remained
a bitter memory for Begin and the Irgun. Begin subsequently converted
his armed movement into a political party, the Herut (or Freedom
Movement). By January 1949, Ben-Gurion had also dissolved the
Palmach, the strike force of the Haganah.
Data as of December 1988
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