David Ben-Gurion (1886 - 1973) was a Zionist leader and Israeli statesman who served as the first prime minister of Israel, holding office from 1948 to 1953 and again from 1955 to 1963. [1] As chairman of the Jewish Agency he led the Zionist movement through the final years of the British Mandate, and on 14 May 1948 he read the declaration establishing the State of Israel. [2] He also served as defence minister and directed the creation of the Israel Defense Forces.
Early life
Ben-Gurion was born David Grün on 16 October 1886 in Płońsk, then part of the Russian Empire and now in Poland. [1] Raised in a household committed to Zionism, he joined the socialist Zionist movement as a teenager and in 1906 emigrated to Ottoman Palestine, where he worked as an agricultural labourer and became active in the Poale Zion party, adopting the Hebrew name Ben-Gurion.
He went to Istanbul to study law, intending to enter Ottoman politics, but the First World War interrupted his studies and the Ottoman authorities expelled him from Palestine. He spent the war years in the United States, where he campaigned for the Zionist cause and later enlisted in the Jewish Legion of the British Army. [2]
Leader of the Yishuv
Returning to Palestine after the war, Ben-Gurion helped found the Histadrut, the federation of Jewish labour unions, in 1920 and served as its secretary-general through the following decade. [4] The Histadrut became an economic and social power in its own right, running enterprises, health services and settlement schemes, and it provided the organisational base for the Mapai party he helped create in 1930.
In 1935 he became chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive, effectively the leading political figure of the Jewish community in Mandatory Palestine. He supported the 1947 United Nations partition plan and directed preparations for the conflict that the leadership expected to follow the end of British rule. [1]
Prime minister
On 14 May 1948, as the Mandate ended, Ben-Gurion proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel in Tel Aviv. [2] Neighbouring Arab states intervened, and the war that followed ended in 1949 in armistice agreements that left Israel in control of more territory than the partition plan had allotted. The war also produced the flight and expulsion of most of the Palestinian Arab population of the area, an outcome that remains central to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. [3]
As prime minister and defence minister, Ben-Gurion merged the pre-state militias into a single national army, ordering the dissolution of independent formations in confrontations that included the Altalena affair. [1] His governments organised the absorption of very large numbers of Jewish immigrants, including refugees from Europe and from Arab and Muslim countries, and established the state's administrative, educational and scientific institutions. He pursued the development of the Negev and settled there himself at Kibbutz Sde Boker.
Ben-Gurion oversaw Israel's participation in the 1956 Sinai campaign, conducted in coordination with Britain and France, and built defence ties with West Germany and France. He resigned in 1953, returned to office in 1955, and left the premiership in 1963. A dispute over the handling of the intelligence scandal known as the Lavon Affair led him to break with Mapai and form the Rafi list in 1965. [1]
Later life and legacy
He retired from the Knesset in 1970 and returned to Sde Boker. He died at Ramat Gan on 1 December 1973 and was buried there beside his wife Paula. [1]
Ben-Gurion is commemorated in Israel in the names of the country's main international airport and of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. [2] His role in founding the state, and the policies of his governments, continue to be examined closely by historians of the region.
