Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
1939
A British White Paper severely restricts Jewish immigration to Israel.
May 9, 1942
Zionist leaders, headed by Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion, convene at
the Biltmore Hotel in New York to declare their postwar program. In the so-called
Biltmore Program they demand an end to the British Mandate — that is, to British rule
over Palestine — and, in addition, Jewish control over immigration with the aim of
founding a Jewish state.
July 22, 1946
Members of the United Resistance Movement — made up of the Jewish underground
movements Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi —bomb the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, the
central offi ce of the British Mandatory government.
November 29,
The United Nations General Assembly passes Resolution 181 to partition the Palestine
1947
Mandate, the region under British Mandatory government, into Jewish and Arab
states, with Jerusalem to be an international city.
May 15, 1948
The British Mandate for Palestine offi cially ends, Israel's independence, declared the
previous day, is implemented, and the British depart. Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon,
Jordan, and Saudi Arabia declare war on Israel.
May 15, 1948 -
War of Independence.
January 7, 1949
May 1948 -
More Jews arrive: 340,000, a number equaling almost half of the existing citizenry.
November
The arrivals include about 270,000 Holocaust survivors and 50,000 Yemeni Jews.
1949
March 11, 1949
Israel is admitted to the United Nations as a member state.
April 3, 1949
Israel and the Arab states agree to an armistice. Israel gains about 50 percent more ter-
ritory than it was originally allotted in the UN Partition Plan.
Early 1950s
About 113,000 Jews arrive from Iraq, and large parts of the Jewish communities of
Romania, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, and Egypt arrive.
January 1951
The Knesset (Israel's parliament) approves negotiations with Germany for reparations
for Jewish property seized, forced labor, imprisonment in concentration camps, and
killings during the period of Nazi rule. The negotiations lead to a treaty, ratifi ed in
March 1953.
1952
Israel's Atomic Energy Agency is founded. In 1953 processes for extracting uranium
from the Negev desert and producing heavy water are developed. In the late 1950s,
Israel receives help from France in designing and building a nuclear reactor in the
southern city of Dimona.
October 29,
Suez War. In retaliation for Egypt-backed border raids by Palestinian gunmen and the
1956
closure of the Straits of Tiran (connecting the Gulf of Aqaba to the Red Sea) and the
Suez Canal to Israeli shipping, Israel invades Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and occupies it for
several months. After this Suez campaign the straits and the canal are opened again to
Israeli shipping until 1967.
1958
Another wave of immigration begins from North Africa, mainly Morocco, bringing
160,000 people to Israel in a very short span of time.
May 23, 1960
The capture of the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann is announced. He is convicted
and hanged on May 31, 1962.
