David Ben-Gurion(Hebrew: דָּוִד בֶּן-גּוּרִיּוֹן‎; pronounced born David Grün; 16 October 1886 – 1 December 1973) was the primary national founder of the State of Israel and the first Prime Minister of Israel.

Ben-Gurion's passion for Zionism, which began early in life, led him to become a major Zionist leader and Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization in 1946.[1] As head of the Jewish Agency from 1935, and later president of the Jewish Agency Executive, he was the de facto leader of the Jewish community in Palestine, and largely led its struggle for an independent Jewish state in Mandatory Palestine. On 14 May 1948, he formally proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel, and was the first to sign the Israeli Declaration of Independence, which he had helped to write. Ben-Gurion led Israel during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and united the various Jewish militias into the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Subsequently, he became known as "Israel's founding father".[2]

Following the war, Ben-Gurion served as Israel's first Prime Minister and Minister of Defense. As Prime Minister, he helped build the state institutions, presiding over various national projects aimed at the development of the country. He also oversaw the absorption of vast numbers of Jews from all over the world. A centerpiece of his foreign policy was improving relationships with the West Germans. He worked very well with Konrad Adenauer's government in Bonn, and West Germany provided large sums (in the Reparations Agreement between Israel and West Germany) in compensation for Nazi Germany's confiscation of Jewish property during the Holocaust.[3]

In 1954 he resigned as both Prime Minister and Minister of Defense, although he remained a member of the Knesset. However, he returned as Minister of Defense in 1955 after the Lavon Affair resulted in the resignation of Pinhas Lavon. Later in the year he became Prime Minister again, following the 1955 elections. Under his leadership, Israel responded aggressively to Arab guerrilla attacks, and in 1956, invaded Egypt along with British and French forces after Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal during what became known as the Suez Crisis.

He stepped down from office in 1963, and retired from political life in 1970. He then moved to Sde Boker, a kibbutz in the Negev desert, where he lived until his death. Posthumously, Ben-Gurion was named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Important People of the 20th century.

Russian Empire

David Ben-Gurion was born in Płońsk in Congress Poland – then part of the Russian Empire. His father, Avigdor Grün, was a lawyer and a leader in the Hovevei Zion movement. His mother, Scheindel (Broitman),[4] died when he was 11 years old. Ben-Gurion's birth certificate, when rediscovered in Poland in 2003, indicated that he had a twin brother who died shortly after birth.[5] At the age of 14 he and two friends formed a youth club, Ezra, promoting Hebrew studies and emigration to the Holy Land.

In 1905, as a student at the University of Warsaw, he joined the Social-Democratic Jewish Workers' Party – Poalei Zion. He was arrested twice during the Russian Revolution of 1905. Ben-Gurion discussed his hometown in his memoirs, saying:

"For many of us, anti-Semitic feeling had little to do with our dedication [to Zionism]. I personally never suffered anti-Semitic persecution. Płońsk was remarkably free of it ... Nevertheless, and I think this very significant, it was Płońsk that sent the highest proportion of Jews to Eretz Israel from any town in Poland of comparable size. We emigrated not for negative reasons of escape but for the positive purpose of rebuilding a homeland ... Life in Płońsk was peaceful enough. There were three main communities: Russians, Jews and Poles. ... The number of Jews and Poles in the city were roughly equal, about five thousand each. The Jews, however, formed a compact, the centralized group occupying the innermost districts whilst the Poles were more scattered, living in outlying areas and shading off into the peasantry. Consequently, when a gang of Jewish boys met a Polish gang the latter would almost inevitably represent a single suburb and thus be poorer in fighting potential than the Jews who even if their numbers were initially fewer could quickly call on reinforcements from the entire quarter. Far from being afraid of them, they were rather afraid of us. In general, however, relations were amicable, though distant."[6]

Ottoman Palestine and Constantinople

In 1906 he immigrated to Ottoman Palestine. A month after his arrival, he was elected to the central committee of the newly formed branch of Poalei Zion in Jaffa, becoming chairman of the party's platform committee. He advocated a more nationalist program than other more leftist or Marxist committee members. The following year he complained about the Russian domination of the group. At the time the Jewish population in Palestine was around 55,000 – of whom 40,000 held Russian citizenship.

Ben-Gurion worked picking oranges in Petah Tikva, and in 1907 he moved to the kibbutzim in Galilee, where he worked as an agricultural laborer and withdrew from politics. The following year, he joined an armed group acting as a watchmen. On 12 April 1909, following an attempted robbery in which an Arab from Kafr Kanna was killed, Ben-Gurion was involved in fighting during which one guard and a farmer from Sejera were killed.[7]

On 7 November 1911, Ben-Gurion arrived in Thessaloniki in order to learn Turkish for his law studies. The city, which had a large Jewish community, impressed Ben-Gurion, who called it "a Jewish city that has no equal in the world". He also realized there that "the Jews were capable of all types of work" Some of the city's Jews were rich businessmen and professors, while others were merchants, craftsmen and porters.[8]

In 1912, he moved to Constantinople, the Ottoman capital, to study law at Istanbul University together with Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, and adopted the Hebrew name Ben-Gurion, after the Jewish leading figure Yosef ben Gurion from the Great Jewish Revolt against the Romans. He also worked as a journalist. Ben-Gurion saw the future as dependent on the Ottoman regime.

World War I

Ben-Gurion was living in Jerusalem at the start of the First World War, where he and Ben Zvi recruited forty Jews into a Jewish militia to assist the Ottoman Army. Despite this he was deported to Egypt in March 1915. From there he made his way to the United States where he remained for three years. On his arrival he and Ben Zvi went on a tour of 35 cities in an attempt to raise a pioneer army, Hechalutz, of 10,000 men to fight on Turkey's side.[9]

Settling in New York City in 1915, he met Russian-born Paula Munweis. They were married in 1917.

After the Balfour Declaration of November 1917, the situation changed dramatically and in 1918 Ben-Gurion, with the interest of Zionism in mind, switched sides and joined the newly formed Jewish Legion of the British Army. He volunteered for the 38th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers, one of the four which constituted the Jewish Legion. His unit fought against the Turks as part of Chaytor's Force during the Palestine Campaign.

Ben-Gurion and his family returned permanently to Palestine after World War I following its conquest by the British from the Ottoman Empire.

Attitude towards the British

The British 1939 White paper stipulated that Jewish immigration to Palestine was to be limited to 15,000 a year for the first five years, and would subsequently be contingent on Arab consent. Restrictions were also placed on the rights of Jews to buy land from Arabs. After this Ben-Gurion changed his policy towards the British, stating: "Peace in Palestine is not the best situation for thwarting the policy of the White Paper".[23]Ben-Gurion believed a peaceful solution with the Arabs had no chance and soon began preparing the Yishuv for war. According to Teveth 'through his campaign to mobilize the Yishuv in support of the British war effort, he strove to build the nucleus of a "Hebrew Army", and his success in this endeavor later brought victory to Zionism in the struggle to establish a Jewish state.'[24]

During the Second World War, Ben-Gurion encouraged the Jewish population to volunteer for the British Army. He famously told Jews to "support the British as if there is no White Paper and oppose the White Paper as if there is no war".[25] About 10% of the Jewish population of Palestine volunteered for the British Army, including many women. At the same time Ben-Gurion assisted the illegal immigration of thousands of European Jewish refugees to Palestine during a period when the British placed heavy restrictions on Jewish immigration.

In 1946, Ben-Gurion agreed that the Haganah could cooperate with Menachem Begin's Irgun in fighting the British, who continued to restrict Jewish immigration. Ben-Gurion initially agreed to Begin's plan to carry out the 1946 King David Hotel bombing, with the intent of embarrassing (rather than killing) the British military stationed there. However, when the risks of mass killing became apparent, Ben-Gurion told Begin to call the operation off. Begin refused.[26]

Due to the Jewish insurgency in Palestine, bad publicity over the restriction of Jewish immigrants to Palestine, non-acceptance of a partitioned state (as suggested by the United Nations) amongst Arabs residents, and the cost of keeping 100,000 troops in Palestine the British Government referred the matter to the United Nations. The British were against the partition plan and announced they would hand the Mandate over to the U.N. on 15 May 1948. However, on 14 May the Israeli Declaration of Independence was unilaterally declared, leading to the 1948 Palestinian exodus.

Attitude towards conquering West Bank

After the ten-day campaign during the 1948 war, the Israelis were militarily superior to their enemies and the Cabinet subsequently considered where and when to attack next.[27] On 24 September, an incursion made by the Palestinian irregulars in the Latrun sector (killing 23 Israeli soldiers) precipitated the debate. On 26 September, David Ben-Gurion put his argument to the Cabinet to attack Latrun again and conquer the whole or a large part of West Bank.[28][29][30][31] The motion was rejected by 5 votes to 7 after discussions.[31] Ben-Gurion qualified the cabinet's decision as bechiya ledorot ("a source of lament for generations") considering Israel may have lost forever the Old City of Jerusalem.[32][33][34]

There is a controversy around these events. According to Uri Bar-Joseph, Ben-Gurion placed a plan that called for a limited action aimed at the conquest of Latrun, and not for an all-out offensive. According to David Tal, in the cabinet meeting, Ben-Gurion reacted to what he had been just told by a delegation from Jerusalem. He points out that this view he would have planned to conquest West Bank is unsubstantiated in both Ben-Gurion's diary and in the Cabinet protocol.[35][36][37][38]

The topic came back at the end of the 1948 war, when General Yigal Allon also proposed the conquest of the West Bank up to the Jordan River as the natural, defensible border of the state. This time, Ben-Gurion refused although he was aware that the IDF was militarily strong enough to carry out the conquest. He feared the reaction of Western powers and wanted to maintain good relations with the United States and not to provoke the British. Moreover, in his opinion the results of the war were already satisfactory and Israeli leaders had to focus on the building of a nation.[39][40][41]

According to Benny Morris, "Ben-Gurion got cold feet during the war. (...). If [he] had carried out a large expulsion and cleansed the whole country -the whole Land of Israel, as far as the Jordan River. It may yet turn out that this was his fatal mistake. If he had carried out a full expulsion rather than a partial one- he would have stabilized the State of Israel for generations."[42]

Religious parties and status quo

In order to prevent the coalescence of the religious right, the Hisdadrut agreed to a vague "status quo" agreement with Mizrahi in 1935.

Ben-Gurion was aware that world Jewry could and would only feel comfortable to throw their support behind the nascent state, if it was shrouded with religious mystique. That would include an orthodox tacit acquiescence to the entity. Therefore, in September 1947 Ben-Gurion decided to reach a formal status quo agreement with the Orthodox Agudat Yisrael party. He sent a letter to Agudat Yisrael stating that while being committed to establishing a non-theocratic state with freedom of religion, he promised that the Shabbat would be Israel's official day of rest, that in state-provided kitchens there would be access to Kosher food, that every effort would be made to provide a single jurisdiction for Jewish family affairs, and that each sector would be granted autonomy in the sphere of education, provided minimum standards regarding the curriculum be observed.[43]

To a large extent this agreement provided the framework for religious affairs in Israel till the present day, and is often used as a benchmark regarding the arrangement of religious affairs in Israel.

Ben-Gurion also described himself as an irreligious person who developed atheism in his youth and who demonstrated no great sympathy for the elements of traditional Judaism, though he quoted the Bible extensively in his speeches and writings.[44] Modern Orthodox philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz considered Ben-Gurion "to have hated Judaism more than any other man he had met".[45]

In later time, Ben-Gurion refused to define himself as "secular", and he regarded himself a believer in God. In a 1970 interview, he described himself as a pantheist, and stated that "I don't know if there's an afterlife. I think there is."[46] During an interview with the Leftist weekly Hotam two years before his death, he revealed, "I too have a deep faith in the Almighty. I believe in one God, the omnipotent Creator. My consciousness is aware of the existence of material and spirit ... [But] I cannot understand how order reigns in nature, in the world and universe – unless there exists a superior force. This supreme Creator is beyond my comprehension . . . but it directs everything."[47]

In a letter to the writer Eliezer Steinman, he wrote "Today, more than ever, the 'religious' tend to relegate Judaism to observing dietary laws and preserving the Sabbath. This is considered religious reform. I prefer the Fifteenth Psalm, lovely are the psalms of Israel. The Shulchan Aruch is a product of our nation's life in the Exile. It was produced in the Exile, in conditions of Exile. A nation in the process of fulfilling its every task, physically and spiritually ... must compose a 'New Shulchan'--and our nation's intellectuals are required, in my opinion, to fulfill their responsibility in this."[47]

References

1. Brenner, Michael; Frisch, Shelley (April 2003). Zionism: A Brief History. Markus Wiener Publishers. p. 184.
2. "1973: Israel's founding father dies". 1 December 1973. Retrieved 31 August 2018 – via news.bbc.co.uk.
3. George Lavy, Germany and Israel: moral debt and national interest (1996) p. 45
4. "Avotaynu: The International Review of Jewish Genealogy". G. Mokotoff. 31 August 2018. Retrieved 31 August 2018 – via Google Books.
5. "Ben-Gurion may have been a twin". Haaretz.
6. Memoirs : David Ben-Gurion (1970), p. 36.
7. Teveth, Shabtai (1985) Ben-Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs. From Peace to War. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-503562-3. Ezra – pp. 3, 4; Paolei Zion – p. 6; central committee – p. 9; populations—pp. 10, 21; Galilee pp. 12, 14–15.
8. Oswego.edu, Gila Hadar, "Space and Time in Salonika on the Eve of World War II and the Expulsion and Extermination of Salonika Jewry", Yalkut Moseshet 4, Winter 2006
9. Teveth, Shabtai (1985) Ben-Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs. From Peace to War. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-503562-3. pp. 25, 26.
10. "Mary Ben-Gurion (biographical details)". cosmos.ucc.ie. Retrieved 31 August 2018.
11. "Amos Ben-Gurion (biographical details)". cosmos.ucc.ie. Retrieved 31 August 2018.
12. Beckerman, Gal (29 May 2006). "The apples sometimes fall far from the tree". The Jerusalem Post.
13. Teveth, Shabtai (1985) Ben-Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs. From Peace to War. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-503562-3. pp. 66–70
14. Morris, Benny (3 October 2002). "Two years of the intifada – A new exodus for the Middle East?". The Guardian. Retrieved 30 August 2010.
15. "Ben-gurion Reveals Suggestion of North Vietnam's Communist Leader". Jewish Telegraphic Agency. 8 November 1966. Retrieved 5 September 2015.
16. "ISRAEL WAS EVERYTHING". Nytimes.com. 21 June 1987. Retrieved 5 September 2015.
17. "Secrets of Ben-Gurion's Leadership". Forward.com. Retrieved 2015-05-17.
18. Efraim Karsh, "Fabricating Israeli history: the 'new historians'", Edition 2, Routledge, 2000, ISBN 978-0-7146-5011-1, p. 213.
19. David Ben-Gurion, statement to the Assembly of Palestine Jewry, 2 October 1947
20. Nahum Goldmann, The Jewish Paradox A Personal Memoir, translated by Steve Cox, 1978, ISBN 0-448-15166-9, pp. 98, 99, 100
21. Simha Flapan, Zionism and the Palestinians, 1979, ISBN 0-85664-499-4, pp. 142–144
22. Teveth, Shabtai (1985) Ben-Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs. From Peace to War. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-503562-3. p. 118.
23. Shabtai Teveth, 1985, Ben-Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs, p. 199
24. S. Teveth, 1985, Ben-Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs, p. 200
25. "Ben-Gurion's road to the State" (in Hebrew). Ben-Gurion Archives. Archived from the original on 15 February 2006.
26. Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews, p. 523.
27. Benny Morris (2008), pp. 315–316.
28. Benny Morris (2008), pp. 317.
29. Uri Ben-Eliezer, The Making of Israeli Militarism, Indiana University Press, 1998, p.185 writes: "Ben-Gurion describes to the Minister his plans to conquer the entire West Bank, involving warfare against entire Jordan's Arab Legion, but to his surprise the Ministers rejected his proposal."
30. "Ben Gurion proposal to conquer Latrun, the cabinet meeting, 26 sept 1948 (hebrew)". Israel state archive blog:. israelidocuments.blogspot.co.il/2015/02/1948.html (Hebrew).
31. Benny Morris (2008), p. 318.
32. Mordechai Bar-On, Never-Ending Conflict: Israeli Military History, Stackpole Books, 2006, p.60 writes : "Originally, this was an idiom that Ben-Gurion used after the government rejected his demand to attack the Legion and occupy Samaria in the wake of a Mujuhidin's attack near Latrun in September 1948.
33. Yoav Gelber, Israeli-Jordanian Dialogue, 1948–1953, Sussex Academic Press, 2004, p.2.
34. Benny Morris (2008), pp. 315.
35. Zaki Shalom (2002). David Ben-Gurion, the State of Israel and the Arab World, 1949–1956. Sussex Academic Press. p. 155. ISBN 978-1-902210-21-6. A great satisfaction with the armistice borders…(Concerning the) area intended to pass into Israeli…(Ben Gurions') statements reveal the ambiguity over this subject
36. Zaki Shalom (2002). David Ben-Gurion, the State of Israel and the Arab World, 1949–1956. Sussex Academic Press. p. 160. ISBN 978-1-902210-21-6. If BG had been fully convinced that the IDF should have fought more aggressively for Jerusalem and the surrounding area, then Sharet's opposition would not have stood in the way of government consent
37. David Tal (24 June 2004). War in Palestine, 1948: Israeli and Arab Strategy and Diplomacy. Routledge. pp. 406–407. ISBN 978-1-135-77513-1. Nothing of this sort appears in the diary he kept at the time or in the minutes of the Cabinet meeting from which he is ostensibly quoting... Ben Gurion once more raised the idea of conquering Latrun in the cabinet. Ben Gurion was in fact reacting to what he had been told by a delegation from Jerusalem... The "everlasting shame" view is unsubstantiated in both Ben Gurion's diary and in the Cabinet protocol.
38. Uri Bar-Joseph (19 December 2013). The Best of Enemies: Israel and Transjordan in the War of 1948. Routledge. p. 115. ISBN 978-1-135-17010-3. the plan place by BG before the government call not for an all-out offensive, but rather for a limited action aimed at the conquest of Latrun…more than 13 years later ..(he) claim that his proposal had been far more comprehensive
39. Anita Shapira (25 November 2014). Ben-Gurion: Father of Modern Israel. Yale University Press. pp. 173–. ISBN 978-0-300-18273-6. "(Ben Gurion) He also did not flinch from provoking the United Nations by breaking the truce agreement. But the limit of his fearlessness was a clash with a Western power. Vainly, the right and Mapam accused him of defeatism. He did not flinch from confronting them but chose to maintain good relations with the United States, which he perceived as a potential ally of the new state, and also not to provoke the British lion, even though its fangs had been drawn. At the end of the war, when Yigal Allon, who represented the younger generation of commanders that had grown up in the war, demanded the conquest of the West Bank up to the Jordan River as the natural, defensible border of the state, Ben-Gurion refused. He recognized that the IDF was militarily strong enough to carry out the conquest, but he believed that the young state should not bite off more than it had already chewed. There was a limit to what the world was prepared to accept. Furthermore, the armistice borders—which later became known as the Green Line—were better than those he had dreamed of at the beginning of the war. In Ben-Gurion's opinion, in terms of territory Israel was satisfied. It was time to send the troops home and start work on building the new nation.
40. Benny Morris (2009). One state, two states: resolving the Israel/Palestine conflict. Yale University Press. p. 79. in March 1949, just before the signing of the Israel-Jordan armistice agreement, when IDF general Yigal Allon proposed conquering the West Bank, Ben-Gurion turned him down flat. Like most Israelis, Ben-Gurion had given up the dream
41. Zaki Shalom (2002). David Ben-Gurion, the State of Israel and the Arab World, 1949–1956. Sussex Academic Press. pp. 174–. ISBN 978-1-902210-21-6. The clearest expression of this 'activist' approach is found in a "personal, top secret" letter sent by Yigal Allon to BG shortly after ... We cannot imagine a border more stable than the Jordan River, which runs the entire length of the country
42. Ari Shavit, Survival of the fittest : An Interview with Benny Morris, Ha'aretz Friday Magazine, 9 January 2004.
43. The Status Quo Letter Archived 16 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine, in Hebrew
44. "Biography: David Ben-Gurion: For the Love of Zion". www.vision.org. Retrieved 31 August 2018.
45. Michael Prior (12 November 2012). Zionism and the State of Israel: A Moral Inquiry. Routledge. pp. 293–. ISBN 978-1-134-62877-3. Retrieved 20 May 2013.
46. "The Free Lance-Star - Google News Archive Search". news.google.com. Retrieved 31 August 2018.
47. Tsameret, Tsevi; Tlamim, Moshe (1 July 1999). "Judaism in Israel: Ben-Gurion's Private Beliefs and Public Policy". Israel Studies. 4 (2): 64–89. doi:10.1353/is.1999.0016. Retrieved 31 August 2018 – via Project MUSE.
48. See e.g. Benny Morris, the Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem and The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited
49. Mêrôn Benveniśtî, Sacred landscape: the buried history of the Holy Land since 1948, p. 120
50. Sir John Bagot Glubb, A Soldier with the Arabs, London 1957, p. 200
51. Ari Shavit'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, Majdal Krum, Sasa. In Operation Hiram there was an 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."
52. David Ben-Gurion (17 January 1955). "Importance of the Negev" (in Hebrew). Archived from the original on 23 February 2007.
53. "Unit 101 (Israel) | Specwar.info ||". En.specwar.info. Retrieved 9 September 2012.
54. Vital (2001), p. 182
55. Moshe Shemesh; Selwyn Illan Troen (5 October 2005). The Suez-Sinai Crisis: A Retrospective and Reappraisal. Routledge. p. 5. ISBN 978-1-135-77863-7. The aims were to be threefold: to remove the threat, wholly or partially, of the Egyptian rmy in the Sinai, to destroy the framework of the fedaiyyun, and to secure the freedom of navigation through the straits of Tiran.
56. Isaac Alteras (1993). Eisenhower and Israel: U.S.-Israeli Relations, 1953–1960. University Press of Florida. pp. 192–. ISBN 978-0-8130-1205-6. the removal of the Egyptian blockade of the Straits of Tiran at the entrance of the Gulf of Aqaba. The blockade closed Israel’s sea lane to East Africa and the Far East, hindering the development of Israel’s southern port of Eilat and its hinterland, the Nege. Another important objective of the Israeli war plan was the elimination of the terrorist bases in the Gaza Strip, from which daily fedayeen incursions into Israel made life unbearable for its southern population. And last but not least, the concentration of the Egyptian forces in the Sinai Peninsula, armed with the newly acquired weapons from the Soviet bloc, prepared for an attack on Israel. Here, Ben-Gurion believed, was a time bomb that had to be defused before it was too late. Reaching the Suez Canal did not figure at all in Israel’s war objectives.
57. Dominic Joseph Caraccilo (January 2011). Beyond Guns and Steel: A War Termination Strategy. ABC-CLIO. pp. 113–. ISBN 978-0-313-39149-1. The escalation continued with the Egyptian blockade of the Straits of Tiran, and Nasser's nationalization of the Suez Canal in July 1956. On October 14, Nasser made clear his intent:"I am not solely fighting against Israel itself. My task is to deliver the Arab world from destruction through Israel's intrigue, which has its roots abroad. Our hatred is very strong. There is no sense in talking about peace with Israel. There is not even the smallest place for negotiations." Less than two weeks later, on October 25, Egypt signed a tripartite agreement with Syria and Jordan placing Nasser in command of all three armies. The continued blockade of the Suez Canal and Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli shipping, combined with the increased fedayeen attacks and the bellicosity of recent Arab statements, prompted Israel, with the backing of Britain and France, to attack Egypt on October 29, 1956.
58. "The Jewish Virtual Library, The Sinai-Suez Campaign: Background & Overview". In 1955, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser began to import arms from the Soviet Bloc to build his arsenal for the confrontation with Israel. In the short-term, however, he employed a new tactic to prosecute Egypt's war with Israel. He announced it on August 31, 1955: Egypt has decided to dispatch her heroes, the disciples of Pharaoh and the sons of Islam and they will cleanse the land of Palestine....There will be no peace on Israel's border because we demand vengeance, and vengeance is Israel's death. These “heroes” were Arab terrorists, or fedayeen, trained and equipped by Egyptian Intelligence to engage in hostile action on the border and infiltrate Israel to commit acts of sabotage and murder.
59. Alan Dowty (20 June 2005). Israel/Palestine. Polity. pp. 102–. ISBN 978-0-7456-3202-5. Gamal Abdel Nasser, who declared in one speech that "Egypt has decided to dispatch her heroes, the disciples of Pharaoh and the sons of Islam and they will cleanse the land of Palestine....There will be no peace on Israel's border because we demand vengeance, and vengeance is Israel's death."...The level of violence against Israelis, soldiers and civilians alike, seemed to be rising inexorably.
60. Ian J. Bickerton (15 September 2009). The Arab-Israeli Conflict: A History. Reaktion Books. p. 101. ISBN 978-1-86189-527-1. (p. 101) To them the murderous fedayeen raids and constant harassment were just another form of Arab warfare against Israel...(p. 102) Israel's aims were to capture the Sinai peninsula in order to open the straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, and to seize the Gaza strip to end fedayeen attacks.
61. Zaki Shalom, Israel's Nuclear Option: Behind the Scenes Diplomacy Between Dimona and Washington, (Portland, Ore.: Sussex Academic Press, 2005), p. 44
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Further reading

• Aronson, Shlomo (2011). David Ben-Gurion and the Jewish Renaissance. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-19748-9..
• Cohen, Mitchell (1987/1992). "Zion and State: Nation, Class and the Shaping of Modern Israel" Columbia University Press)
• Peres, Shimon (2011). Ben-Gurion, Schocken Pub., ISBN 978-0-8052-4282-9.
• Teveth, Shabtai (1985). Ben-Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs: from peace to war. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-503562-9.
• Teveth, Shabtai (1996). Ben-Gurion and the Holocaust. Harcourt Brace & Co.
• Teveth, Shabtai (1997). The Burning Ground. A biography of David Ben-Gurion. Schoken, Tel Aviv.
• St. John, Robert William (1961), Builder of Israel; the story of Ben-Gurion, Doubleday
• Shilon, Avi (2013), Ben-Gurion, Epilogue, Am-Oved Publishers, ISBN 978-965-13-2391-1

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