The Short Answer
Israel declared independence on May 14, 1948, following the UN's 1947 vote to partition British Mandate Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. The Jewish leadership accepted the plan; Arab leaders rejected it, and five Arab armies invaded. In the war that followed, roughly 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled — what Palestinians call the Nakba — while a similar number of Jews were later forced out of Arab countries and absorbed by Israel.
From the Mandate to independence
After World War I, the League of Nations gave Britain a mandate over Palestine that explicitly recognized "the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine." In November 1947, UN General Assembly Resolution 181 recommended dividing the territory into a Jewish state and an Arab state, with Jerusalem under international administration.
The Jewish Agency accepted the plan. The Arab Higher Committee and the Arab League rejected it, and violence broke out immediately. On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion read Israel's Declaration of Independence, which extended "our hand to all neighbouring states and their peoples in an offer of peace." The next day, the armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq invaded.
The refugee question — on both sides
During the 1947–49 war, about 700,000 Palestinian Arabs left their homes. Some fled the fighting, some left at the urging of Arab leaders, and some were expelled. Palestinians commemorate this as the Nakba ("catastrophe").
Less often discussed: between 1948 and the early 1970s, roughly 800,000 Jews were expelled or pressured to leave Arab and Muslim countries such as Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Libya and Morocco, often losing all their property. Israel absorbed them as citizens. Arab states, by contrast, largely kept Palestinian refugees and their descendants stateless for generations.
Key Facts
- UN Partition Plan: November 29, 1947
- Declaration of Independence: May 14, 1948
- Five Arab armies invaded on May 15, 1948
- ~800,000 Jews later left or were expelled from Arab lands
Sources & Further Reading
- Declaration of Israel's Independence (1948) — Yale Avalon Project
- UN General Assembly Resolution 181 — Yale Avalon Project
- 1948 Arab–Israeli War — overview (Wikipedia)
- Jewish exodus from the Muslim world (Wikipedia)
This answer reflects publicly available information as of October 2026.