David Ben-Gurion

David Ben-Gurion (1886–1973) was the principal founder of the State of Israel and its first Prime Minister. Born David Grün in Płońsk, then part of the Russian Empire (today Poland), he immigrated to Ottoman Palestine in 1906 and became active in Labor Zionist politics. He led the Mapai party and chaired the Jewish Agency Executive from 1935, the de facto leadership of the Yishuv during the British Mandate.

On 14 May 1948, Ben-Gurion read the Israeli Declaration of Independence in Tel Aviv, becoming Prime Minister and Defense Minister of the new state. During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War he ordered the integration of paramilitary forces—Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi—into a unified Israel Defense Forces (IDF), a consolidation marked by the controversial Altalena affair in June 1948.

As Prime Minister (1948–1954 and 1955–1963), he oversaw:

• Mass immigration, including operations bringing Jews from Yemen, Iraq, and post-Holocaust Europe, roughly doubling Israel's population in its first years.
• The 1952 Reparations Agreement with West Germany, a politically divisive deal negotiated with Chancellor Konrad Adenauer.
• The 1956 Suez (Sinai) Campaign, coordinated with France and the United Kingdom against Egypt under Gamal Abdel Nasser.
• The launch of Israel's nuclear program at Dimona, with French assistance in the late 1950s.
• State-building decisions including mamlakhtiyut (statism), the dissolution of the Palmach, and a 1950s policy of dispersing population to development towns in the Negev.

He resigned in 1963, later breaking with Mapai to form the Rafi party in 1965 alongside Moshe Dayan and Shimon Peres. He retired to Kibbutz Sde Boker in the Negev, where he died in 1973. Ben-Gurion remains a central—and contested—figure in debates over Israel's founding, the Palestinian Nakba, and the country's political identity.