On This Day: Israel Becomes a Nation

The declaration read: “This right is the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State.”

The new country created at the museum that day was the first modern Jewish state, and its birth ended British colonial rule over Palestine, according to the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The next day, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan attacked the fledgling country. Over 15 months of fighting, Israel expanded the territory apportioned to it by the United Nations. Non-Jewish residents fled from both within the original borders of Israel and from the land that had been taken, becoming the first of the Palestinian refugees. Hundreds of thousands of Arabs fled to neighboring Arab countries in what they would call the "Nakba (disaster)," according to the site MidEastWeb.org.

The drive for a Jewish state began in the 19th century. A small Jewish population had lived in Palestine for centuries, some having fled the Roman Empire’s ban on Jews. In 1897, Theodor Herzl organized the Zionist movement, uniting forces seeking creation of a Jewish homeland.

Britain became involved in Palestine during World War I, according to the Guardian. At the time the Ottoman Empire controlled the land, and they supported Germany. Britain promised self rule to Arabs in present-day Israel if they revolted against the Ottomans. Britain had also promised the land to Jews.

After World War I, Britain ruled the Palestinian territories, making various promises to Jews and Palestinians regarding control over the land. In 1917, the British Balfour Declaration pledged a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

The Nazi Holocaust strengthened worldwide support for a Jewish state. In November 1947, the United Nations proposed splitting the British territories into a Jewish state and an Arab one. But Arab states at the U.N. rejected the proposal, a decision that left Palestinians without a homeland in the Middle East.

In 1995, a landmark agreement between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Ararafat, Palestine's leader, was signed. The agreement gave Palestinians control of part of the West Bank, a hotly contested strip of land between Israel and Jordan.

Since the 1948 attacks on the fledgling state of Israel, three wars have been fought between Israel and its Arab neighbors, and the Middle East conflict rages on through terrorism and ethnic conflict.

In 2008, when Israel celebrated its 60th birthday, Time magazine examined the country's continuing identity struggle. As for the 20 percent of the population that is Arab, many "complain that they are treated as second-class citizens or potential suicide bombers," Time reported.