The training of Jewish fighters for operating a howitzer. (source: VHÚ)
The author is a lawyer and member of the Slovak Society of International Law at the Slovak Academy of Sciences.
This text deals neither with the legal and factual aspects of the current armed conflict between Israel and the Hamas movement in the Gaza Strip, nor with the International Court of Justice proceedings initiated by the Republic of South Africa against Israel on December 29, 2023. It will cover the birth of the State of Israel.
Finding support
At the end of November 1947 the UN General Assembly, via resolution 181 (II), approved the proposal of the UN Committee for Palestine, which recommended the creation of two separate states of Israel and Palestine - the so-called Partition Plan - in the then still valid British mandate of Palestine. Less than half a year later the independence of the new Jewish state was declared.
Already at the time, however, it was obvious that Israel would have to defend itself fiercely in a dispute with a coalition of Arab countries.
