First Government of Israel

The Declaration of Independence provided for a provisional government until elected regular authorities could be established, and the People’s Administration served in that provisional capacity after statehood.[6] The Provisional State Council functioned from 14 May 1948 until 14 February 1949, when the elected Constituent Assembly replaced it.[7] Ben-Gurion already headed the provisional government before undertaking the formation of the first elected administration.[8]

The Declaration had called for elections by 1 October 1948, but the War of Independence caused repeated postponements.[2] Voting finally took place on 25 January 1949, while the war was still underway.[9] About half a million people were eligible to participate, and approximately 440,000 cast ballots, producing turnout of roughly 87 percent.[3][10] The election was formally for a Constituent Assembly intended to prepare a constitution, rather than explicitly for a parliament.[11]

Twenty-one parties appeared on the ballot, and twelve entered the 120-member assembly.[9] Mapai emerged as the largest party, winning 46 seats and nearly 36 percent of the vote.[9] Mapam received 19 seats, the United Religious Front 16, and Herut 14.[3] Although Mapai held a substantial lead over its rivals, its 46 seats left Ben-Gurion needing partners to secure a parliamentary majority.[8]

The assembly first met on 14 February 1949 at the Jewish Agency building in Jerusalem.[12] Opening the proceedings, Chaim Weizmann declared: “It is with a sense of honor and awe that I rise to open the Constituent Assembly of the State of Israel, the first Jewish assembly of our day, in Jerusalem, the eternal city.”[13] Two days later, the lawmakers ratified the Transition Law, establishing a framework for governance and renaming the Constituent Assembly the Knesset.[13] Weizmann was elected Israel’s first president on the same day.[14]

The framework for forming a government required the president to consult parliamentary parties and then call upon a Knesset member to assemble an administration.[7] Weizmann selected Ben-Gurion because Mapai was the largest parliamentary group and no other group could form a majority coalition.[8] Government formation proceeded amid continuing sporadic fighting, before the state’s de facto boundaries had been settled.[10]

Ben-Gurion took about a month and a half to assemble the first elected government after the January election.[8] On 8 March 1949, he presented its composition and program to the Knesset, explaining that he had approached parties ranging from Mapam to the General Zionists but had found their demands incompatible with the coalition he sought to create.[15] The government was established that day.[1] It received a parliamentary vote of confidence and was sworn in on 10 March.[10][16]

The coalition’s cabinet-bearing parties were Mapai, the United Religious Front, the Progressive Party, and the Sephardi faction.[15] The Arab-led Democratic List of Nazareth also participated in the coalition arrangement, although the Arab lists associated with Mapai received no government posts.[2][8] Mapam and Herut remained in opposition, despite Mapam’s position as the second-largest parliamentary party.[2]

Mapai and Mapam together held 65 seats, making a left-wing parliamentary majority numerically possible.[8] Ben-Gurion instead formed a coalition with the United Religious Front, the Progressive Party, the Sephardi faction, and Mapai-associated Arab lists.[8] Mapai combined socialist ideas with diplomatic flexibility, whereas Mapam’s leaders favored a more doctrinaire, pro-Soviet socialist direction.[17] Ben-Gurion also excluded Herut and the Communists as potential coalition partners for ideological reasons.[8]

Politically, the coalition extended beyond Mapai to religious parties, Progressives, Sephardi and Mizrahi representatives, and a Mapai-associated Arab list.[2][8] Its program established shared responsibility among coalition members for agreed policy and government decisions, while preserving lawmakers’ freedom to debate proposals and criticize departures from the line established by the Knesset or coalition.[15] This arrangement linked collective responsibility in government to continuing parliamentary debate rather than requiring coalition members to abandon all scope for criticism.[15]

The United Religious Front, with 16 seats, was the largest coalition partner after Mapai.[8] It united four parties: Mizrachi, Hapoel Hamizrachi, Agudat Yisrael, and Poalei Agudat Yisrael.[18] The alliance spanned religious-Zionist and Orthodox political currents.[18] Its participation followed agreement on religious demands, including deferment of yeshiva students from military service and exemption of religious girls from military service.[18]

The Democratic List of Nazareth, the coalition’s smallest party, held two seats.[8] It was led by Seif el-Din el-Zoubi and Amin-Salim Jarjora.[11] El-Zoubi had served as a Haganah fighter, while Jarjora was an educator and jurist.[11] The list was aligned with Mapai, and its inclusion formed part of Ben-Gurion’s effort to demonstrate that Jews and Arabs could coexist in the new state.[11] Its participation in the governing coalition did not translate into a ministerial appointment.[8]

Ben-Gurion presented a twelve-member cabinet, allocating seven ministers to Mapai, three to the United Religious Front, and one each to the Progressive Party and the Sephardi faction.[15] He retained both the premiership and the defense portfolio.[15] The other Mapai ministers were Moshe Sharett in foreign affairs, Eliezer Kaplan in finance, David Remez in transport, Golda Meirson in labor and social insurance, Zalman Shazar in education and culture, and Dov Yosef in rationing and supply.[15] Sharett and Golda Meir later served as prime minister themselves.[2]

The United Religious Front’s ministers were Yitzhak-Meir Levin in welfare, Yehuda-Leib Hacohen Fishman in religious affairs, and Moshe Shapira in interior and immigration.[15] Pinhas Rosen represented the Progressive Party as justice minister, while Bechor Sheetrit represented the Sephardi faction as police minister.[15] Ze’ev Sharef served as cabinet secretary.[5]

At the presentation on 8 March, commerce and industry, health, agriculture, and minorities had not yet been assigned to individual ministers; responsibility for those portfolios rested temporarily with the government collectively.[15] Listings of the government also associate Kaplan with trade and industry, Yosef with agriculture, Shapira with health, Fishman with war casualties, and Sheetrit with minorities.[19][5] The initial presentation therefore distinguished the immediately allocated ministries from fields of administration for which the cabinet initially assumed joint responsibility.[15]

Immigration and immigrant absorption occupied a central place in the government’s program, which proposed a four-year development and absorption plan intended to double the state’s population through mass immigration and intensive development.[15] The plan connected population growth with agricultural settlement, infrastructure, housing, employment, and economic expansion.[15] Practical measures for newcomers included vocational training and Hebrew-language instruction, alongside efforts to direct immigrants toward productive work and settlement.[15]

Open immigration had been adopted immediately after Israel’s establishment, and the first elected government sought to double the Jewish population within four years.[20] Ben-Gurion expressed the priority he assigned to bringing Jews to Israel by telling the Knesset: “At the present time, Aliyah takes precedence over absorption.”[20] About 415,000 people arrived during the roughly 26 months preceding passage of the Law of Return, whose central provision declared: “Every Jew has the right to immigrate to Israel.”[20]

The scale of immigration placed housing, health, employment, and the organization of immigrant transition camps among the principal subjects of parliamentary discussion.[8] The government faced an already difficult economic situation while confronting urgent security needs and the work of absorbing newcomers.[8] Its program addressed these demands through both development and temporary restrictions on consumption, rather than presenting austerity as its only economic response.[15]

In an April 1949 Knesset speech, Ben-Gurion identified three simultaneous tasks: maintaining security, absorbing large-scale immigration, and sustaining a fair standard of living.[4] He called for expanding production, settlement, and industry, improving productivity, and attracting public and private investment, while introducing austerity as a temporary measure.[4] When presenting the government in March, he had warned: “The economic and organizational test which we will face now is no less difficult or critical than the test of the war.”[21]

On 26 April 1949, Ben-Gurion announced rationing that limited purchases of food and consumer goods.[22] The policy responded to mass immigration by people with few resources, rapidly rising prices, and inflation.[22] Under the system, citizens received personal booklets containing points with which to obtain basic consumer goods, while Dov Yosef headed the Ministry of Supply and Rationing.[22]

The government program envisaged strict rationing of essential food, clothing, and other goods, controls on imports and prices, and penalties for profiteering and black-market activity.[15] Alongside these restrictions, it proposed investment incentives and public and private development of agriculture, industry, housing, and services.[15] Employment, public works, rationing, and black-market activity consequently featured in the First Knesset’s economic debates.[8]

Safeguarding Israel’s independence and sovereignty was an explicit principle of the government’s program.[15] Its defense provisions proposed general conscription at ages and under procedures to be established by law.[15] Parliamentary discussion during the First Knesset addressed the termination of the War of Independence, the organization of the Israel Defense Forces, and the rights of demobilized soldiers.[23]

The foreign-policy program pledged adherence to the United Nations Charter and friendship with countries seeking peace, particularly the United States and the Soviet Union.[15] It also called for Jewish-Arab cooperation with neighboring countries within the UN framework.[15] Early Knesset debates concerned Israel’s ceasefire agreements with neighboring states and its position in the international arena.[13]

The government’s stated civil principles promised equal rights and duties for citizens without distinction of religion, race, or nationality.[15] The program listed freedom of religion, conscience, language, education, and culture among the protections to be secured.[15] It proposed education in Arabic for Arab citizens alongside Hebrew-language instruction, making language and education part of its stated framework for citizenship.[15]

Labor proposals included the right to collective organization, minimum wages, social insurance, workplace protections, and equal pay for equal work.[15] The education program called for free education for children up to an age to be fixed by law, together with compulsory school attendance.[15] The First Knesset also addressed the status of Arab citizens and property left behind by refugees of the War of Independence.[23]

During consideration of annexing the Gaza Strip in 1949, demographic implications figured prominently in ministerial discussions.[20] Foreign Minister Sharett argued that annexation would involve taking responsibility for about 150,000 Arabs, many of whom would wish to return to homes within Israel.[20] In a warning to a Knesset committee, he used a figure of about 170,000 Arabs and said annexation would increase Israel’s Arab minority to 300,000.[20]

For most of its first year, the Knesset met in the Kesem, or “Magic,” Cinema in Tel Aviv.[11] Opened in 1945 with more than 1,100 seats, the building had been repurposed as Israeli Navy headquarters after statehood before becoming the parliament building in 1949.[11] Its size and central location made it practical at a time when large assembly halls were scarce.[11]

A dangerous incident at the cinema in 1949 involved a kibbutz shepherd who entered carrying an automatic weapon and a suitcase of pamphlets promoting a plan for world peace.[11] He claimed that he intended to commit suicide in the Knesset to attract attention to his plan, while some contemporary reports described him shouting, “I will kill Ben-Gurion!” before he was tackled.[11]

Education became a major source of friction within the coalition after the Compulsory Education Law of September 1949 maintained four educational streams: general, labor, national religious, and Haredi.[8] Religious representatives objected that children of religious immigrants in transit camps were receiving nonreligious education.[8] Early in 1950, Orthodox cabinet members stopped attending meetings until their objections to education policy in the immigrant camps were resolved.[24]

A compromise reached in March 1950 secured religious education for those who wanted it.[24] A commission of inquiry reported in June that the government had not coerced anyone, although local education officers had made serious mistakes.[24] The dispute thus involved both the rights of religious immigrant families and the conduct of education officials working in the camps.[24]

Ben-Gurion also attempted to broaden the government’s parliamentary base during early 1950 by negotiating with opposition parties.[24] Mapam ended negotiations in early March and remained outside the coalition; two months later, the General Zionists likewise decided not to join.[24] The government consequently continued to depend on its existing Mapai, religious, Progressive, and Sephardi partners.[24]

Ben-Gurion submitted his resignation on 15 October 1950, ending the first government’s active political tenure.[2] Its listed term ended on 30 October 1950.[5] The outgoing administration continued in office for several days after the resignation while a successor cabinet was being arranged.[25]

After approximately two weeks of negotiations, Ben-Gurion re-formed the cabinet on the same party basis.[24] The new government was formed in November without another Knesset election, retaining the coalition partners that had supported the first administration.[2] Its formation on 1 November was accompanied by a reshuffling of Mapai’s ministers rather than a change in the coalition’s underlying party composition.[8]

Changes recorded on 1 November included the appointment of P. Lubianiker as agriculture minister and I. Geri as minister of trade and industry.[7] Zalman Shazar resigned, David Remez moved to education, and Dov Joseph became transport minister.[7] The Ministry of Supply and Rationing was abolished as part of these changes.[7]

The First Knesset lasted about two and a half years, during which Ben-Gurion formed two governments.[13] The replacement of the first cabinet therefore took place within the same elected legislature and without requiring voters to return immediately to the polls.[2][13]

The first elected government replaced the provisional administration that had governed Israel from its founding, giving Ben-Gurion an executive based on the results of the January 1949 election.[19] Its formation joined the establishment of the Knesset and the election of a president in the transition from provisional to elected institutions.[6][14] Its coalition combined Mapai’s parliamentary leadership with religious, Progressive, Sephardi and Mizrahi, and Arab participation rather than relying on the possible Mapai-Mapam majority.[2][8]

Its published program brought security, immigration, development, civil freedoms, education, and labor protections into a single governing agenda.[15] Mass immigration and the practical demands of absorption were central both to that program and to the legislature’s debates over housing, health, employment, and camps.[8][15] Austerity was presented as a temporary response within a wider strategy of production, investment, settlement, and industrial development.[4]

Accounts of the October 1950 resignation emphasize different causes.[2][25] One explanation links it to education disputes with the religious parties, while another emphasizes the division of authority in trade and industry and the proposed appointment of businessman Jacob Geri, who was not a Knesset member.[2][25] Another account connects the collapse to disputes with religious parties over unified education and the conscription of women.[26] These explanations differ in emphasis, but the successor government retained the same party composition.[8][24]