David Ben-Gurion

David Ben-Gurion was born David Grün in Płońsk, then in the Russian Empire, in 1886 and moved to Ottoman Palestine in 1906. A Labor Zionist, he helped found the Histadrut labour federation and led the Mapai party and the Jewish Agency. On 14 May 1948 he read the declaration establishing the State of Israel. He served as prime minister and defence minister from 1948 to 1963, with a break in 1954-1955. He retired from politics in 1970 and died in 1973. He spent much of his retirement on a kibbutz in the Negev desert, which he hoped Israelis would settle.

Israelis widely regard Ben-Gurion as the country's founding father, crediting him with building the army, the state bureaucracy and the absorption of hundreds of thousands of immigrants. Admirers stress his decisiveness in 1948 and his pragmatism. Palestinians and many historians associate his leadership with the 1948 war in which hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled, known to Palestinians as the Nakba, and with the military government imposed on Arab citizens until 1966. Critics within Israel faulted his domineering style, the Lavon affair and his clashes with party colleagues.