What has Israel done to make peace with its neighbours?
The early years of the state One of the foremost goals of the Zionist movement has been to establish Jewish sovereignty in Israel within borders that are secure and internationally recognised, including by the states of the Arab world. As a liberal democracy, Israel’s clear interest has always been in building and maintaining peaceful relations with its neighbours and the wider world. David Ben-Gurion and the Zionist leadership set a clear precedent for the nation’s leaders in 1947 by accepting the UN partition plan for Palestine. Israel’s Declaration of Independence declared: ‘We extend our hand to all neighbouring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighbourliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help’. After the 1948 War of Independence, Israel signed a series of armistice agreements with Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Transjordan. The agreements included territorial concessions to the Arab countries despite their refusal to sign peace
