How did Israel begin?

Answer 1

Until 1948 the holy land, Palestine, was a British mandated territory. British policy on the territory was informed by the Balfour Declaration of 1917, whereby Palestine would be regarded as a homeland for the Jews, subject to the rights of the Arabs, but would not necessarily be an independent state. By 1939, Britain was moving away from this position, and a white Paper recommended that an Arab state of Palestine be created.
In order to force Britain's hand and ensure a favourable outcome, the Jews commenced a program of terrorism, with the Stern Gang as the main participant. In 1946, the British headquarters in the King David Hotel were blown up. By February 1947, the number of British casualties in Palestine has risen sharply and Britain called on the UN to solve the Palestinian problem.

At first, the international solution was for the Palestinians to receive the major portion of the divided territory, but the Jews gradually achieved concessions, until a "Green Line" was drawn, dividing the territory approximately into two, by means of four sectors which touched at one point, so that a Jew or Palestinian need not cross the other's territory in order to move from one of his two territories to the other. After the British forces moved out, the Jews declared independence for Israel and commenced a civil war to extend its area. This was successful, and the recognised boundaries of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip were far more favourable to Israel than provided by the Green Line.

On April 10, 1948, the village of Deir Yassin, in the suburbs of Jerusalem, was attacked by the Zionists. The Jewish forces rounded up most of its 600 inhabitants, looted everything of value in the village, and next turned their attention to killing the men, women and children. About 150 mutilated corpses of women and children were thrown down a well.

Four days after the massacre of Deir Yassin, the Jewish forces attacked the village of Nasr el Din, near Tiberias. The bulk of the population of this village consisted of defenceless women and children, who were attacked with machine-guns and hand-grenades. Of the whole population of this village, only forty women and children were able to escape to a neighbouring village.

Palestinians were deported from their ancestral homes, changing the proportions between Jews and Arabs in the Israeli zone. Between May 1948 and January 1949, 370 Palestinian villages were wiped out just in the coastal strip between Tel-Aviv and Haifa. In many cases, if the villagers refused to leave, they were put onto trucks and driven away to the West Bank. Of about 850,000 Palestinians living in the territories designated by the UN as a Jewish state, only 160,000 remained on or near their homes and land by winter 1949.

Answer 2

There is certainly a conflict between Israel and Palestine, and more on the causes of that that is elaborated in this question and this question, but it would be incorrect to call it a border war. The issue here is that Israel and Palestine have not actually established legal borders, primarily because the two parties never sat down and settled on what the borders should be.

Answer 3

The state of Israel began during the Jews conquest towards Canaan after the exile from Egypt when they went to the promised land.