Israel's 60th Anniversary May 14, 1948, the Jewish National Council proclaimed the State of Israel: Ariel Sharon, Israeli Prime Minister, 2001–2006 May 14, 2008, marked the 60th anniversary of the creation of the modern State of Israel. As part of the 19th-century Zionistmovement, Jews had begun settling in Palestineas early as 1820. This effort to establish a Jewish homeland received British approval in the Balfour Declarationof 1917. During the 1930s, Jews persecuted by the Hitlerregime poured into Palestine. The postwar acknowledgment of the Holocaust—Hitler's genocide of 6 million Jews—increased international interest in and sympathy for the cause of Zionism. However, Arabs in Palestine and surrounding countries bitterly opposed prewar and postwar proposals to partition Palestine into Arab and Jewish sectors. The British mandate to govern Palestine ended after the war, and, in 1947, the UN voted to partition Palestine. When the British officially withdrew on May 14, 1948, the Jewish National Council proclaimed the State of Israel. Prominent Israeli Politicians Ehud Barak David Ben-Gurion Yizhak Ben-Zvi Golda Meir Moshe Dayan Abba Eban Levi Eshkol Benjamin Netanyahu Ehud Olmert Shimon Peres Yitzhak Rabin Yitzhak Shamir Moshe Sharett Ariel Sharon Chaim Weizmann Ezer Weizman Other Players in Modern Israel's History Mahmoud Abbas Yasir Arafat Menachem Begin Anwar Sadat