The resolution called for a UN Palestine Commission to select and oversee provisional governments for both new states by 1 April 1948. The British Mandate was to end by 1 August 1948 at the latest. Shortly afterwards, London announced that the mandate would be terminated on 15 May 1948.

There had been sporadic shelling of Israeli villages and military positions by Syrian artillery from the Golan Heights in retaliation of Israeli provocations, followed by an air battle on 7 April 1967, in which the Israeli Air Force downed six fighter planes of the Syrian Air Force.

On January 3rd, after a day of aerial shelling and artillery fire on Hamas strongholds in Gaza, Israeli infantry, backed by Israeli Air Force fighter jets, helicopter gunships and UAVs, entered the north of the Strip, with the declared mission of destroying Hamas infrastructure.

Partly by way of a reaction to the above-described Israeli and Iranian programs, in recent years several other Middle Eastern countries have expressed interest in this question.

Looking back on the history of the Middle East, the political-military impact of the various nuclear programs, both the Israeli one (which according to all reports has borne fruit) and the rest (which have not yet done so) has been considerable.

A brief survey of the nuclear programs in the Middle East.

Paradoxically, Israel’s role in the conflict increased in the following years. To begin with, it withdrew its forces from Lebanon, but retained control of an area in the south, manned by the Christian militia of Saad Haddad, called the South Lebanon Army (SLA)

The armed forces of the young independent State of Lebanon took part in the Civil War of 1948 against the newly declared State of Israel with only a thousand troops, the smallest Arab contingent.

In the spring of 2005, the remaining Syrian forces, whose number had already dropped from 40,000 in 2000 to 14,000 in 2004, finally withdrew, thus ending 29 years of military presence. Foreign involvement did not end here, however. Observers have said that Lebanon exchanged the Syrian tutelage for a Western umbrella or stepped-up Iranian interference.

It seems, however, to have become more and more difficult to form a government, given the complicated structure and the power struggles between the parties.