There can also be no doubt that the invasion and subsequent occupation would have foundered a long time ago had it not been for political backing and intervention from countries like the USA and Britain.
Britain voted against the UN recognition of the State of Israel, not wishing to have its Mandate repealed, and has never directly supported Israel's struggle for survival either with aid or on the international arena.
The US did not directly intervene in the fates of Israel until 1973, when Nixon initiated the aerial convoy of ammunition and weaponry to Israel to help it fight the Yom Kippur War. Israel has already withstood attack on all its borders twice before that, as well as several border actions and continual terrorism.
While I am of the opinion that an insular Jewish entity has no long term future in an increasingly Islamic Middle East, and that crimes of war and violations of international law have been perpetrated against the Arab population of Mandatorial Palestine, I'm afraid I cannot allow that the statehood, economy, society and culture which make up the colourful Isreali mosaic are all the product of a selfish experiment by Western powers.
Jewish settlement (or, as many Israelis would have it, re-settlement) of Palestine started 50 years before the foundation of Israel as a state, while the territory was a rundown backwaters of the Ottoman Empire. By 1948, the Jewish society in Palestine was almost self-reliant, and entirely distinct from the Arab one. There were even then many differences and conflicts between the two cultures, which this is probably not the time or place to go into.
The very name of the area is a matter of a telling ideological disparity. The Palestinians, having lacked political and national definition before the beginning of the conflict, fall back on an appelation which is not directly derived either from their history or their culture, whereas the Jews resurrected a personally relevant name, language and culture to found their state upon.
Allow me again to reiterate, I believe that the Zionist endeavour in Israel is doomed, and that it was founded upon a mistaken interpretation of the nationalistic ideology. However, to deprive the generations of people who made Israel into a modern state of any credit is narrow minded and can only lead to the speaker's opinions being dismissed on grounds of ignorance.