1948-1963
For the first 29 years of the existence of the State of Israel, from 1948 until 1977, all the governments were formed by Mapai (the predecessor of the Labor Party) and then the Alignment (a bloc of parties and political groups around the Labor Party).

Except for a single year during the first 15 years of the state, David Ben-Gurion was prime minister (in 1954-5, Moshe Sharett took over from Ben-Gurion, who had resigned), and he headed a variety of coalition governments with changing membership. Sometimes these were more inclined to the left and at others more to the center, but always with the participation of the National Religious Party.

The two parties which Ben-Gurion refused to bring into his governments were the Herut Movement (at the time, the most right-wing party, which advocated a Greater Land of Israel on both banks of the Jordan River, and was headed by Menachem Begin) and the Israeli Communist Party. During the years of Ben-Gurion's premiership the country's population grew from just over 600,000 to just over two million. The economy grew rapidly, even though there was rationing in the early years of the state.

Following the War of Independence (1948-9) there were many border skirmishes and terrorist attacks against Israeli citizens, and the country fought its second war against its neighbors, the 1956 Sinai Campaign, in coalition with France and Great Britain. Among the major controversial political issues that emerged in these years were the 1952 Restitution Agreement with Germany, which was vehemently opposed by Begin, and the so-called Lavon Affair, which evolved around a Jewish spy ring caught in Egypt in 1954 and the question of who was responsible for its operation and failure. Governments were formed and fell (there were four governments in the course of the Second Knesset), sometimes over religious issues, but the Israeli political system was basically stable.