FACTBOX: Israel's painful birth in 1948

(Reuters) - Israel, which marks its 60th anniversary on Thursday, has roots in the 19th-century Zionist movement, which saw a state on land the Bible said God gave to the Jews as an answer to centuries of Jewish persecution in Europe.

When World War One ended Turkish control of the Middle East, the League of Nations gave Britain the Palestine Mandate in 1920, endorsing its "Balfour Declaration" to create "a national home for the Jewish people" and to protect the rights of Arabs.

As fighting broke out in Palestine in 1948, 1.4 million Arabs lived there alongside 720,000 Jews. Two thirds of these were born abroad, notably in central and eastern Europe where the Nazis had killed six million Jews in the Holocaust.

Historians still hotly debate much of what happened but the following is a brief chronology of the partition of Palestine:

November 29, 1947 - United Nations General Assembly approves plan to create Arab and Jewish states and international rule for Jerusalem. The plan wins acceptance from Jewish leaders but is rejected by the Arab League.

January 1948 - Arab Liberation Army (ALA), comprising Palestinians and other Arabs, sets up strongpoints in strategic spots. British report to U.N. estimates 1,974 people killed or injured in Palestine from November 30, 1947 to January 10, 1948.

April 9-10 - Jewish guerrillas kill about 100 Arabs, or more by some estimates, at Deir Yassin near Jerusalem. Details remain disputed but talk of massacre prompts many Arabs to flee homes.

April 13 - In increasingly bitter bloodshed, Arab forces kill 79 Jews in attack on Jerusalem medical convoy.

May 14 - David Ben-Gurion proclaims the State of Israel hours before the British Mandate is due to end at midnight. It is the 5th of Iyar, 5708 according to the Jewish calendar.