My American Foreign Policy term paper. Here’s the Intro:

On May 14^th, 1948 at 6:11 in the afternoon EST, the White House released a short statement recognizing the de facto authority of the provisional government of the brand new State of Israel, which had only come into existence eleven minutes prior halfway around the world[1]. That world into which the new nation had thrust itself instantly exploded around it, as a day later the Arab nations surrounding it attacked. This was wholly expected. The swift acknowledgement and legitimization granted to Israel by the United States, however, was not. Even as Warren Austin, the chief American representative to the United Nations, delivered an address supporting UN trusteeship of the “Palestine Problem” instead of a partitioning of states, he was interrupted midway through[2]. Subsequently, he announced that his own government had in fact just recognized Israel, the state whose existence he had been refuting minutes earlier. He packed his bags and resigned his office on that same day[3]. His President, Harry Truman, had both alienated and humiliated the State Department by making the decision to recognize Israel “without even notifying the men who were in charge of executing America’s foreign policy,”[4] yet again, illustrating some of the complexities of Truman’s administration. Truman’s decision can be explained through all three policy-making models – Organizational Process Model, Rational Actor Model, and Bureaucratic Politics Model – but a combination of the three lenses is essential to showing the clearest explanation to why he ultimately chose to support Israel.