 In Flapan's view, with the proclamation of the birth of Israel and the Arab governments' invasion into the new state, those Arabs who had remained in Israel after 15 May were viewed as "a security problem", a potential fifth column, even though they had not participated in the war and had stayed in Israel hoping to live in peace and equality, as promised in the Declaration of Independence.In the opinion of the author, that document had not altered Ben-Gurion's overall conception