primary feelings on 'Iron Wall'

I have been, for a very long time, interested in history of Israel as a new state. Partly because we get so acquainted with its roots through the bible and there are also unfulfilled prophecies for its future that makes me curious for how it will play out. I have also read about the holocaust and it makes me more of a supporter of their cause than ever. Only recently, however, have I decided that the best way to resolve this curiousity is to get a book to read about it. I checked up on the internet and found several available to me at a local bookstore, I then looked up comments on the books and chose 'The Iron Wall' by Avi Shlaim to read.
So far I'm only a few chapters into the book, and I find it far more interesting than 'collapse' (for which bored me to the extent that I haven't finished it yet, though I'm sure it has a lot of inspiring information). I had a rosy picture of how Israel battled of her Arab counterparts, but I also realized that there were a lot of things I didn't know. What methods were used to birth this nation? How did the Jews clear off large areas of the original inhabitants? A question that the book will not answer (since it's not the main course to be studied in this book) but which popped up in my mind a few pages into the book was this "What were the lives of the first immigrants, or the Yishuv, like in a mostly Palestinian country? What happened as the Palestinians gradually came to understand their plan?"
A few facts I learned: before Israel, Jews presented about ten percent of the population in Palestine, mostly through immigration. After Israel became a state, Jews rose to more than 80 percent of the population in Israel (not counting the West Bank and Gaza). Why? Because in the wars following it's birth, Israel seized towns and evacuated its Palestinians residents. Also, I learnt that peace didn't come easy mostly because Israel is unwilling to compromise its original goals.
I'm going to go off a tangent here. I understand that every Israelite joins the military for a time. I wonder if it would create a culture of believing that a person has only come of age if he/she has been through the military? It might not, and I can think of two reasons why. One, because Judaism already has a coming of age ceremony. Two, because people in this age are more critical of establishing cultures that are more mythlike and less inclusive of dissidents because of the belief in freedom of self-expression as the golden mandate. What I mean is: The idea that one can only be an adult by going through the military is extremely narrow and is more opinion based than fact induced (that is, the military does not foster any traits that would make an individual physically more of an adult than age does).