1948 Palestine war

1947-1949 War
Part of the Arab-Israeli conflict
Captain Avraham ("Bren") Adan raising the Ink Flag at Umm Rashrash (a site now in Eilat), marking the end of the war.
Date 30 November 1947 – 20 July 1949 (1 year, 7 months, 2 weeks and 6 days) Location Former Mandate Palestine, Sinai Peninsula, southern Lebanon Result - Israeli victory - Jordanian marginal victory. - Palestinian Arab defeat - Arab League strategic failure Territorial changes 1949 Armistice Agreements: - Establishment of the State of Israel over the borders proposed by the Partition Plan - Establishment of All-Palestine Government in the Gaza Strip under Egyptian partonship - Jordanian occupation of West Bank and East Jerusalem - Syrian foothold North and South of Sea of Galilee
Belligerents
After 29 November 1947 : Haganah Palmach Irgun File:Lehi.jpg Lehi Allied Bedouin tribes After 26 May 1948 : IDF Minorities Unit Foreign volunteers: Mahal	After 29 November 1947 : Holy War Army Arab Liberation Army After 15 May 1948 : Egypt Transjordan Iraq Syria Lebanon Foreign volunteers and irregulars: Arab Liberation Army Holy War Army Saudi Arabia Lebanon Yemen Muslim Brotherhood Anglo-Egyptian Sudan Pakistan
Commanders and leaders
David Ben-Gurion Chaim Weizmann Yigael Yadin Yaakov Dori David Shaltiel Isser Be'eri Moshe Dayan Yisrael Galili Yigal Allon Shimon Avidan Yitzhak Pundak Yisrael Amir	John Bagot Glubb Norman Lash Habis al-Majali Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni † Hasan Salama † Fawzi Al-Qawuqji Ahmed Ali al-Mwawi Haj Amin Al-Husseini King Farouk I Ahmad Ali al-Mwawi Muhammad Naguib Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzam
Strength
Israel: Approx. 10,000 initially, rising to 115,000 by March 1949	Arabs: Approx. 2,000 initially, rising to approx. 70,000 of which: Egypt: 10,000 initially, rising to 20,000 Iraq: 3,000 initially, rising to 15,000 – 18,000 Syria: 2,500 – 5,000 Transjordan: 8,000 – 12,000 Lebanon: 1,000 Saudi Arabia: 800–1,200 Arab Liberation Army: 3,500 - 6,000 These numbers include only the units deployed to the former Mandatory Palestine, not the entire military strength of the countries involved.
Casualties and losses
6,373 killed (about 4,000 troops and 2,400 civilians)	8,000–15,000 killed

The 1948 Palestine war, known in Arabic as al-Nakba (النكبة, "The Catastrophe") and in Hebrew as the Milkhemet Ha'atzma'ut (מלחמת העצמאות, "War of Independence") or Milkhemet Hashikhrur (מלחמת השחרור "War of Liberation"), refers to the war that occurred in the former Mandatory Palestine during the period between the United Nations vote on the partition plan on November 30, 1947, and the official end of the first Arab-Israeli war on July 20, 1949.

Historians divide the war into two phases:

• The 1947–1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine (sometimes called an "intercommunal war") in which the Jewish and Arab communities of Palestine, supported by the Arab Liberation Army, clashed, while the region was still fully under British rule.
• The 1948 Arab–Israeli War after May 15, 1948, marking the end of the British Mandate and the birth of Israel, in which Transjordan, Egypt, Syria and Iraq intervened and sent expeditionary forces that fought the Israeli army.

At the end of the war, the State of Israel kept the area that had been recommended by the UN General Assembly Resolution 181 but also took control of almost 60% of the area allocated to the proposed Arab state including the Jaffa, Lydda and Ramle area, Galilee, some parts of the Negev, a wide strip along the Tel-Aviv–Jerusalem road and some territories in the West Bank, putting them under military rule. Transjordan took control of the remainder of the West Bank and annexed this and the Egyptian military took control of the Gaza Strip. No Arab Palestinian state was created.

Demographic changes occurred in the country. Between 600,000 and 760,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled from the area that became Israel and became Palestinian refugees. Around 10,000 Jews were forced to leave their homes in Palestine. In the three years following the war, about 700,000 Jews immigrated to Israel, where they settled mainly along the borders and in former Palestinian lands. The war also marked the beginning of the Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim lands. Beginning in 1948, and continuing until 1972, an estimated 800,000 to 1,000,000 Jews left, fled, or were expelled.

In Israel, the war is known as War of Independence or War of Liberation, because it was the origin of the State of Israel. Their traditional historiography sometimes marks the anniversary as of 15 May 1948. Some Palestinian and other Arabs refer to this as the Catastrophe (al-Nakba), because of their loss of traditional lands which they had occupied for centuries, the high number of displaced people, and their failure to create a state following their defeat in the war.

Background

Main article: 1947 UN Partition Plan

On 29 November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution "recommending to the United Kingdom, as the mandatory Power for Palestine, and to all other Members of the United Nations the adoption and implementation, with regard to the future government of Palestine, of the Plan of Partition with Economic Union", UN General Assembly Resolution 181(II). This was an attempt to resolve the Arab-Jewish conflict by partitioning Palestine into Independent Arab and Jewish States and the Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem. Each state would comprise three major sections; the Arab state would also have an enclave at Jaffa in order to have a port on the Mediterranean.

With about 32% of the population, the Jews were allocated 56% of the territory. However, most of the proposed Jewish state was the arid Negev desert.That area, which included a large tract in the Negev desert, contained 499,000 Jews and 438,000 Arabs. The Palestinian Arabs were allocated 42% of the land, which had a population of 818,000 Palestinian Arabs and 10,000 Jews. In consideration of its religious significance, the Jerusalem area, including Bethlehem, with 100,000 Jews and an equal number of Palestinian Arabs, was to become a Corpus Separatum, to be administered by the UN.

The Jewish leadership accepted the partition plan as "the indispensable minimum," glad to gain international recognition but sorry that they did not receive more.

The representatives of the Palestinian Arabs and the Arab League firmly opposed the UN action and rejected its authority in the matter, arguing that the partition plan was unfair to the Arabs because of population balance at that time. However, the Arabs rejected the partition, not because it was supposedly unfair, but because any form of partition was rejected by the Arabs leaders. They upheld "that the rule of Palestine should revert to its inhabitants, in accordance with the provisions of [...] the Charter of the United Nations." According to Article 73b of the Charter, the UN should develop self-government of the peoples in a territory under its administration.

In the immediate aftermath of the UN's approval of the partition plan, explosions of joy amongst the Jewish community were counterbalanced by the expression of discontent amongst the Arab community. Soon after, violence broke out and became more and more prevalent. Murders, reprisals, and counter-reprisals came fast upon each other, resulting in dozens of victims killed on both sides. The sanguinary impasse persisted as no force intervened to put a stop to the escalating cycles of violence.

1947–1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine

Main article: 1947–1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine

This period constitutes the first phase of the war, which took place following the United Nations General Assembly vote for the Partition Plan for Palestine on 29 November 1947, until the termination of the British Mandate and Israeli proclamation of statehood on 14 May 1948. During this period the Jewish and Arab communities of British Mandate clashed, while the British organized their withdrawal and intervened only on an occasional basis. In the first two months of the Civil War, around 1,000 people were killed and 2,000 people injured, and by the end of March, the figure had risen to 2,000 dead and 4,000 wounded. These figures correspond to an average of more than 100 deaths and 200 casualties per week in a population of 2,000,000.

From January onwards, operations became increasingly militarized. A number of Arab Liberation Army regiments infiltrated into Palestine, each active in a variety of distinct sectors around the different coastal towns. They consolidated their presence in Galilee and Samaria. The Army of the Holy War, under the command of Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni, came from Egypt with several hundred men. Having recruited a few thousand volunteers, al-Husayni organised the blockade of the 100,000 Jewish residents of Jerusalem. To counter this, the Yishuv authorities tried to supply the city with convoys of up to 100 armoured vehicles, but the operation became more and more impractical as the number of casualties in the relief convoys surged. By March, al-Husayni's tactic had paid off. Almost all of Haganah's armoured vehicles had been destroyed, the blockade was in full operation, and hundreds of Haganah members who had tried to bring supplies into the city were killed. The situation for those who dwelt in the Jewish settlements in the highly-isolated Negev and North of Galilee was more critical.

This situation caused the USA to withdraw their support for the Partition plan, and the Arab League began to believe that the Palestinian Arabs, reinforced by the Arab Liberation Army, could put an end to partition. The British decided on 7 February 1948 to support the annexation of the Arab part of Palestine by Transjordan.

While the Jewish population was ordered to hold their ground everywhere at all costs, the Arab population was disrupted by the general conditions of insecurity to which the country was exposed. Up to 100,000 Arabs, from the urban upper and middle classes in Haifa, Jaffa and Jerusalem, or Jewish-dominated areas, evacuated abroad or to Arab centers to the east.

Ben-Gurion ordered Yigal Yadin to plan in preparation for the announced intervention of the Arab states. The result of his analysis was Plan Dalet, which was put in place from the start of April onwards.

Plan Dalet and second stage

The adoption of Plan Dalet marked the second stage of the war, in which Haganah passed from the defensive to the offensive.

The first operation, named Nachshon, was directed at lifting the blockade on Jerusalem. In the last week of March, 136 supply trucks had tried to reach Jerusalem; only 41 had made it. The Arab attacks on communications and roads has intensified. The failure of the convoys and the loss of Jewish armoured vehicles has shaken the Yishuv leaders confidence.

1500 men from Haganah's Givati brigade and Palmach's Harel brigade conducted sorties to free up the route to the city between 5 April and 20 April. The operation was successful, and enough foodstuffs to last 2 months were trucked into to Jerusalem for distribution to the Jewish population. The success of the operation was assisted by the death of al-Husayni in combat. The success of the operation was assisted by the death of al-Husayni in combat.

During this time, and independently of Haganah or the framework of Plan Dalet, irregular troops from Irgun and Lehi formations massacred a substantial number of Arabs at Deir Yassin. The event that was publicly deplored and criticized by the principal Jewish authorities had a deep effect on the morale of the Arab population.

At the same time, the first large-scale operation of the Arab Liberation Army ended in a "débâcle", as they were roundly defeated at Mishmar HaEmek. Their Druze allies left them through defection.

Within the framework of creating Jewish territorial continuity according to Plan Dalet, the forces of Haganah, Palmach and Irgun intended to conquer mixed zones of population. Palestinian Arab society was shaken. Tiberias, Haifa, Safed, Beisan, and Jaffa were taken prior to the end of the Mandate, with Acre falling shortly after. More than 250,000 Palestinian Arabs fled from these locales.

The British had essentially withdrawn their troops. The situation pushed the leaders of the neighboring Arab states to intervene, but their preparation was not completed, and they could not assemble sufficient forces to turn the tide of the war. The majority of Palestinian Arab hopes lay with the Arab Legion of Transjordan's monarch, King Abdullah I. He did not intend to create a Palestinian Arab-run state, as he hoped to annex much of the territory of the British Mandate of Palestine. Playing a double-game, he was in contact with the Jewish authorities as with the Arab League.

Preparing for Arab intervention from neighbouring states, Haganah successfully launched Operations Yiftah and Ben-'Ami to secure the Jewish settlements of Galilee, and Operation Kilshon. This created an Israeli-controlled front around Jerusalem. The inconclusive meeting between Golda Meir and Abdullah I, followed by the Kfar Etzion massacre on the 13 May by the Arab Legion, led to predictions that the battle for Jerusalem would be merciless.

Course of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War

Main article: 1948 Arab–Israeli War

Invasion by Arab states, 15 May – 10 June 1948.

On 14 May 1948, the day before the expiration of the British Mandate, David Ben-Gurion declared the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel, to be known as the State of Israel. Both superpower leaders, U.S. President Harry S. Truman (de facto) and the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, immediately recognized the new state, while the Arab League refused to accept the UN partition plan, proclaimed the right of self-determination for the Arabs across the whole of Palestine, and maintained that the absence of legal authority made it necessary to intervene to protect Arab lives and property.

Over the next few days, contingents of four of the seven countries of the Arab League at that time, namely Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, and Syria, invaded territory in the former British Mandate of Palestine and fought the Israelis. They were supported by the Arab Liberation Army and corps of volunteers from Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Yemen. The Arab armies launched a simultaneous offensive on all fronts, Egypt forces invaded from south, Jordanian and Iraqi forces invaded from east, while Syrian forces invaded from north. Co-operation among the various Arab armies was poor.

First truce: 11 June – 8 July 1948

Folke Bernadotte

The UN declared a truce on 29 May, which began on 11 June and lasted 28 days. The ceasefire was overseen by UN mediator Folke Bernadotte and a team of UN Observers, army officers from Belgium, United States, Sweden and France. Bernadotte was voted in by the General Assembly to "assure the safety of the holy places, to safeguard the well being of the population, and to promote 'a peaceful adjustment of the future situation of Palestine'". An arms embargo was declared with the intention that neither side would make any gains from the truce. Neither side respected the truce; both found ways around the restrictions. Both the Israelis and the Arabs used this time to improve their positions, a direct violation of the terms of the ceasefire.

"The Arabs violated the truce by reinforcing their lines with fresh units and by preventing supplies from reaching isolated Israeli settlements; occasionally, they opened fire along the lines". The Israeli Defense Forces acquired weapons from communist Czechoslovakia and improved training of forces and reorganization of the army during this time. Yitzhak Rabin, an IDF commander at the time and later Israel's fifth Prime Minister, said, "[w]ithout the arms from Czechoslovakia... it is very doubtful whether we would have been able to conduct the war". As well as violating the arms and personnel embargo, both sides sent fresh units to the front. The Israel army increased its manpower from approximately 30,000 or 35,000 men to almost 65,000 during the truce. They increased their arms supply to "more than twenty-five thousand rifles, five thousand machine guns, and more than fifty million bullets".

As the truce began, a British officer stationed in Haifa said that the four-week-long truce "would certainly be exploited by the Jews to continue military training and reorganization while the Arabs would waste [them] feuding over the future divisions of the spoils". On 7 July, the day before the expiration of the truce, Egyptian forces under General Muhammad Naguib renewed the war by attacking Negba.

Second phase: 8–18 July 1948

Israeli forces launched a simultaneous offensive on all three fronts: Dani, Dekel, and Kedem. The fighting was dominated by large-scale Israeli offensives and a defensive Arab posture. The fighting continued for ten days until the UN Security Council issued the Second Truce on 18 July.

Israeli Operation Danny resulted in exodus from Lydda and Ramle of 60,000 Palestinian residents. According to Benny Morris, in Ben-Gurion's view, Ramlah and Lydda constituted a special danger because their proximity might encourage co-operation between the Egyptian army, which had started its attack on Kibbutz Negbah, near Ramlah, and the Arab Legion, which had taken the Lydda police station. The author believes that Operation Dani, under which the two towns were seized, revealed that no such co-operation existed. Widespread looting took place during these operations. In total, about 100,000 Palestinians became refugees in this stage, according to Morris.

In Operation Dekel, Nazareth was captured on 16 July. By the time the second truce took effect at 19:00 18 July, Israel had taken the lower Galilee from Haifa Bay to the Sea of Galilee.

18 July 1948 to 10 March 1949

At 19:00 on 18 July, the second truce of the conflict went into effect after intense diplomatic efforts by the UN, lasting until October 15. On 16 September, a new partition for Palestine was proposed, but it was rejected by both sides.

October battles

With the expiration of the truce, Israel launched a series of military operations to drive out the Arab armies and secure its borders. On 15 October, the IDF launched Operation Yoav in the northern Negev. Its goal was to drive a wedge between the Egyptian forces along the coast and the Beersheba-Hebron-Jerusalem road, and ultimately to conquer the whole Negev. Yoav was headed by the Southern Front commander Yigal Allon. The operation was a success, shattering the Egyptian army ranks and forcing the Egyptian forces to retreat from the northern Negev, Beersheba and Ashdod.

An Israeli mortar team outside Safsaf in October 1948

On 22 October, the third truce went into effect.

On 24 October, the IDF launched Operation Hiram and captured the entire upper Galilee, originally attributed to the Arab state by the Partition Plan. They drove the ALA back to Lebanon. At the end of the month, Israel had captured the whole Galilee and had advanced 5 miles (8.0 km) into Lebanon to the Litani River.

On 22 December, the IDF drove the remaining Egyptian forces out of Israel with Operation Horev (also called Operation Ayin). The goal of the operation was to secure the entire Negev, destroy the Egyptian threat on Israel's southern communities, and force the Egyptians into a ceasefire. The operation was a decisive Israeli victory, and Israeli raids into the Nitzana area and the Sinai peninsula forced the Egyptian army into the Gaza Strip, where it was encircled. On 7 January 1949, a truce was achieved. Israeli forces withdrew from Sinai and Gaza under international pressure.

On 5 March, Israel launched Operation Uvda; by 10 March, the Israelis reached Umm Rashrash (where Eilat was built later) and took it without a battle. The Negev Brigade and Golani Brigade took part in the operation. They raised a hand-made flag ("The Ink Flag") and claimed Umm Rashrash for Israel.

Aftermath

Borders

In 1949, Israel signed separate armistices with Egypt on 24 February, Lebanon on 23 March, Jordan on 3 April, and Syria on 20 July. The new borders of Israel, as set by the agreements, encompassed about 78% of Mandatory Palestine as it stood after the independence of Jordan in 1946. This was about 18% more than the UN partition proposal had allotted. These ceasefire lines were known afterwards as the "Green Line". The Gaza Strip and the West Bank were occupied by Egypt and Jordan, respectively. The United Nations Truce Supervision Organization and Mixed Armistice Commissions were set up to monitor ceasefires, supervise the armistice agreements, to prevent isolated incidents from escalating, and assist other UN peacekeeping operations in the region.

Casualities

Israel lost 6,373 of its people, about 1% of its population in the war. About 4,000 were soldiers and the rest were civilians. The exact number of Arab losses is unknown but is estimated at between 8,000 and 15,000.

Demographic consequences

During the 1947-1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine and the 1948 Arab–Israeli War that followed, around 750,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes. In 1951, the UN Conciliation Commission for Palestine estimated that the number of Palestinian refugees displaced from Israel was 711,000. This number did not include displaced Palestinians inside Israeli-held territory. The list of villages depopulated during the Arab-Israeli conflict includes more than 400 Arab villages. It also includes about ten Jewish villages and neighbourhoods.

The Causes of the 1948 Palestinian exodus are a controversial topic among historians. The Palestinian refugee problem and the debate around the right of their return are also major issues of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Arab Palestinians have staged annual demonstrations and protests on 15 May of each year.

During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, around 10,000 Jews were forced to evacuate their homes in Palestine or Israel. In the three years following the war, some 300,000 Jews, who left, fled, or were expelled from their homes in Arab countries, reached Israel. From 1945 until the closure at 1952, more than 250,000 Jewish displaced persons lived in European refugee camps. About 136,000 of them immigrated to Israel. More than 270,000 Jews immigrated from Eastern Europe, mainly Romania and Poland (over 100,000 each). Overall 700,000 Jews settled in Israel, doubling its Jewish population.

Historiography

Main article: New Historians

After the war, Israeli and Arab historiographies differed on the interpretation of the events of 1948. In the West, the majority view favored the Israelis, in part because of the events of the Holocaust that had destroyed six million Jews in Europe during World War II. Supporters thought that a tiny group of vastly outnumbered and ill-equipped Jews had fought off the massed strength of the invading Arab armies. It was widely thought that the Palestinian Arabs had left their homes on the instruction of their leaders, rather than being forced out by the Israelis.

In 1980, with the opening of the Israeli and British archives, Israeli historians started giving new insights on the history of this time period. In particular, the roles played by Abdullah I of Jordan and the British government, the goals of the different Arab nations, the balance of force, and the events related to the Palestinian exodus have been expressed in more complexity or given new interpretations. Some of the issues continue to be hotly debated among historians and commentators of the conflict today.

See also

• List of Israeli military operations in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war
• List of modern conflicts in the Middle East

Further reading

• Yoav Gelber, Palestine 1948, Sussex Academic Press, Brighton, 2006, ISBN 978-1-84519-075-0
• Saleh Abdel Jawad, The Arab and Palestinian Narratives of the 1948 War, in Robert I. Rotberg, Israeli and Palestinian Narratives of Conflict, Indiana University Press, 2006, ISBN 978-0-253-21857-5.
• Efraim Karsh, The Arab-Israeli Conflict: The Palestine War 1948, Osprey publishing, 2002.
• Walid Khalidi (ed.), All that remains.ISBN 978-0-88728-224-9.
• Walid Khalidi, Selected Documents on the 1948 Palestine War, Journal of Palestine Studies, 27(3), 79, 1998.
• Benny Morris, 1948, Yale University Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0-300-12696-9
• Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Oneworld Publications, 2006, ISBN 978-1-85168-555-4
• Eugene Rogan & Avi Shlaim, The War for Palestine — Rewriting the history of 1948, Cambridge University Press, 2001.
• David Tal, War in Palestine, 1948. Strategy and Diplomacy, Routledge, 2004.