1948 Arab-Israeli War

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The 1948 Arab-Israeli War (called by the Israelis the War of Independence and by Arabs as al Naqba, the catastrophe)

Background

1936 Arab Revolt

In 1936, the Arab leadership led by Haj Amin al-Husayni declared a general strike to protest Jewish immigration into Palestine (which by then was already limited by British authorities). The strike was accompanied by an uproar of violent attacks agains Jewish and British targets across the country, which lasted until 1939 when it was quelled by the British. One of the following two competing explanations are generally given for those riots, depending on the partiality of the speaker:

Discontent and feuds with the British leadership's tolerance of Jews
Muslim fears of becoming a minority in what they considered their territory.

Rather than inflicting economic damage to the Jewish population, the strike resulted in a sharp economic rise for the Jews of Palestine. The Arab leadership then began a series of violent actions, during which dozens of Jews were killed.

This period was characterized by the rise of Jewish defence movements. The first of them, the Haganah (Hebrew for "defence") was accepted by the majority of the Jewish public. Although still a civilian force at that stage, it performed military-style operations, many times targetted at civilian objectives. A group of activists branched off Haganah to form the Irgun, and a small faction of the Irgun then branched off into the radical Lehi. The latter two organizations did not confine themselves to strictly military objectives, and were criticized because of their tactics which were sometimes considered terrorist. One of the most famous Irgun actions was the King David Hotel bombing.

In 1939, after three years of rioting, the unrest was put down by the British administration with the help of Jewish volunteers from the Hagana. The British government issued a White Paper and, in effect, reversed their support of the Balfour Declaration by announcing an absolute limit of only 75,000 on future Jewish immigration to Palestine. This limit was maintained even during the Holocaust; many people hold that this decision contributed to the death of countless tens of thousands of Jews.

UN partition plan

November 29, 1947. The United Nations General Assembly approved a plan which partitioned the British Mandate of Palestine into a Jewish and Arab state. Both Jews and Arabs criticised aspects of the plan. The Jewish population largely welcomed the plan, but the Arab leadership, Irgun and Lehi rejected it. The Arab Palestinians turned to neighboring Arab nations to ask for their help in expelling the Jews from Palestine. See 1947 UN Partition Plan for more information on the plan.

Plan Dalet

Soon after the UN parition plan was approved the Yishuv's began working on a plan called Plan Dalet (or Plan D). It's goal was to take over and control the areas alotted to the Jewish state in the partition plan.

Shortly after, the same leadership began to organize tribal bands from Arabs living in the former mandate in order to wage guerrilla war on Israelis. The British representatives, having no desire to maintain order and their force waning, effectively left the Jews and Arabs alone to fight between themselves. During the next six months, most of the fighting was be made using guerrilla tactics, small Arab and Jewish forces conducting brief gunfights at various spots, without achieving any territorial goal but for the protection of the de-facto limits. Some of the Arab fighting groups became the controversial Fedayeen, the forerunners of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Phases of the War

First phase: November 29, 1947 - April 1, 1948

Right after the Brittish announced that they would leave Palestine and the UN's partition plan was approved heavy fighting broke out in Palestine.

It was the Arabs who took the offensive. The Haganah concentrated its efforts on defensive measures. The Arabs concentrated its efforts on cutting off roads to Jewish settlements and towns with mixed populations. At the end of March the Arabs had managed to cut off the vital road going from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem where 1/6 of Palestine's Jews lived. Meanwhile the Haganah armed itself with arms bought from Czechoslovakia.

Second phase: April 1, 1948 - May 15, 1948

It was the Haganah's turn to seize the initiative. Operation Nachshon which aim was to secure the road to Jerusalem was a success.

TODO: first period of the war (Civil War, Part I - Israeli defensive, Part II - Israeli offensive). Include reference to Deir Yassin.

Third phase: May 15, 1948 - July 19, 1948

May 14, 1948. The State of Israel declared itself as an independent nation, stating in its Declaration of Independence that "We extend our hand to all neighbouring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighbourliness". It was quickly given diplomatic recognition by the US under President Truman. Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet Union's UN ambassador, called for the UN to accept Israel as a member state. The UN approved on the same day, the Soviet Union doing the same three days later.

May 15, 1948. Lebanese, Syrian, Iraqi, and Egyptian troops invaded Israel and joined the arab guerrillas. A bitter war ensued.

'TODO: second period, defense against the Jordanians, Egyptians etc.'

May 28, 1948. Two weeks after the creation of the state, the Haganah forces were declared an army, Israel Defence Force. Irgun and Lehi were dissolved and its personell merged into it as well (see Altalena).

During the following months, the Syrian army was repelled, and so were guerrillas led by Kawkaji. In the south, an Egyptian attack was able to penetrate the civilian-manned defences of several Israeli civilian kibutzes, killing their inhabitants. This attack was stopped near Ashdod. A second axis of attack to the east was also blocked, at the expense of diverting forces from Jerusalem. Jerusalem with its Western Wall, Judaism's most holy site, as well as the mountain ridges to its north and south (what was to become known as the West Bank) were blocked by Jordanian forces, which occupied the remaining Arab portion of the Mandate. The Israeli militia groups managed not only to maintain their military control of the Jewish territories, but to actually expand their holdings, despite the efforts of the militaries of the far more numerous, and well established, Arab states.

First Truce: June 11, 1948 - July 8, 1948

On June 11 a general truce was agreed upon largely due to mediator Count Folke Bernadotte's efforts. This gave the Yishuv's a much needed respite.

Fourth phase: July 19, 1948 - July 20, 1949

Aftermath

1949 Armistice Agreements

In 1949, in separate ceasefire agreements signed with Jordan, Syria and Egypt, Israel was able to draw its own borders, which represented a 50% gain over the UN partition proposal and have been known afterwards as the "Green Line". Israel occupied about 70% of the Mandatory Palestine, with the Gaza Strip and West Bank becoming Egyptian and Jordanian respectively.

Demographic Outcome

About 750,000 Arab refugees (See Israeli Map, French Map and Israeli Estimate), and more than 600,000 Jewish refugees (See Map and Israeli Estimate, were created during this conflict. Jewish refugees from Arab lands migrated to Israel, while Arab refugees were prevented from settling in neighbouring countries and have remained in refugee camps up to the time of writing.

The humiliation of the Arab armies at having been routed by the significantly smaller Jewish forces, together with the rising nationalist frenzy in Arab nations, contributed to rising hatred for the Jews living in Arab lands. The status of Jews in Arab states varied greatly from state to state. Some observers wish to maintain that the Jewish populations were more "prevented from leaving" than "expelled". Their civil liberties, too, were in many cases vastly inferior to of their Muslim fellow citizens. For example, in Yemen, Jews were and are prohibited from carrying weapons of any type, even to the point of prohibiting traditional ceremonial Yemeni knives, carried by a large portion of the Yemeni population. The net result was that after over two thousand years of living in Arab controlled countries, the atmosphere was sufficiently anti-Jewishly charged that almost to a man, entire communities of Jews in the hundreds of thousand felt they had no option but to take leave of old homes and move to the uncertainties of the new Jewish state of Israel in effect becoming "refugees" in everything but name. These fears were compounded by the Holocaust, which took place three years before the founding of the state of Israel.

Arabs Palestinians have staged annual demonstrations and protests on May 15 of each year, one day after the anniversary of Israel's declaration of independence. The popularity and number of participants in these annual al Naqba demonstrations has varied over time, though the increasing anti-Israeli sentiment in the Middle East has tended to increase the attendance in recent years. During the al-Aqsa Intifada incited by the PLO after the failure of the Camp David 2000 Summit, the attendance at the demonstrations against Israel have increased exponentially.

External links

References

Adapted from the Wikipedia article, "1948 Arab-Israeli War" http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Arab-Israeli_War August 20, 2003