1948 Palestine war

First Israeli–Arab war the entire conflict in Palestine in 1948 the civil war phase 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine the international phase 1948 Arab–Israeli War Palestine war the broader conflict Israeli–Palestinian conflict yes August 2019 October 2023 1948 Palestine war the intercommunal conflict in Mandatory Palestine, the Arab–Israeli conflict, and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict Abdul Qader April 1948 ii.jpg Egyptian bombing 1948 (cropped).jpg 2/2/2 Negev Brigade soldiers 1948.jpg Tantura expulsion (997008136022405171) (cropped).jpg infobox 300From top to bottom, left to right: Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni with fellow fighters from the Holy War Army Haganah personnel carry a man wounded by the Egyptian bombing of Tel Aviv Jewish soldiers from the Palmach with artillery Expulsion of Palestinians from the village of Tantura 30 November 1947 – 20 July 1949(11 30 1947 07 20 1949) Mandatory Palestine, Sinai Peninsula, southern Lebanon * Establishment of the State of Israel Annexation of the West Bank by Transjordan (including East Jerusalem) Occupation of the Gaza Strip by Egypt and establishment of the All-Palestine Government Syrian foothold established to the north and south of the Sea of Galilee * Israeli victory Transjordanian partial victoryAnita Shapira, L'imaginaire d'Israël : histoire d'une culture politique (2005), Latroun : la mémoire de la bataille, Chap. III. 1 l'événement pp. 91–96Benny Morris (2008), p. 419. Palestinian defeat Hundreds of thousands of Arabs flee or are expelled to theGaza Strip, the West Bank and surrounding Arab states, forming the start of the Palestinian refugee crisis Beginning of the Palestinian Fedayeen insurgency Arab League defeat Hundreds of thousands of Jews flee or are expelled from Arab countries, largely settling in Israel Arab League boycott of Israel 1949 Armistice Agreements signed Star of David.svg Yishuv(before 14 May 1948)Israel(after 14 May 1948) Before 26 May 1948: Haganah Symbol.svg Haganah Palmach.svg Palmach Hish Symbol.svg Hish Him Symbol.svg HIM Irgun.svg Irgun Logo of the Lehi movement.svg Lehi Flag of Druze.svg Druze militantsMinorities in the Middle East: A History of Struggle and Self-Expression 2d Mordechai Nisan 2015 978-0-7864-5133-3 284 McFarland This Jewish-Druze partnership was often referred to as a "covenant of blood," in recognition of the common military yoke carried by the two peoples for the security of the country.http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/the_middle_east_journal/v064/64.4.nisan.pdf The Druze in Israel: Questions of Identity, Citizenship, and Patriotism 2022-02-24 2016-03-04 https://web.archive.org/web/20160304121451/http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=%2Fjournals%2Fthe_middle_east_journal%2Fv064%2F64.4.nisan.pdf dead Allied Bedouin tribesPalestine Post, "Israel's Bedouin Warriors", Gene Dison, August 12, 1948http://english.alarabiya.net/en/perspective/profiles/2013/04/24/Bedouin-army-trackers-scale-Israel-social-ladder-.html Bedouin army trackers scale Israel social ladder AFP 24 April 2013 Al Arabiya 7 May 2015 31 March 2022 https://web.archive.org/web/20220331084908/https://english.alarabiya.net/perspective/profiles/2013/04/24/Bedouin-army-trackers-scale-Israel-social-ladder- live After 26 May 1948: Flag of the Israel Defense Forces.svg Israel Defense Forces Logo gdud herev.png Sword Battalion Foreign volunteers: Mahal Palestinian flag 1938.svg Arab Higher Committee(before 15 May 1948)Arab League(after 15 May 1948) Arab League: Egypt 1922 Egypt Palestinian flag 1938.svg All-Palestine Protectorate (after 22 September 1948) Jordan Transjordan Syria 1932 Syria Iraq 1924 Iraq Lebanon Saudi Arabia 1938 Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen Yemen Irregulars: Palestinian flag 1938.svg Al-Najjada Palestinian flag 1938.svg Holy War Army Arab Liberation Army (bw).svg Arab Liberation Army Flag of the Muslim Brotherhood.svg Muslim Brotherhood Foreign volunteers:Volunteers from Albania 1946, SR Bosnia and Herzegovina, and SR Croatia.https://www.academia.edu/2267922 Strange bedfellows: The Bosnians and Yugoslav volunteers in the 1948 war in Israel/Palestine Seth Frantzman 1 January 2009 Istorija 20. Veka www.academia.edu Israel David Ben-Gurion Israel Chaim Weizmann Israel Yigael Yadin Israel Yaakov Dori Israel David Shaltiel Israel Moshe Dayan Israel Yisrael Galili Israel Yigal Allon Israel Yitzhak Rabin Israel Moshe Carmel Israel Aharon Remez Israel Mickey Marcus Israel Gershon Zak Israel Shlomo Shamir Palestinian flag 1938.svg Amin al-Husseini Palestinian flag 1938.svg Abdul Qadir al-Husayni Palestinian flag 1938.svg Hasan Salama Arab League Azzam Pasha Arab League Fawzi al-Qawuqji Jordan Abdullah I Jordan John Bagot Glubb Jordan Habis Majali Egypt 1922 Farouk I Egypt 1922 Ahmed Ali al-Mwawi Egypt 1922 Mohamed Naguib Israel: 10,000 initially, rising to 115,000 by March 1949 Arabs: 2,000 initially, rising to 70,000 Egypt: 10,000 initially; later 20,000 Iraq: 3,000 initially; later 15,000–18,000 Syria: 2,500–5,000 Transjordan: 8,000–12,000 Lebanon: 1,000Pollack, 2004; Sadeh, 1997 Saudi Arabia: 800–1,200 Arab Liberation Army: 3,500–6,000 USSOC historian Stanley Sandler estimates 6,373 killed (about 4,000 troops and 2,373 civilians)Sandler Stanley Ground Warfare: An International Encyclopedia 2002 ABC-CLIO 160 978-1-57607-344-5 https://books.google.com/books?id=L_xxOM85bD8C&pg=PA160 2019-04-23 2023-03-20 https://web.archive.org/web/20230320155413/https://books.google.com/books?id=L_xxOM85bD8C&pg=PA160 live Benny Morris writes that 5,700– 5,800 were killed.Morris (2008), p. 406. Between 5,000 and 20,000 (including civilians and armed irregulars),Rosemarie Esber Under the Cover of War Arabicus Books & Media 2009 28 among which 4,000 soldiers for Egypt, Jordan and Syria; other estimate: 15,000 Arab dead and 25,000 wounded.Clodfelter Micheal Warfare and Armed Conflicts: A Statistical Encyclopedia of Casualty and Other Figures, 1492–2015 4th 2017 McFarland 978-0-7864-7470-7 572Aref al-Aref gives the number of Palestinian deaths as 13,000, with the majority of that number being civilians.R. Khalidi 1997: Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness, Columbia University Press http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/khal15074. "[...] al-Arif, in al-Nakba, vol. 6, is able to list the names, dates, and places of death of 1,953 Palestinians (out of a total he puts at 13,000) who died as "martyrs" in the war of 1947-49."Henry Laurens, La question de Palestine, Vol. 3. 1947-1967, l'accomplissement des prophéties (2007), citing al-Nakba, vol. 6 Ilan Pappé writes that "a few thousand died in massacres."1. Pappe I. A History of Modern Palestine. 3rd ed. Cambridge University Press; 2022. Benny Morris estimates total Palestinian losses at +5,800, and that around 800 civilians and prisoners of war were massacred. Mandatory Palestine (before 15 May 1948) Mandatory Palestine Gordon MacMillan British Security Forces: 70,000 The 1948 Palestine warPalestinians consider the events of 1948 to be part of the Nakba (ar النَكْبَة), literally 'the catastrophe'. In Israel it is called the War of Independence (he מלחמת העצמאות; Milkhemet Ha'Atzma'ut). (30 November 1947 – 10 March 1949), known in Palestine as the NakbaVS About the Nakba https://www.un.org/unispal/about-the-nakba/ 2026-10-07 Question of Palestine en-USThe Palestinian Nakba: What Happened in 1948 and Why It Still Matters https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1651256 Institute for Palestine StudiesQuick Facts: The Palestinian Nakba (Catastrophe) https://imeu.org/resources/resources/quick-facts-the-palestinian-nakba-catastrophe/142 2026-10-07 The Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) en and in Israel as the War of Independence1948 Arab-Israeli War Summary, Outcome, Casualties, & Timeline Britannica https://www.britannica.com/event/1948-Arab-Israeli-War 2026-10-07 www.britannica.com enMilestones in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations - Office of the Historian https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/arab-israeli-war 2026-10-07 history.state.govStaff C. I. E. 2020-05-15 Explainer: The Arab-Israel War of 1948 — A Short History https://israeled.org/the-arab-israeli-war-of-1948-a-short-history/ 2026-10-07 CIE en-USGreenberg Yitzhak 1988 מימון מלחמת העצמאות (Financing the War of Independence) https://humanities.tau.ac.il/sites/humanities.tau.ac.il/files/media_server/humanities/zionism/%D7%A6%D7%99%D7%95%D7%A0%D7%95%D7%AA/%D7%99%D7%92/3.pdfDavid Tal 2003 פינוי :'כחזית חזית'ל' כעורף חזית'מ ספר מיישובי לוחמת-לא אוכלוסייה העצמאות במלחמת * (Evacuation: From Front Line to Rear Area A Book on Non-Combatant Populations in the War of Independence) https://humanities.tau.ac.il/sites/humanities.tau.ac.il/files/media_server/humanities/zionism/%D7%99%D7%A9%D7%A8%D7%90%D7%9C/4/Israel4_tal.pdf Israel 61–81, was fought in the territory of what had been, at the start of the war, British-ruled Mandatory Palestine.* Michael R. Fischbach, an American scholar of the archives of the United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine, estimates that, in all, Palestinians lost some 6 to 8 million dunams (1.5 to 2 million acres) of land, not including communal land farmed by villages or state land. 2005 Al-Nakba Encyclopedia of the Palestinians Infobase https://books.google.com/books?id=GkbzYoZtaJMC&pg=PA329 Mattar Philip Philip Mattar Mattar Philip 9780816069866 https://web.archive.org/web/20221128022940/https://books.google.com/books?id=GkbzYoZtaJMC&pg=PA329 2022-11-28 Firestone Reuven https://books.google.com/books?id=EHyqYbTM-dwC&pg=PA10 Holy War in Judaism: The Fall and Rise of a Controversial Idea Oxford University Press 2012 978-0-19-986030-2 10, 296 To Jews, the Jewish-Arab war of 1947–1948 is the War of Independence (milchemet ha'atzma'ut). To Arabs, and especially Palestinians, it is the nakba or calamity. I therefore refrain from assigning names to wars. I refer to the wars between the State of Israel and its Arab and Palestinian neighbors according to their dates: 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, and 1982. https://web.archive.org/web/20221128022941/https://books.google.com/books?id=EHyqYbTM-dwC&pg=PA10 2022-11-28 Caplan Neil https://books.google.com/books?id=JyAgn_dD43cC&pg=PT17 The Israel-Palestine Conflict: Contested Histories John Wiley & Sons 2011 978-1-4443-5786-8 17 Perhaps the most famous case of differences over the naming of events is the 1948 war (more accurately, the fighting from December 1947 through January 1949). For Israel it is their 'War of Liberation' or 'War of Independence' (in Hebrew, milhemet ha-atzama'ut) full of the joys and overtones of deliverance and redemption. For Palestinians, it is Al-Nakba, translated as 'The Catastrophe' and including in its scope the destruction of their society and the expulsion and flight of some 700,000 refugees. Caplan Neil https://books.google.com/books?id=ohPWON3LnDMC&pg=PA17 Futile Diplomacy: The United Nations, the Great Powers, and Middle East Peacemaking 1948–1954 Frank Cass & Co 1997 978-0-7146-4756-2 3 17 Although some historians would cite 14 May 1948 as the start of the war known variously as the Israeli War of Independence, an-Nakba (the (Palestinian) Catastrophe), or the first Palestine war, it would be more accurate to consider that war as beginning on 30 November 1947. nakba Almaany https://www.almaany.com/en/dict/ar-en/%D9%86%D9%83%D8%A8%D8%A9/ 2021-08-21 1 en ar: نكبة It began as a civil war between the Arab and Jewish communities following the United Nations Partition Plan and became an international conflict with the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel,On the afternoon of 14 May 1948, David Ben-Gurion, executive head of the Zionist Organization and chairman of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, proclaimed the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine to be known as the State of Israel. the termination of the British mandate, and the entry of the armies of neighbouring Arab states into Palestine. During the war, Zionist forcesThe paramilitary organizations Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi fought on behalf of the Yishuv until late May 1948, when the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were established and the other Jewish armed forces were disbanded. There was also support from overseas volunteers, known as the Mahal. conquered about 78% of the former territory of the mandate, causing the expulsion and flight of over 700,000 Palestinians. Transjordan took control of the territory west of the Jordan River and Egypt occupied the coastal territory around Gaza. The war formally ended with the 1949 Armistice Agreements, which established the Green Line de facto borders of the State of Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. It was the first war of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the broader Arab–Israeli conflict. The war had two main phases, the first being the 1947–1948 civil war, which began on 30 November 1947,Benny Morris (2008), p.77 a day after the United Nations voted to adopt the Partition Plan for Palestine, which planned for the division of the territory into Jewish and Arab sovereign states. During this period, the British still maintained a declining rule over Palestine and occasionally intervened in the violence.Benny Morris (2008), pp. 77–79Tal (2003), p.41 Initially on the defensive, the Zionist forces switched to the offensive in April 1948.Morris (2004), p.13: "The Haganah stayed on the defensive, wishing not to annoy the British while it re-organised and armed for war; it knew that the real challenge would be posed not by the Palestinians but by the armies of the surrounding states. Until the end of January 1948, neither side had the upper hand. But in February and March, Arab ambushers inflicted major defeats on Haganah convoys along the roads, especially between Tel Aviv and (Jewish West) Jerusalem. It appeared to the Yishuv’s leaders that, besieged, Jewish Jerusalem – with a population of 100,000 – might fall; there were similar fears regarding several clusters of Jewish rural settlements around Jerusalem and in western Galilee. The defeats and significant casualties suffered caused the Yishuv to rethink its strategy. At the beginning of April, the Haganah switched to the offensive, at last unleashing a series of major counter-attacks."Benny Morris (2008), p.77–78 In anticipation of an invasion by Arab armies,Morris (2004), p.163: "The British evacuation, which would remove the last vestige of law and order in the cities and on the roads, was only weeks away, and the neighbouring Arab states were mobilising to intervene. The Yishuv was struggling for its life; an invasion by the Arab states could deliver the coup de grâce. It was with this situation and prospect in mind that the Haganah chiefs, in early March, produced ‘Tochnit Dalet’ (Plan D), a blueprint for securing the emergent Jewish state and the blocs of settlements outside the state’s territory against the expected invasion on or after 15 May." they enacted Plan Dalet, an operation aimed at securing territory for the establishment of a Jewish state.Khalidi Walid 1988-10-01 Plan Dalet: Master Plan for the Conquest of Palestine https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.2307/2537591 Journal of Palestine Studies en 18 1 4–19 10.2307/2537591 0377-919X 2537591 'Plan Dalet' or 'Plan D' was the name given by the Zionist High Command to the general plan for military operations within the framework of which the Zionists launched successive offensives in April and early May 1948 in various parts of Palestine. These offensives, which entailed the destruction of the Palestinian Arab community and the expulsion and pauperization of the bulk of the Palestine Arabs, were calculated to achieve the military fait accompli upon which the state of Israel was to be based. subscription The second phase of the war began on 14 May 1948, with the declaration of the establishment of the State of Israel and the termination of the British Mandate at midnight. The following morning, the surrounding Arab armies invaded Palestine, beginning the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. The Egyptians advanced in the south-east while the Jordanian Arab Legion and Iraqi forces captured the central highlands. Syria and Lebanon fought against the Israeli forces in the north. The newly formed Israel Defense Forces managed to halt the Arab forces and in the following months began pushing them back and capturing territory. During the war, massacres and acts of terror were conducted by both sides. A campaign of massacres and violence against the Arab population, such as occurred at Lydda and Ramle and the Battle of Haifa, led to the expulsion and flight of over 700,000 Palestinians, with most of their urban areas being depopulated and destroyed. This violence and dispossession is remembered by Palestinians as the Nakba (Arabic for "the catastrophe") Benny Morris Benny Morris 2004 https://books.google.com/books?id=uM_kFX6edX8C&pg=PA602 The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited 602–604 Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-00967-6 It is impossible to arrive at a definite persuasive estimate. My predilection would be to opt for the loose contemporary British formula, that of 'between 600,000 and 760,000' refugees; but, if pressed, 700,000 is probably a fair estimate http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/FRUS/FRUS-idx?type=goto&id=FRUS.FRUS1949v06&isize=M&submit=Go+to+page&page=973 Memo US Department of State, 4 May 1949 https://web.archive.org/web/20190712104802/http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/FRUS/FRUS-idx?type=goto&id=FRUS.FRUS1949v06&isize=M&submit=Go+to+page&page=973 12 July 2019 Foreign Relations of the United States 1949 973 One of the most important problems which must be cleared up before a lasting peace can be established in Palestine is the question of the more than 700,000 Arab refugees who during the Palestine conflict fled from their homes in what is now Israeli occupied territory and are at present living as refugees in Arab Palestine and the neighbouring Arab states. http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/FRUS/FRUS-idx?type=goto&id=FRUS.FRUS1949v06&isize=M&submit=Go+to+page&page=984 Memorandum on the Palestine Refugee Problem, 4 May 1949 https://web.archive.org/web/20190712104751/http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/FRUS/FRUS-idx?type=goto&id=FRUS.FRUS1949v06&isize=M&submit=Go+to+page&page=984 12 July 2019 Foreign Relations of the United States 1949 984 Approximately 700,000 refugees from the Palestine hostilities, now located principally in Arab Palestine, Transjordan, Lebanon and Syria, will require repatriation to Israel or resettlement in the Arab states. and resulted in the beginning of the Palestinian refugee problem. Hundreds of thousands of Jews fled or were expelled from Arab states in the three years following the Arab defeat in the war, over 260,000 of which settled in Israel.Hacohen Dvora Dvora Hacohen Immigrants in Turmoil: Mass Immigration to Israel and Its Repercussions in the 1950s and After Syracuse University Press 2003 978-0-8156-2969-6 Aliyah to Israel by Country of Origin and Year of Aliyah, 14 May 1948–31 December 1953 18 February 2024 https://books.google.com/books?id=hCw6v0TFhdMC&pg=PA267Morris, 2001, pp. 259–260.Fischbach, Michael R. Jewish Property Claims Against Arab Countries. Columbia University Press, 2008, p. 27 Terminology and alternate names The 1948 Palestine war is also sometimes referred to as the 1948 Arab–Israeli war, the First Arab–Israeli war, or simply the 1948 war, although the term "Arab-Israeli war" often refers to the international phase of the war between Arab countries and Israel after May 15, 1948. Palestinians and the Arab world often refer to the war as the Nakba ("the catastrophe"), while in Israel the conflict is known as the War of Independence (Milhemet Ha'atzma'ut).Black Ian Enemies and Neighbours: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917–2017 Penguin Books Ltd 2017 London 105 EnglishMorris Benny 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War 2008 Yale University Press 978-0-300-12696-91948 Arab-Israeli War Encyclopædia Britannica https://www.britannica.com/event/1948-Arab-Israeli-War 30 March 2025 Background History of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict Intercommunal conflict in Mandatory Palestine The 1948 war came as the culmination of 30 years of friction between Jews and Arabs during the period of British rule of Palestine when, under the terms of the League of Nations mandate held by the British, conditions intended to lead to the establishment of a Jewish National Home in the area were created.Benny Morris 1948: a history of the first Arab-Israeli war https://books.google.com/books?id=J5jtAAAAMAAJ 13 July 2013 2008 Yale University Press 978-0-300-12696-9 19 January 2023 https://web.archive.org/web/20230119160921/https://books.google.com/books?id=J5jtAAAAMAAJ live7 Jewish immigration to Palestine Zionism Zionism formed in Europe as the national movement of the Jewish people. It sought to reestablish Jewish statehood in the ancient homeland. The first wave of Zionist immigration, dubbed the First Aliyah, lasted from 1882 to 1903. Some 30,000 Jews, mostly from the Russian Empire, reached Ottoman Palestine. They were driven both by the Zionist idea and by the wave of antisemitism in Europe, especially in the Russian Empire, which came in the form of brutal pogroms. They wanted to establish Jewish agricultural settlements and a Jewish majority in the land that would allow them to gain statehood.1–2 The Arab inhabitants of Ottoman Palestine who saw the Zionist Jews of the first aliyah settle next to them were not associated with a national movement at the end of the 19th century. Historically, Palestine had never been administered or recognized as a distinct province by any of its Muslim rulers.6–7 Starting in 1882, the Ottomans issued a stream of "restrictive orders" against Jewish settlement and land purchases in Palestine. However, as a result of its perceived insignificance and the inefficiency of Ottoman bureaucracies, these restrictions had little effect. Due to bribes, the Ottoman authorities often supported the Jewish settlers with "entry permits and their extension, land deals, [and] building rights."7–8,40–41 Until the 1910s, Zionists encountered little violence, as the Arabs lacked political awareness and were disorganized.7–8 Between 1909 and 1914, this changed, as Arabs killed 12 Jewish settlement guards and Arab nationalism, and opposition to the Zionist enterprise, increased. In 1911, Arabs attempted to thwart the establishment of a Jewish settlement in the Jezreel Valley, and the dispute resulted in the death of one Arab man and a Jewish guard. The Arabs called the Jews the "new Crusaders", and anti-Zionist (and, occasionally, anti-Semitic) 7Source quotes several examples, such as a poem printed in the newspaper Falastin: "The Jews, the weakest of all peoples and the least of them, Are haggling with us for our land." rhetoric flourished.7–8 World War I and the Balfour Declaration Sinai and Palestine campaign Balfour Declaration During the war, Palestine served as the frontline between the Ottoman Empire and the British Empire in Egypt. The war briefly halted Jewish-Arab friction. The British invaded the land in 1915 and 1916 after two unsuccessful Ottoman attacks on Sinai. They were assisted by the Arab tribes in Hejaz, led by the Hashemites, and promised them sovereignty over the Arab areas of the Ottoman Empire. Palestine was excluded from the promise, initially intended to be a joint British-French domain. After the Balfour Declaration in November 1917, it was designated as a "national home for the Jewish people", with the stipulation that "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine." Several factors influenced the decision to support Zionism. Zionist lobbying, led by Chaim Weizmann, played a significant role, along with religious and humanitarian motivations. The fact that the Arabs of Palestine supported the Ottoman fight against the Allied Powers also contributed. Additionally, the British believed that a British-backed state would help defend the Suez Canal. At that time, the Arab Hashemites did not seem opposed to Jewish rule over Palestine.9–10 Early years of the British Mandate After World War I, the League of Nations granted Britain the Mandate for Palestine, which required it to implement the Balfour Declaration. As the numbers and strength of the Yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine) grew, tensions between the Jewish and Arab communities deepened. Significant bouts of violence happened during the 1920 Jerusalem Riots, as well as in 1921 and 1929. In addition to the emerging Palestinian Arab nationalism, the violence also drew on religious inspirations, such as the accusation that the Jews intended to take over the Temple Mount.11–12 Despite Arab opposition to Jewish immigration, leading Palestinian families continued to sell land to Zionists throughout the period. At least one quarter of members of the Palestinian Arab Executive benefited financially from such purchases, including the mayor of Jerusalem and the al-Husayni family.Morris (2001), p.111 The Zionist leaders intermittently attempted to reach a compromise with the Arabs, but none proved possible.15 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine Arab general strike (Mandatory Palestine) upright=1.1|thumb|left|Fawzi al-Qawuqji (third from the right) in 1936 The peasant-led 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine broke out in the context of increased Jewish migration to Palestine and the plight of the rural native fallāḥīn.Nadan Amos 2017-07-26 Economic Aspects of the Peasant-Led National Palestinian Revolt, 1936-39 https://brill.com/view/journals/jesh/60/5/article-p647_4.xml Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient en 60 5 647–682 10.1163/15685209-12341436 1568-5209 subscription It sparked following the murder of three Jewish drivers on April 15, 1936, whose funeral led rapidly spreading disturbances.Benny Morris (2001), p.128 The revolt began with a general strike among Palestinian Arabs on April 19, 1936, which escalated into intercommunal violence.https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781315570006 Britain, Palestine and Empire: The Mandate Years 2016-04-15 Routledge 978-1-315-57000-6 10.4324/9781315570006 The brutal suppression of the revolt by the British significantly weakened the Palestinian Arabs in advance of the 1948 war.Benny Morris (2001), p.121 Jewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine Jewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine thumb|180px|Aftermath of the King David Hotel bombing committed by the Irgun in 1946 Particularly after the White Paper of 1939, the Zionist paramilitary organizations Irgun, Lehi, and Haganah carried out a campaign of acts of terror and sabotage against British rule. Among these attacks was the 1946 King David Hotel bombing carried out by the Irgun which killed 91 people.Zvada Ľubomír Lach Jiří 2022-09-13 Bloody years of the Jewish Insurgency in British Mandatory Palestine 1939-1948: From the White Paper to the State of Israel https://www.vojenskerozhledy.cz/en/kategorie/ozbrojene-konflikty/zidovske-povstani-britska-palestina Vojenské rozhledy 31 3 121–136 10.3849/2336-2995.31.2022.03.121-136 free 1210-3292Shpiro Shlomo Sep 2013 The Intellectual Foundations of Jewish National Terrorism: Avraham Stern and the Lehi http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09546553.2013.814502 Terrorism and Political Violence en 25 4 606–620 10.1080/09546553.2013.814502 0954-6553 subscription Bell J. Bowyer Terror out of Zion: Irgun Zvai Leumi, LEHI, and the Palestine underground, 1929-1949 1979 Academy Press Dublin 978-0-906187-11-1 https://books.google.com/books?id=yrBtAAAAMAAJ&q=terror+out+of+zion J. Bowyer BellMorris 2004, "the upsurge during 1944–1947 of anti-British Jewish terrorism by the Revisionist Irgun Zvai Leumi (IZL) (the National Military Organisation or 'Irgun') and Lohamei Herut Yisrael (LHI) (Freedom Fighters of Israel or 'Stern Gang')" Pappé 2006 "the Jewish terrorist attack on the King David Hotel" The Arab states Following World War II, the surrounding Arab states were emerging from mandatory rule. Transjordan, under the Hashemite ruler Abdullah I, gained independence from Britain in 1946 and was called Jordan in 1949, but remained under heavy British influence. Egypt gained nominal independence in 1922, but Britain continued to exert a strong influence on it until the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936 limited Britain's presence to a garrison of troops on the Suez Canal until 1945. Lebanon became an independent state in 1943, but French troops did not withdraw until 1946, the same year Syria won its independence from France. In 1945, at British prompting, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Transjordan, and Yemen formed the Arab League to coordinate policy among the Arab states. Iraq and Transjordan coordinated closely, signing a mutual defence treaty, while Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia feared that Transjordan would annex part or all of Palestine and use it as a stepping stone to attack or undermine Syria, Lebanon, and the Hijaz.66–69 The 1947 UN Partition Plan 1947 UN Partition Plan thumb|139px|left|The 1947 UN Partition Plan recommended dividing Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state. 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).http://domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/0/7f0af2bd897689b785256c330061d253 A/RES/181(II) of 29 November 1947 domino.un.org 1947 11 January 2012 dead https://web.archive.org/web/20120524094913/http://domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/0/7f0af2bd897689b785256c330061d253 24 May 2012 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 in Jaffa, which had an Arab-majority population and provided the Arab state with a port on the Mediterranean. With about 32% of the population, the Jews were allocated 56% of the territory (most of it the Negev desert). It contained 499,000 Jews and 438,000 Arabs.Benny Morris (2008), 1948: An History the First Arab-Israeli War, p. 47. 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 la corpus separatum, to be administered by the UN.Pappe, 2006, p. 35 The residents in the UN-administered territory were given the right to choose to be citizens of either of the new states.Karsh, p.7 thumb|right|Protests in Cairo, Egypt against the UN Partition Plan, December 1947 The Jewish leadership accepted the partition plan as "the indispensable minimum",El-Nawawy, 2002, p. 1-2 glad to gain international recognition but sorry that they did not receive more.Morris, Righteous Victims, 2001, p. 190 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 the population balance at that time.Gold, 2007, p. 134 According to the Israeli historian Benny Morris, the Arabs rejected the partition, not because it was supposedly unfair, but because their leaders rejected any form of partition. They held "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 in the Jewish community were counterbalanced by discontent in the Arab community. Soon after, violence broke out and became more prevalent. Murders, reprisals, and counter-reprisals came fast upon each other, resulting in dozens killed on both sides. The sanguinary impasse persisted as no force intervened to put a stop to the escalating violence. First phase: 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine thumb|left|200px|Aftermath of the Ben Yehuda Street bombing, March 1948 The first phase of the war took place from 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.Resolution 181 (II). Future government of Palestine A/RES/181(II)(A+B) 29 November 1947 https://web.archive.org/web/20110617232624/http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/RESOLUTION/GEN/NR0/038/88/IMG/NR003888.pdf?OpenElement June 17, 2011 During this period the Jewish and Arab communities of the British Mandate clashed, while the British organised their withdrawal and intervened only occasionally. In the first two months of the Civil War, around 1,000 people were killed and 2,000 injured,Special UN commission (16 April 1948), § II.5 and by the end of March, the figure had risen to 2,000 dead and 4,000 wounded.Yoav Gelber (2006), p.85 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 militarised. A number of Arab Liberation Army regiments infiltrated Palestine, each active in a variety of distinct sectors around the coastal towns. They consolidated their presence in Galilee and Samaria.Yoav Gelber (2006), pp.51-56 The Army of the Holy War, under Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni's command, 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.Dominique Lapierre et Larry Collins (1971), chap.7, pp.131-153 thumb|right|Arab fighters in front of a burning Haganah armoured supply truck near the city of Jerusalem, March 1948. 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.Benny Morris (2003), p. 163 The situation for those in the Jewish settlements in the highly isolated Negev and North of Galilee was more critical. This caused the US to withdraw its support for the Partition Plan, and the Arab League began to believe that the Palestinian Arabs, reinforced by the Arab Liberation Army, could end the partition. The British decided on 7 February 1948 to support Transjordan's annexation of the Arab part of Palestine.Henry Laurens (2005), p.83 While the Jewish population was ordered to hold their ground everywhere at all costs,Dominique Lapierre et Larry Collins (1971), p.163 the Arab population was disrupted by general conditions of insecurity. 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 centres to the east.Benny Morris (2003), p.67 Plan Dalet and second stage Plan Dalet 240px|thumb|left|Arab residents being expelled during the Battle of Haifa David Ben-Gurion ordered Yigal Yadin to plan for the announced intervention of the Arab states. The result of his analysis was Plan Dalet, which was put in place at the start of April, and which marked the war's second phase,David Tal, War in Palestine, 1948: Israeli and Arab Strategy and Diplomacy, Routledge 2004 p. 89. in which the Haganah took the offensive.118 The first operation, 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 had intensified. The convoys' failure and the loss of Jewish armoured vehicles had shaken the Yishuv leaders' confidence. The city's food and water supply was cut off.Gilbert Martin Jerusalem in the Twentieth Century 1996 John Wiley & Sons 9780471163084 207Gleick Peter H. The World's Water The Biennial Report on Freshwater Resources. Volume 8 2014 Island Press 9781610914819 183 Jerusalem was on the verge of starvation in May,224 both food and water rationing had been introduced.Hirsch Moshe Lapidoth Ruth The Jerusalem Question and Its Resolution: Selected Documents 20 January 2025 Brill 9789004638969 54 thumb|right|199px|Palestinian irregulars of the Holy War Army, approaching al-Qastal village near Jerusalem to take it back from Palmach During this time, paramilitary groups Irgun and Lehi, supported by the Haganah and Palmach,Benny Morris, Righteous Victims - "The most important event during Operation Nahshon was probably the conquest by the IZL and LHI, assisted by the Haganah, of the village of Deir Yassin"Benny Morris "The Historiography of Deir Yassin" (2005), The Journal of Israeli History. "In the course of the battle, the dissidents ran low on ammunition and asked for and obtained thousands of rounds from the Haganah; Haganah squads also provided covering fire and fired on the refugees fleeing southward, towards "Ein Karim. Two squads of the Palmah (the elite strike force of the Haganah) also arrived on the scene and helped evacuate the wounded and take some of the houses." perpetrated the Deir Yassin massacre, killing at least 107 Arab villagers, including women and children, and expelled the rest of the village's residents (approximately 750 people). The event was widely publicized and had a deep effect on the Arab population's morale, greatly contributing to the Palestinian expulsion and flight. The Hadassah medical convoy massacre was conducted by Arab forces as retaliation for Deir Yassin. 79 Jews were killed in the attack which led to a further deterioration of Jewish-Arab relations.Edelheit Hershel Edelheit Abraham J. History of Zionism : A Handbook And Dictionary 2019 Routledge 9780367160258 224Kumaraswamy P.R. The Arab-Israeli Conflict: A Ringside View 2023 Taylor & Francis 9781000871845 76 From April 4–15, the firstBenny Morris (2003), pp. 242-243 large-scale operation of the Arab Liberation Army ended in a debacle, as they were roundly defeated at Mishmar HaEmek. Their Druze allies left them through defection.Benny Morris (2003), p.242 thumb|right|240px|Destroyed buildings in the Manshiya quarter of Jaffa, May 1948 As part of Plan Dalet, the Haganah, Palmach and Irgun captured the urban centers of Tiberias, Haifa (See: Battle of Haifa), Safed, Beisan, Jaffa, and Acre, violently expelling more than 250,000 Palestinian Arabs.Henry Laurens (2005), pp.85-86 The British had essentially withdrawn their troops. The situation pushed the neighbouring 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. However Abdullah did not intend to create a Palestinian state, but hoped to annex much of Eastern Palestine. Playing both sides, he was in contact with both the Israelis and the Arab League.Pappe 2006 Preparing for Arab intervention from neighbouring states, Haganah successfully launched Operations YiftahBenny Morris (2003), pp.248-252 and Ben-'AmiBenny Morris (2003), pp.252-254 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 13 May by the Arab Legion, led to predictions that the battle for Jerusalem would be merciless. Israeli historians Benny Morris and Benjamin Kedar revealed that during the 1948 war, Israel conducted a biological warfare operation codenamed Cast Thy Bread, using typhoid bacteria to contaminate wells in Arab areas to prevent reentry and deter advancing Arab forces.Morris Benny Kedar Benjamin Z. 2022-01-01 'Cast thy bread': Israeli biological warfare during the 1948 War https://doi.org/10.1080/00263206.2022.2122448 Middle Eastern Studies 59 5 752–776 10.1080/00263206.2022.2122448 252389726 0026-3206 subscription Second phase: 1948 Arab–Israeli War 1948 Arab–Israeli War Arab League entry thumb|Clause 10 of the 15 May 1948 Arab League cablegram stating the reasons for their entry into the territory 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.Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs: Declaration of Establishment of State of Israel: 14 May 1948 Retrieved 9 April 2012 https://web.archive.org/web/20120321213130/http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Peace%2BProcess/Guide%2Bto%2Bthe%2BPeace%2BProcess/Declaration%2Bof%2BEstablishment%2Bof%2BState%2Bof%2BIsrael.htm 21 March 2012 Both superpower leaders, U.S. President Harry S. Truman and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, immediately recognised 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.The Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem, Part II, 1947–1977" https://web.archive.org/web/20110526013534/http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/d442111e70e417e3802564740045a309?OpenDocument 2011-05-26 , United Nations The Palestinians' Arab Higher Committee rejected the Partition Resolution and any kind of Jewish state and refused to negotiate with "the Zionist Project".Herf Jeffrey Israel's Moment: International Support for and Opposition to Establishing the Jewish State, 1945–1949 2022 Cambridge University Press 9781009058773 354 thumb|right|168px|Map of the military situation as of June 1st 1948 Over the next few days, contingents of four of the seven countries of the Arab League at that time, Egypt, Iraq, Transjordan, and Syria, invaded the former British Mandate of Palestine and fought the Israelis. They were supported by the Arab Liberation Army, Muslim Brotherhood contingents,Benny Morris 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War Yale University Press 978-0-300-14524-3 85 https://books.google.com/books?id=CC7381HrLqcC&pg=PA85 1 October 2008 and corps of volunteers from Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Yemen. The Arab armies launched a simultaneous offensive on all fronts: Egyptian forces invaded from the south, Jordanian and Iraqi forces from the east, and Syrian forces invaded from the north. Cooperation among the various Arab armies was poor. First truce: 11 June – 8 July 1948 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. Morris Benny 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War Yale University Press 2008 978-0-300-12696-9 registration https://archive.org/details/1948historyoffir00morr He spoke of "peace by Christmas" but saw that the Arab world had continued to reject the existence of a Jewish state, whatever its borders. An arms embargo was declared with the intention that neither side would make 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.Ahron Bregman Ahron Bregman Jihan El-Tahri Jihan El-Tahri The Fifty Years War: Israel and the Arabs https://archive.org/details/fiftyyearswarisr00breg registration BBC Books 1999 978-1-57500-057-2 43 "The Arabs violated the truce by reinforcing their lines with fresh units (including six companies of Sudanese regulars,Benny Morris (2008), p.269 a Saudi battalionBenny Morris (2008), p.322 and contingents from Yemen and MoroccoBenny Morris (2008), p.205) and by preventing supplies from reaching isolated Israeli settlements; occasionally, they opened fire along the lines". Morris Benny 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War The Israeli Defense Forces acquired weapons from Czechoslovakia in contravention to the terms of the truce, improving the training of its forces, and reorganising the army. Yitzhak Rabin, an IDF commander who would later become 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. Israel's army increased its manpower from approximately 30,000 or 35,000 men to almost 65,000 during the trucesomething is wrong. rifles for half of the soldiers only? June 2013 and its arms supply to "more than twenty-five thousand rifles, five thousand machine guns, and more than fifty million bullets". thumb|right|Israeli forces air dropping supplies to besieged Yehiam, 1948 As the truce began, a British officer stationed in Haifa said 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".Morris Benny 2008 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War Yale University Press 267 978-0-300-12696-9 On 7 July, the day before the truce expired, Egyptian forces under General Muhammad Naguib renewed the war by attacking Negba.Alfred A. Knopf. A History of Israel from the Rise of Zionism to Our Time. New York. 1976. p. 330. 978-0-394-48564-5. 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 and continued for ten days until the UN Security Council issued the Second Truce on 18 July. thumb|right|Detained Palestinians during the expulsion from Ramle, July 1948 Israeli Operation Dani resulted in the expulsion 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 cooperation between the Egyptian army, which had started its attack on Kibbutz Negbah, and the Arab Legion, which had taken the Lydda police station. Widespread looting took place during these operations, and about 100,000 Palestinians became refugees.Morris, 2004, p. 448. In Operation Dekel, Nazareth was captured on 16 July. In Operation Brosh, Israel tried and failed to drive the Syrian army out of northeastern Galilee. 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. With smuggled Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress planes acquired in violation of the international arms embargo, Israel bombed a residential neighborhood in Cairo on July 15.CAIRO IS BOMBED BY ISRAEL FLIER; Arab Planes Counter With Air Blows at Jerusalem, Haifa -- Land Fronts Quiet en The New York Times http://timesmachine.nytimes.comhttp//timesmachine.content-tagging.us-east-1-01.prd.dvsp.nyt.net/timesmachine/1948/07/16/84540067.html?zoom=16 2023-12-13 June 2025 InternetArchiveBot yes Freeman-Maloy Dan 2011 Mahal and the Dispossession of the Palestinians https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/jps.2011.xl.2.43 Journal of Palestine Studies 40 2 43–61 10.1525/jps.2011.xl.2.43 10.1525/jps.2011.xl.2.43 0377-919X subscription Morris Benny 1948 : a history of the first Arab-Israeli war 2017-12-31 https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.12987/9780300145243-009/html 264–272 2023-12-14 The First Truce, 11 June–8 July 1948, the International Community, and the War Yale University Press 10.12987/9780300145243-009 978-0-300-14524-3 246151766 subscription 18 July 1948 – 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. On 16 September, a new partition plan for Palestine was proposed but it was rejected by both sides. thumb|An Otter armoured car captured by the Haganah from the ALA in 1948 During the truce, the Egyptians regularly blocked the passage of supply convoys to the beleaguered northern Negev settlements by firing on them, contrary to the truce terms. On 15 October, they attacked another supply convoy, and the already planned Operation Yoav was launched.Benny Morris (2008), p.323. Its goal was to drive a wedge between the Egyptian forces along the coast and the Beersheba-Hebron-Jerusalem road, and to open the road to the encircled Negev settlements. Yoav was headed by Southern Front commander Yigal Allon. The operation was a success, shattering the Egyptian army ranks and forcing Egyptian forces to retreat from the northern Negev, Beersheba, and Ashdod. Meanwhile, on 19 October, Operation Ha-Har commenced operations in the Jerusalem Corridor. On 22 October, the third truce went into effect.Shapira, Anita. Yigal Allon; Native Son; A Biography, Translated by Evelyn Abel, University of Pennsylvania Press 978-0-8122-4028-3 p 247 Before dawn on 22 October, in defiance of the UN Security Council ceasefire order, ALA units stormed the IDF hilltop position of Sheikh Abd, overlooking Kibbutz Manara. The kibbutz was now besieged. Ben-Gurion initially rejected Moshe Carmel's demand to launch a major counteroffensive. He was wary of antagonising the United Nations on the heels of its ceasefire order. During 24–25 October, ALA troops regularly sniped at Manara and traffic along the main road. In contacts with UN observers, Fawzi al-Qawuqji demanded that Israel evacuate neighbouring Kibbutz Yiftah and thin out its forces in Manara. The IDF demanded the ALA's withdrawal from the captured positions and, after a "no" from al-Qawuqji, informed the UN that it felt free to do as it pleased. On 24 October, the IDF launched Operation Hiram and captured the entire upper Galilee, originally attributed to the Arab state by the Partition Plan. It drove the ALA back to Lebanon. At the end of the month, Israel had captured the whole Galilee and had advanced 5 mi km into Lebanon to the Litani River. On 22 December, large IDF forces started Operation Horev. Its objective was to encircle the Egyptian Army in the Gaza Strip and force the Egyptians to end the war. 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 surrounded. Israeli forces withdrew from Sinai and Gaza under international pressure and after the British threatened to intervene against Israel. The Egyptian government announced on 6 January 1949 that it was willing to enter armistice negotiations. Allon persuaded Ben-Gurion to continue as planned, but Ben-Gurion told him: "Do you know the value of peace talks with Egypt? After all, that is our great dream!"Benny Morris (2008), p.369. He was sure that Transjordan and the other Arab states would follow suit. On 7 January 1949, a truce was achieved. 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 Armistice lines thumb|right|150px|Israel after the 1949 Armistice Agreements In 1949, Israel signed separate armistices with Egypt on 24 February, Lebanon on 23 March, Transjordan on 3 April, and Syria on 20 July. The armistice lines saw Israel holding about 78% of Mandatory Palestine (as it stood after the independence of Transjordan in 1946), 22% more than the UN Partition Plan had allocated. These ceasefire lines were known afterwards as the "Green Line". The Gaza Strip and the West Bank were occupied by Egypt and Transjordan, 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. Casualties Israel lost 6,373 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 4,000 for Egypt (2,000), Jordan and Syria (1,000 each) and 15,000.Chris Cook, World Political Almanac, 3rd Ed. (Facts on File: 1995) According to Benny Morris,Benny Morris (2008), p.406 Given that the first half of the war involved hostilities between militias based in a large number of interspersed civilian communities, the conquest of some two hundred villages and urban centers, and the later conquest of two hundred additional villages, 1948 is actually noteworthy for the relatively small number of civilian casualties both in the battles themselves and in the atrocities that accompanied them or followed (compare this, for example, to the casualty rates and atrocities in the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s or the Sudanese civil wars of the past fifty years). Demographic consequences 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim lands During the 1947–48 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine and the 1948 Arab–Israeli War that followed, around 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled. In 1951, the UN Conciliation Commission for Palestine estimated that the number of Palestinian refugees displaced from Israel was 711,000.A/1367/REV.1(SUPP) A 5 General Progress Report and Supplementary Report of the United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine, Covering the Period from 11 December 1949 to 23 October 1950 23 October 1950 21 July 2020 24 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, resulting in no Jews left in or being able to return to the Arab-controlled territory.Curtis Michael Jews, Antisemitism, and the Middle East 2013 Transaction Publishers 9781412851411 247Benny Morris 2004 https://books.google.com/books?id=uM_kFX6edX8C&pg=PA602 The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited 602–604 Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-00967-6 The causes of the 1948 Palestinian exodus are a controversial topic among historians.The War for Palestine. Rewriting the History of 1948 L. Rogan Eugene Shlaim Avi http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/paper/hughesMatthew.html https://web.archive.org/web/20060928211155/http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/paper/hughesMatthew.html 2006-09-28 Institute of Historical Research 2009-08-08 dead The Palestinian refugee problem and the debate around the right of their return are also major issues of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. 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. Jewish Refugees of the Israeli Palestinian Conflict http://www.mideastweb.org/refugees4.htm Mideast Web 2008-07-13 2013-10-09 https://web.archive.org/web/20131009231524/http://www.mideastweb.org/refugees4.htm live The war indirectly resulted in the Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim lands. Largely because of the war between Jews and Arabs in Palestine, hundreds of thousands of Jews who lived in the Arab states were intimidated into flight, or were expelled from their native countries, most of them reaching Israel. The immediate reasons for this exodus were both the popular Arab hostility, including pogroms and anti-Jewish governmental measures, as well as the desire of many Jewish people to join the newly established State of Israel. According to Benny Morris, "the experience of discrimination and persecution in the Arab world ... that preceded 1948 ... [left] a deep dislike, indeed hatred, of that world among [the first generation of Jews that fled or were expelled] and their descendants." This affects Israeli politics with negative views of Arabs and "hard-line, right-wing voting patterns." He states these are long lasting indirect consequences of the war.Morris Benny https://books.google.com/books?id=J5jtAAAAMAAJ&q=%22the%20experience%20of%20discrimination%20and%20persecution%20in%20the%20Arab%20world%22 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War Yale University Press 2008 9780300145243 New Haven 415 In the three years following the war, about 700,000 Jews immigrated to Israel, where they were absorbed, fed and housed mainly along the borders and in former Palestinian lands.Benny Morris, Righteous Victims, chap. VI. Beginning in 1948, and continuing until 1972, an estimated 800,000 to 1,000,000 Jews migrated to Israel.Malka Hillel Shulewitz, The Forgotten Millions: The Modern Jewish Exodus from Arab Lands, Continuum 2001.Ada Aharoni "The Forced Migration of Jews from Arab Countries https://web.archive.org/web/20120213230126/http://www.hsje.org/forcedmigration.htm 2012-02-13 , Historical Society of Jews from Egypt website. Accessed April 4, 2013.Yehuda Zvi Blum For Zion's Sake https://books.google.com/books?id=tlCHQ6LU988C&pg=PA68 1987 Associated University Presse 978-0-8453-4809-3 69 From 1945 until the closure of 1952, more than 250,000 Jewish displaced persons lived in European refugee camps. About 136,000 of them immigrated to Israel.http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005462 Displaced Persons https://web.archive.org/web/20100330002158/http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005462 2010-03-30 29 October 2007 U.S. Holocaust Museum More than 270,000 Jews immigrated from Eastern Europe,Tom Segev 1949. The First Israelis Owl Books 1986 96 mainly Romania and Poland (over 100,000 each). Overall 700,000 Jews settled in Israel,Benny Morris, Righteous Victims, chap.VI. doubling its Jewish population.http://www1.cbs.gov.il/reader/shnaton/templ_shnaton_e.html?num_tab=st02_01&CYear=2006 Israel Central Bureau of Statistics 7 August 2007 2006 Population, by Religion and Population Group dead https://web.archive.org/web/20070930033403/http://www1.cbs.gov.il/reader/shnaton/templ_shnaton_e.html?num_tab=st02_01&CYear=2006 30 September 2007 Dvora Hacohen, Immigrants in Turmoil: Mass Immigration to Israel and its Repercussions in the 1950s and After, Syracuse University Press, 2003 Historiography Since the war, different historiographical traditions have interpreted the events of 1948 differently; in the words of the New Historian Avi Shlaim, "each side subscribes to a different version of events."Shlaim Avi Avi Shlaim 1995 The Debate about 1948 https://www.jstor.org/stable/176252 International Journal of Middle East Studies 27 3 287–304 10.1017/S0020743800062097 176252 55258863 0020-7438 2023-03-02 2023-03-02 https://web.archive.org/web/20230302000036/https://www.jstor.org/stable/176252 live subscription In the Israeli narrative, the war is Israel's War of Independence. In the Palestinian narrative, the War of 1948 is inextricable from the Nakba, the Zionist movement is one of settler colonialism,Khalidi Rashid The Hundred Years' War on Palestine : A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017 2020 Henry Holt and Company 978-1-62779-855-6 First New York 1090697006 and the Israelis are seen as conquerors and the Palestinians as victims. The different narratives of 1948 reflect these different perceptions. An issue affecting the historiography of 1948 is access to sources and archives, which may have been destroyed, appropriated, censored, or otherwise made unavailable to some or all researchers.xxxiv-xxxviiShlaim Avi Avi Shlaim 1995 The Debate about 1948 https://www.jstor.org/stable/176252 live International Journal of Middle East Studies 27 3 287–304 10.1017/S0020743800062097 0020-7438 176252 55258863 https://web.archive.org/web/20230302000036/https://www.jstor.org/stable/176252 2023-03-02 2023-03-02 subscription The war of 1948 : representations of Israeli and Palestinian memories and narratives 2016 Avraham Sela, Alon Kadish 978-0-253-02341-4 Bloomington 957554870 Linguistic barriers represent another hurdle, as most research is published exclusively in the author's native language and is not translated.214 The historiography of 1948 is tied to political legitimacy in the present and has implications for the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.Sela Avraham The war of 1948 : representations of Israeli and Palestinian memories and narratives Caplan Neil 2016 Avraham Sela, Alon Kadish 978-0-253-02341-4 Bloomington Epilogue: Reflections on Post-Oslo Israeli and Palestinian History and Memory of 1948 957554870 https://books.google.com/books?id=FVGSDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA204 According to Avraham Sela and Neil Caplan:A major reason for this grip of the past over the present is the unfulfilled quest of both Israelis and Palestinians for legitimacy, in one or more of the following three senses: (a) each party's sense of its own legitimacy as a national community entitled to its own sovereign state; (b) each party's willingness to grant legitimacy to at least part of the competing national narrative of the other; and (c) the international community's extension of legitimacy to the competing rights and claims of Israelis and Palestinians.The narratives of 1948 have also had implications for Palestinian refugees.211 Israeli narratives Being the victors, the Israelis "were able to propagate more effectively than their opponents their version of this fateful war", in the words of Avi Shlaim. Only in 1987 was that narrative effectively challenged outside the Arab world. Zionist narrative Avi Shlaim gives the conventional Zionist narrative or the "old history" of the 1948 war as follows:The conflict between Jews and Arabs in Palestine came to a head following the passage, on 29 November 1947, of the United Nations partition resolution that called for the establishment of two states, one Jewish and one Arab. The Jews accepted the U.N. plan despite the painful sacrifices it entailed, but the Palestinians, the neighboring Arab states, and the Arab League rejected it. Great Britain did everything in its power toward the end of the Palestine Mandate to frustrate the establishment of the Jewish state envisaged in the UN. plan. With the expiry of the Mandate and the proclamation of the State of Israel, seven Arab states sent their armies into Palestine with the firm intention of strangling the Jewish state at birth. The subsequent struggle was an unequal one between a Jewish David and an Arab Goliath. The infant Jewish state fought a desperate, heroic, and ultimately successful battle for survival against overwhelming odds. During the war, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled to the neighboring Arab states, mainly in response to orders from their leaders and despite Jewish pleas to stay and demonstrate that peaceful coexistence was possible. After the war, the story continues, Israeli leaders sought peace with all their heart and all their might but there was no one to talk to on the other side. Arab intransigence was alone responsible for the political deadlock, which was not broken until President Anwar Sadat's visit to Jerusalem thirty years later.According to Shlaim, this narrative is "not history in the proper sense of the word", as most of the literature on the war was produced—not by professional academic historians—but rather by participants in the war, politicians, soldiers, and state-sponsored historians, as well as by sympathetic journalists, chroniclers, and biographers. It also portrays Israelis as morally superior, lacks political analysis, and gives undue weight to "the heroic feats of the Israeli fighters." This nationalist narrative was taught in Israeli schools and used for gaining legitimacy internationally. New Historians New Historians The standard Zionist narrative of the war remained unchallenged outside the Arab world until the war's fortieth anniversary, when a number of critical books came out, including Simha Flapan's The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities (1987), Benny Morris's The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem (1987), Ilan Pappé's Britain and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1948–51 (1988), and Shlaim's Collusion Across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement and the Partition of Palestine (1988). These writers came to be known as New Historians or "post-Zionists".Pappé Ilan 2009-10-01 The Vicissitudes of the 1948 Historiography of Israel Journal of Palestine Studies 39 1 6–23 10.1525/jps.2010.XXXIX.1.6 10871/15209 0377-919X free According to Shlaim, the new historians disagreed with the Zionist narrative on six main points: British policy with regard to the Yishuv at the end of the Palestine Mandate, the military balance in 1948, the origins of the Palestinian refugee problem, the nature of relations between Israelis and Jordanians during the war, Arab aims in the war, and the reasons peace remained elusive after the war. Among their most vitriolic critics was Shabtai Teveth, biographer of David Ben-Gurion, who published "The New Historians", a series of four weekly full-page articles attacking the new historians, in Haaretz May 1989. Teveth claimed that the new historiography was flawed in its practice and that it was politically motived, that it was pro-Palestinian and aimed to delegitimize the State of Israel. Neo-Zionist narratives Ilan Pappé identifies a turn in predominant Israeli narratives about 1948 in September 2000. In the climate of the Second Intifada and in the Post-9/11 period, "not only were Israel's brutal military operations against the Palestinians during the new intifada seen as justified, but so was their systematic expulsion in 1948." Evidence of the expulsions, massacres, and war crimes of 1948 brought to light by the New Historians could no longer be ignored, but writers of what Pappé calls a "neo-Zionist" narrative justified these as necessary or unavoidable. In this period, the focus of Israeli historical writing on 1948 shifted largely from its human impact back to its military aspects. Neo-Zionist writers were given selective access to top-secret material, to which writers critical of Zionism would not have been given access, and much of their work was published by the Israeli Ministry of Defense. Among those Pappé associated with the neo-Zionist perspective were Benny Morris (who had become more outspokenly defensive of Zionism by this time), Daniel Gutwein he דניאל גוטוויין, Mordechai Bar-On, Yoav Gelber, Tamir Goren, Arnon Golan he ארנון גולן, Alon Kadish, and Yoav Peleg he יואב פלג, as well as the journal Techelet. Palestinian narratives Unlike Israeli narratives that shifted over the decades, Palestinian narratives of 1948 have been more or less constant, focusing on Palestinians' indigenous rights to Palestine, Palestinian victimhood, dispossession, displacement, exile, statelessness, and more "unrequited grievances against colonialism and Zionism."209–211 The term 'Nakba' to describe the Palestinian catastrophe in the war of 1948 was coined in Constantin Zureiq's 1948 book Ma'na an-Nakba.Khalidi Rashid The war for Palestine : rewriting the history of 1948 2007 Cambridge University Press Eugene L. Rogan, Avi Shlaim 978-0-511-37135-6 2nd Cambridge 1 The Palestinians and 1948: the underlying causes of failure 192047956 Yoav Gelber identifies Aref al-Aref's six volume an-Nakba (book) an-Nakba ar النكبة (كتاب) y written in Arabic in the 1950s as thorough and notable.Gelber Yoav https://books.google.com/books?id=0pVFDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA47 Making Israel 2010-04-23 University of Michigan Press Benny Morris 978-0-472-02652-4 en The History of Zionist Historiography: From Apologetics to Denial Palestinian narratives have focused on countering the dominant Zionist narrative; the preëminent Palestinian historian of 1948 Walid Khalidi has dedicated much of his career to disproving the official Israeli narrative that the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight was voluntary.211 Rashid Khalidi and other historians hold that "there is no established, authoritative Palestinian master narrative."212 They attribute this to, among other reasons, the dispersed and fragmented state of the Palestinian community and the loss, destruction, or appropriation by Israel of relevant documents and libraries.Khalidi Rashid The Iron Cage : The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood 2006 Oneworld Publications 978-1-78074-808-5 1050548811xxxiv-xxxvii212 Without access to much in the way of archival materials, Palestinian historians have made use of oral history.Khalidi Rashid R. 1988 Revisionist Views of the Modern History of Palestine: 1948 https://www.jstor.org/stable/41857981 Arab Studies Quarterly 10 4 425–432 41857981 0271-3519 2023-03-04 2023-03-04 https://web.archive.org/web/20230304193807/https://www.jstor.org/stable/41857981 live214 Arab narratives In the narratives of the wider Arab-Muslim world, 1948 is seen as an "Arab debacle", representative of the region's social and political decline from its "glorious distant past".210 The official narratives of Arab states on 1948 tended to be apologetic with the goal of defending their political legitimacy, while the Arab nationalists wrote with a focus on distilling and extracting historical lessons to galvanize Arab society, politics, and ideology in preparation for the next conflict with Israel—neither approach bridled itself too much with historical accuracy.The war for Palestine : rewriting the history of 1948 2007 Cambridge University Press Eugene L. Rogan, Avi Shlaim 978-0-511-37135-6 2nd Cambridge 1920479566 United States narratives The American journalist Joan Peters' 1984 book From Time Immemorial had a massive impact on how 1948 was understood in popular and political narratives in the United States.Said Edward W. 1986-01-01 The Joan Peters Case*: From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine, by Joan Peters Journal of Palestine Studies 15 2 144–150 10.2307/2536835 2536835 0377-919XFinkelstein, N. G. 1988. "Disinformation and the Palestine Question: The Not-So-Strange Case of Joan Peters's From Time Immemorial". In Blaming the Victims, Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question, ed. E. W. Said and C. Hitchens, pp. 33-69. London: Verso. Ilan Pappé asserts the neo-Zionist narrative was pushed in the United States most passionately by Michael Walzer, and by Anita Shapira and Derek Penslar with their 2003 Israeli Historical Revisionism: From Left to Right. In popular culture A 1960 movie Exodus starring Paul Newman as Haganah rebel Ari Ben Canaan, a decorated former captain in the Jewish Brigade of the British Army in the Second World War, obtains a cargo ship. He smuggles 611 Jews out of a Cyprus camp run by the British and onto the ship for an illegal voyage to Mandatory Palestine. An American epic historical drama film about the founding of the State of Israel. Produced and directed by Otto Preminger, the screenplay was adapted from the 1958 novel of the same name by Leon Uris. A 1966 movie Cast a Giant Shadow starring Kirk Douglas as US Colonel Mickey Marcus (1901–1948) who commanded units of the fledgling Israel Defense Forces during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. One of the well known Israeli Machal soldiers, becoming Israel's first modern generalAmerican Jewish Historical Society Ben Gurion named Mickey Marcus Lieutenant General, the first general in the army of Israel in nearly two thousand years. http://www.ajhs.org/scholarship/chapters/chapter.cfm?documentID=286 https://web.archive.org/web/20120329132617/http://www.ajhs.org/scholarship/chapters/chapter.cfm?documentID=286 2012-03-29 Mickey Marcus: Israel's American General (Hebrew: Aluf). He was killed by friendly fire.Ted Berkman Cast a Giant Shadow https://archive.org/details/castgiantshadow00berk registration Doubleday 1962 . Berkman's biography is the only comprehensive biography of Marcus. It was the source for the movie by the same name. A 1966 movie Judith (1966 film) starring Sophia Loren as Judith Auerbach Schiller, a Jewish former wife of a former German tank commander, General Gustav Schiller, who is teaching the Arabs battle tactics while in Palestine shortly before the end of the British mandate, the Haganah are unable to locate him but hopes that she can identify him. Judith and colleagues are smuggled into Damascus, and after days of searching, they find Schiller. As they are about to capture him, Judith shoots and wounds him. Schiller is smuggled back to Palestine and interrogated. A 2015 PBS documentary, A Wing and a Prayer, depicts the Al Schwimmer-led airborne smuggling missions to arm Israel. Israeli Air Force, particularly its scrappy beginnings, inspires 3 films https://www.jta.org/2015/05/12/arts-entertainment/israels-air-force-particularly-its-scrappy-beginnings-inspires-3-films Jewish Telegraphic Agency 12 May 2015 2015-12-10 2015-11-17 https://web.archive.org/web/20151117030244/http://www.jta.org/2015/05/12/arts-entertainment/israels-air-force-particularly-its-scrappy-beginnings-inspires-3-films live The 2021 historical drama film Farha tells the story of a Palestinian girl during the 1948 displacement of Palestinians from their homeland.Sallam Darin Darin Sallam Martin Michel Michel Martin January 29, 2023 'Farha' tells the story of a Palestinian girl in 1948 https://www.npr.org/2023/01/29/1152428451/farha-tells-the-story-of-a-palestinian-girl-in-1948 NPR . Transcript of interview with Darin Sallam. See also Killings and massacres during the 1948 Palestine war List of battles and operations in the 1948 Palestine war List of modern conflicts in the Middle East Notes Citations 2 David J Goldberg A book review of: In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands by Martin Gilbert https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/aug/28/history-jews-muslims-martin-gilbert The Guardian 28 Aug 2010 while it is pertinent to point out that 850,000 Jewish refugees from Arab lands have been fed, housed and absorbed by Israel since 1948 while 750,000 Palestinian refugees languish in camps, dependent on United Nations handouts 10 December 2016 5 March 2017 https://web.archive.org/web/20170305034234/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/aug/28/history-jews-muslims-martin-gilbert live Benny Morris 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War https://books.google.com/books?id=CC7381HrLqcC 1 October 2008 Yale University Press 978-0-300-14524-3 412 "The war indirectly created a second, major refugee problem. Partly because of the clash of Jewish and Arab arms in Palestine, some five to six hundred thousand Jews who lived in the Arab world emigrated, were intimidated into flight, or were expelled from their native countries, most of them reaching Israel, with a minority resettling in France, Britain, and the other Western countries. The immediate propellants to flight were the popular Arab hostility, including pogroms, triggered by the war in Palestine and specific governmental measures, amounting to institutionalized discrimination against and oppression of the Jewish minority communities." 21 September 2016 20 March 2023 https://web.archive.org/web/20230320123844/https://books.google.com/books?id=CC7381HrLqcC live United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine A/AC.25/W/19 30 July 1949 https://web.archive.org/web/20131002103014/http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/4ECBF3578B6149C50525657100507FAB 2 October 2013 ,"The Arabs rejected the United Nations Partition Plan so that any comment of theirs did not specifically concern the status of the Arab section of Palestine under partition but rather rejected the scheme in its entirety." Benny Morris 1948: a history of the first Arab-Israeli war https://books.google.com/books?id=J5jtAAAAMAAJ 13 July 2013 2008 Yale University Press 67 978-0-300-12696-9 p. 67, "The League’s Political Committee met in Sofar, Lebanon, on 16–19 September, and urged the Palestine Arabs to fight partition, which it called “aggression,” “without mercy"'; p. 70, '"On 24 November the head of the Egyptian delegation to the General Assembly, Muhammad Hussein Heykal, said that “the lives of 1,000,000 Jews in Moslem countries would be jeopardized by the establishment of a Jewish state." 19 January 2023 https://web.archive.org/web/20230119160921/https://books.google.com/books?id=J5jtAAAAMAAJ live Benny Morris 1948: a history of the first Arab-Israeli war https://books.google.com/books?id=J5jtAAAAMAAJ 13 July 2013 2008 Yale University Press 116 978-0-300-12696-9 "At the time, Ben-Gurion and the HGS believed that they had initiated a one-shot affair, albeit with the implication of a change of tactics and strategy on the Jerusalem front. In fact, they had set in motion a strategic transformation of Haganah policy. Nahshon heralded a shift from the defensive to the offensive and marked the beginning of the implementation of tochnit dalet (Plan D)—without Ben-Gurion or the HGS ever taking an in principle decision to embark on its implementation. " 19 January 2023 https://web.archive.org/web/20230119160921/https://books.google.com/books?id=J5jtAAAAMAAJ live Benny Morris 1948: a history of the first Arab-Israeli war https://books.google.com/books?id=J5jtAAAAMAAJ 13 July 2013 2008 Yale University Press 339 978-0-300-12696-9 Al-Qawuqji supplied the justification for Operation Hiram, in which the IDF overran the north-central Galilee "pocket" and a strip of southern Lebanon... In truth, as with Yoav, Operation Hiram had been long in the planning... on 6 October, at the IDF General Staff meeting, Carmel had pressed for [Hiram] authorization, but the Cabinet held back. The Arabs were shortly to give him his chance. Before dawn on 22 October, in defiance of the UN Security Council cease-fire order, ALA units stormed the IDF hilltop position of Sheikh Abd, just north of, and overlooking, Kibbutz Manara... Manara was imperiled... Ben-Gurion initially rejected Carmel's demand to launch a major counteroffensive. He was chary of antagonizing the United Nations so close on the heels of its cease-fire order. ... The kibbutz was now besieged, and the main south-north road through the Panhandle to Metulla was also under threat. During the 24–25 October ALA troops regularly sniped at Manara and at traffic along the main road. In contacts with UN observers, al-Qawuqji demanded that Israel evacuate neighboring Kibbutz Yiftah... and thin out its forces in Manara. The IDF demanded the ALA's withdrawal from the captured positions and, after a "no" from al-Qawuqji, informed the United Nations that it felt free to do as it pleased. Sensing what was about to happen, the Lebanese army "ordered" al-Qawuqji to withdraw from Israeli territory—but to no avail. Al-Qawuqji's provocation at Sheikh Abd made little military sense... On 16 October, a week before the attack on Sheikh Abd, Carmel ... had pressed Ben-Gurion to be allowed "to begin in the Galilee." Ben-Gurion had refused, but on 24–25 October he gave the green light. 19 January 2023 https://web.archive.org/web/20230119160921/https://books.google.com/books?id=J5jtAAAAMAAJ live Bibliography Abdel Jawad Saleh Saleh Abdel Jawad Robert I. Rotberg Israeli and Palestinian Narratives of Conflict: History's Double Helix https://books.google.com/books?id=qBdvxmuAwxYC 2006 Indiana University Press 978-0-253-21857-5 The Arab and Palestinian Narratives of the 1948 War Caplan Neil The Israel-Palestine Conflict: Contested Histories https://books.google.com/books?id=JyAgn_dD43cC&pg=PT17 19 September 2011 John Wiley & Sons 978-1-4443-5786-8 War: Atzma'ut and Nakba Yoav Gelber, Palestine 1948, Sussex Academic Press, Brighton, 2006, 978-1-84519-075-0 Efraim Karsh, The Arab-Israeli Conflict: The Palestine War 1948, Osprey publishing, 2002. Walid Khalidi (ed.), All that remains. 978-0-88728-224-9. Walid Khalidi, Selected Documents on the 1948 Palestine War, Journal of Palestine Studies, 27(3), 79, 1998. Levett Gordon The 'Other' Airlift Air Enthusiast 1991 44 17–25 0143-5450 Benny Morris, 1948, Yale University Press, 2008, 978-0-300-12696-9 Benny Morris, Righteous Victims, Vintage Books (reprint edition), 2001, 978-0679744757 Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949, Cambridge University Press, 2004, 978-0521009676 Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Oneworld Publications, 2006, 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. Williamson, Bruce. "Caught in the Middle: Air Combat Between Israel and the RAF, 1948". Air Enthusiast 115, January–February 2005, pp. 2–10 0143-5450 Category:1948 Arab–Israeli War 1948 Palestine war Category:1948 in Israel Category:1947 in Mandatory Palestine Category:1948 in Mandatory Palestine Category:1948 in the West Bank Governorate Category:1948 in All-Palestine (Gaza) 1948 Palestine war Category:1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight 1948 Palestine war