1948 Palestine war
First war of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The 1948 Palestine war[lower-alpha 1] was fought in the territory of what had been, at the start of the war, British-ruled Mandatory Palestine.[14][15][16][17][18][19] During the war, the British withdrew from Palestine, Zionist forces conquered territory and established the State of Israel, and over 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled. It was the first war of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the broader Arab–Israeli conflict.
1948 Palestine war | ||||||||||
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Part of the intercommunal conflict in Mandatory Palestine, the Arab–Israeli conflict, and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict | ||||||||||
Arab fighters in front of a burning Haganah armoured supply truck near the city of Jerusalem (March 1948) | ||||||||||
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Belligerents | ||||||||||
Yishuv Before 26 May 1948: After 26 May 1948: Foreign volunteers: |
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Commanders and leaders | ||||||||||
Gordon MacMillan | ||||||||||
Strength | ||||||||||
Israel: c. 10,000 initially, rising to 115,000 by March 1949 |
Arabs: c. 2,000 initially, rising to 70,000, of which:
| British Security Forces: 70,000 | ||||||||
Casualties and losses | ||||||||||
6,373 killed (about 4,000 troops and 2,373 civilians)[8] | Between +5,000[8] and 20,000 (including civilians and armed irregulars),[9] among which 4,000 soldiers for Egypt, Jordan and Syria; other estimate: 15,000 Arab dead and 25,000 wounded[10] Historian Aref al-Aref gives the Palestinian death toll as 13,000, with the majority of that number being civilians.[11] Historian Benny Morris estimates that around 800 civilians and prisoners of war were murdered "all told".[12] |
The war had two main phases, the first being the 1947–1948 civil war, which began on 30 November 1947,[20] 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.[21][22] Initially on the defensive, the Zionist forces switched to the offensive in April 1948.[23][24] In anticipation of an invasion by Arab armies,[25] they enacted Plan Dalet, an operation aimed at securing territory for the establishment of a Jewish state.[26]
The second phase of the war began on 14 May 1948, with the termination of the British Mandate and the declaration of the establishment of the State of Israel. 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 with 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. By the end of the war, the State of Israel had captured about 78% of former territory of the mandate, the Kingdom of Jordan had captured and later annexed the area that became the West Bank, and Egypt had captured the Gaza Strip. The war formally ended with the 1949 Armistice Agreements, which established the Green Line demarcating these territories.
During the war, massacres and acts of terror were conducted by and against 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 of the Palestinians is known today as the Nakba (Arabic for "the disaster")[27] and resulted in the beginning of the Palestinian refugee problem.