1948 Arab–Israeli War
| 1948 Arab–Israeli War | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the 1948 Palestine war and the Arab–Israeli conflict | |||||||||
| |||||||||
| |||||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||||
|
| ||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
|
David Ben-Gurion Yisrael Galili Yaakov Dori Yigael Yadin Mickey Marcus † Yigal Allon Yitzhak Rabin David Shaltiel Moshe Dayan Shimon Avidan Moshe Carmel Yitzhak Sadeh |
Azzam Pasha King Farouk I Ahmed Ali al-Mwawi Muhammad Naguib King Abdallah I John Bagot Glubb Habis Majali Muzahim al-Pachachi Shukri al-Quwatli Haj Amin al-Husseini Hasan Salama † Fawzi al-Qawuqji | ||||||||
| Strength | |||||||||
|
29,677 (initially) 117,500 (finally)[d] |
10,000 initially, rising to 20,000 7,500–10,000[10][11] 2,000 initially,[10] rising to 15,000–18,000 2,500–5,000[10] 1,000[12] 800–1,200 (Egyptian command) 300 3,500–6,000 Total: 13,000 (initial) 51,100 (minimum) 63,500 (maximum)[e] | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
|
6,373 killed (about 4,000 fighters and 2,400 civilians)[13] |
Arab armies: 3,700–7,000 killed Palestinian Arabs: 3,000–13,000 killed (both fighters and civilians)[14][15] | ||||||||
The 1948 Arab–Israeli War, also known as the First Arab–Israeli War, followed the civil war in Mandatory Palestine as the second and final stage of the 1948 Palestine war. The civil war became a war of separate states with the Israeli Declaration of Independence on 14 May 1948, the end of the British Mandate for Palestine at midnight, and the entry of a military coalition of Arab states into the territory of Mandatory Palestine the following morning. The war formally ended with the 1949 Armistice Agreements which established the Green Line.
Since the 1917 Balfour Declaration and the 1920 creation of the British Mandate of Palestine, and in the context of Zionism and the mass migration of European Jews to Palestine, there had been tension and conflict between Arabs, Jews, and the British in Palestine. The conflict escalated into a civil war 30 November 1947, the day after the United Nations adopted the Partition Plan for Palestine proposing to divide the territory into an Arab state, a Jewish state, and an internationally administered corpus separatum for the cities of Jerusalem and Bethlehem.
At the end of a campaign beginning April 1948 called Plan Dalet, in which Zionist forces attacked, conquered, and depopulated cities, villages, and territories in Mandatory Palestine in preparation for the establishment of a Jewish state, and just before the expiration of the British Mandate for Palestine, Zionist leaders announced the Israeli Declaration of Independence on 14 May 1948.[16] The following morning, Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, and expeditionary forces from Iraq entered Palestine, taking control of the Arab areas and attacking Israeli forces and settlements.[17][18][19][20] The 10 months of fighting took place mostly on the territory of the British Mandate and in the Sinai Peninsula and southern Lebanon, interrupted by several truce periods.[21]
By the end of the war, the State of Israel controlled all of the area that the UN had proposed for a Jewish state, as well as almost 60% of the area proposed for an Arab state,[22] including Jaffa, Lydda and Ramle area, Upper Galilee, some parts of the Negev, the west coast as far as Gaza City, and a wide strip along the Tel Aviv–Jerusalem road. Israel also took control of West Jerusalem, which was meant to be part of an international zone for Jerusalem and its environs. Transjordan took control of East Jerusalem and what became known as the West Bank, annexing it the following year. The territory known today as the Gaza Strip was occupied by Egypt.
Expulsions of Palestinians, which had begun during the civil war, continued during the Arab-Israeli war. Hundreds of Palestinians were killed in multiple massacres, such as occurred in the expulsions from Lydda and Ramle. These events are known today as the Nakba (Arabic for "the catastrophe") and were the beginning of the Palestinian refugee problem. A similar number of Jews moved to Israel during the three years following the war, including 260,000 who migrated, fled, or were expelled from the surrounding Arab states.[23][24][25]
- ^ Palestine Post, "Israel's Bedouin Warriors", Gene Dison, August 12, 1948
- ^ AFP (24 April 2013). "Bedouin army trackers scale Israel social ladder". Al Arabiya English. Al Arabiya. Archived from the original on 31 March 2022. Retrieved 7 May 2015.
- ^ a b c d Oren 2003, p. 5.
- ^ Morris (2008), p. 260.
- ^ Gelber, pp. 55, 200, 239
- ^ Morris, Benny (2008), 1948: The First Arab-Israeli War, Yale University Press, p. 205, New Haven, ISBN 978-0-300-12696-9.
- ^ Anita Shapira, L'imaginaire d'Israël : histoire d'une culture politique (2005), Latroun : la mémoire de la bataille, Chap. III. 1 l'événement pp. 91–96
- ^ Benny Morris (2008), p. 419.
- ^ a b Gelber (2006), p. 12.
- ^ a b c Micheal Clodfelter (2017). Warfare and Armed Conflicts: A Statistical Encyclopedia of Casualty and Other Figures, 1492–2015 (4th ed.). McFarland & Company. p. 571. ISBN 978-0-7864-7470-7. Archived from the original on 20 March 2023. Retrieved 28 September 2020.
- ^ Tucker, Spencer (2010). The Encyclopedia of Middle East Wars: The United States in the Persian Gulf. ABC-CLIO. p. 662. ISBN 978-1-85109-948-1. Archived from the original on 20 March 2023. Retrieved 5 October 2019.
- ^ Hughes, Matthew (Winter 2005). "Lebanon's Armed Forces and the Arab-Israeli War, 1948–49". Journal of Palestine Studies. 34 (2): 24–41. doi:10.1525/jps.2005.34.2.024. ISSN 0377-919X. S2CID 154088601.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
politicswas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Cite error: The named reference
laurenswas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Morris 2008, pp. 404–406.
- ^ Khalidi, Walid (1 October 1988). "Plan Dalet: Master Plan for the Conquest of Palestine". Journal of Palestine Studies. 18 (1): 4–19. doi:10.2307/2537591. ISSN 0377-919X. JSTOR 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.
- ^ *David Tal, War in Palestine, 1948: Israeli and Arab Strategy and Diplomacy, p. 153.
- Shlamim, Avi (19 November 2007), "Israel and the Arab coalition in 1948", The War for Palestine, Cambridge University Press, pp. 228–247, doi:10.1017/cbo9781139167413.014, ISBN 978-0-521-87598-1, archived from the original on 20 March 2023,
In the first phase of the conflict, from the passage of the United Nations partition resolution on 29 November 1947 until the proclamation of statehood on 14 May 1948, the Yishuv had to defend itself against attacks from Palestinian irregulars and volunteers from the Arab world. Following the proclamation of the state of Israel, however, the neighboring Arab states and Iraq committed their regular armies to the battle against the Jewish state
- Book: What Happened Where Archived 22 December 2022 at the Wayback Machine, p. 307, by Chris Cook and Diccon Bewes, published by Routledge, section from book: Arab-Israeli War 1948–9: Israel was invaded by the armies of its Arab neighbours on the day the British Mandate ended, 15 May 1948. After initial Arab gains, Israel counter-attacked successfully, enlarging its national territory...
- Tal, David (2004). War in Palestine, 1948: Israeli and Arab Strategy and Diplomacy. Routledge. p. 163. ISBN 978-0-415-76137-6. OCLC 881747492.
The invasion of Palestine by the Arab Armies started on 15 May, when the Iraqi, Syrian, Jordanian and Egyptian forces crossed the international border.
- Shlamim, Avi (19 November 2007), "Israel and the Arab coalition in 1948", The War for Palestine, Cambridge University Press, pp. 228–247, doi:10.1017/cbo9781139167413.014, ISBN 978-0-521-87598-1, archived from the original on 20 March 2023,
- ^ Benny Morris (2008), p. 401.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
morris2008p236was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Zeev Maoz, Defending the Holy Land, University of Michigan Press, 2009 p. 4: 'A combined invasion of a Jordanian and Egyptian army started ... The Syrian and the Lebanese armies engaged in a token effort but did not stage a major attack on the Jewish state.'
- ^ Rogan and Shlaim 2007 p. 99.
- ^ Cragg 1997 pp. 57, 116.
- ^ Hacohen, Dvora (2003). "Aliyah to Israel by Country of Origin and Year of Aliyah, 14 May 1948–31 December 1953". Immigrants in Turmoil: Mass Immigration to Israel and Its Repercussions in the 1950s and After. Syracuse University Press. ISBN 978-0-8156-2969-6. Retrieved 18 February 2024.
- ^ Morris, 2001, pp. 259–260.
- ^ Fischbach, Michael R. Jewish Property Claims Against Arab Countries. Columbia University Press, 2008, p. 27
Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).