The is referred to as the "'''War of Independence'''" ( Partitioned the territory of the British Mandate Of Palestine into two states, Jewish and Arab, the Arabs refused to accept it and the armies of Egypt , Syria , Transjordan , Lebanon and Iraq , supported by others, attacked the newly established State Of Israel . It was the first in a series of open wars in the Arab-Israeli Conflict . As a result, the region was divided between Israel, Egypt and Transjordan.
| |
background:#bbcccc
|
| |
November 1947-March 1949
|
| |
Middle East
|
| |
1949 Armistice Agreements
|
| |
Israel
|
| |
Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Arab Liberation Army , Holy War Army
|
| |
Yaakov Dori
|
| |
Glubb Pasha
|
| |
29,677 initially- 108,300 by December 1948
|
| |
troops
|
| |
6,373 (4,000 troops and about 2,400 civilians)
|
| |
unknown (between 5,000 and 15,000)
|
|
|
| |
"1" cellspacing="1" width="300"
|
(Source: ''
Jehuda Wallach (Ed.)'', "Not on a silver platter")
This imbalance in ordnance, along with the entry into the fray of the regular, relatively well-equipped and trained forces of the armies from the neighboring Arab states, led to a nearly universal, world military opinion about the outcome of the conflict. A typical example was the statement by
Field Marshall Montgomery , commander of the victorious Allied armies in North Africa and Northern Europe, that the new State of Israel would be defeated within two weeks.
However as the war progressed, the IDF managed to field more troops than the Arab forces. By July 1948, the IDF was fielding 63,000 troops; by early spring 1949, 115,000. The Arab armies had an estimated 40,000 troops in July 1948, rising to 55,000 in October 1948, and slightly more by the spring of 1949.
All Jewish aviation assets were placed under the control of the ''Sherut Avir'' (Air Service, known as the SA) in November 1947 and flying operations began in the following month from a small civil airport on the outskirts of Tel Aviv called on
22 May during which 5 Egyptian Spitfires were shot down. It was also during this time that the balance of air power began to swing in favor of the Israeli Air Force following the purchase of 25
Avia S-199 s from Czechoslovakia, the first of which arrived in Israel on
20 May . This created the ironic situation of the young Jewish state using Nazi-designed
Bf-109 derivatives to help counter the Egyptian Spitfires. The first raid on an Arab capital followed on the night of
31 May /1 June when three Israeli planes bombed Amman. Aloni, 2001, pp. 7-11. The IDF achieved
Air Superiority by the fall of 1948. And the IDF had superiority in firepower and knowledgeable personnel, many of whom had seen action in World War II.Morris, 2001, pp. 217-18.
The first mission of the IDF was to hold on against the Arab armies and stop them from destroying major Jewish settlements, until reinforcements and weapons arrived.
commanded the
Arab Legion (1939-1956)]]
The heaviest fighting would occur in Jerusalem and on the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv road, between Transjordan's
Arab Legion and the Israeli forces. Abdullah ordered
Glubb Pasha , the commander of the Transjordanian Arab Legion, to enter Jerusalem on
May 17 , and heavy house-to-house fighting occurred between
May 19 and
May 28 , with the Arab Legion succeeding in expelling Israeli forces from the Arab quarters of Jerusalem as well as the
Jewish Quarter of the Old City. All the Jewish inhabitants of the Old City were expelled by the Jordanians. Iraqi troops failed in attacks on Jewish settlements (the most notable battle was on
Mishmar Haemek ), and instead took defensive positions around
Jenin ,
Nablus , and
Tulkarm .
In the north, the Syrian army was blocked in the
Kibbutz Degania , where the settlers managed to stop the Syrian armored forces only with light weapons. One tank that was disabled by a
Molotov Cocktail is still presented at the Kibbutz. Later, an artillery bombardment, made by cannons jury-rigged from 19th century museum pieces, led to the withdrawal of the Syrians from the Kibbutz.
During the following months, the Syrian army was repelled, and so were the Palestinian irregulars and the ALA.
In the south, an Egyptian attack was able to penetrate the defenses of several Israeli kibbutzim, but with heavy cost. This attack was stopped near
Ashdod .
The Israeli military managed not only to maintain their military control of the Jewish territories, but to expand their holdings.
mediator, Count
Folke Bernadotte , assassinated in 1948]]
The UN declared a truce on
May 29 , which came into effect on
June 11 and would last 28 days. The cease-fire was overseen by the UN mediator
Folke Bernadotte . An arms embargo was declared with the intention that neither side would make any gains from the truce. But the Israeli side managed to obtain illicit weapons from
Czechoslovakia , while Arab forces did not gain significantly more weapons. At the end of the truce, Folke Bernadotte presented a new partition plan that would give the
Galilee to the Jews and the
Negev to the Arabs. Both sides rejected the plan. On
July 8 , Egyptian forces resumed warfare, thus re-starting the fighting.
The ten days at the height of the summer between the two truces were dominated by large scale Israeli offensives and a defensive posture from the Arab side. The three Israeli offensives that were carried out had been carefully crafted during the first truce in anticipation of its end.
Operation Dani was the most important one, aimed at securing and enlarging the corridor between
Jerusalem and
Tel Aviv by capturing the roadside cities
Lydda (later renamed Lod) and
Ramle . Following their capture, the residents of Lydda and Ramle, some 50,000 Palestinians, were
Expelled By The IDF , in the largest single expulsion of the war.
In a second planned stage of the operation the fortified positions of
Latrun , overlooking Jerusalem, and the city
Ramallah were also to be captured.
The second plan was
Operation Dekel whose aim was to capture the lower
Galilee including the Arab city
Nazareth . The third plan, to which fewer resources were allocated,
Operation Kedem was to secure the Old City of
Jerusalem .
Map of the Attacks .
Lydda (
Lod ) was mainly defended by the Transjordanian Army, but also local Palestinian militias and the
Arab Liberation Army were present. The city was attacked from the north via
Majdal Al-Sadiq and
Al-Muzayri'a and from the east via
Khulda ,
Al-Qubab ,
Jimzu and
Danyal . Bombers were also used for the first time in the conflict to bombard the city. On
July 11 1948 the IDF captured the city.
The next day,
July 12 1948 Ramle also fell to the hands of Israel.
July 15 -16 an attack on Latrun took place but did not manage to occupy the city. A desperate second attempt occurred
July 18 by units from the
Yiftach Brigade equipped with armored vehicles, including two
Cromwell Tank s, but that attack also failed. Despite the second truce, which began on
July 18 , the Israeli efforts to conquer Latrun continued until
July 20 .
After Ramle and Lydda had been captured, the Israeli leadership was surprised to see that the inhabitants didn't flee spontaneously. That was a large problem to them, as they couldn't leave such a large and hostile population in that area. Therefore, Israel forcibly expelled 60,000 inhabitants from their homes, starting on
July 14 .
While
Operation Dani proceeded in the centre, Operation Dekel was carried out in the north.
Nazareth was captured
July 16 and when the second truce took effect at 19.00
July 18 , the whole lower
Galilee from
Haifa bay to
Lake Kinneret was captured by Israel.
Originally the operation was to be done on
July 8 , immediately after the first truce, by
Irgun and
Lehi but it was delayed by
David Shaltiel possibly because he did not trust their ability after their failure to capture
Deir Yassin without
Haganah 's assistance.
The Irgun forces that were commanded by
Yehuda Lapidot (Nimrod) were to break through at
The New Gate , Lehi was to break through the wall stretching from the New Gate to the
Jaffa Gate and the
Beit Hiron Batallion was to strike from
Mount Zion .
The battle was planned to begin on the
Sabbath , at 20.00 Friday
July 16 a day before the
Second Cease-fire Of The Arab-Israeli War . The plan went wrong from the beginning and was postponed first to 23.00 and then to midnight. It wasn't until 02.30 that the battle actually began. The Irgunists managed to break through at the New Gate but the other forces failed in their missions. At 05.45 in the morning Shaltiel ordered a retreat and to cease the hostilities.
19.00
July 18 , the second truce of the conflict went into effect after intense diplomatic efforts by the UN.
On
September 16 ,
Folke Bernadotte proposed a new partition for
Palestine in which Transjordan would annex Arab areas including the Negev, al-Ramla, Lydda. There would be a Jewish state in the whole of
Galilee , internationalization of Jerusalem, and return or compensation for refugees. The plan was once again rejected by both sides. On the next day,
September 17 , Bernadotte was assassinated by the
Lehi and his deputy the
American Ralph Bunche replaced him.
Between
October 15 and
July 20 Israel launched a series of military operations in order to drive out the Arab armies and secure the borders of Israel.
On
October 24 , the IDF launched
Operation Hiram and captured the entire
Upper Galilee , driving the ALA and Lebanese army back to
Lebanon . It was a complete success and at the end of the month, Israel had not only managed to capture the whole Galilee but had also advanced 5 miles into Lebanon to the
Litani River .
On
October 15 , the IDF launched
Operation Yoav in the northern
Negev . Its goal was to drive a wedge between the Egyptian forces along the coast and the
Beersheba -
Hebron -
Jerusalem road and ultimately to conquer the whole Negev. Operation Yoav was headed by the Southern Front commander
Yigal Allon . The Operation was a huge success as it shattered the Egyptian army ranks and forced the Egyptian forces to retreat from the northern Negev, Beersheba and
Ashdod . On
October 22 the
Israeli Navy Commando es sunk the Egyptian flagship
Amir Faruk .
On
December 22 , the IDF drove the remaining Egyptian forces out of Israel, by launching
Operation Horev (also called Operation Ayin). The goal of the operation was to liberate the entire
Negev from Egyptian presence, destroying the Egyptian threat on Israel's southern communities and forcing the Egyptians into a cease-fire after all the Negev was liberated.
The operation was a decisive Israeli victory, and Israeli raids into the
Nitzana and the
Sinai Peninsula forced the Egyptian army, which was encircled in the
Gaza Strip , to withdraw and accept cease-fire. On
January 7 , a truce was achieved. Israeli forces withdrew from Sinai and Gaza under international pressure.
On
March 5 ,
Operation Uvda was launched. On
March 10 , the Israelis reached
Umm Rashrash (where
Eilat was built later) and conquered it without a battle. The
Negev Brigade and
Golani Brigade took part in the operation. They raised an ink-made flag ("
The Ink Flag ") and claimed
Umm Rashrash for
Israel .
In December 1948, the
UN General Assembly passed
Resolution 194 which declared (amongst other things) that in the context of a general peace agreement "refugees wishing to return to their homes and live in peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so" and that "compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return." However, the resolution was never implemented, resulting in the
Palestinian Refugee problem.
Just before noon on
January 7 1949 , four
RAF Spitfire FR. 18s from 208 Squadron on routine reconnaissance in the
Dir El-Ballah area inadvertently flew over an Israeli convoy that had just been attacked by the Royal Egyptian Air Force. IDF soldiers in the convoy shot down one of the British planes. The remaining three planes were then shot down by patrolling Israeli Air Force Spitfires flown by
Slick Goodlin and
John McElroy , volunteers from the United States and Canada respectively. Later that day four RAF Spitfires from the same squadron escorted by 7 No. 213 Squadron
Tempests and another 8 Tempests from No. 6 Squadron, searching for the lost planes from No. 208 Squadron were attacked by four Israeli Air Force Spitfires and one of the Tempests was shot down, killing its pilot
David Tattersfield .Aloni, 2001, p. 22. Another Tempest was damaged by an IAF plane flown by
Ezer Weizman . There was only one other clash between the IAF and the RAF during the war when a No. 13 Squadron
Mosquito PR. 34 on a photo-reconnaissance mission over Israel was shot down on
20 November 1948 by an Israeli
P-51 flown by
Waine Peake .Aloni, 2001, p. 18.
In 1949, Israel signed
Separate Armistices with Egypt on
February 24 , Lebanon on
March 23 , Transjordan on
April 3 , and Syria on
July 20 . Israel was generally able to create its own borders, comprising 78 percent of Mandatory Palestine, 50 percent more than the UN partition proposal allotted it. These cease-fire lines were known afterwards as the "Green Line". The
Gaza Strip and the
West Bank were occupied by
Egypt and
Transjordan respectively.
Israel lost about 1% of its population in the war: 6,373 of its people. About 4,000 were soldiers and the rest were civilians.
The exact number of Arab losses is unknown but are estimated at between 5,000 and 15,000 people.
Mid-Range Wars and Atrocities of the Twentieth Century .
Around 758,000 to 866,000 of the Jews living in Arab countries and territories left or were forced to leave their countries of birth; 600,000 of these people ,
October 23 ,
1950 . (U.N. General Assembly Official Records, 5th Session, Supplement No. 18, Document A/1367/Rev. 1) The Committee believed the estimate to be "as accurate as circumstances permit", and attributed the higher number on relief to, among other things, "duplication of ration cards, addition of persons who have been displaced from area other than Israel-held areas and of persons who, although not displaced, are destitute."
The humiliation of the Arab armies at having been routed by the Jewish forces, together with the rising nationalist frenzy in Arab nations, contributed to rising hatred for the Jews living in Arab lands. The status of Jews in Arab states varied greatly from state to state. Some observers maintain that the Jewish populations were more "prevented from leaving" than "expelled." Their civil liberties, too, were in many cases vastly inferior to those of their Muslim fellow citizens. For example, in Yemen, Jews were and are prohibited from carrying weapons of any type, even to the point of prohibiting traditional ceremonial Yemeni knives, carried by a large portion of the Yemeni population. The net result was that after over two thousand years of living in Arab controlled countries, the atmosphere was sufficiently anti-Jewish that entire communities of Jews in the hundreds of thousands felt they had no option but to take leave of old homes and move to the uncertainties of the new Jewish state of Israel, in effect becoming "refugees" in everything but name. These war-intensified fears came upon the heels of
The Holocaust , which ended with the defeat of
Nazi Germany three years before the founding of the state of Israel.
Arab Palestinians have staged annual demonstrations and protests on
May 15 of each year, one day after the anniversary of Israel's declaration of independence. The popularity and number of participants in these annual ''al Nakba'' demonstrations has varied over time, though the increasing anti-Israeli sentiment in the
Middle East has tended to increase the attendance in recent years. During the
Al-Aqsa Intifada after the failure of the
Camp David 2000 Summit , the attendance at the demonstrations against Israel
Increased Exponentially .
- Aloni, Shlomo (2001). ''Arab-Israeli Air Wars 1947-82''. Osprey Publishing. ISBN 1841762946
- Beckman, Morris (1999). ''The Jewish Brigade: An Army With Two Masters, 1944-45''. Sarpedon Publishers. ISBN 188511956
- Benevisti, Meron (2002). ''Sacred Landscape''. University of California Press. ISBN 0520234227
- Bickerton, Ian and Hill, Maria (2003). ''Contested Spaces: The Arab-Israeli Conflict''. McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0074712179
- Black, Ian (1992). ''Israel's Secret Wars: A History of Israel's Intelligence Services''. Grove Press. ISBN 0802132863
- Bowyer Bell, John (1996). ''Terror Out of Zion: The Fight For Israeli Independence''. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 1560008709
- Bregman, Ahron (2002). ''Israel's Wars: A History Since 1947''. London: Routledge. ISBN 0415287162
- Brown, Judith and Louis, Roger (1999). ''The Oxford History of the British Empire''. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198205643
- Gelber, Yoav (2006). ''Palestine 1948. WAr, Escape and the Emergnece of the Palestinian Refugee Problem''. Sussex Academic Press. ISBN 1845190750
- Gilbert, Martin (1976). ''The Arab-Israeli Conflict'' Weidenfeld & Nicholson. ISBN 0297772414
- Gilbert, Martin (1998). ''Israel: A History''. Black Swan. ISBN 0552995452
- Israel Foreign Ministry, Foreign Ministry of the Russian Federation, Israel State Archives, Russian Federal Archives, Cummings Center for Russian Studies Tel Aviv University, Oriental Institute (2000). ''Documents on Israeli Soviet Relations, 1941-53''. London: Routledge. ISBN 0714648434
- Israeli, Raphael and Penkower, Monty Noam (2002). ''Decision on Palestine Deferred: America, Britain and Wartime Diplomacy, 1939-1945''. London: Routledge. ISBN 0714652687
- Kaniuk, Yoram (2001). ''Commander of the Exodus''. Grove Press. ISBN 080213808X
- Karsh, Efraim (2002). ''The Arab-Israeli Conflict. The Palestine War 1948''. Osprey Publishing. ISBN 1841763721
- Katz, Sam (1988). ''Israeli Units Since 1948''. Osprey Publishing. ISBN 0850458374
- Khalidi, Rashid (2001). The Palestinians and 1948: the underlying causes of failure. In Eugene Rogan and Avi Shlaim (eds.). ''The War for Palestine'' (pp. 12-36). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521794765
- Khalidi, Walid (1987). ''From Haven to Conquest: Readings in Zionism and the Palestine Problem Until 1948''. Institute for Palestine Studies. ISBN 0887281559
- Levenberg, Haim (1993). ''Military Preparations of the Arab Community in Palestine: 1945-1948''. London: Routledge. ISBN 0714634395
- Morris, Benny (2001). ''Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001''. Vintage. ISBN 0679744754
- Oring, Elliott (1981). ''Israeli Humor-The Content: The Content and Structure of the Chizbat of the Palmah''. SUNY Press. ISBN 0873955129
- Pollack, Kenneth (2004).'' Arabs at War: Military Effectiveness, 1948-1991''. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0803287836
- Richelson, Jeffery T. (1997). ''A Century of Spies: Intelligence in the Twentieth Century''. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 019511390X
- Sadeh, Eligar (1997). ''Militarization and State Power in the Arab-Israeli Conflict: Case Study of Israel, 1948-1982''. Universal Publishers. ISBN 0965856461
- Sachar, Howard M. (1979). ''A History of Israel,'' New York: Knopf. ISBN 0679765638
- Sayigh, Yezid (2000). ''Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949-1993''. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198296436
- Shapira, Anita (1992). ''Land and Power: Zionist Resort to Force, 1881-1948''. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195061047
- Shlaim, Avi (2001). Israel and the Arab Coalition. In Eugene Rogan and Avi Shlaim (eds.). ''The War for Palestine'' (pp. 79-103). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521794765
- Sheleg, Yair (2001). A Short History of Terror '' Haaretz ''.
- van Creveld, Martin (2004). ''Moshe Dayan''. Weidenfeld & Nicholson. ISBN 0297846698
- Zertal, Idith (2005). ''Israel's Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521850967
