View source for 1948 Arab–Israeli War

{{Short description|Second and final stage of the 1948 Palestine war}}
{{About|the international phase of the [[1948 Palestine war]]|the preceding civil war phase|1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine}}
{{Pp-move|small=yes}}
{{Pp-extended|small=yes|expiry=indef}}
{{EngvarB|date=March 2021}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=November 2019}}
{{Infobox military conflict
| conflict          = 1948 Arab–Israeli War
| partof            = the [[1948 Palestine war]] and the [[Arab–Israeli conflict]]
| image             = {{Multiple image
| image1            = Tel Aviv-Yafo (997008136796005171).jpg
| image2            = Raising the Ink Flag at Umm Rashrash (Eilat) (cropped).jpg
| perrow            = 2/2/2
| image3            = Israeli soldier and Palestinian prisoners in Ramle 1948.jpg
| image4            = Israeli soldiers in battle with the Arab village of Sassa (cropped).jpg
| border            = infobox
| total_width       = 300}}'''From top to bottom, left to right''': {{flatlist|
* Damaged and ruined buildings and vehicles following the [[Egyptian airstrike on the Old Tel Aviv central bus station|Egyptian airstrike on the Tel Aviv central bus station]]
* Jewish soldiers raising the [[Ink Flag|Israeli flag]] at the end of the war
* Israeli soldier with Palestinian prisoners during the [[1948 Palestinian expulsion from Lydda and Ramle|expulsion from Ramle]]
* Israeli forces attacking the village of [[Sa'sa', Palestine|Sa'sa']]}}
| date              = 15 May 1948 – 10 March 1949{{Efn|Final armistice agreement concluded on 20 July 1949.}}<br/>({{Age in years, months, weeks and days|month1=05|day1=15|year1=1948|month2=03|day2=10|year2=1949}})
| place             = Former [[Mandatory Palestine|British Mandate of Palestine]], Sinai Peninsula, southern Lebanon
| casus             = 
| territory         = Establishment of the [[State of Israel]], [[Jordanian annexation of the West Bank|Jordanian annexation]] of the [[West Bank]], [[Occupation of the Gaza Strip by Egypt|Egyptian occupation]] of the [[Gaza Strip]]
| result            = * Israeli victory
** Establishment of the [[State of Israel]]
* Partial [[Jordan]]ian victory<ref>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</ref><ref>Benny Morris (2008), p. 419.</ref>
** [[Jordanian annexation of the West Bank]]
* Palestinian defeat
** [[1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight]]
** Beginning of the [[Palestinian Fedayeen insurgency]]
| combatant1        = {{tree list}}
* '''{{flag|Israel}}'''<hr>'''Before 26 May 1948''':
* {{flagicon|Israel}} '''[[Yishuv]]'''
* ''Paramilitary groups'':
** [[File:Haganah Symbol.svg|15px]] [[Haganah]]
** [[File:Palmach.svg|15px]] [[Palmach]]
** [[File:Hish Symbol.svg|15px]] [[Hish (Haganah corps)|Hish]]
** [[File:Him Symbol.svg|15px]] [[Guard Corps (Haganah)|Him]]
** [[File:Irgun.svg|15px]] [[Irgun]]
** [[File:Logo of the Lehi movement.svg|15px]] [[Lehi (group)|Lehi]]
** Allied [[Bedouin]] tribes<ref>''Palestine Post'', "Israel's Bedouin Warriors", Gene Dison, August 12, 1948</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=http://english.alarabiya.net/en/perspective/profiles/2013/04/24/Bedouin-army-trackers-scale-Israel-social-ladder-.html |title=Bedouin army trackers scale Israel social ladder |last1=AFP |newspaper=Al Arabiya English |date=24 April 2013 |publisher=[[Al Arabiya]] |access-date=7 May 2015 |archive-date=31 March 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220331084908/https://english.alarabiya.net/perspective/profiles/2013/04/24/Bedouin-army-trackers-scale-Israel-social-ladder- |url-status=live }}</ref><hr>'''After 26 May 1948''':
* {{flagicon|Israel|tsahal}}  [[Israel Defense Forces]]
** [[File:Logo gdud herev.png|15px|border]] [[Sword Battalion|Minorities Unit]]<hr>
* '''Foreign volunteers:'''
* [[Mahal (Israel)|Mahal]]
{{tree list/end}}
| combatant2        = {{tree list}}
* '''{{flag|Arab League}}''':
** {{flagcountry|Kingdom of Egypt|size=23px}}<ref name="Oren">Oren 2003, p. 5.</ref>
*** {{flagicon image|Palestinian flag 1938.svg|link=}} [[All-Palestine Protectorate]]{{efn|name="sept"|After 22 September 1948}}
**** {{flagicon image|Palestinian flag 1938.svg|link=}} [[Army of the Holy War|Holy War Army]]{{efn|name="sept"}}
** {{flag|Transjordan|size=23px}}<ref name=Oren/>
** {{flagcountry|Kingdom of Iraq|size=23px}}<ref name=Oren/>
** {{flagcountry|First Syrian Republic|size=23px}}<ref name=Oren/>
** {{flag|Lebanon|1943|size=23px}}{{Efn|Lebanon had decided to not participate in the war and only took part in the battle of al-Malikiya on 5–6 June 1948.<ref>Morris (2008), p. 260.</ref>}}
** {{flag|Saudi Arabia|1938|size=23px}}<ref>Gelber, pp. 55, 200, 239</ref>
** {{flag|Kingdom of Yemen|name=Yemen|size=23px}}<ref name="Morris, 2008, p. 205">Morris, Benny (2008), [https://archive.org/details/1948historyoffir00morr/page/332 ''1948: The First Arab-Israeli War''], [[Yale University Press]], p. 205, New Haven, {{ISBN|978-0-300-12696-9}}.</ref><hr>'''Irregulars''':
* [[File:Arab Liberation Army (bw).svg|23px]] '''[[Arab Liberation Army]]'''
** {{flagicon image|Palestinian flag 1938.svg|link=}} [[Al-Najjada]]
* {{flagicon image|Palestinian flag 1938.svg|link=}} '''[[Army of the Holy War|Holy War Army]]'''
{{tree list/end}}
| commander1        = {{Flagicon|Israel}} [[David Ben-Gurion]]<br />{{Flagicon|Israel}} [[Yisrael Galili]]<br />{{Flagicon|Israel}} [[Yaakov Dori]]<br />{{Flagicon|Israel}} [[Yigael Yadin]]<br />{{Flagicon|Israel}} [[Mickey Marcus]]{{KIA}}<br />{{Flagicon|Israel}} [[Yigal Allon]]<br />{{Flagicon|Israel}} [[Yitzhak Rabin]]<br />{{Flagicon|Israel}} [[David Shaltiel]]<br />{{Flagicon|Israel}} [[Moshe Dayan]]<br />{{Flagicon|Israel}} [[Shimon Avidan]]<br/>{{Flagicon|Israel}} [[Moshe Carmel]]<br/>{{Flagicon|Israel}} [[Yitzhak Sadeh]]
| commander2        = {{Flagicon|Arab League}} [[Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzam|Azzam Pasha]]<br />{{Flagicon|Kingdom of Egypt}} [[King Farouk I]]<br />{{Flagicon|Kingdom of Egypt}} [[Ahmed Ali al-Mwawi]]<br />{{Flagicon|Kingdom of Egypt}} [[Muhammad Naguib]]<br />{{Flagicon|Transjordan}} [[Abdullah I of Jordan|King Abdallah I]]<br />{{Flagicon|Transjordan}} [[John Bagot Glubb]]<br />{{Flagicon|Transjordan}} [[Habis Majali]]<br />{{Flagicon|Kingdom of Iraq}} [[Muzahim al-Pachachi]]<br />{{Flagicon|First Syrian Republic}} [[Shukri al-Quwatli]]<br />{{flagicon image|Palestinian flag 1938.svg|link=}} [[Haj Amin al-Husseini]]<br />{{flagicon image|Palestinian flag 1938.svg|link=}} [[Hasan Salama]]{{KIA}}<br />[[File:Arab Liberation Army (bw).svg|25px|link=Arab Liberation Army]] [[Fawzi al-Qawuqji]]
| strength1         = {{flagicon|Israel}} 29,677 (initially)<br/>{{flagicon|Israel}} 117,500 (finally){{efn|This includes the entire military personnel count – both combat units and logistical units.<ref name="Gelber12">Gelber (2006), p. 12.</ref>}}
| strength2         = {{Flagicon|Kingdom of Egypt}} 10,000 initially, rising to 20,000{{citation needed|date=November 2013}}<br>{{flagicon|Jordan}} 7,500–10,000<ref name="nos">{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8urEDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA571|page=571|title=Warfare and Armed Conflicts: A Statistical Encyclopedia of Casualty and Other Figures, 1492–2015|edition=4th |publisher=[[McFarland & Company]]|author=Micheal Clodfelter|isbn=978-0-7864-7470-7|date=2017|access-date=28 September 2020|archive-date=20 March 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230320123843/https://books.google.com/books?id=8urEDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA571|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=U05OvsOPeKMC&pg=PA662|title=The Encyclopedia of Middle East Wars: The United States in the Persian Gulf|publisher=ABC-CLIO|date= 2010|first=Spencer|last=Tucker|access-date=5 October 2019|page=662|isbn=978-1-85109-948-1|archive-date=20 March 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230320123843/https://books.google.com/books?id=U05OvsOPeKMC&pg=PA662|url-status=live}}</ref><br />{{flagicon|Kingdom of Iraq}} 2,000 initially,<ref name="nos"/> rising to 15,000–18,000{{citation needed|date=November 2013}}<br />{{flagicon|First Syrian Republic}} 2,500–5,000<ref name="nos"/><br />{{flagicon|Lebanon}} 1,000<ref name="Hughes">{{cite journal |last=Hughes |first=Matthew  |date=Winter 2005 |title=Lebanon's Armed Forces and the Arab-Israeli War, 1948–49 |journal=Journal of Palestine Studies |volume=34 |issue=2 |pages=24–41 |doi=10.1525/jps.2005.34.2.024 |s2cid=154088601 |issn=0377-919X}}</ref><br />{{flagicon|Saudi Arabia|1938|size=23px}} 800–1,200 (Egyptian command)<br />{{flagicon|Kingdom of Yemen}} 300{{citation needed|date=November 2013}}<br />[[File:Arab Liberation Army (bw).svg|23px]] 3,500–6,000<br />'''Total:'''<br/> 13,000 (initial)<br/>51,100 (minimum)<br/>63,500 (maximum){{efn|These numbers include only the combat units sent to the former mandate-territory of Palestine, not the entire military strength.<ref name="Gelber12"/>}}
| casualties1       = {{flagicon|Israel}} 6,373 killed<br>(about 4,000 fighters and 2,400 civilians)<ref name=politics/>
| casualties2       = ''Arab armies:''<br/>{{flagicon|Arab League}} 3,700–7,000 killed<br/>''Palestinian Arabs:''<br/>{{flagicon image|Palestinian flag 1938.svg|link=}} 3,000–13,000 killed<br>(both fighters and civilians)<ref name=laurens/><ref>Morris 2008, pp. 404–406.</ref>
| campaignbox       = {{Campaignbox 1948 Arab–Israeli War}}
}}

The '''1948 Arab–Israeli War''', also known as the '''First Arab–Israeli War''', followed the [[1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine|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 [[Arab League|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 (Israel)|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 [[Aliyah|mass migration of European Jews to Palestine]], there had been [[Intercommunal conflict in Mandatory Palestine|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 General Assembly|United Nations]] adopted the [[United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine|Partition Plan for Palestine]] proposing to divide the territory into an Arab state, a Jewish state, and an internationally administered [[Corpus separatum (Jerusalem)|corpus separatum]] for the cities of [[Jerusalem]] and [[Bethlehem]]. 

At the end of a campaign beginning April 1948 called [[Plan Dalet]], in which [[Zionism|Zionist]] forces attacked, conquered, and [[List of towns and villages depopulated during the 1947–1949 Palestine war|depopulated]] cities, villages, and territories in Mandatory Palestine in preparation for the establishment of a Jewish state, and just before the [[End of the British Mandate for Palestine|expiration of the British Mandate for Palestine]], Zionist leaders announced the [[Israeli Declaration of Independence]] on 14 May 1948.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Khalidi |first=Walid |date=1988-10-01 |title=Plan Dalet: Master Plan for the Conquest of Palestine |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.2307/2537591 |journal=Journal of Palestine Studies |language=en |volume=18 |issue=1 |pages=4–19 |doi=10.2307/2537591 |issn=0377-919X |jstor=2537591 |quote='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.|url-access=subscription }}</ref> The following morning, [[Kingdom of Egypt|Egypt]], [[Jordan|Transjordan]], [[First Syrian Republic|Syria]], and expeditionary forces from [[Kingdom of Iraq|Iraq]] entered Palestine, taking control of the Arab areas and attacking Israeli forces and settlements.<ref>*David Tal, ''War in Palestine, 1948: Israeli and Arab Strategy and Diplomacy,'' p. 153.
*{{Citation |last=Shlamim |first=Avi |title=Israel and the Arab coalition in 1948 |date=2007-11-19 |work=The War for Palestine |pages=228–247 |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/war-for-palestine/saudi-arabia-and-the-1948-palestine-war-beyond-official-history/17C7AAA874E986FB9D35D289F8CA09DE |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230320123851/https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/war-for-palestine/saudi-arabia-and-the-1948-palestine-war-beyond-official-history/17C7AAA874E986FB9D35D289F8CA09DE |archive-date=20 March 2023 |url-status=live |publisher=Cambridge University Press |doi=10.1017/cbo9781139167413.014 |isbn=978-0-521-87598-1 |quote=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|url-access=subscription }}
*[https://books.google.com/books?id=eSBpAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA307 Book: What Happened Where] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221222163527/https://books.google.com/books?id=eSBpAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA307|date=22 December 2022}}, 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...
*{{Cite book |last=Tal |first=David |title=War in Palestine, 1948: Israeli and Arab Strategy and Diplomacy |publisher=Routledge |year=2004 |isbn=978-0-415-76137-6 |pages=163 |oclc=881747492 |quote=The invasion of Palestine by the Arab Armies started on 15 May, when the Iraqi, Syrian, Jordanian and Egyptian forces crossed the international border. }}</ref><ref>Benny Morris (2008), p. 401.</ref><ref name="morris2008p236" /><ref>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.'</ref> 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.<ref>Rogan and Shlaim 2007 p. 99.</ref>

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,<ref>Cragg 1997 pp. 57, 116.</ref> including [[Jaffa]], [[Lod|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]], [[Jordanian annexation of the West Bank|annexing it the following year]]. The territory known today as the [[Gaza Strip]] was [[Occupation of the Gaza Strip by Egypt|occupied by Egypt]].

[[1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight|Expulsions of Palestinians]], which had begun during the civil war, continued during the Arab-Israeli war. Hundreds of Palestinians were killed in [[Killings and massacres during the 1948 Palestine war|multiple massacres]], such as occurred in the [[Palestinian expulsion from Lydda and Ramle|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 [[Jewish exodus from the Muslim world|260,000 who migrated, fled, or were expelled from the surrounding Arab states]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Hacohen |first=Dvora |author-link=Dvora Hacohen |title=Immigrants in Turmoil: Mass Immigration to Israel and Its Repercussions in the 1950s and After |publisher=[[Syracuse University Press]] |year=2003 |isbn=978-0-8156-2969-6 |chapter=Aliyah to Israel by Country of Origin and Year of Aliyah, 14 May 1948–31 December 1953 |access-date=18 February 2024 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hCw6v0TFhdMC&pg=PA267}}</ref><ref name="BennyMorris2">Morris, 2001, pp. 259–260.</ref><ref>Fischbach, Michael R. ''Jewish Property Claims Against Arab Countries''. Columbia University Press, 2008, p. 27</ref>

==Background==
{{Main|1948 Palestine war}}

{{Further|United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine|1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine}}
[[File:UN Palestine Partition Versions 1947.jpg|thumb|A proposed separation of Palestine]]

Since the 1917 [[Balfour Declaration]] and the 1920 creation of the British Mandate of Palestine, and in the context of [[Zionism]] and the [[Aliyah|mass migration of European Jews to Palestine]], there had been [[Intercommunal conflict in Mandatory Palestine|tension and conflict]] between Arabs, Jews, and the British. British policies dissatisfied both Arabs and Jews. In 1920, the Arab leaders were very disappointed with Britain. In 1916, the British commander-in-chief in Cairo had made an agreement with the Emir of [[Mecca]]: if the Arabs rebelled against the Ottoman Empire, the British would provide them with arms and money and support the formation of an independent Arab state. Around 30,000 older rifles and a smaller amount of modern weapons were supplied by the British, and a very large area from the [[Red Sea]] to [[Damascus]] was conquered.<ref>[[T. E. Lawrence]]: Revolt in the dessert, 1927</ref>

Britain backtracked from its promise that an independent Arab state would be formed. In 1920, Britain let French troops attack the [[Arab Kingdom of Syria]], crushing its army and overthrowing its government. Arab opposition developed into the [[1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine]], while the Jewish opposition developed into the 1944–1947 [[Jewish insurgency in Palestine]]. On 29 November 1947, the [[United Nations General Assembly]] adopted a resolution recommending the adoption and implementation of a plan to partition the British Mandate of Palestine into two states, one Arab and one Jewish, and the City of Jerusalem.<ref>[http://domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/0/7f0af2bd897689b785256c330061d253 United Nations: General Assembly: A/RES/181(II): 29 November 1947: ''Resolution 181 (II). Future government of Palestine''.] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120524094913/http://domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/0/7f0af2bd897689b785256c330061d253 |date=24 May 2012 }}</ref>

The [[United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine|General Assembly resolution on Partition]] was greeted with overwhelming joy in Jewish communities and widespread outrage in the Arab world. In Palestine, violence erupted almost immediately, feeding into a spiral of reprisals and counter-reprisals. The British refrained from intervening as tensions boiled over into a low-level conflict that quickly escalated into a [[1947–48 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine|full-scale civil war]].<ref>
*Greg Cashman, Leonard C. Robinson, [https://books.google.com/books?id=x7K2GYnXRngC&pg=PA165 ''An Introduction to the Causes of War: Patterns of Interstate Conflict from World War 1 to Iraq,''] Rowman & Littlefield 2007 p. 165.
*Benjamin Grob-Fitzgibbon,[https://books.google.com/books?id=NUeYAAAAQBAJ&pg=PT57 ''Imperial Endgame: Britain's Dirty Wars and the End of Empire,''] Palgrave/Macmillan 2011 p. 57
*Ilan Pappé (2000), p. 111
*{{cite book | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=CC7381HrLqcC | title = 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War | author = Benny Morris | publisher = Yale University Press | page = 76 | year = 2008 | isbn = 978-0-300-14524-3 | access-date = 14 November 2015 | archive-date = 20 March 2023 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20230320123844/https://books.google.com/books?id=CC7381HrLqcC | url-status = live }}
*Efraïm Karsh (2002), p. 30
*Benny Morris (2003), p. 101</ref>

From January onwards, operations became increasingly militarised, with the intervention of a number of [[Arab Liberation Army]] regiments inside Palestine, each active in a variety of distinct sectors around the different coastal towns. They consolidated their presence in [[Galilee]] and [[Samaria]].<ref>Yoav Gelber (2006), pp. 51–56</ref> [[Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni]] came from Egypt with several hundred men of the [[Army of the Holy War]]. Having recruited a few thousand volunteers, al-Husayni organised the blockade of the 100,000 Jewish residents of Jerusalem.<ref>Dominique Lapierre et Larry Collins (1971), chap. 7, pp. 131–153</ref>

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-Hussayni'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.<ref>Benny Morris (2003), p. 163</ref> The situation for those who dwelt in the Jewish settlements in the highly isolated [[Negev]] and north of Galilee was even more critical.

While the Jewish population had received strict orders requiring them to hold their ground everywhere at all costs,<ref>Dominique Lapierre et Larry Collins (1971), p. 163</ref> the Arab population was more affected by the general conditions of insecurity to which the country was exposed. 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 eastwards.<ref>Benny Morris (2003), p. 67</ref>

This situation caused the United States to withdraw its support for the Partition Plan, encouraging the [[Arab League]] to believe that the Palestinian Arabs, reinforced by the Arab Liberation Army, could put an end to the plan. However, the British decided on 7 February 1948 to support the annexation of the Arab part of Palestine by Transjordan.<ref>Henry Laurens (2005), p. 83</ref>

Although doubt took hold among Yishuv supporters, their apparent defeats were due more to their wait-and-see policy than to weakness.{{citation needed|date=July 2021}} [[David Ben-Gurion]] reorganised Haganah and made conscription obligatory. Every Jewish man and woman in the country had to receive military training. Thanks to funds raised by [[Golda Meir]] from sympathisers in the United States, and [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin's]] decision to support the [[Zionism|Zionist]] cause, the Jewish representatives of Palestine were able to sign very important armament contracts in the East. Other Haganah agents recovered stockpiles from the Second World War, which helped improve the army's equipment and logistics. [[Operation Balak]] allowed arms and other equipment to be transported for the first time by the end of March.<ref>Arnold Krammer (1974), p. 89</ref>

[[File:PikiWiki Israel 21221 The Palmach.JPG|thumb|A Palmach [[M4 Sherman]] tank leading a convoy]]
Ben-Gurion invested [[Yigael Yadin]] with the responsibility to come up with a plan of offence whose timing was related to the foreseeable evacuation of British forces. This strategy, called [[Plan Dalet]], was readied by March and implemented towards the end of April.<ref>David Tal, ''War in Palestine, 1948: Israeli and Arab Strategy and Diplomacy,'' Routledge 2004 p. 89.</ref> A separate plan, [[Operation Nachshon]], was devised to lift the [[Siege of Jerusalem (1948)|siege of Jerusalem]].<ref name="morris2008p116"/> 1500 men from Haganah's Givati brigade and [[Palmach]]'s Harel brigade conducted sorties to free up the route to the city between 5 and 20 April. Both sides acted offensively in defiance of the Partition Plan, which foresaw Jerusalem as a ''[[Corpus separatum (Jerusalem)|corpus separatum]]'', under neither Jewish nor Arab jurisdiction. The Arabs did not accept the Plan, while the Jews were determined to oppose the internationalisation of the city, and secure it as part of the Jewish state.<ref>David Tal, pp. 89–90.</ref> The operation was successful, and enough foodstuffs to last two months were trucked into Jerusalem for distribution to the Jewish population.<ref>Dominique Lapierre et Larry Collins (1971), pp. 369–381</ref> The success of the operation was assisted by the death of al-Husayni in combat.

During this time, fighters from [[Irgun]] and [[Lehi (group)|Lehi]] [[Deir Yassin massacre|massacred a substantial number of Palestinians at Deir Yassin]].  The attack was widely publicized and had a deep impact on the morale of the Palestinian population and contributed to generate the [[1948 Palestinian exodus|exodus of the Arab population]].<ref>{{cite journal|jstor=24450239|title=The 1948 Massacre at Deir Yassin Revisited|author=Matthew Hogan|journal=The Historian|year=2001|volume=63|issue=2|pages=309–333}}</ref>

At the same time, the Arab Liberation Army was roundly defeated at [[Mishmar HaEmek]] in its first large-scale operation,<ref>Benny Morris (2003), pp. 242–243</ref> coinciding with the loss of their [[Druze]] allies through defection.<ref>Benny Morris (2003), p. 242</ref>

[[File:Haifa 1948 expulsion.jpg|thumb|Palestinians being expelled from Haifa, April 1948]]

With the implementation of Plan Dalet, the Haganah, Palmach and Irgun forces began conquering mixed zones. The Palestinian Arab society was shaken as [[Tiberias]], [[Haifa]], [[Safed]], [[Beisan]], [[Jaffa]] and [[Acre (city)|Acre]] were all captured and more than 250,000 [[1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight|Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled]].<ref>Henry Laurens (2005), pp. 85–86</ref>

The British had essentially withdrawn their troops. This pushed the leaders of the neighbouring Arab states to intervene, but they were not fully prepared, and could not assemble sufficient forces to turn the tide.  The majority of Palestinian Arab hopes lay with the [[Arab Legion]] of Transjordan's monarch, King Abdullah I, but he had no intention of creating a Palestinian Arab-run state, since he hoped to annex as much of the territory of the [[Mandatory Palestine|British Mandate for Palestine]] as he could. He was playing a double game, being just as much in contact with the Jewish authorities as with the Arab League.{{Citation needed|date=May 2021}}

In preparation for the offensive, Haganah successfully launched Operations [[Operation Yiftah|Yiftah]]<ref>Benny Morris (2003), pp. 248–252</ref> and Ben-'Ami<ref>Benny Morris (2003), pp. 252–254</ref> to secure the Jewish settlements of [[Galilee]], and [[Operation Kilshon]], which created a united 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.{{citation needed|date=May 2021}}

On 14 May 1948, [[David Ben-Gurion]] declared the establishment of the [[State of Israel]] and the [[1948 Palestine war]] entered its second phase with the intervention of the Arab state armies and the beginning of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.{{Citation needed|date=May 2021}}

===Armed forces===
By September 1947, the [[Haganah]] had "10,489 [[Rifle|rifles]], 702 [[Light machine gun|light machine-guns]], 2,666 [[Submachine gun|submachine guns]], 186 [[Medium machine gun|medium machine-guns]], 672 [[Two-inch mortar|two-inch mortars]] and 92 three-inch (76&nbsp;mm) mortars".<ref name="morris_2003_16"/>

====Importing arms====
[[File:Avia S-199 in June 1948 (Israeli Air Force).png|thumb|An Israeli [[Avia S-199]], June 1948]]

In 1946, Ben-Gurion decided that the Yishuv would probably have to defend itself against both the Palestinian Arabs and neighbouring Arab states and accordingly began a "massive, covert arms acquisition campaign in the West", and acquired many more during the first few months of hostilities.<ref>Leonard Slater (1970), p. 31</ref>

The Yishuv managed clandestinely to amass arms and military equipment abroad for transfer to Palestine once the British blockade was lifted. In the [[United States]], Yishuv agents purchased three [[Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress]] bombers, one of which bombed Cairo in July 1948, some [[Curtiss C-46 Commando]] transport planes, and dozens of half-tracks, which were repainted and defined as "agricultural equipment". In Western Europe, [[Haganah]] agents amassed fifty 65mm French mountain guns, twelve 120mm mortars, ten [[Hotchkiss H35|H-35]] light tanks, and a large number of half-tracks. By mid-May or thereabouts the Yishuv had purchased from [[Czechoslovakia]] 25 [[Avia S-199]] fighters (an inferior version of the [[Messerschmitt Bf 109]]), 200 heavy machine guns, 5,021 light machine guns, 24,500 rifles, and 52&nbsp;million rounds of ammunition, enough to equip all units, but short of heavy arms.<ref>[[Martin Van Creveld]], ''Sword and the Olive: A Critical History of the Israeli Defense Force'', Public Affairs (1998) 2002 p. 78</ref> The airborne arms smuggling missions from Czechoslovakia were codenamed [[Operation Balak]].

The airborne smuggling missions were carried out by mostly American aviators – Jews and non-Jews – led by ex-U.S. Air Transport Command flight engineer [[Al Schwimmer]].<ref>Leonard Slater (1970), p. 100</ref> Schwimmer's operation also included recruiting and training fighter pilots such as [[Lou Lenart]], commander of the first Israeli air assault against the Arabs. Several Americans, including Schwimmer, were later prosecuted by the U.S. government for violating the [[Neutrality Act of 1939]].<ref>{{Cite web|url = https://www.aptonline.org/catalog.nsf/vLinkTitle/WING+AND+A+PRAYER+A|title = A Wing and a Prayer|website = American Public Television|access-date = 15 December 2015|archive-date = 11 October 2016|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20161011072502/https://www.aptonline.org/catalog.nsf/vLinkTitle/WING+AND+A+PRAYER+A|url-status = dead}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |title=Al Schwimmer, Founder of Israel Aircraft Industries, Dies at 94 |language=en |work=Haaretz |url=https://www.haaretz.com/2011-06-11/ty-article/al-schwimmer-founder-of-israel-aircraft-industries-dies-at-94/0000017f-dbec-db22-a17f-fffdedfb0000 |access-date=2023-12-07}}</ref>

====Arms production====
The Yishuv also had "a relatively advanced ''arms producing'' capacity", that between October 1947 and July 1948 "produced 3&nbsp;million 9&nbsp;mm bullets, 150,000 [[Mills bomb|Mills grenades]], 16,000 submachine guns ([[Sten]] Guns) and 210 three-inch (76&nbsp;mm) mortars",<ref name="morris_2003_16"/> along with a few "[[Davidka]]" mortars, which had been indigenously designed and produced. They were inaccurate but had a loud explosion that demoralised the enemy. Much of the munitions used by the Israelis came from the [[Machon Ayalon|Ayalon Institute]], a clandestine bullet factory beneath kibbutz [[Ajalon|Ayalon]], which produced about 2.5&nbsp;million bullets for Sten guns. The munitions produced by the Ayalon Institute were said to have been the only supply that was not in shortage during the war. Locally produced explosives were also plentiful. After Israel's independence, these clandestine arms manufacturing operations were moved above ground. All of the Haganah's weapons-manufacturing was centralised and later became [[Israel Military Industries]].<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.haaretz.com/news/remembrance-and-independence-2013/how-a-fake-kibbutz-was-built-to-hide-a-bullet-factory.premium-1.515584|title=How a Fake Kibbutz Was Built to Hide a Bullet Factory|first=Debra|last=Kamin|date=15 April 2013|newspaper=Haaretz|access-date=16 September 2013|archive-date=12 June 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190612112259/https://www.haaretz.com/.premium-how-a-fake-kibbutz-hid-a-bullet-factory-1.5238288|url-status=live}}</ref>

====Manpower====
In November 1947, the Haganah was an underground paramilitary force that had existed as a highly organised, national force, since the Arab riots of [[1920 Palestine riots|1920]]–[[Jaffa riots|21]], and throughout the [[Riots in Palestine of 1929|riots of 1929]], [[1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine|Great Uprising of 1936–39]],<ref name="morris_2003_16">Morris, 2003, p. 16.</ref> and World War II. It had a mobile force, the [[Hish (Haganah corps)|HISH]], which had 2,000 full-time fighters (men and women) and 10,000 reservists (all aged between 18 and 25) and an elite unit, the [[Palmach]] composed of 2,100 fighters and 1,000 reservists. The reservists trained three or four days a month{{Citation needed|reason=not true. where is the source?|date=November 2013}} and went back to civilian life the rest of the time. These mobile forces could rely on a garrison force, the HIM (''Heil Mishmar'', lit. Guard Corps), composed of people aged over 25. The Yishuv's total strength was around 35,000 with 15,000 to 18,000 fighters and a garrison force of roughly 20,000.<ref name="morris_2003_16"/><ref>Gelber, p. 73; Karsh 2002, p. 25.</ref>

There were also several thousand men and women who had served in the British Army in World War II who did not serve in any of the underground militias but would provide valuable military experience during the war.<ref name="Karsh2002p25">{{harvnb|Karsh|2002|p=25}}</ref> Walid Khalidi says the Yishuv had the additional forces of the Jewish Settlement Police, numbering some 12,000, the Gadna Youth Battalions, and the armed settlers.<ref name="Palestine1">W. Khalidi, 'Plan Dalet: Master Plan for the Conquest of Palestine', J. Palestine Studies 18(1), pp. 4–33, 1988 (reprint of a 1961 article)</ref> Few of the units had been trained by December 1947.<ref name="morris_2003_16"/> On 5 December 1947, [[conscription]] was instituted for all men and women aged between 17 and 25 and by the end of March, 21,000 had been conscripted.<ref>{{cite book|title=The faithful city: the siege of Jerusalem, 1948|first=Dov|last=Joseph|author-link=Dov Yosef|publisher=Simon and Schuster|year=1960|lccn=60-10976|oclc=266413|url=https://archive.org/details/thefaithfulcity0000unse|url-access=registration|pages=[https://archive.org/details/thefaithfulcity0000unse/page/23/mode/2up 23], [https://archive.org/details/thefaithfulcity0000unse/page/38/mode/2up 38]}}</ref> On 30 March, the call-up was extended to men and single women aged between 26 and 35. Five days later, a General Mobilization order was issued for all men under 40.<ref>Levin, Harry. "Jerusalem Embattled – A Diary of the City under Siege." Cassels, 1997. {{ISBN|978-0-304-33765-1}}. pp. 32, 117. Pay £P2 per month. c.f. would buy 2lb of meat in Jerusalem, April 1948. p. 91.</ref>

By March 1948, the Yishuv had a numerical superiority, with 35,780 mobilised and deployed fighters for the [[Haganah]],<ref>Benny Morris (2004), p. 16</ref><ref>Gelber (2006), p. 73</ref> 3,000 men under [[Lehi (militant group)|Lehi]] and [[Irgun]], and a few thousand armed settlers.<ref>D. Kurzman, "Genesis 1948", 1970, p. 282.</ref> Irgun was eventually absorbed into the Jewish Defence Army.<ref name="Mi5">{{cite web |title=Mi5 Files of Jewish Interest "the activities of Irgun, the Jewish organisation involved or implicated in numerous acts of terrorism in the closing years of the British mandate in Palestine" |url=http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/releases/2006/march/jewish.htm |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151016054552/http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/releases/2006/march/jewish.htm |archive-date=16 October 2015 |access-date=29 June 2014 |publisher=Nationalarchives.gov.uk}}</ref> The activities of Irgun was monitored by [[MI5]], which found that Irgun was "involved or implicated in numerous acts of terrorism" during the end years of the [[Mandatory Palestine|British mandate in Palestine]] such as the attacks on trains and the kidnapping of British servicemen.<ref name="Mi5" />

====Arab forces====
According to [[Benny Morris]], by the end of 1947, the Palestinians already "had a healthy and demoralising respect for the Yishuv's military power" and if it came to battle, the Palestinians expected to lose. When the first violent incidents broke out in Jerusalem on the 29 November, the [[Arab Higher Committee]], well aware of  their lack of armaments, had called for a three-day strike: the most militant Palestinian group in the city, consisting of 44 fighters, was furnished with 12 rifles, some handguns and a few kilograms of explosives.<ref>[[Henry Laurens (scholar)|Henry Laurens]], ''[[La Question de Palestine]]'', vol.3, [[Fayard]] 2007 p. 41</ref>

The effective number of Arab combatants was listed as growing to 12,000 by{{when|date=October 2024}} some historians<ref>[[Henry Laurens (scholar)|Henry Laurens]], ''La Question de Palestine'', vol. 3, Fayard 2007 p. 70</ref> while others calculate an eventual total Arab strength of approximately 23,500 troops,{{when|date=October 2024}} and with this being more of less or roughly equal to that of the Yishuv.  However, as Israel mobilised most of its most able citizens during the war while the Arab troops were only a small percentage of its far greater population, the strength of the Yishuv grew steadily and dramatically during the war.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Bregman|first1=Ahron|title=Israel's Wars : A History Since 1947|date=2010|publisher=Taylor & Francis|location=London|isbn=978-0-415-42438-7|pages=23, 24|edition=3rd|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=K1hsUGt8fSMC&pg=PA24|access-date=19 April 2015|archive-date=20 March 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230320123845/https://books.google.com/books?id=K1hsUGt8fSMC&pg=PA24|url-status=live}}</ref>

==Political objectives==

===Yishuv===
[[Yishuv]]'s aims evolved during the war.<ref name="morris_1948_397">Morris, 2008, pp. 397–98.</ref> Mobilisation for a total war was organised.<ref>Moshe Naor,''Social Mobilization in the Arab/Israeli War of 1948: On the Israeli Home Front,'' Routledge 2013 p. 15.</ref> Initially, the aim was "simple and modest": to survive the assaults of the Palestinian Arabs and the Arab states. "The Zionist leaders deeply, genuinely, feared a Middle Eastern reenactment of the [[Holocaust]], which had just ended; the Arabs' public rhetoric reinforced these fears". As the war progressed, the aim of expanding the Jewish state beyond the UN partition borders appeared: first to incorporate clusters of isolated Jewish settlements and later to add more territories to the state and give it defensible borders. A third and further aim that emerged among the political and military leaders after four or five months was to "reduce the size of Israel's prospective large and hostile Arab minority, seen as a potential powerful [[fifth column]], by belligerency and expulsion".<ref name="morris_1948_397"/>

According to research by Shay Hazkani, Ben-Gurion and segments of the [[religious Zionism|religious Zionist]] leadership drew parallels between the war and the biblical wars of extermination, and states this was not a fringe position. IDF indoctrination pamphlets were distributed to recruits  instructing them that God “demands a revenge of extermination without mercy to whoever tries to hurt us for no reason.”.<ref>Shay Hazkani,[https://books.google.com/books?id=sAMcEAAAQBAJ&dq=Hazkani%2BDear+Palestine%2BAbdullah+Dawud&pg=PT11 ''Dear Palestine:A Social History of the 1948,''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221222163528/https://www.google.com/books/edition/Dear_Palestine/sAMcEAAAQBAJ?hl=it&gbpv=1&dq=Hazkani%2BDear+Palestine%2BAbdullah+Dawud&pg=PT11 |date=22 December 2022 }} [[Stanford University Press]] 2021 {{isbn|978-1-503-61465-9}}.</ref><ref>Josh Ruebner, [https://mondoweiss.net/2021/06/unsettling-1948-a-review-of-shay-hazkanis-dear-palestine/ 'Unsettling 1948: A Review of Shay Hazkani's ‘Dear Palestine’,'] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210624191219/https://mondoweiss.net/2021/06/unsettling-1948-a-review-of-shay-hazkanis-dear-palestine/ |date=24 June 2021 }} [[Mondoweiss]] 24 June 2021</ref>

[[Plan Dalet]], or Plan D, ({{langx|he| תוכנית ד'}}, ''Tokhnit dalet'') was a plan worked out by the Haganah, a Jewish paramilitary group and the forerunner of the Israel Defense Forces, in autumn 1947 to spring 1948, which was sent to Haganah units in early March 1948. The intent of Plan Dalet is subject to much controversy, with historians on the one extreme asserting that it was entirely defensive, and historians on the other extreme asserting that the plan aimed at maximum conquest and expulsion of the Palestinians. According to [[Walid Khalidi]] and [[Ilan Pappé]], its purpose was to conquer as much of [[Palestine (region)|Palestine]] and to expel as many Palestinians as possible,<ref name="Palestine1" /><ref>Pappe, Ilan. ''The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine''.</ref> though according to [[Benny Morris]] there was no such intent. In his book ''[[The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine]]'', Pappé asserts that Plan Dalet was a "blueprint for ethnic cleansing" with the aim of reducing both rural and urban areas of Palestine.<ref>Pappé, 2006, pp. xii, 86–126</ref>

According to [[Yoav Gelber]], the plan specified that in case of resistance, the population of conquered villages was to be expelled outside the borders of the Jewish state. If no resistance was met, the residents could stay put, under military rule.<ref>Gelber 2006 p. 306</ref> According to Morris, Plan D called for occupying the areas within the UN sponsored Jewish state, several concentrations of Jewish population outside those areas (West Jerusalem and Western Galilee), and areas along the roads where the invading Arab armies were expected to attack.<ref>Morris 2008 p. 119</ref>

The Yishuv perceived the peril of an Arab invasion as threatening its very existence. Having no real knowledge of the Arabs' true military capabilities, the Jews took Arab propaganda literally, preparing for the worst and reacting accordingly.<ref name="Gelber1"/>{{disputed inline|date=April 2024}}

===Arab League as a whole===
[[File:Clause 10 of Cablegram dated 15 May 1948 addressed to the Secretary-General by the Secretary-General of the League of Arab States.jpg|thumb|Clause 10 of the 15 May 1948 [[Arab League]] cablegram explaining the reasons for their entry into the territory]]
The [[Arab League]] had unanimously rejected the UN partition plan and were officially opposed to the establishment of a Jewish state alongside an Arab one.

The Arab League before partition affirmed the right to the independence of Palestine, while blocking the creation of a Palestinian government.{{clarify|date=January 2013}} Towards the end of 1947, the League established a military committee commanded by the retired Iraqi general Isma'il Safwat whose mission was to analyse the chance of victory of the Palestinians against the Jews.<ref name="Gelber 2006 p.11">Gelber (2006), p. 11</ref> His conclusions were that they had no chance of victory and that an invasion of the Arab regular armies was mandatory.<ref name="Gelber 2006 p.11"/> The political committee nevertheless rejected these conclusions and decided to support an armed opposition to the Partition Plan excluding the participation of their regular armed forces.<ref>[[Henry Laurens (scholar)|Henry Laurens]], ''La Question de Palestine'', Fayard, 2007 p. 32.</ref>

In April with the Palestinian defeat, the [[1948 Palestinian exodus|refugees coming from Palestine]] and the pressure of their public opinion, the Arab leaders decided to invade Palestine.<ref name="Gelber 2006 p.11"/>

The Arab League gave reasons for its invasion in [[Palestine (region)|Palestine]] in the [[:s:Cablegram from the Secretary-General of the League of Arab States to the Secretary-General of the United Nations|cablegram]]:<ref>{{cite web|url=https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/649818 |title=Cablegram dated 15 May 1948 addressed to the Secretary-General by the Secretary-General of the League of Arab States |publisher=UN.org |date= 16 May 1948 |access-date=6 Nov 2023 }}</ref>
* the Arab states find themselves compelled to intervene in order to restore law and order and to check further bloodshed.
* the Mandate over Palestine has come to an end, leaving no legally constituted authority.
* the only solution of the Palestine problem is the establishment of a unitary Palestinian state.

British diplomat [[Alec Kirkbride]] wrote in his 1976 memoirs about a conversation with the Arab League's secretary-general [[Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzam|Azzam Pasha]] a week before the armies marched: "...when I asked him for his estimate of the size of the Jewish forces, [he] waved his hands and said: 'It does not matter how many there are. We will sweep them into the sea.'" However, Kirkbride notes that Azzam was nervous about the impending conflict; he had not slept the night before.<ref>Morris 2008 p. 187; quoting p. 24 of [https://books.google.com/books?id=i8FcAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA24 Kirkbride's memoirs]</ref>

According to Gelber, the Arab countries were "drawn into the war by the collapse of the Palestinian Arabs and the Arab Liberation Army [and] the Arab governments' primary goal was preventing the Palestinian Arabs' total ruin and the flooding of their own countries by more refugees. According to their own perception, had the invasion not taken place, there was no Arab force in Palestine capable of checking the Haganah's offensive".<ref name="Gelber1">Yoav Gelber, 2006, p. 137.</ref>

===King Abdullah I of Transjordan===
King Abdullah was the commander of the [[Arab Legion]], the strongest Arab army involved in the war according to [[Eugene Rogan]] and [[Avi Shlaim]] in 2007.<ref>Rogan and Shlaim 2007 p. 110.</ref> (In contrast, Morris wrote in 2008 that the Egyptian army was the most powerful and threatening army.<ref>Morris, 2008, p. 310</ref>) The Arab Legion had about 10,000 soldiers, trained and commanded by British officers.
[[File:King Abdullah, Jerusalem, 29 May 1948.jpg|thumb|King Abdullah outside the [[Church of the Holy Sepulchre]], 29 May 1948, the day after Jordanian forces took control of the Old City in the [[Battle for Jerusalem]]]]

In 1946–47, Abdullah said that he had no intention to "resist or impede the partition of Palestine and creation of a [[Jewish state]]."<ref name="Sela">Sela, 2002, p. 14.</ref> Ideally, Abdullah would have liked to annex all of Palestine, but he was prepared to compromise.<ref name="Karsh2002p26">{{harvnb|Karsh|2002|p=26}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Karsh|2002|p=51}}</ref> He supported the partition, intending that the West Bank area of the British Mandate allocated for the Arab state be annexed to Jordan.<ref>Morris (2008), pp. 190–192</ref> Abdullah held secret meetings with the Jewish Agency (at which the future [[Israeli Prime Minister]] [[Golda Meir]] was among the delegates) that reached an agreement of Jewish non-interference with Jordanian annexation of the West Bank (although Abdullah failed in his goal of acquiring an outlet to the Mediterranean Sea through the Negev desert) and of Jordanian agreement not to attack the area of the Jewish state contained in the United Nations partition resolution (in which Jerusalem was given neither to the Arab nor the Jewish state, but was to be an internationally administered area). In order to keep their support to his plan of annexation of the Arab State, Abdullah promised to the British he would not attack the Jewish State.<ref>{{cite book|author=Avi Shlaim|title=The Politics of Partition: King Abdullah, the Zionists and Palestine 1921–1951|publisher=Columbia University Press|year=1988|isbn=978-0-231-07365-3|url=https://archive.org/details/politicsofpartit00avis}}</ref>

The neighbouring Arab states pressured Abdullah into joining them in an "all-Arab military invasion" against the newly created State of Israel, that he used to restore his prestige in the Arab world, which had grown suspicious of his relatively good relationship with Western and Jewish leaders.<ref name="Sela" /> Jordan's undertakings not to cross partition lines were not taken at face value. While repeating assurances that Jordan would only take areas allocated to a future Arab state, on the eve of war [[Tawfik Abu al-Huda]] told the British that were other Arab armies to advance against Israel, Jordan would follow suit.<ref>Tal,''War in Palestine, 1948: Israeli and Arab Strategy and Diplomacy,'' p. 154.</ref> On 23 May Abdullah told the French consul in Amman that he "was determined to fight Zionism and prevent the establishment of an Israeli state on the border of his kingdom".<ref>Zamir, 2010, p. 34</ref>

Abdullah's role in this war became substantial. He saw himself as the "supreme commander of the Arab forces" and "persuaded the Arab League to appoint him" to this position.<ref>Tripp, 2001, p. 137.</ref> Through his leadership, the Arabs fought the 1948 war to meet Abdullah's political goals.

===Other Arab states===
King [[Farouk of Egypt]] was anxious to prevent Abdullah from being seen as the main champion of the Arab world in Palestine, which he feared might damage his own leadership aspirations of the Arab world.<ref name="Karsh2002p26"/> In addition, Farouk wished to annex all of southern Palestine to Egypt.<ref name="Karsh2002p26" /> According to [[Gamal Abdel Nasser]] the Egyptian Ministry of Defence's first communique describe the Palestine operations as a merely punitive expedition against the Zionist "gangs",<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Nasser |first=Gamal Abdel |author-link=Gamal Abdel Nasser |date=Winter 1973 |others=Translated and annotated by [[Walid Khalidi]] |title=Nasser's Memoirs of the First Palestine War |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2535478 |url-status=live |journal=[[Journal of Palestine Studies]] |volume=2 |issue=2 |page=9 |doi=10.2307/2535478 |jstor=2535478 |issn=0377-919X |url-access=registration |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110928201645/http://www.palestine-studies.org/enakba/Memoirs/Nasser%2C%20Memoirs%20of%20the%20First%20Palestine%20War.pdf |archive-date=28 September 2011 |access-date=22 February 2024  |jstor-access=}}</ref> using a term frequent in Haganah reports of Palestinian fighters.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Morris |first=Benny |url=http://larryjhs.fastmail.fm.user.fm/The%20Birth%20of%20the%20Palestinian%20Refugee%20Problem%20Revisited.pdf |title=The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |year=2004 |isbn=978-0-521-81120-0 |publication-date=2004 |pages=76, 82, 104, 126, 130, 202, 253 |author-link=Benny Morris}}</ref> According to a 2019 study, "senior British intelligence, military officers and diplomats in Cairo were deeply involved in a covert scheme to drive the King to participate in the Arab states' war coalition against Israel."<ref name="Zamir-2019">{{Cite journal|last=Zamir|first=Meir|date=28 May 2019|title=The role of MI6 in Egypt's decision to go to war against Israel in May 1948|journal=Intelligence and National Security|volume=34|issue=6|pages=775–799|doi=10.1080/02684527.2019.1616389|s2cid=191785036|issn=0268-4527}}</ref> These intelligence officers acted without the approval or knowledge of the British government.<ref name="Zamir-2019" />

[[Nuri as-Said]], the strongman of Iraq, had ambitions for bringing the entire Fertile Crescent under Iraqi leadership.<ref name="Karsh2002p26" /> Both Syria and Lebanon wished to take certain areas of northern Palestine.<ref name="Karsh2002p26" />

One result of the ambitions of the various Arab leaders was a distrust of all the Palestinian leaders who wished to set up a Palestinian state, and a mutual distrust of each other.<ref name="Karsh2002p26" /> Co-operation was to be very poor during the war between the various Palestinian factions and the Arab armies.<ref name="Karsh2002p26" />

===Arab Higher Committee of Amin al-Husayni===
{{Further|All-Palestine Government}}
Following rumours that King Abdullah was re-opening the bilateral negotiations with Israel that he had previously conducted in secret with the Jewish Agency, the Arab League, led by Egypt, decided to set up the [[All-Palestine Government]] in [[Gaza City|Gaza]] on 8 September under the nominal leadership of the Mufti.<ref>Shlaim, 2001, p. 97.</ref> Abdullah regarded the attempt to revive al-Husayni's Holy War Army as a challenge to his authority and all armed bodies operating in the areas controlled by the Arab Legion were disbanded. [[Glubb Pasha]] carried out the order ruthlessly and efficiently.<ref>Shlaim, 2001, p. 99.</ref><ref>Benny Morris (2003), p. 189.</ref>

==Initial line-up of forces==

===Military assessments===
Though the State of Israel faced the formidable armies of neighbouring Arab countries, due to previous battles the Palestinians themselves hardly existed as a military force by the middle of May.<ref>[[Martin Van Creveld]],''Sword and the Olive: A Critical History of the Israeli Defense Force,'', Public Affairs (1998) 2002 p. 75</ref> The British Intelligence and [[Arab League]] military reached similar conclusions.<ref>Morris (2003), pp. 32–33.</ref>

The British Foreign Ministry and the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] believed that the Arab states would finally win in case of war.<ref>Morris (2008), p. 81.</ref><ref>Benny (2008), p. 174.</ref> [[Martin Van Creveld]] says that in terms of manpower, the sides were fairly evenly matched.<ref>[[Martin Van Creveld]],[https://books.google.com/books?id=baa0OKb51rIC&pg=PA80 ''Sword and the Olive: A Critical History of the Israeli Defense Force,''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221222163526/https://books.google.com/books?id=baa0OKb51rIC&pg=PA80 |date=22 December 2022 }}, Public Affairs (1998) 2002 p. 78</ref>

In May, Egyptian generals told their government that the invasion would be "a parade without any risks" and [[Tel Aviv]] would be taken "in two weeks."<ref>Morris 2008 p. 185</ref> Egypt, Iraq, and Syria all possessed air forces, Egypt and Syria had tanks, and all had some modern artillery.<ref name="Morris, 2003, p. 35">Morris, 2003, p. 35.</ref> Initially, the [[Haganah]] had no heavy machine guns, [[artillery]], armoured vehicles, anti-tank or anti-aircraft weapons,<ref name="Karsh2002p25"/> nor military aircraft or tanks.<ref name="morris_2003_16"/> The four Arab armies that invaded on 15 May were far stronger than the Haganah formations they initially encountered.<ref>Morris, 2008, p. 401</ref>

On 12 May, three days before the invasion, David Ben-Gurion was told by his chief military advisers (who over-estimated the size of the Arab armies and the numbers and efficiency of the troops who would be committed&nbsp;– much as the Arab generals tended to exaggerate Jewish fighters' strength) that Israel's chances of winning a war against the Arab states were only about even.<ref name="Morris, 2003, p. 35"/>

===Yishuv/Israeli forces===
Sources disagree about the quantity of arms at the Yishuv's disposal at the end of the Mandate. According to [[Efraim Karsh]] before the arrival shipments from [[Czechoslovakia]] as part of [[Operation Balak]], there was roughly one weapon for every three fighters, and even the Palmach could arm only two out of every three of its active members.<ref name="Karsh2002p25"/> According to [[Larry Collins (writer)|Larry Collins]] and [[Dominique Lapierre]], by April 1948, the Haganah had accumulated only about 20,000 rifles and Sten guns for the 35,000 soldiers who existed on paper.<ref>Collins and LaPierre, 1973 p. 355</ref> According to [[Walid Khalidi]], "the arms at the disposal of these forces were plentiful".<ref name="Palestine1"/> [[France]] authorised [[Air France]] to transport cargo to Tel Aviv on 13 May.<ref name="Zamir2010p22" />

Yishuv forces were organised in nine brigades, and their numbers grew following Israeli independence, eventually expanding to twelve brigades. Although both sides increased their manpower over the first few months of the war, the Israeli forces grew steadily as a result of the progressive mobilisation of Israeli society and the influx of an average of 10,300 immigrants each month.<ref>{{cite book |last=Bregman |first=Ahron |title=Israel's Wars: A History since 1947 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oUSbvWDgYucC&pg=PA24 |publisher=Routledge |year=2002 |page=24 |isbn=978-0-415-28716-6 |access-date=28 September 2020 |archive-date=20 March 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230320123847/https://books.google.com/books?id=oUSbvWDgYucC&pg=PA24 |url-status=live }}</ref> By the end of 1948, the [[Israel Defense Forces]] had 88,033 soldiers, including 60,000 combat soldiers.<ref>Morgan, Michael L.:''The Philosopher as Witness: Fackenheim and Responses to the Holocaust'', p. 182</ref>

{|class="wikitable"
|-
! Brigade
! Commander
! Size<ref>Ben Gurion, David ''War Diaries, 1947–1949''. Arabic edition translated by Samir Jabbour. Institute of Palestine Studies, Beirut, 1994. p. 303.</ref>
! Operations
|-
|[[Golani Brigade|Golani]]
|Moshe Mann
|4,500
|[[Operation Dekel|Dekel]], [[Operation Hiram|Hiram]]
|-
|[[Carmeli Brigade|Carmeli]]
|[[Moshe Carmel]]
|2,000
|[[Operation Hiram|Hiram]]
|-
|[[Alexandroni Brigade|Alexandroni]]
|{{ill|Dan Even|he|דן אבן}}
|5,200
|[[Battles of Latrun|Latrun]], [[Operation Hametz|Hametz]]
|-
|[[Kiryati Brigade|Kiryati]]
|Michael Ben-Gal
|1,400
|[[Operation Danny|Dani]], [[Operation Hametz|Hametz]]
|-
|[[Givati Brigade|Givati]]
|[[Shimon Avidan]]
|5,000
|[[Operation Hametz|Hametz]], [[Operation Barak|Barak]], [[Operation Pleshet|Pleshet]]
|-
|[[Etzioni Brigade|Etzioni]]
|[[David Shaltiel]]
|
|[[Battle of Jerusalem (1948)|Battle of Jerusalem]], [[Operation Shfifon|Shfifon]], [[Operation Yevusi|Yevusi]], [[Battle of Ramat Rachel]]
|-
|[[7th Armored Brigade (Israel)|7th Armoured]]
|[[Shlomo Shamir]]
|
|[[Battles of Latrun]]
|-
|[[8th Armored Brigade (Israel)|8th Armoured]]
|[[Yitzhak Sadeh]]
|
|[[Operation Danny|Danny]], [[Operation Yoav|Yoav]], [[Operation Horev|Horev]]
|-
|[[Oded Brigade|Oded]]
|[[Avraham Yoffe]]
|
|[[Operation Yoav|Yoav]], [[Operation Hiram|Hiram]]
|-
|[[Harel Brigade|Harel]]
|[[Yitzhak Rabin]]<ref>Later, in the midst of the war, Yitzhak Rabin was succeeded by Joseph Tebenkin who led [[Operation Ha-Har]].</ref>
|1,400
|[[Operation Nachshon|Nachshon]], [[Operation Danny|Danny]]
|-
|[[Yiftach Brigade|Yiftach]]
|[[Yigal Allon]]
|4,500 inc. some Golani
|[[Operation Yiftah|Yiftah]], [[Operation Danny|Danny]], [[Operation Yoav|Yoav]], [[Battles of Latrun]]
|-
|[[Negev Brigade|Negev]]
|Nahum Sarig
|2,400
|[[Operation Yoav|Yoav]]
|}

After the invasion: [[France]] allowed aircraft carrying arms from Czechoslovakia to land on French territory in transit to Israel, and permitted two arms shipments to ‘[[Nicaragua]]’, which were actually intended for Israel.<ref name="Zamir2010p22" />

Czechoslovakia [[Arms shipments from Czechoslovakia to Israel 1947–49|supplied vast quantities of arms to Israel]] during the war, including thousands of [[vz. 24]] rifles and [[MG 34]] and ZB 37 machine guns, and millions of rounds of ammunition. Czechoslovakia supplied fighter aircraft, including at first ten [[Avia S-199]] fighter planes.

[[Haganah]] agents in Western Europe had amassed fifty 65mm French mountain guns, twelve 120mm mortars, ten [[Hotchkiss H35|H-35]] light tanks, and a large number of half-tracks. The Haganah readied twelve cargo ships throughout European ports to transfer the equipment, which would set sail as soon as the British blockade lifted at the end of the Mandate.<ref>Morris, 2008: pp. 176–177</ref><ref name="onwar">{{cite web |url=http://www.onwar.com/aced/nation/ink/israel/fisrael1948.htm |title=Wars of the World: Israeli War of Independence 1948–1949 |publisher=Onwar.com |access-date=29 June 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120406090925/http://www.onwar.com/aced/nation/ink/israel/fisrael1948.htm |archive-date=6 April 2012 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

Following Israeli independence, the Israelis managed to build three [[M4 Sherman|Sherman tanks]] from scrap-heap material found in abandoned British ordnance depots.<ref>Laffin, John: ''The Israeli Army in the Middle East Wars 1948–73'', p. 8</ref>[[File:Tanks of the Israeli 8th Armoured Brigade (1948).jpg|thumb|right|[[M4 Sherman|Sherman tanks]] of the [[8th Armored Brigade (Israel)|Israeli 8th Armoured Brigade]], 1948]]

The Haganah also managed to obtain stocks of British weapons due to the logistical complexity of the British withdrawal, and the corruption of a number of officials.<ref>Laurens, vol. 3 p. 69.</ref>
[[File:The British Army in the United Kingdom 1939-45 H37168.jpg|thumb|right|The [[Armored Corps (Israel)|Israeli Armored Corps]] operated two [[Cromwell tank]]s<ref name="Yaakov-2014" />]]

On 29 June 1948, the day before the last British troops left Haifa, two British soldiers sympathetic to the Israelis stole two [[Cromwell tank]]s from an arms depot in the Haifa port area, smashing them through the unguarded gates, and joined the IDF. These two tanks would form the basis of the [[Armored Corps (Israel)|Israeli Armoured Corps]].<ref name="Yaakov-2014">{{cite web |last=Yaakov |first=Yifa |url=http://www.timesofisrael.com/british-deserter-who-stole-tanks-for-haganah-dies/ |title=British deserter who stole tanks for Haganah dies |publisher=Timesofisrael.com |date=2 February 2014 |access-date=29 June 2014 |archive-date=25 January 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220125001051/https://www.timesofisrael.com/british-deserter-who-stole-tanks-for-haganah-dies/ |url-status=live }}</ref>
[[File:BrenCarrierShualeiShimshon.png|thumb|[[Israel Defense Forces|IDF]] soldiers of the [[Samson's Foxes]] unit advance in a captured Egyptian [[Universal Carrier|Bren Gun carrier]].]]

After the first truce, by July 1948, the Israelis had established an air force, a navy, and a tank battalion.<ref name="onwar"/>

After the second truce, Czechoslovakia supplied [[Supermarine Spitfire]] fighter planes, which [[Operation Velvetta|were smuggled]] to [[Israel]] via an abandoned [[Luftwaffe]] runway in [[Yugoslavia]], with the agreement of the Yugoslav government.<ref>Arnold Krammer (1974), p. 103</ref> The airborne arms smuggling missions from Czechoslovakia were codenamed [[Operation Balak]].

===Arab forces===
At the invasion, in addition to the irregular Palestinian militia groups,<!--Expand--> the five Arab states that joined the war were [[Egypt]], [[Emirate of Transjordan|Transjordan]], [[Syria]], [[Lebanon]] and [[Kingdom of Iraq|Iraq]] sending expeditionary forces of their regular armies. Additional contingents came from [[Saudi Arabia]] and [[Yemen]]. On the eve of war, the available number of Arab troops likely to be committed was between 23,500 and 26,500 (10,000 Egyptians, 4,500 Jordanians, 3,000 Iraqis, 3,000–6,000 Syrians, 2,000 [[Arab Liberation Army|ALA]] volunteers, 1,000 Lebanese, and several hundred Saudis), in addition to the irregular Palestinians already present. These Arab forces had been trained by British and French instructors; this was particularly true of Jordan's Arab Legion under command of Lt Gen Sir [[John Glubb]] (known as Glubb Pasha).<ref>{{cite book |last1=Kennedy |first1=Greg |title=Imperial Defence: The Old World Order, 1856–1956 |date=2007 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-134-25246-6 |page=212 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=575-AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA212 |language=en |access-date=10 March 2022 |archive-date=20 March 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230320123847/https://books.google.com/books?id=575-AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA212 |url-status=live }}</ref>

Syria bought a quantity of small arms for the [[Arab Liberation Army]] from [[Czechoslovakia]], but the shipment never arrived due to Haganah force intervention.<ref>Gelber (2006), p. 50.</ref>

====Arab states====
[[File:John Bagot Glubb and soldiers in Ramallah July 20 1948.webp|thumb|[[John Bagot Glubb]] (right), commander of the Jordanian [[Arab Legion]] with soldiers in July 1948]]

Jordan's [[Arab Legion]] was considered the most effective Arab force. Armed, trained and commanded by British officers, this 8,000–12,000 strong force was organised in four infantry/mechanised regiments supported by some forty artillery pieces and seventy-five armoured cars.<ref>{{harvnb|Karsh|2002|pp=26–27}}</ref> Until January 1948, it was reinforced by the 3,000-strong [[Transjordan Frontier Force]].<ref name="Karsh2002p27">{{harvnb|Karsh|2002|p=27}}</ref> As many as 48 British officers served in the Arab Legion.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,794208,00.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110201142817/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,794208,00.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=1 February 2011|magazine=Time|title=Trans-Jordan: Chess Player & Friend|date=16 February 1948|access-date=20 April 2010}}</ref> Glubb Pasha, the commander of the Legion, organised his forces into four brigades as follows:

{|class="wikitable"
|-
! Military Division
! Commander<ref>Ma'an Abu Nawar, ''The Jordanian-Israeli war, 1948–1951: a history of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan'', p. 393.</ref><ref>[[Benny Morris]], ''Victimes : histoire revisitée du conflit arabo-sioniste'', 2003, pp. 241, 247–255.</ref>
!Rank
!Military Zone of operations
|-
|First Brigade, includes: 1st and 3rd regiments
|Desmond Goldie
|Colonel
|[[Nablus]] Military Zone
|-
|Second Brigade, includes: Fifth and Sixth Regiments
|Sam Sidney Arthur Cooke
|Brigadier
|Support force
|-
|Third Brigade, includes: Second and Fourth Regiments
|Teel Ashton
|Colonel
|[[Ramallah]] Military Zone
|-
|Fourth Brigade
|Ahmad Sudqi al-Jundi
|Colonel
|Support: Ramallah, [[Hebron]], and Ramla
|}
The Arab Legion joined the war in May 1948, but fought only in the area that King Abdullah wanted to secure for Jordan: the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

France prevented a large sale of arms by a Swiss company to Ethiopia, brokered by the UK foreign office, which was actually destined for Egypt and Jordan, and denied a British request at the end of April to land a squadron of British aircraft on its way to Transjordan, and applied diplomatic pressure on Belgium to suspend arms sales to the Arab states.<ref name="Zamir2010p22" />

The Jordanian forces were probably the best trained of all combatants. Other combatant forces lacked the ability to make strategic decisions and tactical manoeuvres,{{sfn|Pollack|2004|p=?}} as evidenced by positioning the fourth regiment at [[Latrun]], which was abandoned by ALA combatants before the arrival of the Jordanian forces and the importance of which was not fully understood by the Haganah. In the later stages of the war, Latrun proved to be of high strategic importance for its access to roads and proximity to Jerusalem, with some of the most successful Arab and Jordanian fighting occurring there.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Hughes|first=Matthew|date=2019|title=The Conduct of Operations: Glubb Pasha, the Arab Legion, and the First Arab–Israeli War, 1948–49|journal=War in History|volume=26|issue=4|pages=539–62|doi=10.1177/0968344517725541 |jstor=26986953}} "It was the only Arab army in 1948 that covered itself in glory, defeating Israel in two sets of battles in and around Jerusalem's old city and at Latrun (15 May–18 July)."</ref><ref>{{cite web|last=Hect|first=Aaron|title=Latrun - The Battle for Latrun|publisher=[[Jerusalem Post]]|date=8 September 2009|url=https://www.jpost.com/israel-guide/tel-aviv-and-center-tours/latrun-the-battle-for-latrun|access-date=21 January 2025}} "One of the fiercest and most important battles of the War of Independence was the fight for the fortress of Latrun, which commanded the main road between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem."</ref>

In 1948, Iraq's army had 21,000 men in twelve brigades and the [[Iraqi Air Force]] had 100 planes, mostly British. Initially the Iraqis committed around 3,000 men<ref>D. Kurzman, 'Genesis 1948', 1972, p. 382.</ref> to the war effort, including four infantry brigades, one armoured battalion and support personnel. These were to operate under Jordanian guidance.<ref>I. Pappe, "The ethnic cleansing of Palestine", 2006, p. 129.</ref> The first Iraqi forces to be deployed reached Jordan in April 1948 under the command of Gen. Nur ad-Din Mahmud.<ref name="Pollack149-155">Pollack, 2002, pp. 149–155.</ref>

In 1948, Egypt's army was able to put a maximum of around 40,000 men into the field, 80% of its military-age male population were unfit for military service, and its embryonic logistics system was limited in its ability to support ground forces beyond its borders.{{citation needed|date=November 2013}} Initially, an expeditionary force of 10,000 men was sent to Palestine under the command of Maj. Gen. [[Ahmed Ali al-Mwawi]]. This consisted of five infantry battalions, one armoured battalion equipped with British [[Light Tank Mk VI]] and [[Matilda II tank|Matilda]] tanks, one battalion of sixteen [[QF 25 pounder|25-pounder guns]], a battalion of eight [[Ordnance QF 6 pounder|6-pounder guns]] and one medium-machine-gun battalion with supporting troops.{{citation needed|date=November 2013}}

The [[Egyptian Air Force#Palestine War|Egyptian Air Force]] had over thirty [[Supermarine Spitfire|Spitfires]], four [[Hawker Hurricane]]s and twenty [[C-47 Skytrain|C47s]] modified into crude bombers.<ref>{{cite book | last=Pollack | first=Kenneth | title=Arabs at War : Military Effectiveness, 1948–1991 | publisher=University of Nebraska Press | location=Lincoln| year=2002 | isbn=978-0-8032-3733-9 | oclc=49225708 | page=32}}</ref>

Syria had 12,000 soldiers at the beginning of the 1948 War, grouped into three infantry brigades and an armoured force of approximately battalion size. The [[Syrian Air Force]] had forty-three planes, thirty-seven operational, of which approximately the ten newest were World War II–generation models.<ref>{{cite thesis |last=Hartoch |first=Noam |date=July 2015 |degree=PhD |title=A history of the Syrian Air Force 1947-1967 |publisher=King's College London |s2cid=211516103 }}</ref>

France suspended arms sales to Syria, notwithstanding already-signed contracts.<ref name="Zamir2010p22" />

Lebanon's army was the smallest of the Arab states, consisting of 3,500 soldiers, of whom only 1,000 were deployed during the war.<ref name="Karsh2002p27"/> According to Gelber, in June 1947, Ben-Gurion "arrived at an agreement with the Maronite religious leadership in Lebanon that cost a few thousand pounds and kept Lebanon's army out of the War of Independence and the military Arab coalition".<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.aisisraelstudies.org/2006papers/Gelber%20Yoav%202006.pdf|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20130605014133/http://www.aisisraelstudies.org/2006papers/Gelber%20Yoav%202006.pdf|url-status=dead|title=Yoav Gelber, 2006, 'Sharon's Inheritance'|archivedate=5 June 2013}}</ref> A token force of 436 soldiers crossed into northern Galilee, seized two villages after a small skirmish, and withdrew.<ref name="Hughes" /> Israel then invaded and occupied southern Lebanon until the end of the war.<ref>Rogan and Shlaim 2001, p. 8.</ref>

By the time of the second truce, the Egyptians had 20,000 men in the field in thirteen battalions equipped with 135 tanks and 90 [[artillery]] pieces.<ref>Pollack, 2002, pp. 15–27.</ref>

During the first truce, the Iraqis increased their force to about 10,000.<ref>D. Kurzman, "Genesis 1948", 1972, p. 556.</ref> Ultimately, the Iraqi expeditionary force numbered around 18,000 men.<ref name="Tripp2002p73"/><ref>Pollack, 2002, p. 150.</ref>

Saudi Arabia sent hundreds of volunteers to join the Arab forces. In February 1948, around 800 tribesmen had gathered near [[Aqaba]] to invade the [[Negev]], but crossed to Egypt after Saudi rival King Abdallah denied them permission to pass through Jordanian territory.<ref>Gelber, p. 55</ref> The Saudi troops were attached to the Egyptian command throughout the war,<ref>Morris, 2008, pp. 322, 326.</ref> and estimates of their total strength ranged up to 1,200.<ref>Uthman Hasan Salih. ''Dawr Al-Mamlaka Al-'Arabiyya Al-Sa'udiyya Fi Harb Filastin 1367H/1948'' (The role of Saudi Arabia in the Palestine war of 1948), Revue d'Histoire Maghrébine [Tunisia] 1986 13(43–44): 201–221. {{ISSN|0330-8987}}.</ref><ref>Morris, 2008, p. 205; cites British diplomatic communications.</ref> By July 1948, the Saudis comprised three brigades within the Egyptian expeditionary force, and were stationed as guards between Gaza city and Rafah.<ref>Gelber, p. 200</ref> This area came under heavy aerial bombardment during [[Operation Yoav]] in October,<ref>Gelber, p. 203</ref> and faced a [[Operation Horev|land assault]] beginning in late December which culminated in the [[Battle of Rafah (1949)|Battle of Rafah]] in early January of the new year. With the subsequent armistice of [[1949 Armistice Agreements#With Egypt|24 February 1949]] and evacuation of almost 4,000 Arab soldiers and civilians from Gaza, the Saudi contingent withdrew through [[Arish]] and returned to Saudi Arabia.<ref>Gelber, p. 239</ref>

During the first truce, Sudan sent six companies of regular troops to fight alongside the Egyptians.<ref>Morris, 2008, p. 269.</ref> Yemen also committed a small expeditionary force to the war effort, and contingents from Morocco joined the Arab armies as well.<ref name="Morris, 2008, p. 205"/>

==Course of the war==
At the last moment, several Arab leaders, to avert catastrophe – secretly appealed to the British to hold on in Palestine for at least another year.<ref>{{cite book|author=Benny Morris|title=1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CC7381HrLqcC&pg=PA332|access-date=14 July 2013|date=1 October 2008|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=978-0-300-14524-3|page=185|quote=King Abdullah had always acknowledged Arab (as distinct from Jordanian) weakness, and his son, Prince Talal, openly predicted defeat. at the last moment, several leaders, including King Ibn Sagud and Azzam Pasha – to avert catastrophe – secretly appealed to the British to soldier on in Palestine for at least another year. Egypt's foreign minister, Khashaba, had already done so. He 'wished they would remain, and suggested that it was their duty to do so.'}}</ref><ref name="Tucker528">{{cite book |last=Tucker |first=Spencer C. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YAd8efHdVzIC&pg=PA528 |title=The Encyclopedia of the Arab-Israeli Conflict: A Political, Social, and Military History |publisher=ABC-CLIO |year=2008 |isbn=978-1-85109-841-5 |page=528 |access-date=19 March 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230320123847/https://books.google.com/books?id=YAd8efHdVzIC&pg=PA528 |archive-date=20 March 2023 |url-status=live}}</ref>

===First phase: 15 May – 11 June 1948===
{{Further|1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine|Plan Dalet|Israeli Declaration of Independence}}

[[File:1948_Arab_Israeli_War_-_May_15-June_10.svg|thumb|250x250px|Arab offensive, 15 May – 10 June 1948]]
[[File:Butterfly_Armored-car_Gvar-Am-israel1948.jpg|thumb|A "Butterfly" improvised armoured car of the Haganah at [[Kibbutz]] [[Dorot]] in the [[Negev]], [[Israel]] 1948. The armoured car is based on [[Canadian Military Pattern truck|CMP]]-15 truck. The car has brought supply to the kibbutz. The Negev Kibbutz's{{dubious|Bad English. ALL kibbutz children from the Negev were evacuated, or just those from Dorot?|date=January 2016}} children were later evacuated by those cars from their kibbutz, before an expected Egyptian Army attack.]]
The [[1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine|civil war in Mandatory Palestine]] became a war between separate [[Nation state|states]] with the [[Israeli Declaration of Independence|declaration of the establishment]] of the [[Israel|State of Israel]] on 14 May 1948, a few hours before the termination of the [[Mandatory Palestine|British Mandate of Palestine]] at midnight. The following morning, the [[Regular army|regular armies]] of neighbouring Arab states{{snd}}[[Kingdom of Egypt|Egypt]], [[Emirate of Transjordan|Transjordan]] and [[Syrian Republic (1946–63)|Syria]]{{snd}}invaded the region.<ref>[[Yoav Gelber]], ''Palestine 1948'', 2006 – Chap. 8 "The Arab Regular Armies' Invasion of Palestine".</ref><ref>{{cite web |date=12 May 1948 |title=Communication dated 11 May 1948 from J. Fletcher-Cooke of the United Kingdom delegation to the United Nations Commission on Palestine to Dr. Ralph J. Bunche, Principal Secretary to the Commission: Retrieved 15 December 2013 |url=https://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/38D6FE31E6BEDBC485257089006EC7E5 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131212204736/http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/38D6FE31E6BEDBC485257089006EC7E5 |archive-date=12 December 2013 |access-date=29 June 2014 |publisher=Unispal.un.org}}</ref>{{page needed|date=October 2024}}

Through [[Plan Dalet]], Zionist forces had already, from 1 April down to 14 May, conducted 8 of its 13 full-scale military operations outside of the area allotted to a Jewish state by partition, and the operational commander [[Yigal Allon]] later stated that had it not been for the Arab invasion, Haganah's forces would have reached 'the natural borders of western Israel.'<ref>Sean F. McMahon,''The Discourse of Palestinian-Israeli Relations: Persistent Analytics and Practices,'' Routledge 2010 p. 37: "If it wasn't for the Arab invasion there would have been no stop to the expansion of the forces of Haganah who could have, with the same drive, reached the natural borders of western Israel". [[Walid Khalidi]], "Plan Dalet: Master Plan for the Conquest of Palestine," ''[[Journal of Palestine Studies]]'', Vol. 18, No. 1, Special Issue: Palestine 1948, (Autumn,1988), pp. 4–33, p. 19.</ref> Although the Arab invasion was denounced by the United States, the Soviet Union, and UN secretary-general [[Trygve Lie]], it found support from the [[Republic of China (1912–1949)|Republic of China]] and other UN member states.<ref name="Tucker528"/>

The initial Arab plans called for Syrian and Lebanese forces to invade from north while Jordanian and Iraqi forces were to invade from east in order to meet at Nazareth and then to push forward together to Haifa. In the south, the Egyptians were to advance and take Tel Aviv.<ref name="Gelber2006p130">Yoav Gelber (2006), p. 130.</ref> At the Arab League meeting in Damascus on 11–13 May, Abdullah rejected the plan, which served Syrian interests, using the fact his allies were afraid to go to war without his army. He proposed that the Iraqis attack the Jezreel valley and the Arab Legion enter Ramallah and Nablus and link with the Egyptian army at Hebron,<ref name="Gelber2006p130" /> which was more in compliance with his political objective to occupy the territory allocated to the Arab State by the partition plan and promises not to invade the territory allocated to the Jewish State by the partition plan. In addition, Lebanon decided not to take part in the war at the last minute, due to the still-influential Christians' opposition, encouraged by Jewish bribes.<ref>Gelber (2006), p. 11 "Lebanon was active in forming the political coalition, but ultimately abstained from military participation, presumably owing to the still influential Christians' opposition, encouraged by Jewish bribes."</ref>

Intelligence provided by the [[Consulate General of France in Jerusalem|French consulate in Jerusalem]] on 12 May 1948 on the Arab armies' invading forces and their revised plan to invade the new state contributed to Israel's success in withstanding the Arab invasion.<ref name="Zamir2010p21" />

The first mission of the Jewish forces was to hold on against the Arab armies and stop them, although the Arabs had enjoyed major advantages (the initiative, vastly superior firepower).<ref>Morris, 2008, p. 263</ref> As the British stopped blocking the incoming Jewish immigrants and arms supply, the Israeli forces grew steadily with large numbers of immigrants and weapons, that allowed the Haganah to transform itself from a paramilitary force into a real army. Initially, the fighting was handled mainly by the Haganah, along with the smaller Jewish militant groups [[Irgun]] and [[Lehi (group)|Lehi]]. On 26 May 1948, Israel established the [[Israel Defense Forces]] (IDF), incorporating these forces into one military under a central command.<!-- any info on its initial force? -->{{citation needed|date=May 2021}}

====Southern front – Negev====
[[File:Nirim1948 1.jpg|thumb|Israeli soldiers in [[Nirim]]]]
[[File:Negba1948Defenses.jpg|thumb|upright|Israeli soldiers in [[Negba]]]]
The Egyptian force, the largest among the Arab armies, invaded from the south.

On 15 May 1948, the Egyptians attacked two settlements: [[Battle of Nirim|Nirim]], using artillery, armoured cars carrying cannons, and [[Bren carrier]]s;<ref name="morris2008p236" /> and [[Battles of Kfar Darom|Kfar Darom]]<ref name="morris2008p236" /> using artillery, tanks and aircraft. The Egyptians' attacks met fierce resistance from the few and lightly armed defenders of both settlements, and failed. On 19 May the Egyptians attacked [[Battle of Yad Mordechai|Yad Mordechai]], where an inferior force of 100 Israelis armed with nothing more than rifles, a medium machinegun and a [[PIAT]] anti-tank weapon, held up a column of 2,500 Egyptians, well-supported by armour, artillery and air units, for five days.<ref>{{harvnb|Karsh|2002|p=57}}</ref> The Egyptians took heavy losses, while the losses sustained by the defenders were comparatively light.<ref name="Karsh2002p56" />

One of the Egyptian force's two main columns made its way northwards along the shoreline, through what is today the [[Gaza Strip]] and the other column advanced eastwards toward [[Beersheba]].<ref name="Karsh2002p56">{{harvnb|Karsh|2002|p=56}}</ref><ref>Wallach et al. (Volume 2, 1978), p. 29</ref> To secure their flanks, the Egyptians attacked and laid siege to a number of [[kibbutz]]im in the [[Negev]], among those Kfar Darom, Nirim, Yad Mordechai, and [[Battles of Negba#First skirmishes and battle of June 2|Negba]].<ref name="Karsh2002p56" /><ref>Tal, 2004, p. 179</ref> The Israeli defenders held out fiercely for days against vastly superior forces, and managed to buy valuable time for the IDF's [[Givati Brigade]] to prepare to stop the Egyptian drive on Tel Aviv.

On 28 May the Egyptians renewed their northern advance, and stopped at a destroyed bridge north to [[Ashdod|Isdud]]. The Givati Brigade reported this advance but no fighters were sent to confront the Egyptians. Had the Egyptians wished to continue their advance northward, towards [[Tel Aviv]], there would have been no Israeli force to block them.<ref>Morris, 2008, p. 239</ref><ref>Tal, 2004 p. 182</ref>

{{Further|Operation Pleshet}}
From 29 May to 3 June, Israeli forces stopped the Egyptian drive north in [[Operation Pleshet]]. In the first combat mission performed by Israel's fledgling air force, four [[Avia S-199]]s attacked an Egyptian armoured column of 500 vehicles on its way to [[Ashdod|Isdud]]. The Israeli planes dropped 70 kilogram bombs and strafed the column, although their machine guns jammed quickly. Two of the planes crashed, killing a pilot. The attack caused the Egyptians to scatter, and they had lost the initiative by the time they had regrouped. Following the air attack, Israeli forces constantly bombarded Egyptian forces in Isdud with [[Canon de 65 M (montagne) modele 1906|''Napoleonchik'']] cannons, and IDF patrols engaged in small-scale harassment of Egyptian lines. Following another air attack, the Givati Brigade launched a counterattack. Although the counterattack was repulsed, the Egyptian offensive was halted as Egypt changed its strategy from offensive to defensive, and the initiative shifted to Israel.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Society_%26_Culture/48iaf.html|title=1948: The War of Independence|publisher=Jewishvirtuallibrary.org|access-date=26 June 2010|archive-date=3 December 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161203093021/https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Society_%26_Culture/48iaf.html|url-status=dead}}</ref>{{better source needed|date=June 2022}}

On 6 June, in the [[Battle of Nitzanim]], Egyptian forces attacked the kibbutz of [[Nitzanim]], located between [[al-Majdal, Askalan|Majdal]] and [[Isdud]], and the Israeli defenders surrendered after resisting for five days.

==== Battles of Latrun ====
{{Further|Battles of Latrun (1948)}}
The heaviest fighting occurred in [[Battle for Jerusalem (1948)|Jerusalem]] and on the Jerusalem – Tel Aviv road, between Jordan's [[Arab Legion]] and Israeli forces.<ref>{{harvnb|Karsh|2002|pp=61–62}}</ref> As part of the redeployment to deal with the Egyptian advance, the Israelis abandoned the Latrun fortress overlooking the main highway to Jerusalem, which the Arab Legion immediately seized.<ref>{{harvnb|Karsh|2002|p=61}}</ref> The Arab Legion also occupied the Latrun Monastery. From these positions, the Jordanians were able to cut off supplies to Israeli fighters and civilians in Jerusalem.<ref name="Karsh2002p62">{{harvnb|Karsh|2002|p=62}}</ref>

The Israelis attempted to take the Latrun fortress in a series of battles lasting from 24 May to 18 July. The Arab Legion held Latrun and managed to repulse the attacks.<ref name="Karsh2002p62" /> During the attempts to take Latrun, Israeli forces suffered some 586 casualties, among them [[Mickey Marcus]], Israel's first general, who was killed by [[friendly fire]]. The Arab Legion also took losses, losing 90 dead and some 200 wounded up to 29 May.<ref>''War in Palestine, 1948: Israeli and Arab Strategy and Diplomacy. David Tal''.</ref>
{{gallery|align=center|captionstyle=text-align:center|width=240|height=160
| Handasa-burma001.jpg | Building the Burma Road
| Burma Road 1948.jpg | A bulldozer tows a truck on the "Burma road", June 1948
| Latroun (11 juin).png | Area map
}}
The besieged Israeli [[Jerusalem]] was only saved via the opening of the so-called "[[Burma Road (Israel)|Burma Road]]", a makeshift bypass road built by Israeli forces that allowed Israeli supply convoys to pass into Jerusalem.<ref name="Karsh2002p62" /> Parts of the area where the road was built were cleared of Jordanian snipers in May and the road was completed on 14 June. Supplies had already begun passing through before the road was completed, with the first convoy passing through on the night of 1–2 June. The Jordanians spotted the activity and attempted to shell the road, but were ineffective, as it could not be seen. However, Jordanian sharpshooters killed several road workers, and an attack on 9 June left eight Israelis dead. On 18 July, elements of the [[Harel Brigade]] took about 10 villages to the south of Latrun to enlarge and secure the area of the Burma Road.{{citation needed|date=May 2021}}

The Arab Legion was able to repel an Israeli attack on Latrun. The Jordanians launched two counterattacks, temporarily taking [[Beit Susin]] before being forced back, and capturing [[Gezer (kibbutz)|Gezer]] after a fierce battle, which was retaken by two Palmach squads the same evening.<ref>Morris, 2008, pp. 229–230</ref>

{{gallery|align=center|captionstyle=text-align:center|width=240|height=160
| 1948-Jordanian artillery shelling Jerusalem.jpg| Jordanian artillery shelling Jerusalem in 1948
| Arab Legion soldier in ruins of Hurva.jpg | [[Arab Legion]] soldier standing in ruins of the most sacred Synagogue, the [[Hurva Synagogue|"Hurva"]], [[Old City (Jerusalem)|Old City]].<ref name="Morris2008p218"/>
| Jewish Quarter Refugees.jpg | Jewish residents of Jerusalem fleeing during the battle for the [[Old City (Jerusalem)|Old City]]
}}

====Battle for Jerusalem====
{{Further|Battle for Jerusalem}}
[[File:Prof Fekete Rector Heb Uni-water-allocation.jpg|thumb|upright=.6|Mathematics professor [[Michael Fekete]], the [[Provost (education)|Provost]] of the [[Hebrew University]] of [[Jerusalem]], with his water quota, during the siege of Jerusalem]]
The Jordanians in [[Latrun]] cut off supplies to western Jerusalem.<ref name="Karsh2002p62"/> Though some supplies, mostly munitions, were airdropped into the city, the shortage of food, water, fuel and medicine was acute. The Israeli forces were seriously short of food, water and ammunition.<ref name="Karsh2002p62" />

King Abdullah ordered [[John Bagot Glubb|Glubb Pasha]], the commander of the Arab Legion, to enter Jerusalem on 17 May. The Arab Legion fired 10,000 artillery and mortar shells a day,<ref name="Karsh2002p62" /> and also attacked [[West Jerusalem]] with sniper fire.

Heavy house-to-house fighting occurred between 19 and 28 May, with the Arab Legion eventually succeeding in pushing Israeli forces from the Arab neighbourhoods of Jerusalem as well as the [[Jewish Quarter (Jerusalem)|Jewish Quarter]] of the Old City.<ref name="Karsh2002p62"/> The 1,500 Jewish inhabitants of the Old City's Jewish Quarter were expelled, and several hundred were detained. The Jews had to be escorted out by the Arab Legion to protect them against Palestinian Arab mobs that intended to massacre them.<ref>(Morris (2008), "1948: The First Arab-Israeli War", Yale University Press, New Haven, {{ISBN|978-0-300-12696-9}}, p. 219).[[Mordechai Weingarten]]</ref>

On 22 May, Arab forces attacked kibbutz [[Ramat Rachel]] south of Jerusalem. After a fierce battle in which 31 Jordanians and 13 Israelis were killed, the defenders of Ramat Rachel withdrew, only to partially retake the kibbutz the following day. Fighting continued until 26 May, until the entire kibbutz was recaptured. [[Har Adar|Radar Hill]] was also taken from the Arab Legion, and held until 26 May, when the Jordanians retook it in a battle that left 19 Israelis and 2 Jordanians dead.<ref>Netanel Lorch (1961), p. 192</ref> A total of 23 attempts by the [[Harel Brigade]] to capture Radar Hill in the war failed.{{citation needed|date=May 2021}}

The same day, [[Thomas C. Wasson]], the [[Consulate General of the United States, Jerusalem|US Consul-General in Jerusalem]] and a member of the UN Truce Commission was shot dead in West Jerusalem. It was disputed whether Wasson was killed by the Arabs or Israelis.{{citation needed|date=May 2021}}

In mid to late October 1948, the [[Harel Brigade]] began its offensive in what was known as [[Operation Ha-Har]], to secure the [[Jerusalem Corridor]].{{citation needed|date=May 2021}}

====Northern Samaria====
{{Further|Battle of Jenin (1948)}}
[[File:Afulahagana.jpg|thumb|left|Israeli soldiers in [[Afula]] ]]
An Iraqi force consisting of two infantry and one armoured brigade crossed the Jordan River from northern Jordan, [[Gesher, Israel#1948 Israeli-Arab war|attacking the Israeli settlement of Gesher]] with little success.<ref name="morris2008p236"/> Following this defeat, Iraqi forces moved into the strategic triangle bounded by the Arab towns [[Nablus]], [[Jenin]] and [[Tulkarm]]. On 25 May, they were making their way towards [[Netanya]], when they were stopped.<ref name="Karsh2002p60" /> On 29 May, an Israeli attack against the Iraqis led to three days of heavy fighting over Jenin, but Iraqi forces managed to hold their positions.<ref name="Karsh2002p60" /> After these battles, the Iraqi forces became stationary and their involvement in the war effectively ended.<ref name="Pollack149-155" /><ref name="Karsh2002p60" />

Iraqi forces failed in their attacks on Israeli settlements with the most notable battle taking place at [[Gesher, Israel|Gesher]], and instead took defensive positions around [[Jenin]], [[Nablus]], and [[Tulkarm]], from where they could put pressure on the Israeli center.{{citation needed|date=May 2014}}<ref>''[[The Palestine Post]]'': ''State of Israel is Born'' (1948)</ref> On 25 May, Iraqi forces advanced from Tulkarm, taking [[Geulim]] and reaching [[Kfar Yona]] and [[Ein Vered]] on the Tulkarm-[[Netanya]] road. The [[Alexandroni Brigade]] then stopped the Iraqi advance and retook Geulim. The IDF [[Carmeli Brigade|Carmeli]] and [[Golani Brigade]]s attempted to capture Jenin during an offensive launched on 31 May, but were defeated in course of the subsequent [[Battle of Jenin (1948)|battle]] by an Iraqi counterattack.{{Citation needed|date=May 2021}}

====Northern front – Lake of Galilee====
[[File:Deganiatank1.jpg|thumb|Syrian [[Renault R35|R-35]] [[light tank]] destroyed at [[Degania Alef]] ]]
{{Further|Battles of the Kinarot Valley}}
On 14 May Syria entered Palestine with the 1st Infantry Brigade supported by a battalion of armoured cars, a company of French [[Renault R35|R 35]] and R 37 tanks, an artillery battalion and other units.<ref name="pollack2002p448-457">Pollack 2002, pp. 448–457</ref> The Syrian president, [[Shukri al-Quwwatli]] instructed his troops in the front, "to destroy the Zionists". "The situation was very grave. There aren't enough rifles. There are no heavy weapons," [[David Ben-Gurion|Ben-Gurion]] told the Israeli Cabinet.<ref>Morris, 2008, pp. 253–254</ref><ref name="Tal, 2004, pp. 251">Tal, 2004, p. 251</ref> On 15 May, the Syrian forces turned to the eastern and southern [[Sea of Galilee]] shores, and attacked [[Samakh, Tiberias|Samakh]] the neighbouring [[Tegart fort]] and the settlements of [[Sha'ar HaGolan]], [[Ein Gev]], but they were bogged down by resistance.<ref name="morris2008p236"/> Later, they attacked [[Samakh, Tiberias|Samakh]] using tanks and aircraft, and on 18 May they succeeded in conquering [[Samakh, Tiberias|Samakh]]<ref name="pollack2002p448-457"/> and occupied the abandoned [[Sha'ar HaGolan]].<ref name="morris2008p236"/>

On 21 May, the Syrian army was stopped at kibbutz [[Battles of the Kinarot Valley|Degania Alef]] in the north, where local militia reinforced by elements of the [[Carmeli Brigade]] halted Syrian armoured forces with [[Molotov cocktail]]s, hand grenades and a single [[PIAT]]. One tank that was disabled by Molotov cocktails and hand grenades still remains at the kibbutz. The remaining Syrian forces were driven off the next day by four [[Napoleonchik]] mountain guns – Israel's first use of artillery during the war.<ref>{{cite book |last=Dupuy |first=Trevor N. |title=Elusive Victory: The Arab–Israeli Wars, 1947–1974 |publisher=Military Book Club |year=2002 |page=[https://archive.org/details/carryingwaterasw0000tate/page/49 49] |isbn=978-0-9654428-0-0 |url=https://archive.org/details/carryingwaterasw0000tate/page/49 }}</ref> Following the Syrian forces' defeat at the [[Degania Alef|Deganias]] a few days later, they abandoned the [[Samakh, Tiberias|Samakh]] village.<ref name="pollack2002p448-457"/> The Syrians were forced to besiege the kibbutz rather than advance.<ref name="Karsh2002p60">{{harvnb|Karsh|2002|p=60}}</ref> One author claims that the main reason for the Syrian defeat was the Syrian soldiers' low regard for the Israelis who they believed would not stand and fight against the Arab army.<ref name="Tal, 2004, pp. 251"/>

On 6 June, the 3rd battalion of the [[Lebanese Armed Forces|Lebanese Army]] took [[Al-Malkiyya]] and [[Qadas]] in what became the only intervention of the Lebanese army during the war, handing the towns over to the [[Arab Liberation Army]] and withdrawing on 8 July.<ref name="Hughes" />

On 6 June, Syrian forces attacked Mishmar HaYarden, but they were repulsed. On 10 June, the Syrians overran [[Mishmar HaYarden]] and advanced to the main road, where they were stopped by units of the [[Oded Brigade]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Khalidi |first=Walid |title=[[All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948]] <!--|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_By7AAAAIAAJ--> |publisher=Institute for Palestine Studies |year=1992 |page=480 |isbn=978-0-88728-224-9 }}</ref> Subsequently, the Syrians reverted to a defensive posture, conducting only a few minor attacks on small, exposed Israeli settlements.<ref name="pollack2002p448-457"/>

==== Palestinian forces ====
[[File:PikiWiki Israel 20772 The Palmach.jpg|right|thumb|upright| Kaukji, the [[Arab Liberation Army]] commander]]
In the continuity of the civil war between Jewish and Arab forces that had begun in 1947, battles between Israeli forces and Palestinian Arab militias took place, particularly in the Lydda, al-Ramla, Jerusalem, and Haifa areas. On 23 May, the [[Alexandroni Brigade]] captured [[Tantura]], south of [[Haifa]], from Arab forces. On 2 June, Holy War Army commander [[Hasan Salama]] was killed in a battle with Haganah at [[Ras al-Ein]].{{Citation needed|date=May 2021}}

==== Air operations ====
[[File:Egyptian Plane TA 1948.jpg|thumb|left|An Egyptian [[Supermarine Spitfire|Spitfire]] shot down over Tel Aviv on 15 May 1948]]
[[File:Egyptian bombing 1948.jpg|thumb|left|Volunteers evacuating a wounded man during Egyptian bombardment of Tel Aviv.]]{{Cite check section|date=January 2024|talk=gross source misrepresentation in section #Air operations}}
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 [[Sde Dov Airport|Sde Dov]], with the first ground support operation (in an [[RWD-13]])<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.luftfahrtmuseum.com/htmi/itf/rwd13.htm |title=Virtual Aviation Museum – RWD 13 |publisher=Luftfahrtmuseum.com |access-date=29 June 2014 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303230852/http://www.luftfahrtmuseum.com/htmi/itf/rwd13.htm |archive-date=3 March 2016 }}</ref> taking place on 17 December. The [[Galilee Squadron]] was formed at [[Yavne'el]] in March 1948, and the Negev Squadron was formed at [[Nir-Am]] in April. By 10 May, when the SA suffered its first combat loss, there were three flying units, an air staff, maintenance facilities and logistics support. At the outbreak of the war on 15 May, the SA became the [[Israeli Air Force]]. With its fleet<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.aeroflight.co.uk/waf/israel/iaftypes.htm|title=Israel Air Force Aircraft Types|date=19 September 1999|first=John|last=Hayles|publisher=John Hayles, aeroflight.co.uk|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070222090625/http://www.aeroflight.co.uk/waf/israel/iaftypes.htm|archive-date=22 February 2007}}</ref> of light planes it was no match for Arab forces during the first few weeks of the war with their [[T-6 Texan|T-6s]], [[Spitfire]]s, [[C-47]]s, and [[Avro Anson]]s.

On 15 May, with the beginning of the war, four [[Royal Egyptian Air Force]] (REAF) Spitfires attacked [[Tel Aviv]], bombing [[Sde Dov Airport|Sde Dov Airfield]], where the bulk of Sherut Avir's aircraft were concentrated, as well as the [[Reading Power Station]]. Several aircraft were destroyed, some others were damaged, and five Israelis were killed. Throughout the following hours, additional waves of Egyptian aircraft bombed and strafed targets around Tel Aviv, although these raids had little effect. One Spitfire was shot down by anti-aircraft fire, and its pilot was taken prisoner.<ref name="Morris 2008, p. 261">Morris (2008), p. 261</ref>

Throughout the next six days, the REAF continued to attack Tel Aviv, causing civilian casualties. On 18 May, Egyptian warplanes attacked the [[Tel Aviv Central Bus Station]], killing 42 people and wounding 100. In addition to their attacks on Tel Aviv, the Egyptians bombed rural settlements and airfields, though few casualties were caused in these raids.<ref name="Morris 2008, p. 261"/>

At the outset of the war, the REAF was able to attack Israel with near impunity, due to the lack of Israeli fighter aircraft to intercept them,<ref>Morris, 2008, p. 235</ref> and met only ground fire.

As more effective air defences were transferred to Tel Aviv, the Egyptians began taking significant aircraft losses. As a result of these losses, as well as the loss of five Spitfires downed by the British when the Egyptians mistakenly attacked [[Ramat David Airbase|RAF Ramat David]], the Egyptian air attacks became less frequent. By the end of May 1948, almost the entire REAF Spitfire squadron based in [[El Arish]] had been lost, including many of its best pilots.{{citation needed|date=May 2021}}

Although lacking fighter or bomber aircraft, in the first few days of the war, Israel's embryonic air force still attacked Arab targets, with light aircraft being utilised as makeshift bombers, striking Arab encampments and columns. The raids were mostly carried out at night to avoid interception by Arab fighter aircraft. These attacks usually had little effect, except on morale.{{Citation needed|date=May 2021}}
[[File:Avia-S-199-IAF-101Sqn-Tel-Nof-Israel-1948-01.jpg|thumb|An Avia S-199, Israel's 1st fighter aircraft]]
[[File:Spitfire-MkIX-hatzerim-1-2.jpg|thumb|An Israeli Spitfire F Mk]]
[[File:Israeli B-17Gs 01011953.JPG|thumb|upright|Israeli B-17s in flight]]

The balance of air power soon began to swing in favour of the Israeli Air Force following the arrival of 25 [[Avia S-199]]s from [[Czechoslovakia]], the first of which arrived in Israel on 20 May. Ironically, Israel was using the Avia S-199, an inferior derivative of the [[Messerschmitt Bf 109|Bf 109]] designed in [[Nazi Germany]] to counter British-designed Spitfires flown by Egypt. Throughout the rest of the war, Israel would acquire more Avia fighters, as well as 62 Spitfires from Czechoslovakia. On 28 May 1948, Sherut Avir became the Israeli Air Force.<ref>{{cite web |title=Focus on Israel: MACHAL – Overseas Volunteers |url=https://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/mfa-archive/1999/pages/focus%20on%20israel-%20machal%20-%20overseas%20volunteers.aspx |website=Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs |access-date=30 November 2021 |archive-date=27 November 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211127090419/http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/mfa-archive/1999/pages/focus%20on%20israel-%20machal%20-%20overseas%20volunteers.aspx |url-status=live }}</ref>

Many of the pilots who fought for the Israeli Air Force were [[Mahal (Israel)|foreign volunteers]] or mercenaries, including many [[World War II]] veterans.<ref>David Bercuson (1984), p. 74</ref>

On 3 June, Israel scored its first victory in aerial combat when Israeli pilot [[Modi Alon]] shot down a pair of Egyptian DC-3s that had just bombed Tel Aviv. Although Tel Aviv would see additional raids by fighter aircraft, there would be no more raids by bombers for the rest of the war. From then on, the [[Israeli Air Force]] began engaging the Arab air forces in air-to-air combat. The first dogfight took place on 8 June, when an Israeli fighter plane flown by Gideon Lichtman shot down an Egyptian Spitfire. By the fall of 1948, the IAF had achieved [[air superiority]] and had superior firepower and more knowledgeable personnel, many of whom had seen action in World War II.<ref>Morris, 2001, pp. 217–218.</ref> Israeli planes then began intercepting and engaging Arab aircraft on bombing missions.

Following Israeli air attacks on Egyptian and Iraqi columns, the Egyptians repeatedly bombed [[Tel Nof Airbase|Ekron Airfield]], where IAF fighters were based. During a 30 May raid, bombs aimed for Ekron hit central [[Rehovot]], killing 7 civilians and wounding 30. In response to this, and probably to the Jordanian victories at [[Battles of Latrun (1948)|Latrun]], Israel began bombing targets in Arab cities. On the night of 31 May/1 June, the first Israeli raid on an Arab capital took place when three IAF planes flew to [[Amman]] and dropped several dozen 55 and 110-pound bombs, hitting the King's Palace and an adjacent British airfield. Some 12 people were killed and 30 wounded. During the attack, an RAF hangar was damaged, as were some British aircraft. The British threatened that in the event of another such attack, they would shoot down the attacking aircraft and bomb Israeli airfields, and as a result, Israeli aircraft did not attack Amman again for the rest of the war. Israel also bombed [[Arish]], [[Gaza City|Gaza]], [[Damascus]], and [[Cairo]]. Israeli [[Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress]] bombers flying to Israel from [[Czechoslovakia]] bombed Egypt on their way.<ref>Morris, 2008, p. 262.</ref><ref>Aloni, 2001, pp. 7–11.</ref>

==== Sea battles ====
[[File:Northland Color 1.jpg|left|thumb|''Northland'' in [[Greenland]] ''circa'' 1944 which became the Israeli INS Eilat]]
At the outset of the war, the [[Israeli Navy]] consisted of three former [[Aliyah Bet]] ships that had been seized by the British and impounded in [[Haifa]] harbour, where they were tied up at the breakwater. Work on establishing a navy had begun shortly before Israeli independence, and the three ships were selected due to them having a military background – one, the INS ''Eilat'', was an ex-[[United States Coast Guard|US Coast Guard]] icebreaker, and the other two, the INS ''Haganah'' and INS ''Wedgwood'', had been [[Royal Canadian Navy]] corvettes.<ref name="navy"/><ref name="Gershoni, pp. 46–47">Gershoni, pp. 46–47</ref>

The ships were put into minimum running condition by contractors dressed as stevedores and port personnel, who were able to work in the engine rooms and below deck. The work had to be clandestine to avoid arousing British suspicion. On 21 May 1948, the three ships set sail for Tel Aviv, and were made to look like ships that had been purchased by foreign owners for commercial use. In Tel Aviv, the ships were fitted with small field guns dating to the late 19th century and anti-aircraft guns.<ref name="navy"/><ref name="Gershoni, pp. 46–47"/>

After the British left Haifa port on 30 June, Haifa became the main base of the Israeli Navy. In October 1948, a [[submarine chaser]] was purchased from the United States. The warships were manned by former merchant seamen, former crewmembers of Aliyah Bet ships, Israelis who had served in the [[Royal Navy]] during World War II, and foreign volunteers. The newly refurbished and crewed warships served on coastal patrol duties and bombarded Egyptian coastal installations in and around the [[Gaza City|Gaza]] area all the way to [[Port Said]].<ref name="navy">{{cite web |url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Society_%26_Culture/machalnavy.html |title=History of the Navy |publisher=Jewishvirtuallibrary.org |access-date=18 January 2013 |archive-date=10 March 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120310044400/http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Society_%26_Culture/machalnavy.html |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name="Gershoni, pp. 46–47"/>{{better source needed|date=June 2022}}

==== Israeli use of biological warfare ====
{{Main|Operation Cast Thy Bread}}

Research by Israeli historians [[Benny Morris]] and [[Benjamin Kedar]] show that during the 1948 war, Israel conducted a [[Operation Cast Thy Bread|biological warfare operation codenamed Cast Thy Bread]]. According to Morris and Kedar, the Haganah initially used [[Typhoid fever|typhoid]] bacteria to contaminate water wells in newly cleared Arab villages to prevent the population including militiamen from returning. Later, the biological warfare campaign expanded to include Jewish settlements that were in imminent danger of being captured by Arab troops and inhabited Arab towns not slated for capture. There were also plans to expand the biological warfare campaign into other Arab states including Egypt, Lebanon and Syria, but they were not carried out.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Benny |last2=Kedar |first2=Benjamin Z. |date=2022-01-01 |title='Cast thy bread': Israeli biological warfare during the 1948 War |url=http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85138258079&partnerID=8YFLogxK |journal=Middle Eastern Studies |volume=59 |issue=5 |pages=752–776 |doi=10.1080/00263206.2022.2122448 |issn=0026-3206 |s2cid=252389726|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

==== End of the first phase ====
[[File:Palestine Military Situation, June 11, 1948, Truman Papers.jpg|thumb|The Palestine Military Situation, 11 June 1948. Truman Papers]]
Throughout the following days, the Arabs were only able to make limited gains due to fierce Israeli resistance, and were quickly driven off their new holdings by Israeli counterattacks.{{citation needed|date=May 2021}}

As the war progressed, the IDF managed to field more troops than the Arab forces. In July 1948, the IDF had 63,000 troops; by early spring 1949, they had 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.{{Citation needed|date=May 2021}}

Upon the implementation of the truce, the IDF had control over nine Arab cities and towns or mixed cities and towns: New [[Jerusalem]], [[Jaffa]], [[Haifa]], [[Acre, Israel|Acre]], [[Safed]], [[Tiberias]], [[Baysan]] (Beit She'an), [[Samakh, Tiberias|Samakh]] and [[Yibna]] ([[Yavne]]). Another city, [[Jenin]], was not occupied but its residents fled. The combined Arab forces captured 14 Jewish settlement points, but only one of them, [[Mishmar HaYarden]], was in the territory of the proposed Jewish State according to [[United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine|Resolution 181]].<ref name=statsgelber/>

Within the boundaries of the proposed Jewish state, there were twelve Arab villages which opposed Jewish control or were captured by the invading Arab armies, and in addition to them, the [[Lod Airport]] and pumping station near [[Antipatris]], which were within the boundaries of the proposed Jewish state, were under the control of the Arabs. The IDF captured about 50 large Arab villages outside of the boundaries of the proposed Jewish State and a larger number of hamlets and Bedouin encampments. 350 square kilometres of the proposed Jewish State were under the control of the Arab forces, while 700 square kilometres of the proposed Arab State were under the control of the IDF. This figure ignores the Negev desert which was not under any absolute control of either side.<ref name=statsgelber>Gelber, 2004 {{page needed|date=May 2021}}; Kinneret, p. 220</ref>{{page needed|date=May 2021}}

In the period between the invasion and the first truce the Syrian army had 315 of its men killed and 400–500 injured; the Iraqi expeditionary force had 200 of its men killed and 500 injured; the Jordanian Arab Legion had 300 of its men killed and 400–500 injured (including irregulars and Palestinian volunteers fighting under the Jordanians); the Egyptian army had 600 of its men killed and 1,400 injured (including irregulars from the [[Muslim Brotherhood]]); the ALA, which returned to fight in early June, had 100 of its men killed or injured. 800 Jews were taken hostage by the Arabs and 1,300 Arabs were taken hostage by the Jews, mostly Palestinians.<ref name=statsgelber/>{{page needed|date=May 2021}}

===First truce: 11 June – 8 July 1948===
The UN declared a truce on 29 May, which came into effect on 11 June and lasted 28 days.
The truce was designed to last 28 days and an arms embargo was declared with the intention that neither side would make any gains from the truce. Neither side respected the truce; both found ways around the restrictions placed on them.<ref name="Karsh2002p64">{{harvnb|Karsh|2002|p=64}}</ref> Both the Israelis and the Arabs used this time to improve their positions, a direct violation of the terms of the ceasefire.<ref name="Morris2008p269">Morris, 2008, pp. 269–71</ref>

====Reinforcements====
{|class="wikitable floatright"
|+ Israeli Forces 1948<ref>[[Ahron Bregman|Bregman]], 2002, p. 24 citing Ben Gurion's diary of the war</ref>
|-
|Initial strength
|29,677
|-
|4 June
|40,825
|-
|17 July
|63,586
|-
|7 October
|88,033
|-
|28 October
|92,275
|-
|2 December
|106,900
|-
|23 December
|107,652
|-
|30 December
|108,300
|}
At the time of the truce, the British view was that "the Jews are too weak in armament to achieve spectacular success".<ref name="Karsh2002p64" /> As the truce commenced, a British officer stationed in [[Haifa]] stated that 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".<ref name="Morris2008p269" /> During the truce, the Israelis sought to bolster their forces by massive import of arms.<ref name="Karsh2002p64" /> The IDF was able to [[Arms shipments from Czechoslovakia to Israel 1947–1949|acquire weapons from Czechoslovakia]] as well as improve training of forces and reorganisation of the army during this time. [[Yitzhak Rabin]], an IDF commander at the time of the war and later Israel's fifth Prime Minister, stated "[w]ithout the arms from Czechoslovakia... it is very doubtful whether we would have been able to conduct the war".<ref>{{cite book |author1=Ahron Bregman |author-link1=Ahron Bregman |author2=Jihan El-Tahri |author-link2=Jihan El-Tahri |title=The Fifty Years War: Israel and the Arabs |url=https://archive.org/details/fiftyyearswarisr00breg |url-access=registration |publisher=[[BBC Books]] |year=1999|isbn=978-1-57500-057-2 }}</ref>

The Israeli army increased its manpower from approximately 30,000–35,000 men to almost 65,000 during the truce due to mobilisation and the constant immigration into Israel. It was also able to increase its arms supply to more than 25,000 rifles, 5,000 machine guns, and fifty million bullets.<ref name="Morris2008p269" /> As well as violating the arms and personnel embargo, they also sent fresh units to the front lines, much as their Arab enemies did.<ref name="Morris2008p269" />

[[File:Altalena off Tel-Aviv beach.jpg|thumb|right|''Altalena'' burning near Tel Aviv beach]]

During the truce, Irgun attempted to bring in a private arms shipment aboard a ship called ''[[Altalena Affair|Altalena]]''. Fearing a coup by the Irgun (at the time the IDF was in the process of integrating various pre-independence political factions), Ben-Gurion ordered that the arms be confiscated by force. After some miscommunication, the army was ordered by Ben-Gurion to sink the ship. Sixteen Irgun members and three IDF soldiers were killed in the fighting.<ref>Dov Joseph (1960), p. 239</ref>

====UN mediator Bernadotte====
[[File:Folke-Bernadotte.jpg|thumb|upright|UN Palestine mediator, [[Folke Bernadotte]], assassinated in September 1948 by the militant group [[Lehi (group)|Lehi]] ]]
The [[ceasefire]] was overseen by UN mediator [[Folke Bernadotte]] and a team of UN Observers made up of army officers from Belgium, United States, Sweden and France.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/truce1.html|title=The First Truce|access-date=22 February 2009|archive-date=9 May 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080509154526/http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/truce1.html|url-status=live}}</ref>{{better source needed|date=June 2022}}
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{{'"}}.<ref name="Morris2008p269"/> [[Folke Bernadotte]] reported:

<blockquote> During the period of the truce, three violations occurred ... of such a serious nature:
# the attempt by ...the Irgun Zvai Leumi to bring war materials and immigrants, including men of military age, into Palestine aboard the ship ''Altalena'' on 21 June...
# Another truce violation occurred through the refusal of Egyptian forces to permit the passage of relief convoys to Jewish settlements in the Negeb...
# The third violation of the truce arose as a result of the failure of the Transjordan and Iraqi forces to permit the flow of water to Jerusalem.<ref>[https://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/7D468BBE932AC79C802564C00037B882 Security Council, S/1025, 5 October 1948, Report by the United Nations, Mediator on the Observtation of the Truce in, Palestine in the Period from 11 June, to 9 July 1948] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131203130025/http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/7D468BBE932AC79C802564C00037B882 |date=3 December 2013 }}, During the period of the truce, three violations occurred ... of such a serious nature... the ''Altalena'' incident, the Negeb convoys, and the question of the water supply to Jerusalem....
# the attempt by ...the Irgun Zvai Leumi to bring war materials and immigrants, including men of military age, into Palestine aboard the ship ''Altalena'' on 21 June...
# Another truce violation occurred through the refusal of Egyptian forces to permit the passage of relief convoys to Jewish settlements in the Negeb...
# The third violation of the truce arose as a result of the failure of the Transjordan and Iraqi forces to permit the flow of water to Jerusalem.</ref></blockquote>

After the truce was in place, Bernadotte began to address the issue of achieving a political settlement. The main obstacles in his opinion were "the Arab world's continued rejection of the existence of a Jewish state, whatever its borders; Israel's new 'philosophy', based on its increasing military strength, of ignoring the partition boundaries and conquering what additional territory it could; and the emerging Palestinian Arab refugee problem".<ref name="Morris2008p269" />

Taking all the issues into account, Bernadotte presented a new partition plan. He proposed there be a Palestinian Arab state alongside Israel and that a "Union" "be established between the two sovereign states of Israel and Jordan (which now included the West Bank); that the Negev, or part of it, be included in the Arab state and that Western Galilee, or part of it, be included in Israel; that the whole of Jerusalem be part of the Arab state, with the Jewish areas enjoying municipal autonomy and that Lydda Airport and Haifa be 'free ports' – presumably free of Israeli or Arab sovereignty".<ref name="Morris2008p269" /> Israel rejected the proposal, in particular the aspect of losing control of Jerusalem, but they did agree to extend the truce for another month. The Arabs rejected both the extension of the truce and the proposal.<ref name="Morris2008p269" />

===Second phase: 8–18 July 1948 ("Ten Day Battles")===
On 8 July, the day before the expiration of the truce, Egyptian forces under General [[Muhammad Naguib]] renewed the war by [[Battles of Negba#Battle of July 12|attacking Negba]].<ref>Alfred A. Knopf. ''A History of Israel from the Rise of Zionism to Our Time''. New York. 1976. p. 330. {{ISBN|978-0-394-48564-5}}.</ref> The following day, Israeli air forces launched a simultaneous offensive on all three fronts, ranging from [[Quneitra]] to [[Arish]] and the Egyptian air force bombed the city of Tel Aviv.<ref>Gelber, 2006{{page needed|date=May 2021}}; Kinneret, p. 226</ref> During the fighting, the Israelis were able to open a lifeline to a number of besieged kibbutzim.<ref name="Karsh2002p64"/>

The fighting continued for ten days until the UN Security Council issued the Second Truce on 18 July. During those 10 days, the fighting was dominated by large-scale Israeli offensives and a defensive posture from the Arab side.{{Citation needed|date=May 2021}}

====Southern front====
{{Further|Operation An-Far|Operation Death to the Invader}}
[[File:6pdr-Aibdis.jpg|thumb|An Egyptian artillery piece captured by battalion 53 of the [[Givati Brigade]].]]
In the south, the IDF carried out several offensives, including [[Operation An-Far]] and [[Operation Death to the Invader]]. The task of the 11th Brigades's 1st Battalion on the southern flank was to capture villages, and its operation ran smoothly, with but little resistance from local irregulars. According to Amnon Neumann, a [[Palmach]] veteran of the Southern front, hardly any Arab villages in the south fought back, due to the miserable poverty of their means and lack of weapons, and suffered expulsion.<ref>[[Gideon Levy]] and Alex Levac, [https://www.haaretz.com/weekend/twilight-zone/1.550550 'Drafting the blueprint for Palestinian refugees' right of return,'] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151016054552/http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/twilight-zone/1.550550 |date=16 October 2015 }} at [[Haaretz]] 4 October 2013: 'In all the Arab villages in the south almost nobody fought. The villagers were so poor, so miserable, that they didn't even have weapons ... The flight of these residents began when we started to clean up the routes used by those accompanying the convoys. Then we began to expel them, and in the end they fled on their own.'</ref> What slight resistance was offered was quelled by an artillery barrage, followed by the storming of the village, whose residents were expelled and houses destroyed.<ref>David Tal, ''War in Palestine, 1948: Israeli and Arab Strategy and Diplomacy,'' Routledge 2004 p. 307.</ref>
{{Further|Battles of Negba}}
On 12 July, the Egyptians launched an offensive action, and again attacked [[Negba]], which they had previously failed to capture, using three infantry battalions, an armoured battalion, and an artillery regiment. In the battle that followed, the Egyptians were repulsed, suffering 200–300 casualties, while the Israelis lost 5 dead and 16 wounded.<ref>Herzog and Gazit, 2005, p. 86</ref>

After failing to take Negba, the Egyptians turned their attention to more isolated settlements and positions. On 14 July, an Egyptian attack on [[Gal On]] was driven off by a minefield and by resistance from Gal On's residents.<ref>Lorch, Netanel (1998). ''History of the War of Independence''</ref>{{page needed|date=May 2021}}
{{Further|Battle of Be'erot Yitzhak}}
The Egyptians then assaulted the lightly defended village of [[Be'erot Yitzhak]]. The Egyptians managed to penetrate the village perimeter, but the defenders concentrated in an inner position in the village and fought off the Egyptian advance until IDF reinforcements arrived and drove out the attackers. The Egyptians suffered an estimated 200 casualties, while the Israelis had 17 dead and 15 wounded. The battle was one of Egypt's last offensive actions during the war, and the Egyptians did not attack any Israeli villages following this battle.{{Citation needed|date=May 2021}}

====Operation Dani====

Israeli [[Operation Dani]] was the most important Israeli offensive, aimed at securing and enlarging the corridor between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv by capturing the roadside cities [[Lod]] (Lydda) and [[Ramle]]. In a second planned stage of the operation the fortified positions of [[Latrun]] – overlooking the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway – and the city of [[Ramallah]] were also to be captured. [[Al-Haditha, Ramle|Hadita]], near Latrun, was captured by the Israelis at a cost of nine dead.{{citation needed|date=May 2021}}

The objectives of Operation Dani were to capture territory east of Tel Aviv and then to push inland and relieve the Jewish population and forces in [[Jerusalem]]. Lydda had become an important military center in the region, lending support to Arab military activities elsewhere, and Ramle was one of the main obstacles blocking Jewish transportation. Lydda was defended by a local militia of around 1,000 residents, with an [[Arab Legion]] contingent of 125–300.<ref>Kadish, Alon, and Sela, Avraham. (2005) "Myths and historiography of the 1948 Palestine War revisited: the case of Lydda," ''The Middle East Journal'', 22 September 2005; and Khalidi, Walid. (1998) Introduction to Munayyer, Spiro. [https://web.archive.org/web/20110718144237/http://www.palestine-studies.org/enakba/Memoirs/Munayyer,%20The%20Fall%20of%20Lydda.pdf The fall of Lydda]. ''[[Journal of Palestine Studies]]'', Vol. 27, No. 4, pp. 80–98.</ref>

On 10 July, [[Glubb Pasha]] ordered the defending [[Arab Legion]] troops to "make arrangements...for a phony war".<ref>{{cite book|author=Benny Morris|title=1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CC7381HrLqcC&pg=PA287+|year=2008|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=978-0-300-14524-3|page=287}}</ref>{{clarification needed|date=October 2024}}

=====Lydda and al-Ramla=====
{{Further|Palestinian expulsion from Lydda and Ramle}}

The IDF forces gathered to attack the city numbered around 8,000. It was the first operation where several brigades were involved. 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 [[Daniyal]]. Bombers were also used for the first time in the conflict to bombard the city. The IDF captured the city on 11 July.<ref name="Karsh2002p64" />

[[File:1948 Arab-Israeli War (997008136589405171) (cropped).jpg|thumb|An Israeli soldier with detained Palestinians in Ramle, July 1948]]

The civilian [[Palestinian expulsion from Lydda and Ramle|populations of Lydda and Ramle (50,000-70,000 people) were violently expelled]].{{refn|Slater, Jerome, ''Mythologies Without End: The US, Israel, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1917-2020'' (New York, 2020; online edn, Oxford Academic, 19 Nov. 2020), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190459086.003.0001. "During the 1948 war Rabin was a leading Haganah general and commander of a force that violently expelled 50,000 inhabitants of the Palestinian towns of Lydda and Ramle."}}{{refn|Pappé 2006, "[...] expelled the populations of the two towns of Lydd and Ramla, altogether 70,000 people"}} Hundreds of Palestinians were killed in multiple mass killing events in Lydda, and many were expelled without the provision of transport vehicles, as had been done in Ramle; many of the evictees died on the long walk under the hot July sun.<ref>{{cite book|author=Benny Morris|title=The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–1949|url=https://archive.org/details/birthofpalestini00morr|url-access=registration|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=1987|pages=[https://archive.org/details/birthofpalestini00morr/page/203 203–11]|isbn=978-0-521-33889-9}}</ref>

=====Battle of Latrun=====
{{Further|Battles of Latrun (1948)}}

On 15–16 July, an attack on Latrun took place but did not manage to occupy the fort.<ref name="Karsh2002p64" /> A desperate second attempt occurred on 18 July by units from the [[Yiftach Brigade]] equipped with armoured vehicles, including two [[Cromwell tank]]s, but that attack also failed. Despite the second truce, which began on 18 July, the Israeli efforts to conquer Latrun continued until 20 July.{{Citation needed|date=May 2021}}

====Jerusalem====
{{Further|Operation Kedem}}
[[File:PikiWiki Israel 2184 1948 war מלחמת העצמאות.jpg|thumb|right|[[Etzioni Brigade|Beit Horon Battalion]] soldiers in the [[Russian Compound]] in Jerusalem, 1948]]
[[Operation Kedem]]'s aim was to secure the Old City of Jerusalem, but fewer resources were allocated. The operation failed.<ref>[http://www.allthatremains.com/Maps/IsraeliMiliteryDuringTheTruce07-08-48-To-07-18-48.jpg Map of the Attacks] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050414014404/http://www.allthatremains.com/Maps/IsraeliMiliteryDuringTheTruce07-08-48-To-07-18-48.jpg |date=14 April 2005 }}.</ref> Originally the operation was to begin on 8 July, immediately after the first truce, by [[Irgun]] and [[Lehi (group)|Lehi]] forces. However, it was delayed by [[David Shaltiel]], possibly because he did not trust their ability after their failure to capture [[Deir Yassin]] without Haganah assistance.{{Citation needed|date=May 2021}}

Irgun forces commanded by [[Yehuda Lapidot]] 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 [[Etzioni Brigade|Beit Horon Battalion]] was to strike from [[Mount Zion]].{{citation needed|date=May 2021}}

The battle was planned to begin on the [[Shabbat]], at 20:00 on 16 July, two days before the second ceasefire of the war. The plan went wrong from the beginning and was postponed first to 23:00 and then to midnight. It was not until 02:30 that the battle actually began. The Irgun managed to break through at the New Gate, but the other forces failed in their missions. At 05:45 on 17 July, Shaltiel ordered a retreat and to cease hostilities.{{Citation needed|date=May 2021}}

On 14 July 1948, Irgun occupied the Arab village of [[Malha]] after a fierce battle. Several hours later, the Arabs launched a counterattack, but Israeli reinforcements arrived, and the village was retaken at a cost of 17 dead.{{Citation needed|date=May 2021}}

====Southern Galilee====
{{Further|Operation Dekel}}
The second plan was [[Operation Dekel]], which was aimed at capturing the [[Lower Galilee]] including [[Nazareth]]. Nazareth was captured on 16 July, and by the time the second truce took effect at 19:00 18 July, the whole Lower Galilee from Haifa Bay to the [[Sea of Galilee]] was captured by Israel.{{Citation needed|date=May 2021}}

====Eastern Galilee====
Operation Brosh was launched in a failed attempt to dislodge Syrian forces from the Eastern Galilee and the Benot Yaakov Bridge. During the operation, 200 Syrians and 100 Israelis were killed.{{citation needed|date=May 2021}}

===Second truce: 18 July – 15 October 1948===
{{Further|Folke Bernadotte}}
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, Count [[Folke Bernadotte]] proposed a new partition for Palestine in which the [[Negev]] would be divided between Jordan and Egypt, and Jordan would annexe [[Lod|Lydda]] and [[Ramla]]. There would be a Jewish state in the whole of [[Galilee]], with the frontier running from Faluja northeast towards Ramla and Lydda. [[Jerusalem]] would be internationalised, with municipal autonomy for the city's Jewish and Arab inhabitants, the [[Port of Haifa]] would be a free port, and [[Ben Gurion International Airport|Lydda Airport]] would be a free airport. All [[Palestinian refugee]]s would be granted the [[right of return]], and those who chose not to return would be compensated for lost property. The UN would control and regulate Jewish immigration.<ref>{{harvnb|Karsh|2002|p=76}}</ref>

The plan was once again rejected by both sides. On the next day, 17 September, Bernadotte was [[Folke Bernadotte#Assassination|assassinated]] in Jerusalem by the militant Zionist group [[Lehi (group)|Lehi]]. A four-man team ambushed Bernadotte's motorcade in Jerusalem, killing him and a French UN observer sitting next to him. Lehi saw Bernadotte as a British and Arab puppet, and thus a serious threat to the emerging State of Israel, and feared that the provisional Israeli government would accept the plan, which it considered disastrous. Unbeknownst to Lehi, the government had already decided to reject it and resume combat in a month. Bernadotte's deputy, American [[Ralph Bunche]], replaced him.<ref>
*A. Ilan, ''Bernadotte in Palestine'', 1948 (Macmillan, 1989) p. 194
*[[J. Bowyer Bell]], Assassination in International Politics, ''International Studies Quarterly'', vol. 16, March 1972, pp. 59–82.
*{{cite news|first=Clyde|last=Haberman|author-link=Clyde Haberman|title=Terrorism Can Be Just Another Point of View|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1995/02/22/books/books-of-the-times-terrorism-can-be-just-another-point-of-view.html?pagewanted=all|work=The New York Times|date=22 February 1995|access-date=28 December 2008|quote=Mr. Shamir, nearly 80, still speaks elliptically about the Bernadotte assassination. Years later, when Ben-Gurion moved to a kibbutz in the Negev desert, Sdeh Bokker, one of his closest friends there was Yehoshua Cohen, who had been one of the assassins.|archive-date=20 June 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190620083956/https://www.nytimes.com/1995/02/22/books/books-of-the-times-terrorism-can-be-just-another-point-of-view.html?pagewanted=all|url-status=live}} Review of Kati Marton's biography.
*{{cite news|first=Alan|last=Cowell|author-link=Alan Cowell|title=The Middle East Talks: Reporter's Notebook; Syria Offers Old Photo To Fill an Empty Chair|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1991/11/02/world/middle-east-talks-reporter-s-notebook-syria-offers-old-photo-fill-empty-chair.html?pagewanted=all|work=The New York Times|date=2 November 1991|access-date=28 December 2008|quote=In recent years, several members of the group known by the British as the Stern Gang have acknowledged responsibility for the killing. Mr. Shamir, who was a member of the Stern Gang, has declined to discuss the killing, and one of his spokesman has said he had no role in it.|archive-date=27 March 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220327040650/https://www.nytimes.com/1991/11/02/world/middle-east-talks-reporter-s-notebook-syria-offers-old-photo-fill-empty-chair.html?pagewanted=all|url-status=live}}</ref>

On 22 September 1948, the [[Provisional State Council]] of Israel passed the Area of Jurisdiction and Powers Ordnance, 5708–1948. The law officially added to Israel's size by annexing all land it had captured since the war began. It also declared that from then on, any part of Palestine captured by the Israeli army would automatically become part of Israel.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.israellawresourcecenter.org/israellaws/fulltext/areajurisdictionpowersord.htm |title=Area of Jurisdiction and Powers Ordinance (1948) |publisher=Israellawresourcecenter.org |access-date=18 January 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170624062229/http://www.israellawresourcecenter.org/israellaws/fulltext/areajurisdictionpowersord.htm |archive-date=24 June 2017 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

===Little triangle pocket===
{{Main|Operation Shoter}}

The Arab villagers of the area known as the "[[Triangle (Israel)|Little Triangle]]" south of [[Haifa]] repeatedly fired at Israeli traffic along the main road from [[Tel Aviv]] to Haifa and were supplied by the Iraqis from northern Samaria.<ref name=Morris2008p298/> The sniping at traffic continued during the Second Truce. The poorly planned assaults on 18 June and 8 July had failed to dislodge Arab militia from their superior positions. The Israelis launched [[Operation Shoter]] on 24 July in order to gain control of the main road to Haifa and to destroy all the enemy in the area.<ref name=Morris2008p298/>

Israeli assaults on 24 and 25 July were beaten back with stiff resistance. The Israelis then broke the Arab defences with a combined infantry and armour assault backed by heavy shelling and bombing. Three Arab villages surrendered, and most of the inhabitants fled before and during the attack. The Israeli soldiers and aircraft struck one of the Arab retreat routes, killing 60 Arab soldiers.{{Dubious |1=the article has POV and "dubious" problems |reason=Summary of problem |date=December 2013}}. Most of the inhabitants fled before and during the attack, reaching northern Samaria; hundreds were forcibly expelled during the following days. At least a hundred militiamen and civilians were killed.<ref name=Morris2008p298/>

The Arabs claimed that the Israelis had massacred Arab civilians, but the Israelis rejected the claims.{{Dubious |1=the article has POV and "dubious" problems |reason=Summary of problem |date=December 2013}} A United Nations investigation found no evidence of a massacre. Following the operation, the Tel Aviv-Haifa road was opened to Israeli military and civilian traffic, and Arab roadblocks along the route were removed. Traffic along the Haifa-[[Hadera]] coastal railway was also restored.

===Third phase: 15 October 1948 – 10 March 1949===
[[File:1948 arab israeli war - Oct.jpg|thumb|250px|October battles]]
Israel launched a series of military operations to drive out the Arab armies and secure the northern and southern borders of Israel.

====Northern front – Galilee====
{{Further|Operation Hiram}}
[[File:Israeli mortar team outside Zafzaf in October 1948.png|thumb|upright|An Israeli mortar team outside [[Safsaf]], October 1948]]
[[File:Hiram Sasa Attack.jpg|thumb|upright|Israeli soldiers attack Sasa during Operation Hiram, October 1948]]
On 22 October, the third truce went into effect.<ref>Shapira, Anita. Yigal Allon; Native Son; A Biography Translated by Evelyn Abel, University of Pennsylvania Press {{ISBN|978-0-8122-4028-3}} p. 247</ref> Irregular Arab forces refused to recognise the truce, and continued to harass Israeli forces and settlements in the north. On the same day that the truce came into effect, the [[Arab Liberation Army]] violated the truce by attacking [[Manara, Israel|Manara]], capturing the strongpoint of Sheikh Abed, repulsing counterattacks by local Israeli units, and ambushed Israeli forces attempting to relieve Manara. The IDF's [[Carmeli Brigade]] lost 33 dead and 40 wounded.<ref>Gelber, 2006, p. 33</ref> Manara and [[Misgav Am]] were totally cut off, and Israel's protests at the UN failed to change the situation.

On 24 October, the IDF launched [[Operation Hiram]] and captured the entire [[upper Galilee]] area, driving the ALA back to Lebanon, and ambushing and destroying an entire Syrian battalion.<ref name="Karsh2002p68" /> The Israeli force of four infantry brigades was commanded by [[Moshe Carmel]].<ref name="Karsh2002p68" /> The entire operation lasted just 60 hours, during which numerous villages were captured, often after locals or Arab forces put up resistance.<ref name="Karsh2002p68" /> Arab losses were estimated at 400 dead and 550 taken prisoner, with low Israeli casualties.<ref name="Karsh2002p68" />

Some prisoners were reportedly executed by the Israeli forces. An estimated 50,000 Palestinian refugees fled into Lebanon, some of them fleeing ahead of the advancing forces, and some expelled from villages which had resisted, while the Arab inhabitants of those villages which had remained at peace were allowed to remain and became Israeli citizens. The villagers of [[Iqrit]] and Birim were persuaded to leave their homes by Israeli authorities, who promised them that they would be allowed to return. Israel eventually decided not to allow them to return, and offered them financial compensation, which they refused to accept.<ref>{{cite book |last=Hussein |first=Hussein Abu |title=Access Denied: Palestinian Land Rights in Israel |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4hdL3AtNhw4C&pg=PA85|publisher=Zed Books |year=2003 |page=85 |isbn=978-1-84277-122-8}}</ref>

At the end of the month, the IDF had captured the whole of Galilee, driven all ALA forces out of Israel, and had advanced {{convert|5|mi|km|0|order=flip|abbr=off}} into [[Lebanon]] to the [[Litani River]],<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.zionism-israel.com/dic/operation_Hiram.htm |title=Operation Hiram |publisher=Zionism-israel.com |access-date=29 June 2014 |archive-date=24 May 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190524084536/http://www.zionism-israel.com/dic/operation_Hiram.htm |url-status=live }}</ref> occupying thirteen Lebanese villages. In the village of [[Hula, Lebanon|Hula]], two Israeli officers [[Hula massacre|killed]] between 35 and 58 prisoners as retaliation for the [[Haifa Oil Refinery massacre]]. Both officers were later put on trial for their actions.

====Negev====
[[File:Israelis at Faluja.jpg|thumb|Israeli troops occupying abandoned Egyptian trenches at [[Huleiqat]], October 1948]]
[[File:Beersheba 1948.jpg|thumb|IDF forces in [[Beersheba]] during [[Operation Yoav]] ]]
[[File:Negev Brigade soldiers 1948.jpg|thumb|An IDF artillery unit in the Negev]]
[[File:Beit Natif 1948.jpg|thumb|IDF forces near [[Bayt Nattif]], near Hebron, after it was captured. October 1948.]]
{{Further|Operation Yoav{{!}}Operation Yoav|Operation_Shmone{{!}}Shmone|Operation_Lot{{!}}Lot|Operation_Assaf{{!}}Assaf|Operation_Horev{{!}}Horev|Operation Uvda{{!}}Uvda|Battles of the Sinai (1948){{!}}Battles of the Sinai}}

Israel launched a series of military operations to drive out the Arab armies and secure the borders of Israel. However, invading the West Bank might have brought into the borders of the expanding State of Israel a massive Arab population it could not absorb. The Negev desert was an empty space for expansion, so the main war effort shifted to Negev from early October.<ref>[[Shlomo Ben-Ami]] (Shlomo Ben-Ami (2006), pp. 41–42)</ref> Israel decided to destroy or at least drive out the Egyptian expeditionary force since the Egyptian front lines were too vulnerable as permanent borders.<ref name="Morris2008p320"/>

On 15 October, the IDF launched [[Operation Yoav]] in the northern Negev.<ref name="Karsh2002p64" /> 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.<ref name="Karsh2002p64" /> This was a special concern on the Israeli part because of a British diplomatic campaign to have the entire Negev handed over to Egypt and Jordan, and which thus made Ben-Gurion anxious to have Israeli forces in control of the Negev as soon as possible.<ref name="Karsh2002p64" />

Operation Yoav was headed by the Southern Front commander [[Yigal Allon]]. Committed to Yoav were three infantry and one armoured brigades, who were given the task of breaking through the Egyptian lines.<ref name="Karsh2002p68">{{harvnb|Karsh|2002|p=68}}</ref> The Egyptian positions were badly weakened by the lack of a [[defence in depth]], which meant that once the IDF had broken through the Egyptian lines, there was little to stop them.<ref name="Karsh2002p68" /> The operation was a huge success, shattering the Egyptian ranks and forcing the Egyptian Army from the northern Negev, [[Beersheba]] and [[Ashdod]].<ref name="Karsh2002p68" />

In the so-called "[[Faluja Pocket]]", an encircled Egyptian force was able to hold out for four months until the [[1949 Armistice Agreements]], when the village was peacefully transferred to Israel and the Egyptian troops left.<ref name="Karsh2002p68" /> Four warships of the [[Israeli Navy]] provided support by bombarding Egyptian shore installations in the [[Ashkelon]] area, and preventing the [[Egyptian Navy]] from evacuating retreating Egyptian troops by sea.<ref name="navy"/>{{better source needed|date=June 2022}}

On 19 October, [[Operation Ha-Har]] began in the [[Jerusalem Corridor]], while a [[Israeli naval campaign in Operation Yoav#Battle near Majdal|naval battle also took place]] near [[al-Majdal, Askalan|Majdal]], with three Israeli corvettes facing an Egyptian corvette with air support. An Israeli sailor was killed and four wounded, and two of the ships were damaged. One Egyptian plane was shot down, but the corvette escaped. Israeli naval vessels also shelled Majdal on 17 October, and [[Gaza City|Gaza]] on 21 October, with air support from the [[Israeli Air Force]]. The same day, the IDF [[Battle of Beersheba (1948)|captured Beersheba]], and took 120 Egyptian soldiers prisoner. On 22 October, Israeli naval commandos using explosive boats [[Israeli naval campaign in Operation Yoav|sank]] the Egyptian flagship ''[[El Amir Farouq|Emir Farouk]]'', and damaged an Egyptian minesweeper.<ref name="Karsh2002p68" />

On 9 November 1948, the IDF launched [[Operation Shmone]] to capture the [[Tegart fort]] in the village of [[Iraq Suwaydan]]. The fort's Egyptian defenders had previously repulsed eight attempts to take it, including two during Operation Yoav. Israeli forces bombarded the fort before an assault with artillery and airstrikes by B-17 bombers. After breaching the outlying fences without resistance, the Israelis blew a hole in the fort's outer wall, prompting the 180 Egyptian soldiers manning the fort to surrender without a fight. The defeat prompted the Egyptians to evacuate several nearby positions, including hills the IDF had failed to take by force. Meanwhile, IDF forces took Iraq Suwaydan itself after a fierce battle, losing 6 dead and 14 wounded.{{citation needed|date=May 2021}}

From 5 to 7 December, the IDF conducted [[Operation Assaf]] to take control of the Western Negev. The main assaults were spearheaded by mechanised forces, while [[Golani Brigade]] infantry covered the rear. An Egyptian counterattack was repulsed. The Egyptians planned another counterattack, but it failed after Israeli aerial reconnaissance revealed Egyptian preparations, and the Israelis launched a preemptive strike. About 100 Egyptians were killed, and 5 tanks were destroyed, with the Israelis losing 5 killed and 30 wounded.{{citation needed|date=May 2014}}

[[File:Operation Horev.jpg|thumb|right|An Israeli convoy in the Negev during Operation Horev]]
On 22 December, the IDF launched [[Operation Horev]], also called Operation Ayin.<ref name="Karsh2002p68" /> The goal of the operation was to drive all remaining Egyptian forces from the Negev, destroying the Egyptian threat on Israel's southern communities and forcing the Egyptians into a ceasefire. During five days of fighting, the Israelis secured the Western Negev, expelling all Egyptian forces from the area.<ref name="Karsh2002p68" />

Israeli forces subsequently launched raids into the [[Nitzana, Israel|Nitzana]] area, and entered the [[Battles of the Sinai (1948)|Sinai Peninsula]] on 28 December. The IDF captured Umm Katef and [[Abu Ageila]], and advanced north towards [[Arish|Al Arish]], with the goal of encircling the entire Egyptian expeditionary force. Israeli forces pulled out of the Sinai on 2 January 1949 following joint British-American pressure and a British threat of military action. IDF forces regrouped at the border with the [[Gaza Strip]]. Israeli forces attacked [[Battle of Rafah (1948)|Rafah]] the following day, and after several days of fighting, Egyptian forces in the Gaza Strip were surrounded. The Egyptians agreed to negotiate a ceasefire on 7 January, and the IDF subsequently pulled out of Gaza.<ref name="Karsh2002p68" /> According to Morris, "the inequitable and unfair rules of engagement: the Arabs could launch offensives with impunity, but international interventions always hampered and restrained Israel's counterattacks."<ref>Morris 2008, p. 404</ref>

On 28 December, the [[Alexandroni Brigade]] failed to take the Falluja Pocket, but managed to seize Iraq el-Manshiyeh and temporarily hold it.<ref>{{cite book |last=Khalidi |first=Walid |title=All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_By7AAAAIAAJ |publisher=Institute for Palestine Studies |year=1992 |page=108 |isbn=978-0-88728-224-9 |access-date=28 September 2020 |archive-date=20 March 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230320124349/https://books.google.com/books?id=_By7AAAAIAAJ |url-status=live }}</ref> The Egyptians counterattacked, but were mistaken for a friendly force and allowed to advance, trapping a large number of men. The Israelis lost 87 soldiers.{{citation needed|date=May 2014}}

On 5 March, [[Operation Uvda]] was launched following nearly a month of reconnaissance, with the goal of securing the Southern Negev from Jordan. The IDF entered and secured the territory, but did not meet significant resistance along the way, as the area was already designated to be part of the Jewish state in the UN Partition Plan, and the operation meant to establish Israeli sovereignty over the territory rather than actually conquer it. The Golani, [[Negev Brigade|Negev]], and Alexandroni brigades participated in the operation, together with some smaller units and with naval support.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Weissenstein |last2=Dvir |first1=Rudi |first2=Ori |title=Rudi Weissenstein: Israel Early Photographs |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6ClVAAAAYAAJ |publisher=Modan Publishing House |year=2008 |page=32 |isbn=978-965-7141-10-6 |access-date=28 September 2020 |archive-date=20 March 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230320124411/https://books.google.com/books?id=6ClVAAAAYAAJ |url-status=live }}</ref>

On 10 March, Israeli forces secured the Southern Negev, reaching the southern tip of Palestine: Umm Rashrash on the [[Red Sea]] (where [[Eilat]] was built later) and taking it without a battle. Israeli soldiers raised a hand-made Israeli flag ("[[Ink Flag|The Ink Flag]]") at 16:00 on 10 March, claiming Umm Rashrash for Israel. The raising of the Ink Flag is considered to be the end of the war.<ref>{{cite book |last=Dan |first=Uri |title=To the Promised Land: The Birth of Israel |url=https://archive.org/details/topromisedlandbi00danu|url-access=registration |publisher=Doubleday Religious Publishing Group |year=1988 |page=[https://archive.org/details/topromisedlandbi00danu/page/267 267] |isbn=978-0-385-24597-5}}</ref>

====Anglo-Israeli air clashes====
[[File:Ramle Funeral 1949.jpg|thumb|The funeral of a [[Royal Air Force]] pilot killed during a clash with the [[Israeli Air Force]] ]]

As the fighting progressed and Israel mounted an incursion into the Sinai, the [[Royal Air Force]] began conducting almost daily reconnaissance missions over Israel and the Sinai. RAF reconnaissance aircraft took off from Egyptian airbases and sometimes flew alongside [[Egyptian Air Force|Royal Egyptian Air Force]] planes. High-flying British aircraft frequently flew over [[Haifa]] and [[Ramat David Airbase]], and became known to the Israelis as the "shuftykeit."<ref name="spyflight"/>

On 20 November 1948, an unarmed RAF photo-reconnaissance [[De Havilland Mosquito]] of [[No. 13 Squadron RAF]] was shot down by an [[Israeli Air Force]] [[P-51 Mustang]] flown by American volunteer Wayne Peake as it flew over the [[Galilee]] towards [[Hatzor Airbase]]. Peake opened fire with his cannons, causing a fire to break out in the port engine. The aircraft turned to sea and lowered its altitude, then exploded and crashed off [[Ashdod]]. The pilot and navigator were both killed.<ref name="spyflight"/><ref>Aloni, 2001, p. 18.</ref>

Just before noon on 7 January 1949, four [[Supermarine Spitfire|Spitfire]] FR18s from [[No. 208 Squadron RAF]] on a reconnaissance mission in the [[Deir al-Balah]] area flew over an Israeli convoy that had been attacked by five Egyptian Spitfires fifteen minutes earlier. The pilots had spotted smoking vehicles and were drawn to the scene out of curiosity. Two planes dived to below 500&nbsp;feet altitude to take pictures of the convoy, while the remaining two covered them from 1,500&nbsp;feet.<ref name="spyflight">{{cite web|url=http://www.spyflight.co.uk/iafvraf.htm|title=Iaf V Raf|publisher=Spyflight.co.uk|access-date=26 June 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180414141639/http://www.spyflight.co.uk/iafvraf.htm|archive-date=14 April 2018|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref name="Aloni">Aloni, 2001, p. 22.</ref>

Israeli soldiers on the ground, alerted by the sound of the approaching Spitfires and fearing another Egyptian air attack, opened fire with machine guns. One Spitfire was shot down by a tank-mounted machine gun, while the other was lightly damaged and rapidly pulled up. The remaining three Spitfires were then attacked by patrolling IAF Spitfires flown by [[Chalmers Goodlin]] and John McElroy, volunteers from the United States and Canada respectively. All three Spitfires were shot down, and one pilot was killed.<ref name="spyflight"/><ref name="Aloni"/>

Two pilots were captured by Israeli soldiers and taken to [[Tel Aviv]] for interrogation, and were later released. Another was rescued by [[Bedouin]]s and handed over to the Egyptian Army, which turned him over to the RAF. Later that day, four RAF Spitfires from the same squadron escorted by seven [[Hawker Tempest]]s from [[No. 213 Squadron RAF]] and eight from [[No. 6 Squadron RAF]] went searching for the lost planes, and were attacked by four IAF Spitfires. The Israeli formation was led by [[Ezer Weizman]]. The remaining three were manned by Weizman's wingman Alex Jacobs and American volunteers Bill Schroeder and Caesar Dangott.<ref name="spyflight"/><ref name="Aloni"/>

The Tempests found they could not jettison their external fuel tanks, and some had non-operational guns. Schroeder shot down a British Tempest, killing pilot David Tattersfield, and Weizman severely damaged a British plane flown by Douglas Liquorish. Weizman's plane and two other British aircraft suffered light damage during the engagement. During the battle, British Tempest pilots treated British Spitfires as potential Israeli aircraft until the British Spitfire pilots were told by radio to wiggle their wings to be more clearly identifiable. The engagement ended when the Israelis realised the danger of their situation and disengaged, returning to Hatzor Airbase.<ref name="spyflight"/><ref name="Aloni"/>

Israeli prime minister [[David Ben-Gurion]] personally ordered the wrecks of the RAF fighters that had been shot down to be dragged into Israeli territory. Israeli troops subsequently visited the crash sites, removed various parts, and buried the other aircraft. However, the Israelis did not manage to conceal the wrecks in time to prevent British reconnaissance planes from photographing them. An RAF salvage team was deployed to recover the wrecks, entering Israeli territory during their search. Two were discovered inside Egypt, while Tattersfield's Tempest was found north of [[Nirim]], {{convert|4|mi|km|0|order=flip|abbr=on}} inside Israel. Interviews with local Arabs confirmed that the Israelis had visited the crash sites to remove and bury the wrecks. Tattersfield was initially buried near the wreckage, but his body was later removed and reburied at the British War Cemetery in [[Ramla]].<ref name="spyflight"/><ref>Cohen, Michael Joseph: ''Truman and Israel'' (1990)</ref>

In response, the RAF readied all Tempests and Spitfires to attack any IAF aircraft they encountered and bomb IAF airfields. British troops in the Middle East were placed on high alert with all leave cancelled, and British citizens were advised to leave Israel. The [[Royal Navy]] was placed on high alert. At Hatzor Airbase, the general consensus among the pilots, most of whom had flown with or alongside the RAF during World War II, was that the RAF would not allow the loss of five aircraft and two pilots to go without retaliation, and would probably attack the base at dawn the next day. That night, in anticipation of an impending British attack, some pilots decided not to offer any resistance and left the base, while others prepared their Spitfires and were strapped into the cockpits at dawn, preparing to repel a retaliatory airstrike. However, despite pressure from the squadrons involved in the incidents, British commanders refused to authorise any retaliatory strikes.<ref name="spyflight"/><ref>Adrian, p. 7</ref>

The day following the incident, British pilots were issued a directive to regard any Israeli aircraft infiltrating Egyptian or Jordanian airspace as hostile and to shoot them down, but were also ordered to avoid activity close to Israel's borders. Later in January 1949, the British managed to prevent the delivery of [[Avgas|aviation spirit]] and other essential fuels to Israel in retaliation for the incident. The [[Foreign and Commonwealth Office|British Foreign Office]] presented the Israeli government with a demand for compensation over the loss of personnel and equipment.<ref name="spyflight"/><ref>Adrian, p. 59</ref>

====UN Resolution 194====
In December 1948, the [[United Nations General Assembly|UN General Assembly]] passed [[United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194|Resolution 194]]. It called to establish a [[United Nations Conciliation Commission|UN Conciliation Commission]] to facilitate peace between Israel and Arab states. However, many of the resolution's articles were not fulfilled, since these were opposed by Israel, rejected by the Arab states, or were overshadowed by war as the 1948 conflict continued.

==Weapons==
Both sides utilized weapons that had been used in World War II by the British and French forces. Egypt's arsenal included leftover British equipment, while the Syrian arsenal included leftover French weaponry. The Israeli Defense Forces utilized an array of British, American, French and Czechoslovakian military equipment.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Weapons of the Arab-Israeli Wars |url=http://www.balagan.org.uk/war/ai/weapons.htm |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090109025501/http://www.balagan.org.uk/war/ai/weapons.htm |archive-date=9 January 2009 |access-date=11 January 2018}}</ref> In addition to the aforementioned, the IDF also used several [[Davidka]] mortars, which were a domestically produced weapon by Israel.<ref>
{{cite book
| author = Collins, Larry
| authorlink = Larry Collins (writer)
| author2 = Lapierre, Dominique
| authorlink2 = Dominique Lapierre
| date = 1972
| title = [[O Jerusalem!]]
| publisher = [[Weidenfeld & Nicolson]]
| location = London
| page = 152
| isbn = 978-0-297-99459-6
| quote = They fired a shell made out of water pipes and packed with explosives, nails and bits of scrap metal.
| lccn = 73160924
}}</ref>

According to Amitzur Ilan, "Israel's ability to cope better with the embargo situation was, by far, her greatest strategic asset."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Ilan |first=Amitzur |date=1996 |title=The Origin of the Arab-Israeli Arms Race |doi=10.1007/978-1-349-13696-4 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |location=London|series=St Antony's Series |isbn=978-1-349-13698-8 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Ovendale |first=Ritchie |date=1997 |title=Review of The Origin of the Arab-Israeli Arms Race: Arms, Embargo, Military Power and Decision in the 1948 Palestine War |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2170732 |journal=The American Historical Review |volume=102 |issue=4 |pages=1198–1199 |doi=10.2307/2170732 |jstor=2170732 |issn=0002-8762|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

{|class="wikitable"
|-
! Type
! Arab armies
! IDF
|-
! Tanks
|[[Matilda II tank|Matilda tanks]], [[Renault R40|R-39s]], [[FT-17]]s, [[Renault R35|R35s]], [[Panzer IV]]s (dug in and used as stationary gun emplacements by Egypt), [[Fiat M13/40]], [[Sherman tank|Sherman M4]], [[M22 Locust|M-22]], [[Vickers]] [[Light Tank Mk VI|MK-6]].
||[[Cromwell tank]]s, [[Hotchkiss H35|H39s]], [[M4 Sherman]]
|-
! [[armored personnel carrier|APCs]]/[[infantry fighting vehicle|IFVs]]
|British World War II era trucks, [[Humber Armoured Car|Humber Mk III & IV]], Automitrailleuses Dodge/Bich type, improvised armored cars/trucks, [[Marmon-Herrington Armoured Car]]s, [[Universal Carrier]]s, [[Carden Loyd tankette|Lloyd Towing Carriers]]
||British World War II era trucks, improvised armored cars/trucks, [[M3 Scout Car|White M3A1 Scout Cars]], [[Daimler Armoured Car]]s, [[Universal Carrier]]s, [[M3 Half-track]]s, [[IHC M14 Half-track]]s, [[M5 Half-track]]s
|-
! Artillery
|[[Mortar (weapon)|Mortars]], [[15&nbsp;cm sIG 33 auf Fahrgestell Panzerkampfwagen II (Sf)|15 cm sIG33 auf Pz IIs]], [[Universal Carrier|25 mm anti-tank guns on Bren carriers]], improvised self-propelled guns used by Syrians in 1948–49, 65&nbsp;mm mountain guns on [[Lorraine 37L|Lorraine 38L]] ''chenillettes'', 2-pounder anti-tank guns, 6-pounder anti-tank guns
||Mortars, {{convert|2|in|mm|adj=on}} British mortars, 65&nbsp;mm French howitzers (''[[Napoleonchik]]s''), [[120&nbsp;mm French mortars]], [[Davidka|Davidka mortars]]
|-
! Aircraft
|[[Supermarine Spitfire|Spitfires]], [[T-6 Texan]]s, [[C-47 Dakota]]s, [[Hawker Hurricane]]s, [[Avro Anson]]s
||[[Supermarine Spitfire|Spitfires]], [[Avia S-199]]s, [[B-17 Flying Fortress]]es, [[P-51 Mustang]]s, [[C-47 Dakota]]s
|-
! Small Arms
|[[Lee–Enfield rifle]]s, [[Bren Gun]]s, [[Sten|Sten guns]], [[MAS 36]]s
||[[Sten|Sten guns]], [[Mills bomb|Mills grenades]], [[Karabiner 98k]] (Czech copies), [[Bren Gun]]s, [[MP 40]]s, [[MG-34|MG-34 Machine guns]], [[Thompson submachine gun]]s, [[Lee–Enfield rifle]]s, [[Molotov cocktail]]s, [[PIAT|PIAT anti-tank infantry weapon]]
|}

==Aftermath==
===1949 Armistice Agreements===
{{Main|1949 Armistice Agreements}}

[[File:1947-UN-Partition-Plan-1949-Armistice-Comparison.svg|thumb|right|upright|alt=Map comparing the borders of the 1947 partition plan and the Armistice Demarcation Lines of 1949.|{{Partition Plan-Armistice Lines comparison map legend}}]]

In 1949, Israel signed separate [[armistice]]s with Egypt on 24 February, Lebanon on 23 March, Transjordan on 3 April, and Syria on 20 July. The Armistice Demarcation Lines, as set by the agreements, saw the territory under Israeli control encompassing approximately three-quarters of the prior British administered [[Mandatory Palestine|Mandate]] as it stood after [[Emirate of Transjordan|Transjordan]]'s independence in 1946. Israel controlled territories of about one-third more than was allocated to the Jewish State under the UN partition proposal.<ref>L. Carl Brown (2013), p. 126.</ref> After the armistices, Israel had control over 78% of the territory comprising former Mandatory Palestine<ref>{{cite web|url=http://lawcenter.birzeit.edu/iol/en/index.php?action_id=210 |title=Legal Status in Palestine |publisher=Lawcenter.birzeit.edu |access-date=29 June 2014 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071103074653/http://lawcenter.birzeit.edu/iol/en/index.php?action_id=210 |archive-date=3 November 2007}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Tobin |first=Maurine and Robert |title=How Long O Lord?: Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Voices from the Ground and visions for the future in Israel–Palestine |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zeWXoGGptHAC&pg=PT271 |publisher=Cowley Publications |year=2002 |isbn=978-1-56101-214-5 |access-date=28 September 2020 |archive-date=20 March 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230320124417/https://books.google.com/books?id=zeWXoGGptHAC&pg=PT271 |url-status=live }}</ref> or some {{convert|8000|sqmi|km2|order=flip|abbr=on}}, including the entire [[Galilee]] and [[Jezreel Valley]] in the north, the whole [[Negev]] in south, [[West Jerusalem]] and the [[Israeli coastal plain|coastal plain]] in the center.

The armistice lines were known afterwards as the "[[Green Line (Israel)|Green Line]]". The [[Gaza Strip]] and the [[West Bank]] (including [[East Jerusalem]]) 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.{{Citation needed|date=May 2021}}

Just before the signing of the Israel-Transjordan armistice agreement, general Yigal Allon proposed a military offensive to conquer the West Bank up to the Jordan River as the natural, defensible border of the state. Ben-Gurion refused, although he was aware that the IDF was militarily strong enough to carry out the conquest. He feared the reaction of Western powers and wanted to maintain good relations with the United States and not to provoke the British. Moreover, the results of the war were already satisfactory and Israeli leaders had to build a state.<ref name="Shapira2014p173"/><ref name="Morris2009p79"/><ref name="Shalom2002p174"/>

===Casualties===
{{Main|Israeli casualties of war|Palestinian casualties of war}}

{{See also|Killings and massacres during the 1948 Palestine war}}
Israel lost 6,373 of its people, about 1% of its population at the time, in the war. About 4,000 were soldiers and the rest were civilians.<ref name=politics>{{cite book|author=Adam M. Garfinkle|title=Politics and Society in Modern Israel: Myths and Realities|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=si1oUnk5N3QC&pg=PA61|year=2000|publisher=M.E. Sharpe|isbn=978-0-7656-0514-6|page=61}}</ref>

The exact number of Arab casualties is unknown. One estimate places the Arab death toll at 7,000, including 3,000 Palestinians, 2,000 Egyptians, 1,000 Jordanians, and 1,000 Syrians.<ref name="onwar"/> In 1958, Palestinian historian [[Aref al-Aref]] calculated that the Arab armies' combined losses amounted to 3,700, with Egypt losing 961 regular and 200 irregular soldiers and Transjordan losing 362 regulars and 200 irregulars. According to [[Henry Laurens (scholar)|Henry Laurens]], the Palestinians suffered double the Jewish losses, with 13,000 dead, 1,953 of whom are known to have died in combat situations. Of the remainder, 4,004 remain nameless but the place, tally and date of their death is known, and a further 7,043, for whom only the place of death is known, not their identities nor the date of their death. According to Laurens, the largest part of Palestinian casualties consisted of non-combatants and corresponds to the successful operations of the Israelis.<ref name=laurens>Laurens 2007 p. 194</ref>

===Demographic outcomes===
====Arabs====
{{Main|1948 Palestinian exodus|Causes of the 1948 Palestinian exodus}}

{{Nakba}}
During the [[1947–1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine]] and the 1948 Arab–Israeli War that followed, around 750,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled from their homes, out of approximately 1,200,000 Arabs living in former [[Mandatory Palestine|British Mandate of Palestine]], a displacement known to Palestinians as the ''[[Nakba]]''. In 1951, the UN Conciliation Commission for Palestine estimated that the number of Palestinian refugees displaced from Israel was 711,000.<ref>[https://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/93037E3B939746DE8525610200567883 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] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140520201651/http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/93037E3B939746DE8525610200567883 |date=20 May 2014 }}, published by the [[United Nations Conciliation Commission]], 23 October 1950. (U.N. General Assembly Official Records, 5th Session, Supplement No. 18, Document A/1367/Rev. 1)</ref>

This number did not include [[Present absentee|displaced Palestinians inside Israeli-held territory]]. More than 400 Arab villages, and about ten Jewish villages and neighbourhoods, [[list of villages depopulated during the Arab–Israeli conflict|were depopulated]] during the Arab–Israeli conflict, most of them during 1948. According to estimate based on earlier census, the total Muslim population in Palestine was 1,143,336 in 1947.<ref>Government of Palestine, ''A Survey of Palestine'', Supplement, p. 10 (1946)</ref> The [[causes of the 1948 Palestinian exodus]] are a controversial topic among historians.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Hughes |first1=Matthew |title=The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 |url=https://reviews.history.ac.uk/review/219/ |website=[[Institute of Historical Research]] |access-date=8 August 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201028213837/https://reviews.history.ac.uk/review/219 |archive-date=28 October 2020 |url-status=live}}</ref> After the war, around 156,000 [[Arab citizens of Israel|Arabs remained]] in Israel and became Israeli citizens.<ref>{{cite web|title=Dr. Sarah Ozacky-Lazar, Relations between Jews and Arabs during Israel's first decade (in Hebrew) |url=http://lib.cet.ac.il/pages/item.asp?item=13336 |access-date=29 June 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130606124854/http://lib.cet.ac.il/pages/item.asp?item=13336 |archive-date=6 June 2013 |url-status=live }}</ref>

Displaced Palestinian Arabs, known as [[Palestinian refugee]]s, were settled in [[Palestine refugee camps|Palestinian refugee camps]] throughout the Arab world. The United Nations established [[UNRWA]] as a relief and human development agency tasked with providing humanitarian assistance to Palestinian refugees. Arab nations refused to absorb Palestinian refugees, instead keeping them in refugee camps while insisting that they be allowed to return.<ref name="Palestine refugees-UNRWA">{{cite web |url=http://unrwa.org/etemplate.php?id=86 |title=Palestine refugees |publisher=Unrwa.org |access-date=18 January 2013 |archive-date=16 January 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130116212728/http://unrwa.org/etemplate.php?id=86 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name="Jerusalem Fund">{{cite web |url=http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/ht/display/ContentDetails/i/2591 |title=Re-claiming Palestine: The Legal Basis for Rights of Return and Restitution |publisher=Thejerusalemfund.org |date=2 August 2005 |access-date=18 January 2013 |archive-date=6 June 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130606172307/http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/ht/display/ContentDetails/i/2591 |url-status=live }}</ref>

Refugee status was also passed on to their descendants, who were also largely denied citizenship in Arab states, except in Transjordan.<ref>{{cite book|author=Joseph Ginat and Edward Joseph Perkins|title=The Palestinian Refugees: Old Problems – new Solutions|date=2001|publisher=University of Oklahoma Press|isbn=978-0-8061-3393-5|page=140|quote=In order to highlight the plight of the refugees and to put pressure on Israel to admit responsibility for them, Arab countries (except Transjordan) have denied citizenship rights to the Palestinians in their midst; in so doing, they claimed they were serving the interests of the Palestinians and supporting their right of return.}}</ref> The [[Arab League]] instructed its members to deny Palestinians citizenship "to avoid dissolution of their identity and protect their right of return to their homeland." More than 1.4&nbsp;million Palestinians still live in 58 recognised refugee camps,<ref name="Palestine refugees-UNRWA"/><ref name="Jerusalem Fund"/> while more than 5&nbsp;million [[Palestinians#Demographics|Palestinians]] live outside Israel and the [[Palestinian territories]].

Palestinian refugees and displaced persons and the lack of a [[Palestinian right of return]] remain major issues in the [[Arab–Israeli conflict]].

====Jews====
{{Main|Jewish exodus from Arab countries}}

In the three years from May 1948 to the end of 1951, 700,000 Jews [[Aliyah|settled in Israel]], mainly along the borders and in former Arab lands,<ref name="BennyMorris2"/> doubling the Jewish population there.<ref>{{cite report|url=http://www1.cbs.gov.il/reader/shnaton/templ_shnaton_e.html?num_tab=st02_01&CYear=2006 |publisher=Israel Central Bureau of Statistics |access-date=7 August 2007 |year=2006 |title=Population, by Religion and Population Group |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070930033403/http://www1.cbs.gov.il/reader/shnaton/templ_shnaton_e.html?num_tab=st02_01&CYear=2006 |archive-date=30 September 2007 }}</ref> Of these, upwards of 300,000 [[Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries|arrived from Asian and North African states]].<ref name=sachar_pp395-403>Sachar, pp. 395–403.</ref><ref>Devorah Hakohen, [https://books.google.com/books?id=fYOiPrm-6PsC&pg=PA292 ''Immigrants in Turmoil: Mass Immigration to Israel and Its Repercussions in the 1950s and after,''] Syracuse University Press 2003 p. 267</ref> Among them, the largest group, over 100,000, [[Operation Ezra and Nehemiah|was from Iraq]]. The remaining came mostly from Europe, including 136,000 from the 250,000 displaced Jews of World War II living in [[Displaced persons camps in post-World War II Europe|refugee camps]] and urban centers in Germany, Austria, and Italy,<ref>[http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005462 Displaced Persons] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100330002158/http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005462 |date=30 March 2010 }} retrieved on 29 October 2007 from the U.S. Holocaust Museum.</ref> and more than 270,000 coming from Eastern Europe,<ref>Tom Segev, ''1949. The First Israelis'', Owl Books, 1986, p. 96.</ref> mainly [[History of the Jews in Romania#Post-War|Romania]] and [[History of the Jews in Poland#Communist rule: 1945–1989|Poland]], over 100,000 each.

On the establishment of the state, a top priority was given to a policy for the "ingathering of exiles", and the [[Mossad LeAliyah Bet]] gave key assistance to the Jewish Agency to organise immigrants from Europe and the Middle East, and arrange for their transport to Israel. For Ben-Gurion, a fundamental defect of the State was that "it lacked Jews".<ref>Devorah Hakohen, [https://books.google.com/books?id=fYOiPrm-6PsC&pg=PA292 ''Immigrants in Turmoil: Mass Immigration to Israel and Its Repercussions in the 1950s and after,''] Syracuse University Press 2003 pp. 24, 31, 42, 45.</ref>

Jewish immigrants from Arab and Muslim countries left for numerous reasons. The war's outcome had exacerbated Arab hostilities to local Jewish communities. News of the victory aroused messianic expectations in Libya and Yemen; Zionism had taken root in many countries; active incentives for making aliyah formed a key part of Israeli policy; and better economic prospects and security were to be expected from a Jewish state.<ref name="sachar_pp395-403"/>

Some Arab governments, Egypt, for example, held their Jewish communities hostage at times. Persecution, political instability, and news of a number of violent pogroms also played a role. Some 800,000–1,000,000 Jews eventually left the [[Arab world]] over the next three decades as a result of these various factors.<ref name="sachar_pp395-403"/> An estimated 650,000 of the departees settled in [[Israel]].{{sfn|Beker|2005|p=4}}

==Historiography==
Since the war, different [[Historiography|historiographical]] traditions have interpreted the events of 1948 differently; in the words of the [[New Historians|New Historian]] [[Avi Shlaim]], "each side subscribes to a different version of events."<ref name="Shlaim-1995">{{Cite journal |last=Shlaim |first=Avi |author-link=Avi Shlaim |date=1995 |title=The Debate about 1948 |journal=International Journal of Middle East Studies |volume=27 |issue=3 |pages=287–304 |doi=10.1017/S0020743800062097 |issn=0020-7438 |jstor=176252 |s2cid=55258863}}</ref> In the Israeli narrative, the war is Israel's War of Independence.<ref name="Shlaim-1995" /> In the Palestinian narrative, the War of 1948 is inextricable from the [[Nakba]], the Zionist movement is one of [[Zionism as settler colonialism|settler colonialism]],<ref>{{Cite book |last=Khalidi |first=Rashid |title=The Hundred Years' War on Palestine : A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017 |date=2020 |publisher=Henry Holt and Company |isbn=978-1-62779-855-6 |edition=First |location=New York |oclc=1090697006}}</ref> and the Israelis are seen as [[Conquest|conquerors]] and the Palestinians as victims.<ref name="Shlaim-1995" /> The different narratives of 1948 reflect these different perceptions.<ref name="Shlaim-1995" />

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.<ref name="Shlaim-1995" /><ref name="Indiana University Press-2016">{{Cite book |title=The war of 1948 : representations of Israeli and Palestinian memories and narratives |date=2016 |editor1=Avraham Sela |editor2=Alon Kadish |isbn=978-0-253-02341-4 |location=Bloomington |oclc=957554870 |publisher= Indiana University Press}}</ref> Linguistic barriers represent another hurdle, as most research is published exclusively in the author's native language and is not translated.<ref name="Indiana University Press-2016" />

The historiography of 1948 is tied to political [[Legitimacy (political)|legitimacy]] in the present and has implications for the [[Israeli–Palestinian conflict]].<ref name="Sela-2016">{{Cite book |last1=Sela |first1=Avraham |title=The war of 1948 : representations of Israeli and Palestinian memories and narratives |last2=Caplan |first2=Neil |date=2016 |editor1=Avraham Sela |editor2=Alon Kadish |isbn=978-0-253-02341-4 |location=Bloomington |chapter=Epilogue: Reflections on Post-Oslo Israeli and Palestinian History and Memory of 1948 |oclc=957554870 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FVGSDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA204 |publisher= Indiana University Press}}</ref> According to [[Avraham Sela]] and Neil Caplan:<blockquote>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.<ref name="Sela-2016" /></blockquote>The narratives of 1948 have also had implications for [[Palestinian refugees]].<ref name="Indiana University Press-2016" />{{Rp|page=211}}

=== Israeli narratives ===
The Israelis, whether or not they were conquerors, were irrefutably the victors of the war, and for this reason among others, "they were able to propagate more effectively than their opponents their version of this fateful war."<ref name="Shlaim-1995" /> Only in 1987 was that narrative effectively challenged outside the Arab world.<ref name="Shlaim-1995" />

==== Zionist narrative ====
Avi Shlaim gives the conventional Zionist narrative or the "old history" of the 1948 war as follows:<blockquote>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.<ref name="Shlaim-1995" /></blockquote>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{{snd}}not by professional academic historians{{snd}}but rather by participants in the war, politicians, soldiers, and state-sponsored historians, as well as by sympathetic journalists, chroniclers, and biographers.<ref name="Shlaim-1995" /> It also portrays Israelis as morally superior, lacks political analysis, and gives undue weight to "the heroic feats of the Israeli fighters."<ref name="Shlaim-1995" /> This [[Nationalist historiography|nationalist narrative]] was taught in Israeli schools and used for gaining legitimacy internationally.<ref name="Shlaim-1995" />

==== New Historians ====
{{Further|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).<ref name="Shlaim-1995" /> These writers came to be known as [[New Historians]] or "post-Zionists."''<ref name="Pappe-2009">{{Cite journal |last=Pappé |first=Ilan |date=2009-10-01 |title=The Vicissitudes of the 1948 Historiography of Israel |journal=Journal of Palestine Studies |volume=39 |issue=1 |pages=6–23 |doi=10.1525/jps.2010.XXXIX.1.6 |hdl=10871/15209 |issn=0377-919X|hdl-access=free }}</ref>''

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.<ref name="Shlaim-1995" />

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.<ref name="Shlaim-1995" /> 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 [[Delegitimisation of Israel|delegitimize]] the State of Israel.<ref name="Shlaim-1995" />

==== 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."<ref name="Pappe-2009" /> 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.<ref name="Pappe-2009" />

In this period, the focus of Israeli historical writing on 1948 shifted largely from its human impact back to its military aspects.<ref name="Pappe-2009" /> 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]].<ref name="Pappe-2009" />

Among those Pappé associated with the neo-Zionist perspective were [[Benny Morris]] (who had become more outspokenly defensive of Zionism by this time), {{Ill|Daniel Gutwein|he|דניאל גוטוויין}}, [[Mordechai Bar-On]], [[Yoav Gelber]], Tamir Goren, {{Ill|Arnon Golan|he|ארנון גולן}}, Alon Kadish, and {{Ill|Yoav Peleg|he|יואב פלג}}, as well as the journal [[Azure (magazine)|''Techelet'']] .<ref name="Pappe-2009" />

=== 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."<ref name="Indiana University Press-2016" />{{Rp|page=|pages=209–211}} The term '[[Nakba]]' to describe the Palestinian catastrophe in the war of 1948 was coined in [[Constantin Zureiq|Constantin Zureiq's]] 1948 book ''[[Ma'na an-Nakba]]''.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Khalidi |first=Rashid |title=The war for Palestine : rewriting the history of 1948 |date=2007 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |editor1=Eugene L. Rogan |editor2=Avi Shlaim |isbn=978-0-511-37135-6 |edition=2nd |location=Cambridge |chapter=1 The Palestinians and 1948: the underlying causes of failure |oclc=192047956}}</ref> [[Aref al-Aref]] wrote a six volume work titled {{Ill|an-Nakba (book)|lt=an-Nakba|ar|النكبة (كتاب)|italic=y}} that was published in Arabic in the 1950s.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Gelber |first=Yoav |title=Making Israel |date=2010-04-23 |publisher=University of Michigan Press |others=Benny Morris |isbn=978-0-472-02652-4 |language=en |chapter=The History of Zionist Historiography: From Apologetics to Denial |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0pVFDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA47}}</ref>

Palestinian narratives have focused on countering the dominant Zionist narrative; the preeminent 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.<ref name="Indiana University Press-2016" />{{Rp|page=211}}

[[Rashid Khalidi]] and other historians hold that "there is no established, authoritative Palestinian master narrative."<ref name="Indiana University Press-2016" />{{Rp|page=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.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Khalidi |first=Rashid |title=The Iron Cage : The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood |year=2006 |publisher=Oneworld Publications |isbn=978-1-78074-808-5 |oclc=1050548811}}</ref><ref name="Indiana University Press-2016" />{{Rp|page=212}} Without access to much in the way of archival materials, Palestinian historians have made use of [[oral history]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Khalidi |first=Rashid R. |date=1988 |title=Revisionist Views of the Modern History of Palestine: 1948 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/41857981 |url-status=live |journal=Arab Studies Quarterly |volume=10 |issue=4 |pages=425–432 |issn=0271-3519 |jstor=41857981 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230304193807/https://www.jstor.org/stable/41857981 |archive-date=2023-03-04 |access-date=2023-03-04}}</ref><ref name="Indiana University Press-2016" />{{Rp|page=214}}

=== 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."<ref name="Indiana University Press-2016" />{{Rp|page=210}} The official narratives of Arab states on 1948 tended to be [[Apologia|apologetic]] with the goal of defending their political legitimacy, while the [[Arab nationalism|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{{snd}}neither approach bridled itself too much with historical accuracy.<ref>{{Cite book |title=The war for Palestine : rewriting the history of 1948 |date=2007 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |editor1=Eugene L. Rogan |editor2=Avi Shlaim |isbn=978-0-511-37135-6 |edition=2nd |location=Cambridge |oclc=192047956}}</ref>{{Rp|page=6}}

=== Western narratives ===

==== In the United States ====
The American journalist [[Joan Peters|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.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Said |first=Edward W. |date=1986-01-01 |title=The Joan Peters Case*: From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine, by Joan Peters |journal=Journal of Palestine Studies |volume=15 |issue=2 |pages=144–150 |doi=10.2307/2536835 |issn=0377-919X |jstor=2536835}}</ref><ref>[[Norman Finkelstein|Finkelstein, 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 Books|Verso]].</ref>

[[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''.<ref name="Pappe-2009" />

== In popular culture ==
* In 1948, the Egyptian film ''[[A Girl from Palestine]]'' tells the story of an Egyptian fighter pilot.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Armes |first=Roy |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=88sTRTl6yKwC&dq=%22a+girl+from+palestine%22+1948+film&pg=PA135 |title=Dictionary of African Filmmakers |year=2008 |publisher=Indiana University Press |isbn=978-0-253-35116-6 |language=en}}</ref>
* A 2015 PBS documentary, ''[[A Wing and a Prayer (film)|A Wing and a Prayer]]'', depicts the Al Schwimmer–led airborne smuggling missions to arm Israel.<ref>{{Cite web|title = Israeli Air Force, particularly its scrappy beginnings, inspires 3 films|url = https://www.jta.org/2015/05/12/arts-entertainment/israels-air-force-particularly-its-scrappy-beginnings-inspires-3-films|website = Jewish Telegraphic Agency|access-date = 10 December 2015|date = 12 May 2015|archive-date = 17 November 2015|archive-url = 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|url-status = live}}</ref>

==See also==
* [[List of battles and operations in the 1948 Palestine war]]
* [[List of modern conflicts in the Middle East]]
* [[List of wars involving Israel]]

==Notes==
{{Notelist}}

==References==
<references>
<ref name="Shapira2014p173">{{cite book|author=Anita Shapira|title=Ben-Gurion: Father of Modern Israel|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2eEdBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA173|date= 2014|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=978-0-300-18273-6|pages=173–|quote=(Ben Gurion) He also did not flinch from provoking the United Nations by breaking the truce agreement. But the limit of his fearlessness was a clash with a Western power. Vainly, the right and Mapam accused him of defeatism. He did not flinch from confronting them but chose to maintain good relations with the United States, which he perceived as a potential ally of the new state, and also not to provoke the British lion, even though its fangs had been drawn. At the end of the war, when Yigal Allon, who represented the younger generation of commanders that had grown up in the war, demanded the conquest of the West Bank up to the Jordan River as the natural, defensible border of the state, Ben-Gurion refused. He recognized that the IDF was militarily strong enough to carry out the conquest, but he believed that the young state should not bite off more than it had already chewed. There was a limit to what the world was prepared to accept. Furthermore, the armistice borders – which later became known as the Green Line – were better than those he had dreamed of at the beginning of the war. In Ben-Gurion's opinion, in terms of territory Israel was satisfied. It was time to send the troops home and start work on building the new nation.}}</ref>

<ref name="Morris2009p79">{{cite book|author=Benny Morris|title=One state, two states: resolving the Israel/Palestine conflict|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4ZztAAAAMAAJ|year=2009|publisher=Yale University Press|page=79|isbn=978-0-300-12281-7|quote=in March 1949, just before the signing of the Israel-Transjordan armistice agreement, when IDF general Yigal Allon proposed conquering the West Bank, Ben-Gurion turned him down flat. Like most Israelis, Ben-Gurion had given up the dream}}</ref>

<ref name="Shalom2002p174">{{cite book|author=Zaki Shalom|title=David Ben-Gurion, the State of Israel and the Arab World, 1949–1956|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KMTm5zOzUugC&pg=PA174|year=2002|publisher=Sussex Academic Press|isbn=978-1-902210-21-6|pages=174–|quote=The clearest expression of this 'activist' approach is found in a "personal, top secret" letter sent by Yigal Allon to BG shortly after ... We cannot imagine a border more stable than the Jordan River, which runs the entire length of the country }}</ref>

<ref name="Morris2008p298">{{cite book|author=Benny Morris|title=1948: a history of the first Arab-Israeli war|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=J5jtAAAAMAAJ|access-date=13 July 2013|year=2008|publisher=Yale University Press|page=116|isbn=978-0-300-12696-9|quote='the Little Triangle': Ijzim, Ein Ghazal, and Jaba. The villages repeatedly fired at Israeli traffic along the coast road and were supplied by the Iraqis from northern Samaria. … Sniping at traffic continued after the start of the Second Truce, …on 24 July Israel launched mivtza shoter (Operation Policeman). The aim was 'to gain control' of the coast road between Zikhron Yaakov and Haifa 'and to destroy all the enemy in the area.'… By 26 July it was over. Most of the inhabitants fled before and during the attack, reaching northern Samaria; hundreds of others were forcibly expelled during the following days. At least a hundred militiamen and civilians were killed.|archive-date=19 January 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230119160921/https://books.google.com/books?id=J5jtAAAAMAAJ|url-status=live}}</ref>

<ref name="morris2008p116">{{cite book|author=Benny Morris|title=1948: a history of the first Arab-Israeli war|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=J5jtAAAAMAAJ|access-date=13 July 2013|year=2008|publisher=Yale University Press|page=116|isbn=978-0-300-12696-9|quote=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.|archive-date=19 January 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230119160921/https://books.google.com/books?id=J5jtAAAAMAAJ|url-status=live}}</ref>

<!-- <ref>{{cite book|author=Benny Morris|title=1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CC7381HrLqcC&pg=PA332|access-date=14 July 2013|date=1 October 2008|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=978-0-300-14524-3|page=185|quote=King Abdullah had always acknowledged Arab (as distinct from Jordanian) weakness, and his son, Prince Talal, openly predicted defeat. at the last moment, several leaders, including King Ibn Sagud and Azzam Pasha – to avert catastrophe – secretly appealed to the British to soldier on in Palestine for at least another year. Egypt's foreign minister, Khashaba, had already done so. He 'wished they would remain, and suggested that it was their duty to do so.'}}</ref> -->

<ref name="Tripp2002p73">{{cite book|author=Charles Tripp|title=A History of Iraq|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WR-Cnw1UCJEC&pg=PA100|year=2002|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-52900-6|page=73|quote=.= Iraq had dispatched 3,000 troops to the front in May and in the months that followed a further 15,000 troops were sent, making them the largest single Arab force in Palestine (also – The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948, edited by Eugene L. Rogan, Avi Shlaim, chapter at pp. 125–49) }}</ref>

<ref name="morris2008p236">Morris, 2008, pp. 236, 237, 247, 253, 254</ref>

<ref name="Zamir2010p21">{{cite journal|last=Zamir|first=Meir|title='Bid' for Altalena: France's Covert Action in the 1948 War in Palestine|journal=Middle Eastern Studies|date=January 2010|volume=46|issue=1|pages=21, 32|publisher=Routledge|quote=Intelligence provided by the French consulate in Jerusalem on 12 May 1948 on the Arab armies' revised plan to invade the new state was crucial in Israel's success in withstanding the Arab invasion|doi=10.1080/00263200903432258|s2cid=143924379}}</ref>

<ref name="Zamir2010p22">{{cite journal|last=Zamir|first=Meir|title='Bid' for Altalena: France's Covert Action in the 1948 War in Palestine|journal=Middle Eastern Studies|date=January 2010|volume=46|issue=1|page=22|publisher=Routledge|quote=a) the suspension of arms sales to Syria, notwithstanding signed contracts; b) prevention of a large sale of arms by a Swiss company to Ethiopia, which was actually destined for Egypt and Transjordan; c) diplomatic pressure on Belgium to suspend arms sales to the Arab states; d) denial of a British request at the end of April to permit the landing of a squadron of British aircraft on their way to Transjordan; e) authorization of Air France to transport cargo to Tel Aviv on 13 May; f) allowing aircraft [carrying arms from Czechoslovakia] to land on French territory in transit to Israel; g) discreet French diplomatic support for Israel in the UN; h) two arms shipments to 'Nicaragua', which were actually intended for Israel.|doi=10.1080/00263200903432258|s2cid=143924379}}</ref>

<ref name="Morris2008p218">{{cite book|author=Benny Morris|title=1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CC7381HrLqcC&pg=PA332|access-date=14 July 2013|date= 2008|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=978-0-300-14524-3| page=218|quote=On 26–27 May, the Legionnaires took the Hurvat Israel (or "Hurva") Synagogue, the quarter's largest and most sacred building, and then, without reason, blew it up. 'This affair will rankle for generations in the heart of world Jewry,' predicted one Foreign Office official. The destruction of the synagogue shook Jewish morale.}}</ref>

<ref name="Morris2008p320">{{cite book|author=Benny Morris|title=1948: a history of the first Arab-Israeli war|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=J5jtAAAAMAAJ|access-date=13 July 2013|year=2008|publisher=Yale University Press|page=320|isbn=978-0-300-12696-9|quote=If the front lines of 14 October were to turn into permanent borders, Israel would be truncated and extremely vulnerable. Moreover, the no-peace, no-war situation was untenable. As David Ben-Gurion put it to his ministers on 26 September, "A protracted truce will break us. The Egyptian expeditionary force had to be destroyed or, at the least, driven from Palestine|archive-date=19 January 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230119160921/https://books.google.com/books?id=J5jtAAAAMAAJ|url-status=live}}</ref>

<!--
<ref name="refugees">Benny Morris, 2004. [https://books.google.com/books?id=uM_kFX6edX8C&pg=PA602 ''The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited''], pp. 602–604. Cambridge University Press; {{ISBN|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"''; <br />– [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''] {{Webarchive|url=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 |date=12 July 2019 }}, FRUS, 1949, p. 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."''; <br />– [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''] {{Webarchive|url=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 |date=12 July 2019 }}, FRUS, 1949, p. 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."''</ref>
-->

<!-- <ref name="Gelber2006p138">{{cite book|author=Yoav Gelber|title=Palestine 1948: War, Escape and the Emergence of the Palestinian Refugee Problem|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UcSUgrDsD_sC|access-date=14 July 2013|date=1 January 2006|publisher=Sussex Academic Press|isbn=978-1-84519-075-0|page=138|quote=A war between Israel and the Arab States broke out immediately, and the Arab armies invaded Palestine.}}</ref> -->
</references>

==Bibliography==
===Works by involved parties===
{{Refbegin}}
* [[Ben Dunkelman|Dunkelman, Ben]] (1976) ''Dual Allegiance: An Autobiography''. Macmillan Company of Canada, Toronto. {{ISBN|978-0-7705-1429-7}}
* {{cite book|title=The Faithful City: The Siege of Jerusalem, 1948|first=Dov|last=Joseph|author-link=Dov Yosef|publisher=Simon and Schuster|year=1960|lccn=60-10976|oclc=266413|url=https://archive.org/details/thefaithfulcity0000unse|url-access=registration}}
* Kagan, Benjamin (1966) ''The Secret Battle for Israel''. World Publishing,  Cleveland. {{LCCN|6624991}}
* Lorch, Netanel (1961) ''The Edge of the Sword: Israel's War of Independence, 1947–1949''. New York, London: [[G. P. Putnam's Sons]] {{LCCN|618345}}
{{Refend}}

===Secondary sources===
{{Refbegin|40em}}
* Adrian, Nathan (2004). ''Britain, Israel and Anglo-Jewry 1949–57''. [[Routledge]]
* Aloni, Shlomo (2001). ''Arab-Israeli Air Wars 1947–82''. [[Osprey Publishing]]. {{ISBN|978-1-84176-294-4}}
* [[Morris Beckman (writer)|Beckman, Morris]] (1999). ''The Jewish Brigade: An Army With Two Masters, 1944–45''. Sarpedon Publishers. {{ISBN|978-1-86227-423-5}}
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{{Refend}}

===Ancillary works===
{{Refbegin}}
* [[Judith M. Brown|Brown, Judith M.]] and [[Wm. Roger Louis|Louis, Wm. Roger]] (1999). ''The Oxford History of the British Empire''. Oxford: [[Oxford University Press]]. {{ISBN|978-0-19-820564-7}}
* Flint, Colin. ''Introduction to Geopolitics'', Routledge 2012
* [[Inari Karsh|Karsh, Inari]] & [[Efraim Karsh|Karsh, Efraim]] (1999). ''Empires of the Sand: The Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East, 1789–1923''. [[Harvard University Press]]. {{ISBN|978-0-674-00541-9}}
* Penkower, Monty Noam (2002). ''Decision on Palestine Deferred: America, Britain and Wartime Diplomacy, 1939–1945''. London: [[Routledge]]. {{ISBN|978-0-7146-5268-9}}
* Oren, Michael, ''Six Days of War'', Random House Ballantine Publishing Group, New York, 2003, {{ISBN|978-0-345-46192-6}}
* [[Jeffrey T. Richelson|Richelson, Jeffrey T.]] (1997). ''A Century of Spies: Intelligence in the Twentieth Century''. Oxford: [[Oxford University Press]]. {{ISBN|978-0-19-511390-7}}
* Sicker, Martin (1999). ''Reshaping Palestine: From Muhammad Ali to the British Mandate, 1831–1922''. [[Praeger Publishers|Praeger]]/[[Greenwood Publishing|Greenwood]]. {{ISBN|978-0-275-96639-3}}
{{Refend}}

==External links==
{{Commons category}}
* The Israeli Knesset: [https://www.knesset.gov.il/holidays/eng/independence_day_war.htm About the War of Independence]
* [http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/ United Nations: System on the Question of Palestine] ({{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20020815081332/http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/ |date=15 August 2002 }})
* MidEastWeb: [http://www.mideastweb.org/briefhistory.htm History of Palestine, Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict]
* [[Stephen R. Shalom]]: {{webarchive |url=http://webarchive.loc.gov/all/20020913220119/http://www.zmag.org/shalom-meqa.htm |title=Palestinian viewpoint concerning the context of the 1948 war |date=13 September 2002}}
* [https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/middle_east/israel_and_the_palestinians/key_documents/1681322.stm The BBC on the UN Partition Plan]
* [https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/middle_east/03/v3_ip_timeline/html/1948.stm The BBC on the Formation of Israel]
* [[Avi Shlaim]]: [http://users.ox.ac.uk/~ssfc0005/Israel%20and%20the%20Arab%20Coalition%20in%2019481.html Israel and the Arab Coalition in 1948] ({{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090830023223/http://users.ox.ac.uk/~ssfc0005/Israel%20and%20the%20Arab%20Coalition%20in%2019481.html |date=30 August 2009 }})
* {{cite magazine|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,779710,00.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070703231512/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,779710,00.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=3 July 2007|title=I Have Returned|magazine=Time|access-date=31 October 2009|date=15 March 1948}}
* {{cite magazine|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,798381,00.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070930122418/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,798381,00.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=30 September 2007|title=War for Jerusalem Road|magazine=Time|access-date=31 October 2009|date=19 April 1948}}

{{Israeli wars}}{{List of wars involving North Yemen}}{{Arab–Israeli conflict}}
{{Anti-Jewish pogroms during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War}}
{{Palestinian Arab villages depopulated during the 1948 Palestine War}}
{{Nakbaend}}
{{Cold War}}
{{Egypt–Israel relations}}
{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Arab-Israeli War}}
[[Category:1948 Arab–Israeli War| ]]
[[Category:1948 in Israel]]
[[Category:1948 in Palestine]]
[[Category:1948 in Egypt]]
[[Category:1948 in Syria|Arab Israeli War]]
[[Category:Conflicts in 1948]]
[[Category:1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight]]
[[Category:Invasions of Israel]]
[[Category:Wars of independence]]