1948 Arab–Israeli War

The 1948 Arab–Israeli War (15 May 1948 – 10 March 1949), also known as the First Arab–Israeli War, followed the civil war in Mandatory Palestine (29 November 1947 – 14 May 1948) as the second and final stage of the 1948 Palestine war. The civil war became a war of separate states with the Israeli Declaration of Independence on 14 May 1948, the end of the British Mandate for Palestine at midnight, and the entry of a military coalition of Arab states into the territory of Mandatory Palestine the following morning. The war formally ended with the 1949 Armistice Agreements which established the Green Line. Since the 1917 Balfour Declaration and the 1920 creation of the British Mandate of Palestine, and in the context of Zionism and the mass migration of European Jews to Palestine, there had been tension and conflict between Arabs, Jews, and the British in Palestine. On 29 November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly voted in favor of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, proposing to divide the territory into an Arab state, a Jewish state, and an internationally administered corpus separatum for the cities of Jerusalem and Bethlehem. The land allocated to the Arab State included about 43% of Mandatory Palestine. The land allocated to the Jewish State, who constituted a third of the population, was 56% of Mandatory Palestine. While Jewish leaders in Palestine supported the plan, leaders of the Palestinian Arab community and in the broader Arab world did not. The following day, the conflict escalated into a civil war with attacks by Palestinian militias and mobs on Jewish areas. As the two communities battled, the British withdrew. In April 1948, Zionist forces launched an offensive codenamed Plan Dalet, during which they conquered and depopulated cities, villages, and territories in Mandatory Palestine in preparation for the establishment of a Jewish state. Just before the expiration of the British Mandate for Palestine, Zionist leaders announced the Israeli Declaration of Independence on 14 May 1948. The following morning, Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, and expeditionary forces from Iraq launched an invasion into Palestine, taking control of the Arab areas and attacking Israeli forces and settlements. 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. By the end of the war, the State of Israel controlled about 78% of the former territory of Mandatory Palestine: 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, including Jaffa, Lydda and Ramla (Ramle) area, Upper Galilee, some parts of the Negev, the west coast as far as Gaza City, and a wide strip along the Tel Aviv–Jerusalem road. Israel also took control of West Jerusalem, which was meant to be part of an international zone for Jerusalem and its environs. Transjordan took control of East Jerusalem and what became known as the West Bank, annexing it the following year. The territory known today as the Gaza Strip was occupied by Egypt. Expulsions of Palestinians, which had begun during the civil war, continued during the Arab-Israeli war. Hundreds of Palestinians were killed in multiple massacres, such as occurred in the expulsions from Lydda and Ramla. 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 migrated, fled, or were expelled from Arab states in the three years following the war, 260,000 of whom went to Israel.

Background

Since the 1917 Balfour Declaration and the 1920 creation of the British Mandate of Palestine, and in the context of Zionism and the mass migration of European Jews to Palestine, there had been tension and conflict between Arabs, Jews, and the British. 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. 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.

The 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 full-scale civil war. 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. 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. 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. 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, 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. 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. Although doubt took hold among Yishuv supporters, their apparent defeats were due more to their wait-and-see policy than to weakness. 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 Stalin's decision to support the 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.

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. A separate plan, Operation Nachshon, was devised to lift the siege of Jerusalem. 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, 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. The operation was successful, and enough foodstuffs to last two months were trucked into Jerusalem for distribution to the Jewish population. The success of the operation was assisted by the death of al-Husayni in combat. During this time, fighters from Irgun and Lehi 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 exodus of the Arab population. At the same time, the Arab Liberation Army was roundly defeated at Mishmar HaEmek in its first large-scale operation, coinciding with the loss of their Druze allies through defection.

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 were all captured and more than 250,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled. 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 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. In preparation for the offensive, Haganah successfully launched Operations Yiftah and Ben-'Ami 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. 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.

=== Armed forces === By September 1947, the Haganah had "10,489 rifles, 702 light machine-guns, 2,666 submachine guns, 186 medium machine-guns, 672 two-inch mortars and 92 three-inch (76 mm) mortars".

Importing arms

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. 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 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 million rounds of ammunition, enough to equip all units, but short of heavy arms. 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. 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.

==== Arms production ==== The Yishuv also had "a relatively advanced arms producing capacity", that between October 1947 and July 1948 "produced 3 million 9 mm bullets, 150,000 Mills grenades, 16,000 submachine guns (Sten Guns) and 210 three-inch (76 mm) mortars", 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 Ayalon Institute, a clandestine bullet factory beneath kibbutz Ayalon, which produced about 2.5 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.

==== 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 1920–21, and throughout the riots of 1929, Great Uprising of 1936–39, and World War II. It had a mobile force, the 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. 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. 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. 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. Few of the units had been trained by December 1947. 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. 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. By March 1948, the Yishuv had a numerical superiority, with 35,780 mobilised and deployed fighters for the Haganah, 3,000 men under Lehi and Irgun, and a few thousand armed settlers. Irgun was eventually absorbed into the Jewish Defence Army. 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 British mandate in Palestine such as the attacks on trains and the kidnapping of British servicemen.

==== 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. The effective number of Arab combatants was listed as growing to 12,000 by some historians while others calculate an eventual total Arab strength of approximately 23,500 troops, 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.

Political objectives

=== Yishuv === The Yishuv's aims evolved during the war. Mobilisation for a total war was organised. 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". According to research by Shay Hazkani, Ben-Gurion and segments of the 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.". Plan Dalet, or Plan D, (Hebrew: 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 and to expel as many Palestinians as possible, 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. 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. 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. 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.

Arab League as a whole

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. 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. His conclusions were that they had no chance of victory and that an invasion of the Arab regular armies was mandatory. 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. In April with the Palestinian defeat, the refugees coming from Palestine and the pressure of their public opinion, the Arab leaders decided to invade Palestine. The Arab League gave reasons for its invasion in Palestine in the cablegram:

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 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. 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".

=== 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. (In contrast, Morris wrote in 2008 that the Egyptian army was the most powerful and threatening army.) The Arab Legion had about 10,000 soldiers, trained and commanded by British officers.

In 1946–47, Abdullah said that he had no intention to "resist or impede the partition of Palestine and creation of a Jewish state." Ideally, Abdullah would have liked to annex all of Palestine, but he was prepared to compromise. He supported the partition, intending that the West Bank area of the British Mandate allocated for the Arab state be annexed to Jordan. 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. 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. 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. 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". 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. 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. In addition, Farouk wished to annex all of southern Palestine to Egypt. 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", using a term frequent in Haganah reports of Palestinian fighters. 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." These intelligence officers acted without the approval or knowledge of the British government. Nuri as-Said, the strongman of Iraq, had ambitions for bringing the entire Fertile Crescent under Iraqi leadership. Both Syria and Lebanon wished to take certain areas of northern Palestine. 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. Co-operation was to be very poor during the war between the various Palestinian factions and the Arab armies.

Arab Higher Committee of Amin al-Husayni

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 on 8 September under the nominal leadership of the Mufti. 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.

Initial line-up of forces

=== Military assessments === Though the State of Israel faced the armies of multiple neighbouring Arab countries, due to previous battles the Palestinians themselves hardly existed as a military force by the middle of May. British intelligence and the Arab League reached similar conclusions. The British Foreign Office and the CIA believed that the Arab states would finally win in case of war. Israeli military historian Martin Van Creveld says the sides were fairly evenly matched in manpower at the beginning of the war, but the ratio shifted in Israel's favor as it went on. 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." Egypt, Iraq, and Syria all possessed air forces, Egypt and Syria had tanks, and all had some modern artillery. Initially, the Haganah had no heavy machine guns, artillery, armoured vehicles, anti-tank or anti-aircraft weapons, nor military aircraft or tanks. The four Arab armies that invaded on 15 May were far stronger than the Haganah formations they initially encountered. 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 – 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.

=== Yishuv/Israeli forces === The primary Jewish military force in Palestine was the Haganah, which was subordinate to the official leadership of the Yishuv that became the provisional Israeli government. From November 1947, with the outbreak of the 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine, it began reorganizing, changing from a territorial militia to resemble a regular army. By April and May 1948, it was conducting brigade-sized operations. Mobilization of the Yishuv began during the civil war period with conscription instituted. Following independence it was initially Israel's main military force. The Haganah was joined by two smaller independent militias, the Irgun and Lehi. They consisted of political dissidents from the mainstream leadership and at times had come into conflict with the Haganah, but fought alongside it during the civil war and early stages of the war with the Arab states. On 26 May 1948, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion issued an order for the formation of the Israel Defense Forces as the unified military force of Israel, which was ratified by the Israeli cabinet on 31 May. The order called for the disbandment of all other Jewish armed forces. Subsequently, the Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi were merged into the IDF, although the Irgun and Lehi retained independent presences in Jerusalem and the Irgun recruits into the IDF were initially placed together in their own units. After the Altalena Affair, an attempt by the Irgun to import arms in June 1948 that resulted in clashes with the IDF, the independent Irgun units within the IDF were broken up, with the soldiers dispersed between various units. Following the assassination of Folke Bernadotte by Lehi in September 1948, the Israeli government lost its last remaining tolerance for independent militias and broke up the Irgun and Lehi remnants in Jerusalem. Training and experience gained by volunteers from the Yishuv in the British Armed Forces during World War II was decisive in building a new military. Some 30,000 Jews from Palestine served in the British military during the war. The military training and discipline, organizational skills, and combat experience they gained were of great benefit in building the IDF and fighting the war. They proved important to the Haganah's efforts to train its personnel and helped establish the IDF's General Staff, its artillery, engineering, logistics, and medical services, as well as the fledgling air force and navy. Veterans of the Jewish Brigade, a British Army brigade group composed primarily of Jews from the Yishuv that fought in the Italian campaign towards the end of the war, were heavily represented in building the IDF, with many Jewish Brigade veterans serving as officers during the war. A handful of Yishuv volunteers served as aircrews, including pilots, and hundreds more as ground crews in the Royal Air Force, which would benefit Israel's new air force. Members of the Yishuv who had served in the Royal Navy and British Merchant Navy during World War II proceeded to serve in the Israeli Navy during the 1948 war. The Haganah's elite strike force, the Palmach, had also received British training as preparation for a possible German invasion of Palestine and took part in missions against Vichy French forces in Syria and Lebanon. In addition, thousands of foreign volunteers, mostly World War II veterans of Allied militaries, served in the IDF during the war in what became known as Mahal, bringing their skills and experience to the IDF. Most were Jews, but some non-Jews also served. They were both ideologically-motivated volunteers and mercenaries. Most of Israel's air and ground crews were Mahal volunteers from English-speaking countries, resulting in English being the main language of the Israeli Air Force during the war. Other Mahal volunteers included sailors, tank crews, doctors, and logistics and communications personnel. As well as experience from World War II, the 1947–1948 civil war against Arab militias prior to the invasion of the Arab armies provided additional combat experience for units and fighters, most of whom were new recruits. 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. According to 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. According to Walid Khalidi, "the arms at the disposal of these forces were plentiful". According to Benny Morris, on 15 May only about 60% of Haganah troops had weapons, but the amount of weapons available rapidly increased due to massive shipments from abroad as well as domestic manufacturing. Yishuv forces were organized 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. By the end of 1948, the Israel Defense Forces had 88,033 soldiers, including 60,000 combat soldiers.

France authorised Air France to transport cargo to Tel Aviv on 13 May. 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. Czechoslovakia 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 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. In addition to arms shipments from abroad, Israel's local domestic arms industry produced substantial quantities of weapons and ammunition, as well as dozens of makeshift armored cars and trucks. Following independence, the Israelis managed to build three Sherman tanks from scrap-heap material found in abandoned British ordnance depots. Israeli agents in Italy subsequently purchased 32 Sherman tanks, which arrived in three shipments from November 1948 to January 1949. Although still in serviceable condition, the tanks' gun barrels had been destroyed to prevent them from firing, so it was decided to install Krupp field guns that had been purchased from Switzerland in September 1948 with the intent to use them for field artillery, but the conversion proved complicated and it is likely that none of the Shermans with Krupp guns were ready until the war was over. However, three 75mm M3 tank guns were also purchased in Italy and these were fitted onto three Shermans in time for them to take part in combat.

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. The equipment obtained included twelve armored cars, four of which had cannons, and three half-tracks. On 29 June 1948, the day before the last British troops left Haifa, two British soldiers sympathetic to the Israelis stole two Cromwell tanks 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 Israeli Armored Corps.

After the first truce, by July 1948, the Israelis had established an air force, a navy, and a tank battalion. After the second truce, Czechoslovakia supplied Supermarine Spitfire fighter planes, which were smuggled to Israel via an abandoned Luftwaffe runway in Yugoslavia, with the agreement of the Yugoslav government. The airborne arms smuggling missions from Czechoslovakia were codenamed Operation Balak.

=== Arab forces === At the invasion, in addition to the irregular Palestinian militia groups, the five Arab states that joined the war were Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon and 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 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 Bagot Glubb (known as Glubb Pasha). Syria bought a quantity of small arms for the Arab Liberation Army from Czechoslovakia, but the shipment never arrived due to Haganah force intervention.

Arab states

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. Until January 1948, it was reinforced by the 3,000-strong Transjordan Frontier Force. As many as 48 British officers served in the Arab Legion. The commander of the Arab Legion was a British officer, John Bagot Glubb, also known as "Glubb Pasha". The Legion was organized into four brigades as follows:

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. The Jordanian forces were probably the best trained of all combatants. Other combatant forces lacked the ability to make strategic decisions and tactical manoeuvres, 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. 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 to the war effort, including four infantry brigades, one armoured battalion and support personnel. These were to operate under Jordanian guidance. The first Iraqi forces to be deployed reached Jordan in April 1948 under the command of Gen. Nur ad-Din Mahmud. 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. 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 tanks, one battalion of sixteen 25-pounder guns, a battalion of eight 6-pounder guns and one medium-machine-gun battalion with supporting troops. The Egyptian Air Force had over thirty Spitfires, four Hawker Hurricanes and twenty C47s modified into crude bombers. 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. France suspended arms sales to Syria, notwithstanding already-signed contracts. 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. In 1948, the Lebanese army contained of four infantry battalions, one artillery battalion, one armored battalion, a cavalry group as well as transport engineering and medical support units. Each infantry battalion averaged 500–550 men, with 450 soldiers per battalion, and contained three infantry companies. Only the third battalion saw battle. 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". A token force of 436 soldiers crossed into the northern Galilee, seized two villages after a small skirmish, and withdrew. Israel then invaded and occupied southern Lebanon until the end of the war. 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. During the first truce, the Iraqis increased their force to about 10,000. Ultimately, the Iraqi expeditionary force numbered around 18,000 men. 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. The Saudi troops were attached to the Egyptian command throughout the war, and estimates of their total strength ranged up to 1,200. By July 1948, the Saudis constituted three brigades within the Egyptian expeditionary force, and were stationed as guards between Gaza city and Rafah. This area came under heavy aerial bombardment during Operation Yoav in October, and faced a land assault beginning in late December which culminated in the Battle of Rafah in early January of the new year. With the subsequent armistice of 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. During the first truce, Sudan sent six companies of regular troops to fight alongside the Egyptians. Yemen also committed a small expeditionary force to the war effort, and contingents from Morocco joined the Arab armies as well.

== 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.

First phase: 15 May – 11 June 1948

The civil war in Mandatory Palestine became a war between separate states with the declaration of the establishment of the State of Israel on 14 May 1948, a few hours before the termination of the British Mandate of Palestine at midnight. The following morning, the regular armies of neighbouring Arab states – Egypt, Transjordan and Syria – invaded the region. Through Plan Dalet, Zionist forces had already, from 1 April down to 14 May, conducted 8 of their 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 forces would have reached 'the natural borders of western Israel.' By 15 May 1948, when the Mandate formally expired and the State of Israel came into being, Israel controlled two contiguous and connected strips of Palestine which contained the main Jewish settlement concentrations. One ran along the coastal plain from Rosh Hanikra to Rehovot, with two additional appendages emanating from its southern end, one running to West Jerusalem and the other to the Jewish settlement bloc in the Negev which was connected by a sliver of land near Negba. The other strip was in the Galilee Panhandle, Jordan Valley, and Beit She'an Valley. These two strips were narrowly linked by the Israeli-held Jezreel Valley. The Arabs held the rest of Palestine, including a small Arab Liberation Army-supported enclave just south of Haifa. 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 and other UN member states. 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. 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, 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. Intelligence provided by the 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. The first mission of the Jewish forces was to hold on against the Arab armies and stop them, although the Arabs began the war with major advantages such as the initiative and vastly superior firepower.

Southern front – Negev

The Egyptian force, the largest among the Arab armies, invaded from the south. The Egyptian invasion was preceded by the entry of smaller forces of Muslim Brotherhood volunteers in April and Egyptian Army volunteers on 6 May, before the end of the Mandate. With the end of the Mandate, the Egyptian task force, composed of Egyptian troops and Muslim Brotherhood volunteers, entered the Negev. The main Egyptian force advanced north in the direction of Tel Aviv while a mixed force of Egyptian troops and Muslim Brotherhood volunteers broke off from the main force and advanced east, occupying Beersheba on 19 May before advancing to the Hebron Hills. It participated in combat alongside the Arab Legion and local irregulars at kibbutz Ramat Rachel. The presence of Israeli kibbutzim along the path of main force's thrust north was seen as a threat due to their potential to cut off forward units and harass supply convoys. To secure their flanks, the Egyptians attacked and laid siege to numerous kibbutzim, expending great resources in attempting to capture them. The defenders of these settlements held out fiercely for days against vastly superior forces, and managed to buy valuable time for the Israelis to reposition their forces and deploy the heavy weaponry now entering the country. On 15 May 1948, the Egyptians attacked two settlements: Nirim, using artillery, armored cars carrying cannons, and Bren carriers; and Kfar Darom 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 Yad Mordechai, where an inferior force of 100 Israelis armed with nothing more than rifles, a medium machine gun and a PIAT anti-tank weapon, held up a column of 2,500 Egyptians, well-supported by armor, artillery and aircraft, for five days. The Egyptians took heavy losses, while the losses sustained by the defenders were comparatively light. A number of other kibbutzim were heavily shelled but not assaulted. During the last week of May, Israeli units of the Negev and Givati Brigades harassed the Egyptians. In addition, the embryonic Israeli Air Force periodically bombed the Gaza City area, where the Egyptian force's headquarters was located, using converted civilian aircraft. On 24 May, the Egyptians reached Majdal and made it their headquarters, briefly stopping and setting up a defensive perimeter. The Egyptians achieved a crucial success when a battalion advanced east from Majdal and managed to link up with the Egyptian force in the Hebron Hills. The Egyptians dug themselves in, cutting off numerous Israeli settlements as well as the Negev Brigade. However, this also resulted in Egyptian forces becoming more overstretched. On 28 May the Egyptians renewed their northern advance, and stopped at a destroyed bridge north to 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, the only Israeli forces positioned to block them were two and a half companies of the Givati Brigade. On 2 June, an Egyptian battalion attacked Negba and was beaten back by the kibbutz's 140 defenders. The Israelis lost 8 killed and 11 wounded while inflicting an estimated 100 casualties on the Egyptians. From 29 May to 3 June, Israeli forces stopped the Egyptian drive north in Operation Pleshet. It began with attacks by Israel's fledgling air force. Isrseli aircraft attacked Egyptian positions at Isdud. The Israeli planes dropped 70 kilogram bombs and strafed enemy positions, although their machine guns quickly jammed. One plane was shot down and another crashed. The attacks caused the Egyptians to scatter, and they had lost the initiative by the time they had regrouped. Following the air attacks, the Givati Brigade launched a counterattack against Egyptian forces in Isdud supported by a battery of 65mm Napoleonchik cannons and two 120mm mortars. The counterattack was repulsed, although Israeli troops managed to briefly capture houses on the village's outskirts before being pushed back. Despite having held their ground, the Egyptian command was alarmed by the counterattack. They feared that their forces might be cut off. This fear was exacerbated when Givati Brigade troops ambushed an Egyptian supply column just south of Isdud. The Egyptian offensive was halted as Egypt changed its strategy from offensive to defensive, and the initiative shifted to Israel. The Israelis lost 45 killed or missing, 50 wounded, and 5 captured. Egyptian losses were variously reported as 7–15 killed and 18–30 wounded, although these may only be partial figures. On 6 June, in the Battle of Nitzanim, Egyptian forces attacked the kibbutz of Nitzanim, located between Majdal and Isdud, and the Israeli defenders surrendered after resisting for five days. Shortly before the first truce was to come into effect, an Israeli counterattack to retake the kibbutz failed and the Israelis retreated to nearby Hill 69, which was subsequently attacked and conquered by the Egyptians causing the Israelis to retreat further. The Egyptians then captured a major crossroads and attempted to continue towards Beit Daras and Be'er Tuvia but ran into fierce resistance and withdrew. However, Israeli forces managed to occupy a number of hilltop positions and villages along the front line, although they failed to conquer the Tegart fort at Iraq Suwaydan. By the time the first truce came into effect, the Egyptians were in scattered positions across the Negev to the Hebron area and incapable of mounting a serious offensive.

Jerusalem and Latrun

The heaviest fighting occurred in Jerusalem and on the Jerusalem – Tel Aviv road, between Jordan's Arab Legion and Israeli forces.

With the termination of the Mandate, the Arab Legion entered eastern Palestine. Its units swiftly reached Jericho, Nablus, Ramallah, and Latrun, facing no resistance. The original Jordanian plan had been to avoid Jerusalem, as Jordan had promised the British a peaceful takeover of Arab areas in eastern Palestine and entering Jerusalem would both go against the UN plan for it to be an international zone and result in combat. However, after British control over Jerusalem ended, the Haganah and Irgun rapidly seized control in parts of the city, taking over British outposts in the Old City in Operation Shfifon a day before the Israeli declaration of independence followed by the rapid seizure of numerous other areas of the city in Operation Pitchfork. Arab refugees fled Jerusalem in large numbers, and the city's Arab notables sent appeals to King Abdullah and the Arab Legion's commander John Bagot Glubb asking for help. In addition, King Abdullah was probably also motivated to intervene over the city's political and religious significance, as well as the fact that he would be blamed for the fall of East Jerusalem by the Arab world, Israeli forces could potentially advance to Jericho from Jerusalem and cut off his forces, the graves of his father and brother Faisal were located there, and annexing an area as important as that would make his kingdom more significant. The easy occupation of eastern Palestine also likely gave him an appetite for further conquest as he talked of conquering West Jerusalem and Tel Aviv for several days. It was finally decided to assault Jerusalem. King Abdullah ordered Glubb to enter Jerusalem on 17 May.