ROMSO Cyprus Knowledge Base

The 1948 Arab-Israeli War

The 1948 Arab-Israeli War, also known as the War of Independence or the War of Liberation, was a conflict fought in the territory of what had been British-ruled Mandatory Palestine from November 1947 to July 1949. The war broke out on November 30, 1947, when the Arabs of the Land of Israel launched attacks against the Jewish community in Israel to prevent its implementation.

The fighting began as a limited military confrontation between the Palestinian Arab forces and the Jewish Protective Force of the Israeli Jewish community. However, with the arrival of Arab League volunteers, including those from the Salvation Army and later the Muslim Brotherhood, the scope of the conflict expanded. The presence of the British army in the territory, which was in the process of evacuating its forces, limited the scale of the fighting.

In April 1948, the Jewish Protective Force moved to attack various areas of Mandatory Palestine, ultimately defeating the irregular Arab forces that were in front of them. On May 14, 1948, the leadership of the Jewish community declared the establishment of a Jewish state in the United States. The next day, the regular armies of several Arab countries, including Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and Egypt, invaded Mandatory Palestine with the assistance of relatively small military forces from Lebanon and Saudi Arabia.

The war can be divided into two major phases: the first stage, which ended with the First Remission in the War, saw the defense forces, later known as the IDF, successfully repel the Arab attacks. In the second phase, the military initiative was mainly by the Arab side, but ultimately, the Jewish state emerged victorious.

The war resulted from a six-month civil war between the Arabs and Jews of Palestine following the return in 1947 of the British mandate to the Palestine of the United Nations and the ruling Resolution 181 of November 1947. The Palestinian Arab leaders totally rejected the decision to divide their territory, on the basis of the promise of most Arab states, massive armed intervention.

The war had significant consequences for the region, including the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes, known as the Nakba or "catastrophe" in Arabic. The war also led to the establishment of the State of Israel and its recognition by the international community.