The Arab-Israeli War, 1948–49

The Five-Front Invasion, May 1948

When the British Mandate ended at midnight on 14–15 May 1948, the regular armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon crossed into the territory of the new state of Israel. Egypt advanced from the south through Gaza and the Negev. Jordan’s British-trained Arab Legion moved into the West Bank and east Jerusalem. Syria attacked from the north-east, Lebanon from the north and Iraqi units operated alongside the Jordanians. On paper the Arab forces outnumbered Israel’s, but they had no unified command, no shared plan and rivalries between the leaders. King Abdullah of Jordan in particular wanted the West Bank for himself rather than for a Palestinian state.

The Phases of the War, May 1948 – January 1949

The war can be divided into clear phases. The first phase from 15 May to 11 June saw heavy fighting and Arab gains, particularly in Jerusalem where the Arab Legion seized the Old City and expelled its Jewish population. A first UN truce ran from 11 June to 8 July, brokered by the UN mediator Count Folke Bernadotte. During the truce Israel re-armed, smuggling weapons in from Czechoslovakia, while the Arab states quarrelled. When fighting resumed in the ‘Ten Days’ from 8–18 July, Israel went on the offensive and captured Lod, Ramle and Nazareth. A second truce held from 19 July to 15 October, although Bernadotte was assassinated by Lehi gunmen in September after he proposed a revised plan giving the Negev to the Arab side.

From October 1948 to January 1949 Israel launched a series of offensives that broke the Arab armies. Operation Yoav drove Egypt out of most of the Negev. Operation Hiram cleared Lebanese and Arab Liberation Army forces from Galilee. Operation Horev pushed Egyptian forces back to the Sinai border. By January 1949 Egypt had agreed to talks. The pattern was clear: the longer the war ran, the more the balance shifted in Israel’s favour as it mobilised its full population, while Arab armies struggled to keep their volunteer or expeditionary forces supplied at distance.

The Battle for Jerusalem

Jerusalem was the war’s most contested ground. The Arab Legion drove Jewish forces out of the Old City in May 1948, expelling its Jewish population from the Jewish Quarter. West Jerusalem remained in Israeli hands but was nearly cut off — supply convoys had to fight their way along the road from Tel Aviv. The Israelis built the ‘Burma Road’, a hastily improvised track through the Judean hills, to bypass Latrun where Jordanian forces blocked the main route. The fighting ended with the city divided: Jordan held the Old City and east Jerusalem, Israel held the west. This division persisted until 1967.

The 1949 Armistice Agreements

From February to July 1949 Israel signed separate armistice agreements with Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. The Egypt agreement was negotiated on the Greek island of Rhodes under UN mediation. Iraq did not sign — its forces simply withdrew. The agreements drew the Green Line, which was treated as the de facto Israeli border until 1967. Crucially, none of the agreements were peace treaties. The Arab states refused to recognise Israel as a permanent neighbour and maintained an economic boycott. The way the war ended therefore guaranteed it would not stay ended.

Territorial Outcome and Two Names for the Same War

The war redrew the map of Palestine. Israel’s share grew from the 56 per cent allocated by Resolution 181 to about 78 per cent. Egypt held the Gaza Strip, where roughly 200,000 Palestinian refugees crowded into a narrow coastal area. Jordan held the West Bank, including east Jerusalem, and formally annexed it in 1950 — an act recognised only by Britain and Pakistan. The Palestinian state envisaged by the UN partition plan was never created. How the war is named reflects how it is remembered: in Israel it is called the War of Independence; among Palestinians it is called the Nakba, meaning ‘catastrophe’. Both labels can appear in good GCSE answers as long as the student treats them as competing names for the same event.

The Refugee Question

Around 700,000 Palestinian Arabs — roughly half the pre-war Arab population — left or were forced from the territory that became Israel. The causes were varied: direct expulsion in some cases (e.g. Lod and Ramle in July 1948), flight from advancing Israeli forces, instruction by Arab commanders to leave temporarily, and panic after the Deir Yassin attack of April 1948. Israeli ‘New Historians’ in the 1980s used newly opened archives to argue that displacement was more systematic than the older Israeli account had admitted — this is named here only as historiographical context, not as a Paper 2 interpretation question. Refugee camps were established in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza, run by UNRWA from 1949 (covered in Lesson 4).