1948 Arab-Israeli War

The 1948 Arab-Israeli War, called the "War of Independence" (Hebrew: מלחמת העצמאות) by Israelis and "al Nakba" (Arabic: النكبة, "the catastrophe") by Arabs, was the first in a series of wars in the Arab-Israeli conflict. It established the state of Israel as an independent state, dividing the remaining areas of the British Mandate of Palestine into areas controlled by Egypt and Transjordan.

Aftermath

1949 Armistice Agreements

In 1949, Israel signed separate armistices with Egypt on February 24, Lebanon on March 23, Transjordan on April 3, and Syria on July 20. Israel was generally able to create its own borders, comprising seventy-eight percent of Mandatory Palestine, fifty percent more than the UN partition proposal allotted it. These cease-fire lines were known afterwards as the "Green Line". The Gaza Strip and the West Bank were occupied by Egypt and Transjordan respectively.

Related Topics:
1949 - Separate armistices - Gaza Strip - West Bank - Egypt - Transjordan

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Casualties

Each side lost about 1% of its population in the war. Israel lost 6,373 of its people. About 4,000 were soldiers and the rest (about 2,400) were civilians.

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The exact number of Arab losses is unknown, but scholars estimate they lost between 5,000 and 15,000 people. According to Jacob Bercovitch and Richard Jackson, International Conflict : A Chronological Encyclopedia of Conflicts and Their Management 1945-1995 (1997) about 8,000 Arabs were killed. According to World Political Almanac, 3rd Ed. (Facts on File: 1995) by Chris Cook about 15,000 Arabs were killed. http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat4.htm

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Demographic outcome

About 750,000 Arab Palestinian refugees (See Israeli map, and Israeli estimate), and about the same number of Jewish refugees (See Israeli map, JIMENA estimate) were created during this conflict. More than 600,000 Israeli Estimate) of the Jews from Arab lands immigrated to Israel, while Arab refugees were prevented from settling in neighboring countries and have remained in refugee camps up to the time of writing. (For more on the flight of Palestinians, see Palestinian exodus.)

Related Topics:
Palestinian refugee - Jewish refugees - Immigrated to Israel - Refugee camp - Palestinian exodus

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The humiliation of the Arab armies at having been routed by the Jewish forces, together with the rising nationalist frenzy in Arab nations, contributed to rising hatred for the Jews living in Arab lands. The status of Jews in Arab states varied greatly from state to state. Some observers wish to maintain that the Jewish populations were more "prevented from leaving" than "expelled". Their civil liberties, too, were in many cases vastly inferior to those of their Muslim fellow citizens. For example, in Yemen, Jews were and are prohibited from carrying weapons of any type, even to the point of prohibiting traditional ceremonial Yemeni knives, carried by a large portion of the Yemeni population. The net result was that after over two thousand years of living in Arab controlled countries, the atmosphere was sufficiently anti-Jewishly charged that almost to a man, entire communities of Jews in the hundreds of thousands felt they had no option but to take leave of old homes and move to the uncertainties of the new Jewish state of Israel in effect becoming "refugees" in everything but name. These fears were compounded by the Holocaust, which ended with the defeat of Nazi Germany three years before the founding of the state of Israel.

Related Topics:
The Holocaust - Nazi Germany

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Arab Palestinians have staged annual demonstrations and protests on May 15 of each year, one day after the anniversary of Israel's declaration of independence. The popularity and number of participants in these annual al Nakba demonstrations has varied over time, though the increasing anti-Israeli sentiment in the Middle East has tended to increase the attendance in recent years. During the al-Aqsa Intifada after the failure of the Camp David 2000 Summit, the attendance at the demonstrations against Israel have increased exponentially.

Related Topics:
May 15 - Middle East - Al-Aqsa Intifada - Camp David 2000 Summit - Increased exponentially

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