1948 by Benny Morris

This book chronicles the fighting between the Jews and the Arabs following the U.N. resolution to partition Palestine.

The first Zionist began immigrating to Palestine in the 1880s. In 1925 there were 125,000 Jews, by 1931 there were 175,000, and by 1939 there were 460,000.

The state of Israel under partition would have consisted of 500,000 Jews and 450,000 Arabs on 55 percent of Palestine (another 100,000 Jews or so would live in the international zone of Jerusalem).

During the Mandate period Jews gained land through buying it from Arabs, even from notable Arab families, including the Husseinis. Their landholding increased between 1920 and 1947 from 456,000 dunams to about 1.4 million.

During the mandate period the U.N. sent different envoys to suggest ways of partitioning the land.

Eventually, the U.N passed resolution 181 (November 1947) which called for the division of Palestine into two states.

The Jews accept the resolution while the Arabs reject it. (The Jews put a lot of pressure on Truman and used a lot of political maneuvering to get the votes, while the Arabs hardly did any. Some Arabs contend that had the vote for partition been taken anonymously it would not have passed.)

Immediately following the passing of the resolution, a civil war broke out between Palestinian Arabs and Jews on the land earmarked for the Jewish state. The Jews are better organized and beat the Palestinian Arabs. Most Arabs flee as the Haganah conquers villages and towns, including Tiberias, Haifa and Jaffa, and expel many Arabs in order to rid the country of a potential fifth column and to prepare for the Arab invasion which was coming at the end of the mandate.

When the British withdrew, at the end of the Mandate, Iraq, Egypt, Jordan and Syria invade Palestine (Lebanon doesn’t really get involved).

The Arabs countries have their own agenda and there is no unified war plan, and they each suspect the other of trying to gobble up Palestine. The Jordan’s have the only real army: the Arab League commanded by a Brit.

Many Arab leaders understand that they couldn’t beat the Zionist, but the “street” in all the Arab countries called for elimination of the Zionist entity, and had they not complied they feared they would lose their power.

After fighting for a few months, in which Israel halts the attacking armies, the U.N. mandates a truce.

The Israelis attack (they create a pretext) and cut off the Egyptian’s army in the south. The Egyptians ask the other Arab nation for assistance but to no avail.

Political pressure stops the Israeli army from totally crushing the Egyptians army.

The Egyptians are forced to sign a truce and the rest of the Arab nations follow and withdraw from Israel. Israel comes out of the war more powerful and with more territory. During the war Israel gets most of it's weapon from the czechs and become stronger during the embargo.

Facts/Quotes:

Shertok: “There are those who say that we uprooted Arabs from their places. But even they will not deny that the source of the problem was the war: had there been no war, the Arabs would not have abandoned their villages, and we would not have expelled them. Had the Arabs from the start accepted the decision of 29 November a completely different Jewish state would have arisen.. In essence the State of Israel would have arisen with a large Arab minority, which would have left its impress on the state, on its manner of governance, and on its economic life, and [this Arab minority] would have constituted an organic part of the state.”

(though the Arabs would argue that the Zionist influx was, since the beginning, an act of aggression and they were merely acting in self-defense)

“In truth, however, the Jews committed far more atrocities than the Arabs and killed far more civilians and POW’s in deliberate acts of brutality in the course of 1948. This was probably due to the circumstance that the victorious Israelis captured some four hundred Arab villages and towns during April – November 1948, whereas the Palestinian Arabs and ALA failed to take any settlements and the Arab armies that invaded in mid- May overran fewer than a dozen settlements.”

“The 1948 War, from the Arab’s perspective, was a war of religious as much as, if not more than, a nationalist war over territory.”

Between 1948 and 1951 Israel absorbs some 700,000 immigrants. 400,000 Arabs are displaced because of the war.

“The Zionist shift from unreserved adherence to the UN borders to expansionism was slow and hesitant.”

After a brazen act, during the civil war, where 58 civilians died.. “Ben Gurion said that he had been in London during the Blitz, ‘but such a thing I never saw, I couldn’t recognize the street.’ But, he added, ‘we were the first to commit [such acts]… the Jews were the first.’ He was referring to previous LHI and IZL bombings.”

One of the fist public opinion polls in Palestine in Feb 41 found that “88 percent of the Palestinian Arabs favored Germany and only 9 percent favored Britain.”

In the beginning of the 20^th century there existed “no Palestinian Arab national movement nor any separate Palestinian Arab national consciousness.” … “Thus, 1920 was to prove crucial in the emergence of a separate Palestinian Arab national movement and a decisive moment in the evolving Zionist-Arab conflict.”

In 1925 the Jews establish Hebrew university. Palestinians Arabs establish universities in the West Bank and Gaza in the 1970’s.

The Vatican opposed Jewish statehood.

In the late 1940's the Yishuv was 90% Ashkenazi and 90% secular and 3% ultra orthodox and anti Zionist.