War of 1948

Known as the War of Independence on the Israeli side and the Nakba on the Palestinian side, this event followed the collapse of the British Mandate, which was the administration of Palestine under the British Empire. The United Nations’ 1947 partition plan proposed separate Jewish and Arab states and would put Jerusalem under international administration. Both parties were opposed on their views of the plan, as the Jewish leaders accepted it, and both the Palestinian and Arab leaders rejected it, arguing for the unjust division of land. The UN voted the partition plan into action on November 29, 1947, and a civil war broke out almost immediately after. As the war spread throughout Mandatory Palestine, both sides had major actors, including the Zionist military organization Haganah, and the Palestinians had Arab militias, with the addition of local fighters. 

On May 14, 1948, the war entered a new phase as Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion declared the establishment of the State of Israel. As word got out, the armies of Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon joined the fighting against Israel, expanding the conflict into something of a multinational war. After months of truces, mediation from the UN, and fighting, Israel came out as the militarily victorious party and secured more land than the partition plan had allotted them beforehand. Through four armistice agreements in 1949 and the establishment of the Green Line, Israel controlled about 77 percent of the former mandated Palestine, while Transjordan had the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and Egypt had the Gaza Strip under its control. Finally, almost 750,000 Palestinian people were displaced, and a refugee crisis that we still see today began.