B7, key topic 2 - Israel’s creation, the 1948–49 war and Suez

UN Handover And Partition

By 1947, Britain wanted to leave Palestine. The mandate had become expensive, violent and politically impossible to manage. Britain had promised support for a Jewish national home in the Balfour Declaration, but it also had responsibilities towards the Arab population already living in Palestine. After the Second World War, Jewish immigration pressure increased, especially because many Holocaust survivors had nowhere secure to go. Palestinian Arabs opposed large-scale Jewish immigration and rejected the idea that their land should be divided without their consent.

Britain was also facing direct violence. Zionist armed groups attacked British officials and installations, while Arab-Jewish tension inside Palestine continued to deepen. Britain could restrict immigration, police unrest, or propose compromises, but it could not make both sides accept the same political future. In 1947 Britain handed the problem to the United Nations.

The UN created UNSCOP, the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine. Its majority recommendation was partition: one Jewish state, one Arab state, an economic union between them, and a special international status for Jerusalem because of its religious importance. The General Assembly adopted Resolution 181 on 29 November 1947.

Jewish leaders accepted the plan as a basis for statehood, even though some disliked the borders. Arab leaders rejected it. Their objection was not simply dislike of a line on a map. They argued that the Arab majority in Palestine had not consented to partition and that many Palestinian Arabs would be placed inside the proposed Jewish state. To them, partition looked like a denial of self-determination.

The partition vote did not peacefully create two states. It made the political dispute more urgent. Jewish communities celebrated and prepared for independence. Palestinian Arab and wider Arab opposition hardened. Violence escalated almost immediately into civil war inside the mandate.

Misconception check: the UN did not simply "create Israel" by drawing a map. Resolution 181 recommended partition, but it was not accepted by both sides and was not peacefully implemented. Israel was created through the end of British rule, Jewish declaration of independence, war, and later international recognition.

War And Israeli Victory

The First Arab-Israeli War is best understood in two phases. The first phase was a civil war within the British Mandate between Jewish and Palestinian Arab forces after the partition vote. The second phase began after Israel declared independence and neighbouring Arab armies entered the former mandate.

During the civil war, control of roads, towns and mixed areas became crucial. Jewish forces wanted to keep settlements connected, especially the route to Jerusalem. Palestinian Arab forces tried to block Jewish movement and resist partition. Violence against civilians and fear of further violence helped drive flight and depopulation in some areas. By May 1948, Jewish forces had captured important towns and routes, while many Palestinian Arab communities had already been displaced.

On 14 May 1948, as Britain withdrew, David Ben-Gurion declared the establishment of the State of Israel. On 15 May, armies from Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq entered the former mandate. Saudi forces also fought under Egyptian command. The Arab states said they were acting against partition and in defence of Palestine's Arabs. Israel saw the invasion as a war for survival.

Israel's victory had several causes. It was not because the Arab side had no weapons or because Israel won easily. Israel was vulnerable in May 1948, but it had important advantages that grew during the war.

The 1949 armistice agreements ended the fighting with Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. They did not make peace. Israel now held more territory than the UN partition plan had proposed. Jordan controlled the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Egypt controlled the Gaza Strip. The proposed Arab Palestinian state did not come into existence.

A strong explanation of Israeli victory should connect military factors to political factors:

Israel won because it became more organised as the war continued, while its opponents stayed divided. The creation of the IDF and the use of truce periods to import arms and recruit manpower gave Israel a growing military advantage. By contrast, Arab armies did not share a single strategy and some leaders were more interested in their own territorial aims than in coordinated action. This meant Israel could survive the first attacks, then launch offensives that improved its position before the 1949 armistices.

Refugees And Law Of Return

The war created two very different stories of national identity. For Israelis, the war became the War of Independence: proof that the new state had survived against hostile neighbours. For Palestinians, it became the Nakba, or catastrophe: the loss of homes, communities, land and political control.

More than 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled during the 1947-49 conflict. The causes are contested, and a careful answer should avoid one-cause explanations. Some Palestinians fled from fighting, fear, economic collapse or rumours of massacre. Some were expelled by Jewish or Israeli forces. Some left because local leadership and security broke down. Many expected to return after the fighting, but Israel did not allow a general return, partly because Israeli leaders feared it would reverse the demographic and security outcome of the war.

The refugee problem became long-term because no peace settlement solved it. Refugees lived in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and elsewhere. Camps were meant to be temporary, but they became lasting spaces of hardship, political anger and national memory. UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, began operations in 1950 to assist Palestine refugees.

UN General Assembly Resolution 194 called for conciliation and addressed return and compensation, but it did not settle the question. The refugee problem therefore became one of the central unresolved consequences of the war.

Israel's Law of Return, passed in 1950, pulled in the opposite direction. It gave Jews the right to immigrate to Israel. The citizenship route for those immigrants was established under the nationality law of 1952; the two laws worked together, rather than the 1950 law itself conferring citizenship. From Israel's point of view, this expressed the Zionist idea that Israel was a national home and refuge for Jews after centuries of persecution and especially after the Holocaust. It also helped increase Israel's population and strengthen the new state.

For Palestinians, the contrast was bitter. Jewish immigrants from outside the region could enter Israel under the Law of Return, while many Palestinians who had lived in the land before 1948 could not return to their homes. This contrast made the refugee issue not only humanitarian but also political and moral.

Misconception check: do not treat the Palestinian refugee problem as only a side-effect of fighting, and do not treat the Law of Return as only an immigration rule. Both were linked to competing national claims over the same land.