1948 Palestine war

The 1948 Palestine war (30 November 1947 – 10 March 1949), known in Palestine as the Nakba and in Israel as the War of Independence, was fought in the territory of what had been, at the start of the war, British-ruled Mandatory Palestine. It began as a civil war between the Arab and Jewish communities following the United Nations Partition Plan and became an international conflict with the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, the termination of the British mandate, and the entry of the armies of neighbouring Arab states into Palestine. During the war, Zionist forces conquered about 78% of the former territory of the mandate, causing the expulsion and flight of over 700,000 Palestinians. Transjordan took control of the territory west of the Jordan River and Egypt occupied the coastal territory around Gaza. The war formally ended with the 1949 Armistice Agreements, which established the Green Line de facto borders of the State of Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. It was the first war of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the broader Arab–Israeli conflict.

The war had two main phases, the first being the 1947–1948 civil war, which began on 30 November 1947, a day after the United Nations voted to adopt the Partition Plan for Palestine, which planned for the division of the territory into Jewish and Arab sovereign states. During this period, the British still maintained a declining rule over Palestine and occasionally intervened in the violence. Initially on the defensive, the Zionist forces switched to the offensive in April 1948. In anticipation of an invasion by Arab armies, they enacted Plan Dalet, an operation aimed at securing territory for the establishment of a Jewish state.

The second phase of the war began on 14 May 1948, with the declaration of the establishment of the State of Israel and the termination of the British Mandate at midnight. The following morning, the surrounding Arab armies invaded Palestine, beginning the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. The Egyptians advanced in the south-east while the Jordanian Arab Legion and Iraqi forces captured the central highlands. Syria and Lebanon fought against the Israeli forces in the north. The newly formed Israel Defense Forces managed to halt the Arab forces and in the following months began pushing them back and capturing territory.

During the war, massacres and acts of terror were conducted by both sides. A campaign of massacres and violence against the Arab population, such as occurred at Lydda and Ramle and the Battle of Haifa, led to the expulsion and flight of over 700,000 Palestinians, with most of their urban areas being depopulated and destroyed. This violence and dispossession is remembered by Palestinians as the Nakba (Arabic for "the catastrophe") and resulted in the beginning of the Palestinian refugee problem. Hundreds of thousands of Jews fled or were expelled from Arab states in the three years following the Arab defeat in the war, over 260,000 of which settled in Israel.