1947–1949 Palestine war

The **1948 Palestine War**, was a war between the Jews living in the region, the Arabs or Palestinians, and the other states around Israel. The war began in 1947 after the announcement of the end of the British Mandate in Palestine and the separation of the land into two countries of the same size. By the end of the war in 1949, Israel had made bigger its land beyond its given borders. The Arab state created in the UN Partition Plan never came into existence as its two largest parts, the Gaza Strip, a small piece of land south of Palestine on the coast and the West Bank, the region east of Jerusalem and west of the Jordan River, went into the control of Egypt and Jordan. The war continues to be an issue in the Middle East today. For Israelis, it shows the change from the Yishuv (the Jewish group in Palestine) to the state of Israel. Other countries had to deal with the idea of loss and the difficulties of local arguments caused by the creation of a Jewish State in a highly Arab region. Palestinians remember the war as **The** **Nakba** (*lit. **Catastrophe)***.

## Background
### Jewish settlement
Beginning in 1881, European Jews began to move to Palestine in large numbers. These new immigrants mainly settled in the region under the banner of Jewish nationalism, known as Zionism. The goal of this nationalist movement was the creation of a Jewish state. Although at first friendly, relations between Arabs in Palestine and Jews from Europe became more bitter as the number of Jews moving grew. 
### Palestinian Nationalism and the Great Revolt
During World War One, Arabs and Jews were under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. To weaken it Britain and France, began to offer land to peoples in sections of the Empire for launching resistance to the Ottomans. This included offering Palestine to various Arab leaders (including the Husayn family of Saudi Arabia). At the same time, the British offered control of Palestine to a Jewish state that didn't yet exist. Although this action led to nothing, it  encouraged greater movement of Jews to Palestine as well as a fear of losing regional control for the Palestinians. In 1936, responding to the growing Jewish population, Palestinian Arabs led an armed revolt against the British and Jews in Palestine. The revolt, led by the mufti and head of the Arab Higher Committee Hajj Amin al-Husayni, was the first large-scale expression of  Palestinian nationalism.  This situation, two cultures competing against each other for Palestine, continued  throughout World War Two. At the end of that conflict, the British Mandate in Palestine was near ending and the peoples of the region wanted a solution to the issue.

### UN Resolution
In 1947, the British gave the issue of competing peoples within Palestine to the United Nations. The United Nations Special Committee on Palestine was tasked with fixing the issue of violence between the two groups and treating each side with fairness in the giving-out of land. On November 29, 1947, the Partition Plan was announced. Palestine would be divided into separate Jewish and Arab states of roughly equal size. Jerusalem would remain an independent city run by the UN. The British would leave the Mandate of Palestine by May 1948. At first, most of the international community supported the plan (including both the US and USSR) as well as the Yishuv. Palestinian Arabs, as well as the nations of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Transjordan (now Jordan) argued against the plan and pushed for a new one with an Arab state and a recognized Jewish minority. When that was not accepted, these nations moved for war by raising armies to fight the new state of Israel.

## Armed forces
### Jewish Community (Israel after May 15, 1948)
Given its recent status as a state, the Yishuv actually had one of the most well-organized and well-armed military forces in the region. This was under the control of the Haganah, a single state army that would become the Israeli Defense Force  in late May 1948. By mid-May, Israel had called up an army of 35,000. As the war continued into July, that number rose to 65,000. At the end of the war, Israel had successfully brought up and armed 96,441 men to fight against the Palestinians and Arab nations.   Israel had a developed strategic plan and a simple command system under the leadership of David Ben-Gurion, the minister of defense.
### Palestinian Forces
Unlike the Yishuv, the Palestinians had no unified force before the war began in late 1947. There were several paramilitary groups, but no single leader, structure or plan. Al-Husayni and the Arab Higher Committee tried to give the fighters a system. Many disliked his leadership and did not think of the committee as the voice of Palestinians. Al-Husayni  created a force known as the Holy War Army made up of new volunteers and paramilitary forces. This army and the other Palestinian fighters lacked modern weapons and supplies. Though al-Husayni pushed the Arab League (a collection of majority Arab nations) for greater support and control to direct the course of the war, the League blocked him.

### Arab League Forces
The nations of the Arab League that joined in the war against Israel were Egypt, Transjordan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria (there was a smaller force from Saudi Arabia and Yemen under Egyptian command). Despite having the League to bind them, at the start of the war there was no single League commander. Each country mobilized its own force for its own goals.  The final force from the Arab League, the Arab Liberation Army, was a force of 4,000 volunteers from across the Middle East which worked out of Syria.

## Notes
## Bibliography
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