The Promise and the Problem

The roots of the 1948 war lie in two promises Britain made about the same land. In 1917, the Balfour Declaration pledged British support for 'the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.' Meanwhile, the Hussein-McMahon correspondence had suggested Arab independence across the region as a reward for the Arab Revolt against the Ottomans. Palestine was claimed by both.

Jewish immigration to Palestine, mostly from Europe, accelerated after the Holocaust. By 1947, Palestine had 600,000 Jewish and 1.3 million Arab residents. Violence between the communities, and against British forces, was escalating. Exhausted by war and empire, Britain announced it would hand the Palestine problem to the United Nations and leave.

On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly voted on Resolution 181 — the Partition Plan. It would divide Palestine into a Jewish state, an Arab state, and an international zone for Jerusalem. The Jewish Agency accepted. The Arab League rejected it. The day after the vote, snipers killed seven Jews on a bus in Jerusalem. The civil war had begun.

The next six months — before Israel declared independence — were a brutal intercommunal conflict. Arab militias and the Arab Liberation Army attacked Jewish settlements and roads. The Haganah initially went on the defensive, then, as British withdrawal approached, launched Plan D to secure territory allocated to the Jewish state and key transportation routes. Arab villages along those routes were captured and their populations fled or were expelled.

By May 14, 1948, roughly 300,000 Palestinian Arabs had already become refugees — well before the Arab states invaded. The question of whether they fled from fear, were expelled by Jewish forces, or some combination of both has been contested by historians ever since. The Nakba — the Catastrophe — had begun before the formal war.