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99-805: The first exchanges took place after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War , when Israel exchanged all its Palestinian prisoners and POWs from Arab armies in exchange for all Israeli soldiers and civilians taken captive during the war. On December 8, 1954, a five-man Israel Defense Forces (IDF) patrol operating on the Syrian border was abducted and tortured by the Syrian Army . One of the soldiers, Uri Ilan , committed suicide while in captivity after being falsely informed by his captors that his fellow soldiers had been killed. The four surviving POWs and Ilan's body were returned on March 29, 1956, in exchange for 40 Syrian soldiers captured during various Israeli military operations. Following

198-878: A Greek Catholic Christian, Jibril was a Muslim. Throughout the 1980s the General Command actively cooperated with the nascent Hezbollah paramilitary group (made mostly of Shia Muslims ) dedicated to armed struggle against Israel, as well as with Syria and Iran, both of whom fund and arm Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. In the mid-1990s, Jibril held conferences with these groups in Tehran and Damascus in order to achieve tighter coordination of activities, though his organization remained small and its own actions were more concerned with aiding Hezbollah and achieving an Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon. The Israelis never forgot Jibril's spectacular exploits, especially

297-631: A Hezbollah attack on an IDF roadblock at Beit Yahoun in southern Lebanon on July 17, 1986. Their bodies were retained by the Lebanese and only released on July 21, 1996, in exchange for the bodies of 123 Lebanese fighters held by Israel. Hezbollah released 17 soldiers from the South Lebanon Army (SLA) while the SLA released 45 detainees from the Khiam prison . On May 25, 1998, the remains of IDF soldier Itamar Ilyah

396-584: A PFLP-GC guerrilla landed a motorized hang glider (apparently supplied by Libya) near an Israeli army camp near Kiryat Shemona in Northern Israel on 25 November 1987. He succeeded to kill six soldiers and wounded several others, before being shot dead himself. The action has been seen by some as providing the catalyst for the eruption of the First Intifada . On 2 January 1988, nighttime Israeli airstrikes on Ain al-Hilweh killed three members of PFLP-GC. It

495-582: A few " Davidka " mortars, which had been indigenously designed and produced. They were inaccurate but had a loud explosion that demoralised the enemy. Much of the munitions used by the Israelis came from the Ayalon Institute , a clandestine bullet factory beneath kibbutz Ayalon , which produced about 2.5 million bullets for Sten guns. The munitions produced by the Ayalon Institute were said to have been

594-559: A highly organised, national force, since the Arab riots of 1920 – 21 , and throughout the riots of 1929 , Great Uprising of 1936–39 , and World War II. It had a mobile force, the HISH , which had 2,000 full-time fighters (men and women) and 10,000 reservists (all aged between 18 and 25) and an elite unit, the Palmach composed of 2,100 fighters and 1,000 reservists. The reservists trained three or four days

693-593: A month and went back to civilian life the rest of the time. These mobile forces could rely on a garrison force, the HIM ( Heil Mishmar , lit. Guard Corps), composed of people aged over 25. The Yishuv's total strength was around 35,000 with 15,000 to 18,000 fighters and a garrison force of roughly 20,000. There were also several thousand men and women who had served in the British Army in World War II who did not serve in any of

792-521: A mysterious package onto a flight to Tel Aviv. While the girls assumed they were helping their "boyfriends" pass drugs, they were unknowingly carrying explosives. On 21 February 1970, the group used its first barometric triggers to detonate two in-flight airliners nearly simultaneously: a Swissair flight to Tel Aviv that fell in Aargau Canton , killing 41, and an Austrian Airlines flight from Frankfurt to Tel Aviv, which actually failed to destroy

891-614: A negotiated settlement to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict . By that time, the Rejectionist Front was composed primarily of leftist groups, among them the PFLP, DFLP, General Command, PLF, and numerous other small factions. However, the members of these PLO groups were limited in their ability to confront Fatah, which never lost its supremacy within the umbrella organization. The only group that waged uninterrupted attrition against Arafat

990-536: A potential powerful fifth column , by belligerency and expulsion". According to research by Shay Hazkani, Ben-Gurion and segments of the religious Zionist leadership drew parallels between the war and the biblical wars of extermination, and states this was not a fringe position. IDF indoctrination pamphlets were distributed to recruits instructing them that God “demands a revenge of extermination without mercy to whoever tries to hurt us for no reason.”. Plan Dalet , or Plan D, ( Hebrew : תוכנית ד' , Tokhnit dalet )

1089-539: A speech at the annual Ashura celebration in Beirut where he accused Israel of dragging its feet in the prisoner exchange negotiations. He also disclosed that the organization, apart from two captive soldiers, were also holding the partial remains of several other soldiers killed in the war. He claimed that the IDF had "lied" to the relatives when they returned supposedly intact bodies for burial. Nasrallah's speech aimed at speeding up

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1188-507: A spokesman for the pro-rebel Palestine Refugee Camp Network said, "the implementation of the truce has been problematic" because of "intermittent" government shelling of Yarmouk and clashes on its outskirts. Many PFLP-GC fighters reportedly defected to the rebels. One PFLP-GC commander said "I felt that we became soldiers for the Assad regime, not guards for the camps, so I decided to defect". He claimed that government forces stood by and watched as

1287-604: A variety of distinct sectors around the different coastal towns. They consolidated their presence in Galilee and Samaria . Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni came from Egypt with several hundred men of the Army of the Holy War . Having recruited a few thousand volunteers, al-Husayni organised the blockade of the 100,000 Jewish residents of Jerusalem. To counter this, the Yishuv authorities tried to supply

1386-672: The 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine , while the Jewish opposition developed into the 1944–1947 Jewish insurgency in Palestine . The civil war began the day after the adoption of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine on 29 November 1947 – which planned to divide the territory into an Arab state, a Jewish state, and the Special International Regime encompassing the cities of Jerusalem and Bethlehem . At

1485-464: The 1982 Lebanon war and 65 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails. In 1984 Israel swapped 291 Syrian prisoners and the bodies of 72 others in exchange for six Israeli prisoner and five bodies. The remaining two soldiers from the Bhamdoun raid in the hands of PFLP-GC (Yosef Grof and Nissim Salem), as well as a third IDF prisoner ( Hezi Shai ) captured during the battle of Sultan Ya'qoub , also held by

1584-619: The Fatah -backed Black September group in the Munich Olympic killings ( 5–6 September 1972), Habash continued to be the first among equals among the Rejectionist Front, the groups that refused any permanent settlement in a framework other than military victory. From 1970 to 1973, the group targeted a number of aircraft; typically having members seduce single young women and promise them a life of adventure and love – often while getting them addicted to drugs – before asking them to carry some cash and

1683-648: The First Arab–Israeli War , followed the civil war in Mandatory Palestine as the second and final stage of the 1948 Palestine war . The civil war became a war of separate states with the Israeli Declaration of Independence on 14 May 1948, the end of the British Mandate for Palestine at midnight, and the entry of a military coalition of Arab states into the territory of Mandatory Palestine

1782-792: The Kfar Etzion massacre on 13 May by the Arab Legion led to predictions that the battle for Jerusalem would be merciless. On 14 May 1948, David Ben-Gurion declared the establishment of the State of Israel and the 1948 Palestine war entered its second phase with the intervention of the Arab state armies and the beginning of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. By September 1947, the Haganah had "10,489 rifles, 702 light machine-guns, 2,666 submachine guns, 186 medium machine-guns, 672 two-inch mortars and 92 three-inch (76 mm) mortars". In 1946, Ben-Gurion decided that

1881-602: The Negev , the east coast as far as Gaza City , and a wide strip along the Tel Aviv – Jerusalem road. Israel also took control of West Jerusalem , which was meant to be part of an international zone for Jerusalem and its environs. Transjordan took control of East Jerusalem and what became known as the West Bank , annexing it the following year . The territory known today as the Gaza Strip

1980-572: The Sheba Farms area in 2000 as well as Elhanan Tannenbaum . In October 2007 Israel and Hezbollah agreed to exchange Hassan Aqil, a civilian Hezbollah member captured in 2006, and the remains of two Hezbollah fighters killed in the 2006 Lebanon war and subsequently brought to Israel, for the remains of Gabriel Dwait, an Israeli resident who drowned in 2005 and was washed ashore in Lebanon. In January 2008 Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah held

2079-592: The Syrian Civil War (2011-present) fighting on the side of the Ba'athist Syrian Arab Republic . The group has a paramilitary wing called the Jihad Jibril Brigades . It has been designated a terrorist organization by Canada, United Kingdom, Japan, United States, and European Union. Jibril joined with George Habash in 1967 as more or less an equal partner in the PFLP leadership. When he quickly tired of

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2178-551: The United States , Yishuv agents purchased three Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombers, one of which bombed Cairo in July 1948, some Curtiss C-46 Commando transport planes, and dozens of half-tracks, which were repainted and defined as "agricultural equipment". In Western Europe, Haganah agents amassed fifty 65mm French mountain guns, twelve 120mm mortars, ten H-35 light tanks, and a large number of half-tracks. By mid-May or thereabouts

2277-703: The peace process . The PFLP-GC left the PLO in 1974 to join the Rejectionist Front , protesting what they saw as the PLO's move towards an accommodation with Israel in the Arafat-backed Ten Point Program of the Palestinian National Council (PNC). Unlike most of the organizations involved in the Rejectionist Front, the PFLP-GC never resumed its role within the PLO. From the start, the PFLP-GC

2376-469: The 1950s, two Israeli naval commanders captured shortly after the war, and the body of an Israeli soldier who was abducted a year before the war and subsequently died in prison were also released. On April 2, 1968, 12 Jordanian soldiers taken prisoner during the Battle of Karameh were released in exchange for the body of a missing Israeli soldier. The Jordanians were supposed to have returned two more bodies, but

2475-557: The 1956 Suez Crisis , Israel exchanged 5,500 Egyptian prisoners captured during the campaign and 77 others who were captured during military operations from before the war, in exchange for an Israeli pilot taken prisoner during the war, and three soldiers taken captive in pre-war attacks. On February 21, 1962, Syria exchanged the body of an Israeli soldier it was holding for a Syrian soldier in Israeli captivity. On December 21, 1963, 11 Israeli soldiers and civilians captured by Syria throughout

2574-742: The 1970s and 1980s it was involved in the Palestinian insurgency in South Lebanon and launched a number of attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians; including the Avivim school bus massacre (1970), the bombing of Swissair Flight 330 (1970), the Kiryat Shmona massacre (1974) and the Night of the Gliders (1987). Since the late 1980s PFLP-GC had been largely inactive in military activities, but re-emerged during

2673-522: The 1970s and 1980s, the group carried out a number of attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians , and gained notoriety for using spectacular means. After 1969 Habash could no longer claim that he was the head of the true organization, as all three of the group's original triumvirate were now separate. Nevertheless, due to the PFLP's spectacular successes, including the Dawson's Field hijackings (September 1970), Lod Airport Massacre (1971), and coordination with

2772-645: The Arab Liberation Army was roundly defeated at Mishmar HaEmek in its first large-scale operation, coinciding with the loss of their Druze allies through defection. With the implementation of Plan Dalet, the Haganah, Palmach and Irgun forces began conquering mixed zones. The Palestinian Arab society was shaken as Tiberias , Haifa , Safed , Beisan , Jaffa and Acre were all captured and more than 250,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled . The British had essentially withdrawn their troops. This pushed

2871-658: The Arab areas and attacked Israeli forces and several Jewish settlements. The 10 months of fighting took place mostly on the territory of the British Mandate and in the Sinai Peninsula and southern Lebanon , interrupted by several truce periods. By the end of the war the State of Israel controlled all of the area that the UN had proposed for a Jewish state, as well as almost 60% of the area proposed for an Arab state, including Jaffa , Lydda and Ramle area, Upper Galilee , some parts of

2970-439: The Arab world. In Palestine, violence erupted almost immediately, feeding into a spiral of reprisals and counter-reprisals. The British refrained from intervening as tensions boiled over into a low-level conflict that quickly escalated into a full-scale civil war . From January onwards, operations became increasingly militarised, with the intervention of a number of Arab Liberation Army regiments inside Palestine, each active in

3069-585: The General Command's insurgents were as a result for decades considered the best trained of any of the Palestinian guerrilla groups. What may have helped Jibril was Hawatmeh's own 1969 defection from the PFLP to form the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PDFLP, later without the "Popular"), after Habash tried to compensate for some of the problems that had caused Jibril's exit. In

List of Arab–Israeli prisoner exchanges - Misplaced Pages Continue

3168-562: The Israel-Lebanon border, and they were exchanged for 3 Israeli pilots in Syrian captivity. On June 3, 1973, 3 Israeli Air Force pilots in Syrian captivity for three years were exchanged for 46 Syrian prisoners. During the October 1973 Yom Kippur War , Egypt and Syria took 293 Israeli prisoners, while Israel captured 8,372 Egyptians, 392 Syrians, 13 Iraqis, and 6 Moroccans. All these prisoners were exchanged during November 15–22, 1973. During

3267-408: The Jewish population. The success of the operation was assisted by the death of al-Husayni in combat. During this time, fighters from Irgun and Lehi massacred a substantial number of Palestinians at Deir Yassin . The attack was widely publicized and had a deep impact on the morale of the Palestinian population and contributed to generate the exodus of the Arab population . At the same time,

3366-568: The Jewish settlements in the highly isolated Negev and north of Galilee was even more critical. While the Jewish population had received strict orders requiring them to hold their ground everywhere at all costs, the Arab population was more affected by the general conditions of insecurity to which the country was exposed. Up to 100,000 Arabs, from the urban upper and middle classes in Haifa, Jaffa and Jerusalem, or Jewish-dominated areas, evacuated abroad or to Arab centres eastwards. This situation caused

3465-504: The Jews. His conclusions were that they had no chance of victory and that an invasion of the Arab regular armies was mandatory. The political committee nevertheless rejected these conclusions and decided to support an armed opposition to the Partition Plan excluding the participation of their regular armed forces. In April with the Palestinian defeat, the refugees coming from Palestine and

3564-530: The Lebanon mountains, a hilly terrain that was more attuned to the image of a guerrilla leader than Arafat's mansions in Tunis. With the emergence of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad throughout the 1980s, Jibril proved more able to cope than Habash and his other allies in the Rejectionist Front. This was enabled by a factor that had nothing to do with his abilities or beliefs: While Habash was a Greek Orthodox and Hawatmeh

3663-638: The Night of the Hang Gliders, and used a variety of operations to try and kill him, none successfully, although his son and heir Jihad Ahmed Jibril was assassinated by a car bomb on 20 May 2002, with the identity of the assassins unknown. Due to these activities, the General Command is regarded as the most hard-line of the old insurgent groups, and currently resists the Oslo Accords from its bases in Syria and Lebanon. During

3762-412: The PFLP in the direction of an ideology as leftist as possible. Jibril decided that Hawatmeh's theorizing was chafing the PFLP and producing an organization of impotent intellectuals, and declared as such when he formed the General Command. Habash, he stated, had become a puppet to the professors of the exile, the elite among the refugees who were well-educated and wealthy, yet preached class revolution to

3861-577: The PFLP-GC fought the rebels, without helping the Palestinians. Ahmed Jibril reportedly fled Damascus for the Mediterranean city of Tartous . Palestinian left-wing groups—including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the biggest Palestinian leftist group—berated Jibril and the PFLP-GC. One PFLP official said "Everyone knows the true size of PFLP-GC. They are not representative of

3960-550: The PFLP-GC was receiving Syrian arms across the border. The group has come under fierce criticism within Lebanon, accused of acting on Syria's behalf to stir up unrest. At the beginning of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, the PFLP-GC was an ally of the Ba'ath Party -led government of Syria. The PFLP-GC was based in Yarmouk Camp – a district of Damascus that is home to the biggest community of Palestinian refugees in Syria. Several members of

4059-476: The PFLP-GC, were released May 20, 1985, in an exchange known as the Jibril Agreement for 1,150 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. Among those released were 380 prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment. During the so-called "Jibril deal" several controversial prisoners, such as Kozo Okamoto , were released. July 1985 – Israel frees more than 700 Lebanese detainees. Shi'ite leaders say their freedom

List of Arab–Israeli prisoner exchanges - Misplaced Pages Continue

4158-524: The Palestinians". Another said that Jibril "does not even belong to the Palestinian Left. He is closer to the extremist right-wing groups than to revolutionary leftist ones". On 18 December, the Palestinian National Council (PNC) denounced Jibril, saying it would expel him over his role in the conflict. Despite being based in Syria, the PFLP-GC have participated in fighting inside the Gaza Strip during

4257-441: The Palestinians. According to Walid Khalidi and Ilan Pappé , its purpose was to conquer as much of Palestine and to expel as many Palestinians as possible, though according to Benny Morris there was no such intent. In his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine , Pappé asserts that Plan Dalet was a "blueprint for ethnic cleansing" with the aim of reducing both rural and urban areas of Palestine. According to Yoav Gelber ,

4356-568: The Palestinians. Their behavior was deemed "unacceptable" by IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Levy . The pro-Syrian PFLP-GC , led by Ahmad Jibril , helped the Fatah fighters and their prisoners with transportation away from the frontline. PFLP-GC kept two of the Israeli prisoners. Six of these soldiers (Eliyahu Abutbul, Danny Gilboa, Rafael Hazan, Reuven Cohen, Avraham Mindvelsky, and Avraham Kronenfeld) were released November 23, 1983, in exchange for 4,765 Palestinians and Lebanese imprisoned at Ansar camp during

4455-713: The Suez Canal in the War of Attrition , were exchanged for 71 Egyptian and Syrian prisoners held in Israel. On January 1, 1970, a night watchman in Metulla , Shmuel Rosenwasser, was abducted by Fatah . More than a year later Rosenwasser was freed in exchange for Mahmoud Hijazi, a Fatah prisoner in Israel. Hijazi was wounded and captured in Fatah's first military attack on Israel, January 1, 1965, and sentenced to 30 years in prison. On June 9, 1972, an IDF force captured 5 Syrian officers patrolling near

4554-565: The United States to withdraw its support for the Partition Plan, encouraging the Arab League to believe that the Palestinian Arabs, reinforced by the Arab Liberation Army, could put an end to the plan. However, the British decided on 7 February 1948 to support the annexation of the Arab part of Palestine by Transjordan. Although doubt took hold among Yishuv supporters, their apparent defeats were due more to their wait-and-see policy than to weakness. David Ben-Gurion reorganised Haganah and made conscription obligatory. Every Jewish man and woman in

4653-658: The Yishuv had purchased from Czechoslovakia 25 Avia S-199 fighters (an inferior version of the Messerschmitt Bf 109 ), 200 heavy machine guns, 5,021 light machine guns, 24,500 rifles, and 52 million rounds of ammunition, enough to equip all units, but short of heavy arms. The airborne arms smuggling missions from Czechoslovakia were codenamed Operation Balak . The airborne smuggling missions were carried out by mostly American aviators – Jews and non-Jews – led by ex-U.S. Air Transport Command flight engineer Al Schwimmer . Schwimmer's operation also included recruiting and training fighter pilots such as Lou Lenart , commander of

4752-406: The Yishuv would probably have to defend itself against both the Palestinian Arabs and neighbouring Arab states and accordingly began a "massive, covert arms acquisition campaign in the West", and acquired many more during the first few months of hostilities. The Yishuv managed clandestinely to amass arms and military equipment abroad for transfer to Palestine once the British blockade was lifted. In

4851-467: The Yishuv's military power" and if it came to battle, the Palestinians expected to lose. When the first violent incidents broke out in Jerusalem on the 29 November, the Arab Higher Committee , well aware of their lack of armaments, had called for a three-day strike: the most militant Palestinian group in the city, consisting of 44 fighters, was furnished with 12 rifles, some handguns and a few kilograms of explosives. The effective number of Arab combatants

4950-412: The aim of expanding the Jewish state beyond the UN partition borders appeared: first to incorporate clusters of isolated Jewish settlements and later to add more territories to the state and give it defensible borders. A third and further aim that emerged among the political and military leaders after four or five months was to "reduce the size of Israel's prospective large and hostile Arab minority, seen as

5049-463: The aircraft, which made an emergency landing . The PFLP-GC was also responsible for the Avivim school bus massacre in 1970 and the Kiryat Shmona massacre in 1974. Jibril focused on carving out a stake of the PLO recruitment in Lebanese refugee camps. While Fatah absorbed enormous casualties in the 1982 Lebanon War, the General Command succeeded in surviving, and at the end retained most of its previous manpower. In one of its most famous attacks,

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5148-436: The city with convoys of up to 100 armoured vehicles, but the operation became more and more impractical as the number of casualties in the relief convoys surged. By March, Al-Hussayni's tactic had paid off. Almost all of Haganah 's armoured vehicles had been destroyed, the blockade was in full operation, and hundreds of Haganah members who had tried to bring supplies into the city were killed. The situation for those who dwelt in

5247-481: The coffins were found to contain only dirt, and the soldiers are still considered missing. In July, 1968 an El-Al airliner was hijacked to Algeria. The twelve Israeli crewmen and passengers were exchanged for 16 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. The Israeli government later denied that there had been a deal. On December 7, 1969, two Israeli citizens whose plane was hijacked to Damascus, and two Israeli pilots, Giora Rom and Nissim Ashkenazi who were shot down over

5346-484: The country had to receive military training. Thanks to funds raised by Golda Meir from sympathisers in the United States, and Stalin's decision to support the Zionist cause, the Jewish representatives of Palestine were able to sign very important armament contracts in the East. Other Haganah agents recovered stockpiles from the Second World War, which helped improve the army's equipment and logistics. Operation Balak allowed arms and other equipment to be transported for

5445-414: The crowd, killing 14 Palestinians and wounding 43. On 3 August 2012, 21 civilians were killed when the Syrian Army shelled Yarmouk. Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas condemned the Syrian Army for shelling the camp and chided the PFLP-GC for dragging Palestinians into the conflict. On 5 December 2012, fighting erupted in Yarmouk between the Syrian Army and PFLP-GC on one side, and Syrian rebels on

5544-421: The deaths of four Israelis, including two small children. According to eyewitness accounts, Kuntar bludgeoned a four-year-old girl to death. In exchange Hezbollah released the bodies of two Israeli soldiers (Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev) captured in a cross-border raid July 12, 2006. On October 18, 2011, captured IDF tank gunner Gilad Shalit , captured by the Palestinian militant organization Hamas in 2006,

5643-434: The early 1990s, but it reportedly cooperated with the Hezbollah guerrillas in South Lebanon. Supporters of the Libyan convicted of the Lockerbie bombing have suggested the PFLP-GC was in fact responsible. Following the rise of Hamas in the 1987–1991 First Intifada among Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Jibril found an able ally in resisting the trend started by Fatah leader Yasser Arafat toward

5742-399: The elite among the exile population, who were detached from the reality of the refugee camps, be they in the West Bank and Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, or Jordan. Many leaders of Palestinian groups lived in luxurious accommodations throughout the Eastern Bloc, Europe, or various Arab states, especially Syria, Iraq, and Libya. Jibril uniquely insisted on living in a specially designed security bunker in

5841-413: The end of March, 21,000 had been conscripted. On 30 March, the call-up was extended to men and single women aged between 26 and 35. Five days later, a General Mobilization order was issued for all men under 40. By March 1948, the Yishuv had a numerical superiority, with 35,780 mobilised and deployed fighters for the Haganah , 3,000 men under Lehi and Irgun , and a few thousand armed settlers. Irgun

5940-472: The end of a series of offensives that began April 1948, in which Zionist forces had conquered cities and territories in Mandatory Palestine in preparation for the establishment of a Jewish state, Zionist leaders announced the Israeli Declaration of Independence on 14 May 1948. The following morning, after the termination of the British Mandate, Egypt, Transjordan, Syria , and expeditionary forces from Iraq entered Palestine. The invading forces took control of

6039-406: The establishment of a Jewish state alongside an Arab one. The Arab League before partition affirmed the right to the independence of Palestine, while blocking the creation of a Palestinian government. Towards the end of 1947, the League established a military committee commanded by the retired Iraqi general Isma'il Safwat whose mission was to analyse the chance of victory of the Palestinians against

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6138-441: The exchange, both sides also swapped prisoners from the War of Attrition . On April 4, 1975, Egypt returned the bodies of 39 IDF soldiers killed during the Yom Kippur War in exchange for 92 terrorists and security prisoners held in Israel. In June 1975, Israel released 20 prisoners from the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula. In exchange, Egypt gave Israel the bodies of Eliyahu Hakim and Eliyahu Bet-Zuri , two Jewish fighters of

6237-453: The first Israeli air assault against the Arabs. Several Americans, including Schwimmer, were later prosecuted by the U.S. government for violating the Neutrality Act of 1939 . The Yishuv also had "a relatively advanced arms producing capacity", that between October 1947 and July 1948 "produced 3 million 9 mm bullets, 150,000 Mills grenades , 16,000 submachine guns ( Sten Guns) and 210 three-inch (76 mm) mortars", along with

6336-489: The first time by the end of March. Ben-Gurion invested Yigael Yadin with the responsibility to come up with a plan of offence whose timing was related to the foreseeable evacuation of British forces. This strategy, called Plan Dalet , was readied by March and implemented towards the end of April. A separate plan, Operation Nachshon , was devised to lift the siege of Jerusalem . 1500 men from Haganah's Givati brigade and Palmach 's Harel brigade conducted sorties to free up

6435-464: The following morning. The war formally ended with the 1949 Armistice Agreements which established the Green Line . Since the 1917 Balfour Declaration and the 1920 creation of the British Mandate of Palestine , and in the context of Zionism and the mass migration of European Jews to Palestine , there had been tension and conflict between Arabs, Jews, and the British. British policies dissatisfied both Arabs and Jews. Arab opposition developed into

6534-413: The group's lack of field initiative, he was therefore still able to leave while retaining a significant retainer of his previous supporters. One of his most hated enemies within the group, Naif Hawatmeh , unintentionally provided him with the pretext: While Jibril wrestled with Habash over why the Popular Front was so dependent on theoretical discussion rather than armed struggle, Hawatmeh tried to influence

6633-430: The leaders of the neighbouring Arab states to intervene, but they were not fully prepared, and could not assemble sufficient forces to turn the tide. The majority of Palestinian Arab hopes lay with the Arab Legion of Transjordan's monarch, King Abdullah I, but he had no intention of creating a Palestinian Arab-run state, since he hoped to annex as much of the territory of the British Mandate for Palestine as he could. He

6732-420: The masses in the camps. In July 2021, Talal Naji succeeded Jibril as the secretary-general of the PFLP-GC. The PFLP-GC was founded in 1968 as a Syrian-backed splinter group from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). It was headed by Secretary-General Ahmed Jibril , also known by the kunya "Abu Jihad" (not to be confused with Khalil al-Wazir , the head of Fatah's armed wing who used

6831-461: The negotiations with Israel but it created a lot of bad blood in Israel, both among the relatives of those who were led to believe that their bodies had been buried intact and among Israeli politicians who accused Hezbollah of waging "psychological warfare" against Israel. Several ministers called for the "elimination" of the Hezbollah leader. On June 1, 2008, Israel released the Lebanese prisoner Nasim Nisr , in exchange for which Hezbollah handed over

6930-409: The ongoing Israel-Hamas war , on the side of Hamas and allied Palestinian factions . Its role in Lebanon after the Syrian Army Left Lebanon in 2005 (see Cedar Revolution ) is uncertain, and it has been involved in a number of clashes with Lebanese security forces. In late October 2005, the Lebanese Army surrounded camps of the PFLP-GC in a tense standoff, after Lebanese authorities claimed that

7029-404: The only supply that was not in shortage during the war. Locally produced explosives were also plentiful. After Israel's independence, these clandestine arms manufacturing operations were moved above ground. All of the Haganah's weapons-manufacturing was centralised and later became Israel Military Industries . In November 1947, the Haganah was an underground paramilitary force that had existed as

7128-488: The other. The rebels included the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and a group made up of Palestinians, called Liwa al-Asifa or Storm Brigade. By 17 December, the rebels had won control of Yarmouk. Afterwards, Government and rebel representatives agreed that all armed groups should withdraw from Yarmouk and leave it as a neutral zone. The agreement also said that the PFLP-GC should be dismantled and its weapons surrendered. However,

7227-426: The partial remains of up to 20 Israeli soldiers killed during the 2006 Lebanon War . In July 2008 Israel released long time serving Lebanese prisoner Samir al-Quntar , four Hezbollah fighters captured in the 2006 Lebanon war and the bodies of 199 Palestinian, Lebanese of Arab fighters captured by Israel in the past three decades. Kuntar had been convicted for his role in the 1979 Nahariya attack , which resulted in

7326-436: The plan specified that in case of resistance, the population of conquered villages was to be expelled outside the borders of the Jewish state. If no resistance was met, the residents could stay put, under military rule. According to Morris, Plan D called for occupying the areas within the UN sponsored Jewish state, several concentrations of Jewish population outside those areas (West Jerusalem and Western Galilee), and areas along

7425-622: The pre-state underground militia Lehi who had been hanged in 1945 for having assassinated British politician Lord Moyne in Cairo in November 1944. During the Israeli invasion of Lebanon (the Litani Operation ) IDF soldier Avraham Amram was captured in a clash on April 5, 1978, with Palestinian PFLP-GC forces near Rashidieh camp in South Lebanon. Four other Israeli soldiers were killed while two others managed to escape to Israeli held territory. He

7524-612: The pressure of their public opinion, the Arab leaders decided to invade Palestine. The Arab League gave reasons for its invasion in Palestine in the cablegram : British diplomat Alec Kirkbride wrote in his 1976 memoirs about a conversation with the Arab League's Secretary-General Azzam Pasha a week before the armies marched: "...when I asked him for his estimate of the size of the Jewish forces, [he] waved his hands and said: 'It does not matter how many there are. We will sweep them into

7623-581: The remains of two Hezbollah members, in exchange for allowing a German mediator to visit the Israeli Col. Elhanan Tannenbaum held by Hezbollah, kidnapped in Dubai in 2000. Over 400 Palestinian and 30 Lebanese prisoners, including Hezbollah leaders ash-Sheikh Abdal-Karim Obeid and Mustafa Dirani , as well as the remains of 59 Lebanese killed by Israel, were exchanged in 2004 for the bodies of three IDF soldiers (Adi Avitan, Benny Avraham and Omar Souad) captured in

7722-460: The roads where the invading Arab armies were expected to attack. The Yishuv perceived the peril of an Arab invasion as threatening its very existence. Having no real knowledge of the Arabs' true military capabilities, the Jews took Arab propaganda literally, preparing for the worst and reacting accordingly. The Arab League had unanimously rejected the UN partition plan and were officially opposed to

7821-528: The route to the city between 5 and 20 April. Both sides acted offensively in defiance of the Partition Plan, which foresaw Jerusalem as a corpus separatum , under neither Jewish nor Arab jurisdiction. The Arabs did not accept the Plan, while the Jews were determined to oppose the internationalisation of the city, and secure it as part of the Jewish state. The operation was successful, and enough foodstuffs to last two months were trucked into Jerusalem for distribution to

7920-599: The same nom de guerre ), a former military officer in the Syrian Army who had been one of the PFLP's early leaders. The PFLP-GC declared that its primary focus would be military, not political, complaining that the PFLP had been devoting too much time and resources to Marxist philosophizing. Although the group was initially a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), it always opposed Yasser Arafat and opposes any political settlement with Israel ; for this reason, it has never participated in

8019-528: The sea.'" PFLP-GC The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command ( Arabic : الجبهة الشعبية لتحرير فلسطين – القيادة العامة ) or PFLP-GC is a Palestinian nationalist militant organisation based in Syria . It is a member the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). It was founded in 1968 by Ahmed Jibril after splitting from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) based on ideological and internal disputes. In

8118-595: The three years following the war, including 260,000 from the surrounding Arab states . On 29 November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution recommending the adoption and implementation of a plan to partition the British Mandate of Palestine into two states, one Arab and one Jewish, and the City of Jerusalem. The General Assembly resolution on Partition was greeted with overwhelming joy in Jewish communities and widespread outrage in

8217-589: The underground militias but would provide valuable military experience during the war. Walid Khalidi says the Yishuv had the additional forces of the Jewish Settlement Police, numbering some 12,000, the Gadna Youth Battalions, and the armed settlers. Few of the units had been trained by December 1947. On 5 December 1947, conscription was instituted for all men and women aged between 17 and 25 and by

8316-629: The war, the PFLP-FC supported the Syrian Army to fight the Syrian rebels in and around Yarmouk. At the beginning of the war, tensions arose in Yarmouk between the PFLP-GC and anti-government Palestinian residents. On 5 June 2011, a number of Yarmouk residents were shot dead while protesting at the Israeli border . Allegedly angered by the PFLP-GC's refusal to take part in the protests, thousands of mourners burnt down its headquarters in Yarmouk. PFLP-GC members fired on

8415-515: The war. Yishuv 's aims evolved during the war. Mobilisation for a total war was organised. Initially, the aim was "simple and modest": to survive the assaults of the Palestinian Arabs and the Arab states. "The Zionist leaders deeply, genuinely, feared a Middle Eastern reenactment of the Holocaust , which had just ended; the Arabs' public rhetoric reinforced these fears". As the war progressed,

8514-480: The years since Israel's independence were exchanged for 18 Syrian prisoners in Israel. During the 1967 Six-Day War , Israel took 4,338 Egyptian soldiers and 899 civilians, 553 Jordanian soldiers and 366 civilians, and 367 Syrian soldiers and 205 civilians captive, while 15 Israeli soldiers and the bodies of two more fell into Arab captivity. All of them were released following the war. Israeli spies imprisoned in Egypt since

8613-542: Was occupied by Egypt . Expulsions of Palestinians , which had begun during the civil war, continued during the Arab-Israeli war. Hundreds of Palestinians were killed in multiple massacres , such as occurred in the expulsions from Lydda and Ramle . These events are known today as the Nakba ( Arabic for "the catastrophe") and were the beginning of the Palestinian refugee problem . A similar number of Jews moved to Israel during

8712-854: Was released in exchange for 1027 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel. During the 2023 Israel–Hamas war , a series of exchanges were made between Israel and Hamas to exchange militant-held hostages for Palestinian prisoners . The negotiations were brokered by Qatar, Egypt, and the United States, and were part of a temporary ceasefire agreement . 1948 Arab%E2%80%93Israeli War [REDACTED]   Israel Before 26 May 1948 : [REDACTED] Yishuv Paramilitary groups : After 26 May 1948 : [REDACTED]   Arab League : Irregulars : [REDACTED] Arab Liberation Army Central and Jerusalem front Northern front International Massacres Biological warfare The 1948 Arab–Israeli War , also known as

8811-499: Was a plan worked out by the Haganah, a Jewish paramilitary group and the forerunner of the Israel Defense Forces, in autumn 1947 to spring 1948, which was sent to Haganah units in early March 1948. The intent of Plan Dalet is subject to much controversy, with historians on the one extreme asserting that it was entirely defensive, and historians on the other extreme asserting that the plan aimed at maximum conquest and expulsion of

8910-577: Was arrested in West Germany on suspicion of terrorist activities. He is believed by some to have led the cell that carried out the Lockerbie bombing . September 3, 1982, four Palestinian Fatah fighters surprised an IDF outpost near Bhamdoun in central Lebanon. The commander of the Palestinian squad was Eissa Hajjo. Eight IDF soldiers from the Nahal brigade surrendered without a fight and were taken prisoners by

9009-547: Was eventually absorbed into the Jewish Defence Army. The activities of Irgun was monitored by MI5 , which found that Irgun was "involved or implicated in numerous acts of terrorism" during the end years of the British mandate in Palestine such as the attacks on trains and the kidnapping of British servicemen. According to Benny Morris , by the end of 1947, the Palestinians already "had a healthy and demoralising respect for

9108-458: Was exchanged March 14, 1979, for 76 convicted Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, 20 of whom "with blood on their hands." The prisoner swap was described as Israel's "first prisoner exchange with an Arab terrorist organization". Among those released in the exchange was Hafez Dalkamoni, who would later be described as one of the “key-aids” of Ahmed Jibril , the leader of the PFLP-GC . In 1988 he

9207-495: Was exchanged for 65 Lebanese prisoners and the bodies of 40 Hezbollah fighters and Lebanese soldiers captured by Israel. Among those returned to Lebanon, were the remains of Hadi Nasrallah, the son of Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah , who was killed in a clash with IDF the year before. Ilyah was killed in a devastating Hezbollah ambush at Ansariya , where 12 soldiers from the elite naval commando unit Shayetet 13 were killed on September 5, 1997. In 2003, Israel released

9306-463: Was guaranteed in exchange for the return of 39 foreign passengers from the hijacking of TWA flight 847 . Israel denies a connection. On September 12, 1991, the body of IDF Druze soldier Samir Assad, was returned to Israel in exchange for two members of the Palestinian DFLP faction. Assad was killed outside Sidon in 1983. Two Israeli soldiers, Yosef Fink and Rachmim Alsheich, were killed in

9405-436: Was listed as growing to 12,000 by some historians while others calculate an eventual total Arab strength of approximately 23,500 troops, and with this being more of less or roughly equal to that of the Yishuv. However, as Israel mobilised most of its most able citizens during the war while the Arab troops were only a small percentage of its far greater population, the strength of the Yishuv grew steadily and dramatically during

9504-485: Was more concentrated on means than ends. They never depended on a political platform; most of their recruits were young, exiled, poor, illiterate, and angry. The General Command promised a gun in every hand, and the means to write their own narrative rather than read and praise those of others as the better off exiles did in universities in Europe. Jibril still used iron discipline to keep his fighters loyal and professional, and

9603-404: Was playing a double game, being just as much in contact with the Jewish authorities as with the Arab League. In preparation for the offensive, Haganah successfully launched Operations Yiftah and Ben-'Ami to secure the Jewish settlements of Galilee , and Operation Kilshon , which created a united front around Jerusalem. The inconclusive meeting between Golda Meir and Abdullah I, followed by

9702-430: Was reported that the air raid was in response to the hang glider attack. PSP positions along the coast North of Sidon were also hit and three of their members killed. In total around twenty people were killed in the attack, including seven children and one woman. In the previous two years there had been about forty Israeli air strikes on Lebanon. The PFLP-GC has not been involved in major attacks on Israeli targets since

9801-545: Was the Fatah Revolutionary Council led by maverick hardliner Sabri al-Banna (better known as Abu Nidal ), who was viewed by other Palestinian organizations as not so much a guerrilla as a pure criminal with no higher goal than deposing the moderates at the head of the PLO. Though many Palestinians still were opposed to compromising on the principle of defeating Israel by armed struggle, the existing groups could not channel their desires, as many of them were led by

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