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114-704: In the 1948 Arab–Israeli War it was a Palmach infantry brigade. It was formed in late April 1948 from existing Palmach battalions: the First Battalion, that resided in Jezreel Valley and the Third Battalion in the eastern valleys. In late 1948, the Second Palmach Battalion was transferred to it from the Negev Brigade . The Palmach memorial website records 274 of its members being killed whilst in

228-482: A Franco-Syrian Treaty of Independence . This showed that determined economic and political pressure could challenge a fragile imperial administration. On 16 October 1935 a large arms shipment camouflaged in cement bins , comprising 25 Lewis guns and their bipods, 800 rifles and 400,000 rounds of ammunition destined for the Haganah , was discovered during unloading at the port of Jaffa . The news sparked Arab fears of

342-711: A District Commander who had armed platoons of 150–200 fighters, each commanded by a platoon leader. A Statement of Policy issued by the Colonial Office in London on 7 September declared the situation a "direct challenge to the authority of the British Government in Palestine" and announced the appointment of Lieutenant-General John Dill as supreme military commander. By the end of September 20,000 British troops in Palestine were deployed to "round up Arab bands". In June 1936

456-538: A Jewish military takeover of Palestine. A little over two weeks later, on 2 November 1935, al-Qassam gave a speech in the port of Haifa denouncing the Balfour declaration on its 18th anniversary. In a proclamation to that effect, together with Jamal al-Husayni , he alluded to the Haganah weapons smuggling operation. Questioned at the time by a confidant about his preparations, he stated that he had 15 men, each furnished with

570-502: A contributory factor to the preceding 1929 disturbances , and the problem of these 'landless' Arabs grew particularly grave after 1931, causing High Commissioner Wauchope to warn that this 'social peril ... would serve as a focus of discontent and might even result in serious disorders.' Economic factors played a major role in the outbreak of the Arab revolt. Palestine's fellahin , the country's peasant farmers, made up over two-thirds of

684-585: A degree of autonomous control over the Jewish settlement and the Supreme Muslim Council performed a comparable role for Muslims. Thus, well before Lord Peel arrived in Palestine on 11 November 1936, the groundwork for territorial partition as proposed by the Royal Commission in its report on 7 July 1937 had already been done. The commission, which concluded that 1,000 Arab rebels had been killed during

798-475: A farming population of 590,000 whereas the 102,000 dunums of such land in Jewish possession supported a farming population of only 50,000. The late 1920s witnessed poor harvests, and the consequent immiseration grew even harsher with the onset of the Great Depression and the collapse of commodity prices. The Shaw Commission in 1930 had identified the existence of a class of 'embittered landless people' as

912-582: 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

1026-613: A general strike in July 1931, accompanied by organised demonstrations in the streets, led to independence for the former British mandate territory under Prime Minister Nuri as-Said , and full membership of the League of Nations in October 1932. The Syrian national movement had used a general strike from 20 January to 6 March in 1936 which, despite harsh reprisals, brought about negotiations in Paris that led to

1140-512: 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

1254-501: A hut in a banana plantation beside the highway between Petah Tikva and Yarkona were assassinated in retaliation by members of the Haganah-Bet . Jews and Palestinians attacked each other in and around Tel Aviv. Palestinians in Jaffa rampaged through a Jewish residential area , resulting in several Jewish deaths. After four days, by 19 April, the deteriorating situation erupted into

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1368-559: A lack of financial self-sufficiency of the proposed Arab State. The British Government accompanied the publication of the Woodhead Report by a statement of policy rejecting partition as impracticable due to "political, administrative and financial difficulties". With the failure of the Peel Commission's proposals the revolt resumed during the autumn of 1937 marked by the assassination on 26 September of Acting District Commissioner of

1482-593: 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

1596-646: A paramilitary arm with the Haganah and Irgun . In 1930 Sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam organised and established the Black Hand , a small anti-Zionist and anti-British militia. He recruited and arranged military training for impoverished but pious peasants but also for ex-criminals he had persuaded to take Islam seriously and they engaged in a campaign of vandalizing tree plantations and British-constructed rail lines, destroying phone lines and disrupting transportation. Three minor mujāhīdūn and jihadist groups had also been formed that advocated armed struggle; these were

1710-536: 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 )

1824-419: A rifle and one cartridge. Soon after, perhaps fearing a pending preemptive arrest, he disappeared with his group into the hills, not to start a revolution, premature at that point, but to impress upon people that he was a man ready to do what he said should be done. Some weeks later, a Jewish policeman was shot dead in a citrus grove while investigating the theft of grapefruit, after he happened to come close to

1938-520: A set of countrywide disturbances. An Arab general strike and revolt ensued that lasted until October 1936. The strike began on 19 April in Nablus, where an Arab National Committee was formed, and by the end of the month National Committees had been formed in all of the towns and some of the larger villages. On the same day, the High Commissioner Wauchope issued Emergency Regulations that laid

2052-409: A significant deterioration in relations between Palestinian Arabs and Jews. In 1936 alone, some 60,000 Jews immigrated that year – the Jewish population having grown under British auspices from 57,000 to 320,000 in 1935 The advent of Zionism and British colonial administration crystallised Palestinian nationalism and the desire to defend indigenous traditions and institutions. Palestinian society

2166-604: 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

2280-571: 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

2394-648: 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

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2508-587: The Haganah , whereas on the Palestinian Arab side, the revolt forced the flight into exile of the main Palestinian Arab leader of the period, al-Husseini. World War I left Palestine, especially the countryside, deeply impoverished. The Ottoman and then the Mandate authorities levied high taxes on farming and agricultural produce and during the 1920s and 1930s this together with a fall in prices, cheap imports, natural disasters and paltry harvests all contributed to

2622-743: 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

2736-602: 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

2850-692: The Six-Day War in the Gaza Strip In 1971 the brigade was converted to an armored brigade. It fought in the Egyptian front of the Yom Kippur War in 1973. After the war it was regrouped and its unit number was changed to 576. in 2006 the brigade fought in Operation Defensive Shield . In May 2014 it was disbanded. In 2016, it was decided to reestablish the brigade as an elite infantry brigade in

2964-686: The Tel Hai settlement. Huge crowds gathered for the occasion of his obsequies in Haifa and later burial in Balad al-Shaykh . The actual uprising was triggered some five months later, on 15 April 1936, by the Anabta shooting where remnants of a Qassamite band stopped a convoy on the road from Nablus to Tulkarm , robbed its passengers and, stating that they were acting to revenge al-Qassam's death, shot 3 Jewish passengers, two fatally, after ascertaining their identity. One of

3078-504: 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

3192-475: The Yishuv , described Arab causes as fear of growing Jewish economic power, opposition to mass Jewish immigration and fear of the British identification with Zionism . The general strike lasted from April to October 1936. The revolt is often analysed in terms of two distinct phases. The first phase began as spontaneous popular resistance, which was seized on by the urban and elitist Arab Higher Committee, giving

3306-602: The religious Zionists , some of the General Zionists , and sections of the Labour Zionist movement also opposed the recommendations. Ben-Gurion was delighted by the Peel Commission's support for transfer, which he viewed as the foundation of "national consolidation in a free homeland." Subsequently, the two main Jewish leaders, Chaim Weizmann and Ben Gurion had convinced the Zionist Congress to approve equivocally

3420-558: The 1930s wrought several changes, giving rise to new political organizations and a broader activism that spurred a far wider cross-section of the population in rural areas, strongly nationalist, to join actively in the Palestinian cause. Among new political parties formed in this period were the Independence Party which called for an Indian Congress Party -style boycott of the British, the pro- Nashashibi National Defence Party ,

3534-595: 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

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3648-658: 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

3762-439: 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

3876-593: The British administration, later known as the Great Revolt , the Great Palestinian Revolt , or the Palestinian Revolution , lasted from 1936 until 1939. The movement sought independence from British colonial rule and the end of the British authorities' support for Zionism , which sought the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, whose concomitant effect was to marginalize and displace

3990-488: The British formed armed Jewish units equipped with armoured vehicles to serve as auxiliary police. The British government in Palestine was convinced that the strike had the full support of the Palestinian Arabs and they could see "no weakening in the will and spirit of the Arab people." Air Vice-Marshall Richard Peirse , commander of British forces in Palestine and Transjordan from 1933 to 1936, reported that because

4104-667: The British involved their clients in Transjordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Egypt in an attempt to pacify the Palestinian Arabs and on 9 October the rulers made an appeal for the strike to be ended. A more pressing concern may have been the approaching citrus harvest and the attractive, soaring prices on the international markets caused by the disruption to the Spanish citrus harvest due to the Spanish Civil War . On 22 August 1936, Anglo-Jewish Arabist scholar Levi Billig of Hebrew University

4218-515: The Commission did not arrive in Palestine until 11 November. In the early 1920s the first High Commissioner of Palestine, Herbert Samuel , had failed to create a unified political structure embracing both Palestinian Arabs and Palestinian Jews in constitutional government with joint political institutions. This failure facilitated internal institutional partition in which the Jewish Agency exercised

4332-822: The Galilee Lewis Andrews by Quassemite gunmen in Nazareth. Andrews was widely hated by Palestinians for supporting Jewish settlement in the Galilee, and he openly advised Jews to create their own defense force. On 30 September, regulations were issued allowing the Government to detain political deportees in any part of the British Empire, and authorising the High Commissioner to outlaw associations whose objectives he regarded as contrary to public policy. Haj Amin al-Husseini

4446-616: The Grands Moulins flour mills and the Nesher cement factory, could take advantage of cheap Arab labour pouring in from the countryside. After 1935 the slump in the construction boom and further concentration by the Yishuv on an exclusivist Hebrew labour programme removed most of the sources of employment for rural migrants. By 1935 only 12,000 Arabs (5% of the workforce) worked in the Jewish sector, half of these in agriculture, whereas 32,000 worked for

4560-657: The Green Hand ( al-Kaff al-Khaḍrā ) -active in the area of Acre - Safed - Nazareth from 1929 until 1930 when they were dispersed; the Organization for Holy Struggle ( al-Jihād al-Muqaddas ), led by Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni and operative in the areas of Jerusalem (1931–1934); and the Rebel Youth ( al-Shabāb al-Thā'ir ), active in the Tulkarm and Qalqilyah area from 1935, and composed mainly of local boy scouts.) The pressures of

4674-408: 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,

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4788-520: 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

4902-504: 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

5016-416: The Mandate authorities and 211,000 were either self-employed or worked for Arab employers. The ongoing disruption of agrarian life in Palestine, which had been continuing since Ottoman times, thus created a large population of landless peasant farmers who subsequently became mobile wage workers who were increasingly marginalised and impoverished; these became willing participants in nationalist rebellion. At

5130-496: 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 ,

5244-468: The Peel recommendations as a basis for further negotiation, and to negotiate a modified Peel proposal with the British. The British government initially accepted the Peel report in principle. However, with war clouds looming over Europe, they realized that to attempt to implement it against the will of the Palestinian Arab majority would rouse up the entire Arab world against Britain. The Woodhead Commission considered three different plans, one of which

5358-439: The Qassamites' encampment. Following the incident, the Palestine police launched a massive manhunt and surrounded al-Qassam in a cave just north of Ya'bad . In the ensuing battle, on 20 November, al-Qassam was killed. The death of al-Qassam generated widespread outrage among Palestinian Arabs, galvanizing public sentiments with an impact similar to the effect on the Yishuv of news of the death of Joseph Trumpeldor in 1920 at

5472-565: 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

5586-420: The Yiftach Brigade. In May 1949 the Palmach brigade was disbanded. This was part of a general downsizing of the IDF (9 out of 12 brigades were disbanded). It was also considered by many as part of Ben-Gurion's process of disbanding the Palmach itself. A while after that, it was re-established as a reserve unit that served in the Gaza Strip front As an infantry brigade it also fought in the Suez Crisis and in

5700-658: 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

5814-406: 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

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5928-467: 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

6042-410: The Zionist policy of ensuring that their investments were directed only to facilitate expansion exclusively of the Yishuv further compounded matters. The government did, however, set the minimum wage for Arab workers below that for Jewish workers, which meant that those making capital investments in the Yishuv's economic infrastructure, such as Haifa's electricity plant, the Shemen oil and soap factory,

6156-407: The adult male Palestinian Arab population between 20 and 60 was killed, wounded, imprisoned or exiled. Estimates of the number of Palestinian Jews killed are up to several hundred. The Arab revolt in Mandatory Palestine was unsuccessful, and its consequences affected the outcome of the 1948 Palestine war . It caused the British Mandate to give crucial support to pre-state Zionist militias like

6270-412: 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

6384-422: The carrying and discharge of firearms, sabotage and intimidation. Despite this, however, the Arab campaign of murder and sabotage continued and Arab gangs in the hills took on the appearance of organised guerrilla fighters. Violence continued throughout 1938. In July 1938, when the Palestine Government seemed to have largely lost control of the situation, the garrison was strengthened from Egypt, and in September it

6498-436: 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

6612-484: 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

6726-413: 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

6840-472: 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

6954-531: The end of the 1920s, with an Arab Women's Congress held in Jerusalem in 1929 attracting 200 participants, and an Arab Women's Association (later Arab Women's Union) being established at the same time, both organised by feminist Tarab Abdul Hadi . Myriads of rural women would play an important role in response to faz'a alarm calls for inter-village help by rallying in defence of the rebellion. General strikes had been used in neighbouring Arab countries to place political pressures on Western colonial powers. In Iraq

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7068-406: 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

7182-429: The excitement of the fellahin ." However, Moshe Shertok of the Jewish Agency even suggested that all villages in the area of an incident should be punished. On 2 June, an attempt by rebels to derail a train bringing the 2nd Battalion Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Regiment from Egypt led to the railways being put under guard, placing a great strain on the security forces. On 4 June, in response to this situation,

7296-453: 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

7410-489: 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

7524-760: The following Israeli military operations: The memorial for the fallen soldiers of the Yiftach Brigade is situated in the northern Negev north of Rahat , near Kibbutz Beit Kama and Kama Junction on Road 40 . This Israel Defense Forces -related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . 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

7638-464: 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

7752-448: The formation on 25 April 1936 of the Arab Higher Committee (AHC). The Committee resolved "to continue the general strike until the British Government changes its present policy in a fundamental manner"; the demands were threefold: (1) the prohibition of Jewish immigration; (2) the prohibition of the transfer of Arab land to Jews; (3) the establishment of a National Government responsible to a representative council. About one month after

7866-449: The general strike started, the leadership group declared a general non-payment of taxes in explicit opposition to Jewish immigration. In the countryside, armed insurrection started sporadically, becoming more organized over time. One particular target of the rebels was the Mosul–Haifa oil pipeline of the Iraq Petroleum Company constructed only a few years earlier to Haifa from a point on the Jordan River south of Lake Tiberias . This

7980-456: The government rounded up a large number of Palestinian leaders and sent them to a detention camp at Auja al-Hafir in the Negev desert. The Battle of Nur Shams on 21 June marked an escalation with the largest engagement of British troops against Arab militants so far in this Revolt. During July, Arab volunteers from Syria and Transjordan , led by Fawzi al-Qawukji , helped the rebels to divide their formations into four fronts, each led by

8094-448: The immediate spark for the uprising was the murder of two Jews by a Qassamite band , and the retaliatory killing by Jewish gunmen of two Arab labourers, incidents which triggered a flare-up of violence across Palestine. A month into the disturbances, Amin al-Husseini , president of the Arab Higher Committee and Mufti of Jerusalem , declared 16 May 1936 as 'Palestine Day' and called for a general strike . David Ben-Gurion , leader of

8208-508: The increasing indebtedness of the fellahin. The rents paid by tenant fellah increased sharply, owing to increased population density, and growing transfer of land from Arabs to the Jewish settlement agencies, such as the Jewish National Fund , increased the number of fellahin evicted while also removing the land as a future source of livelihood. By 1931 the 106,400 dunums of low-lying Category A farming land in Arab possession supported

8322-467: The indigenous Arab majority. The uprising occurred during a peak in the influx of European Jewish immigrants, and with the growing plight of the rural fellahin rendered landless, who as they moved to metropolitan centres to escape their abject poverty found themselves socially marginalized. Since the Battle of Tel Hai in 1920, Jews and Arabs had been involved in a cycle of attacks and counter-attacks, and

8436-448: The indigenous Arab population and from the 1920s onwards they were pushed off the land in increasingly large numbers into urban environments where they often encountered only poverty and social marginalisation. Many were crowded into shanty towns in Jaffa and Haifa where some found succour and encouragement in the teachings of the charismatic preacher Izz ad-Din al-Qassam who worked among

8550-540: 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

8664-421: The legal basis for suppressing the insurgency. On 21 April the leaders of the five main parties accepted the decision at Nablus and called for a general strike of all Arabs engaged in labour, transport and shopkeeping for the following day. While the strike was initially organised by workers and local committees, under pressure from below, political leaders became involved to help with co-ordination. This led to

8778-516: The measures adopted by the Police on the lines of similar Turkish methods, were punitive and effective. In reality the measures created a sense of solidarity between the villagers and the rebels. The pro-Government Mayor of Nablus complained to the High Commissioner that, "During the last searches effected in villages properties were destroyed, jewels stolen, and the Holy Qur'an torn, and this has increased

8892-455: The movement an organized shape that was focused mainly on strikes and other forms of political protest, in order to secure a political result. By October 1936, this phase had been defeated by the British civil administration using a combination of political concessions , international diplomacy (involving the rulers of Iraq , Saudi Arabia , Transjordan and Yemen ) and the threat of martial law . The second phase, which began late in 1937,

9006-448: The neighbouring Arab peoples", which had resulted in support for the rebellion in the form of volunteers from Syria and Iraq . Peel's main recommendation was for partition of Palestine into a small Jewish state (based on current Jewish land ownership population and incorporating the country's most productive agricultural land), a residual Mandatory area, and a larger Arab state linked to Transjordan . A second and more radical proposal

9120-404: 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

9234-478: The outbreak of the Second World War. In the final fifteen months of the revolt alone there were 936 murders and 351 attempted murders; 2,125 incidents of sniping; 472 bombs thrown and detonated; 364 cases of armed robbery; 1,453 cases of sabotage against government and commercial property; 323 people abducted; 72 cases of intimidation; 236 Jews killed by Arabs and 435 Arabs killed by Jews; 1,200 rebels killed by

9348-436: 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

9462-462: The poor in Haifa. The revolt was thus a popular uprising that produced its own leaders and developed into a national revolt. Although the Mandatory government introduced measures to limit the transfer of land from Arabs to Jews, these were easily circumvented by willing buyers and sellers. The failure of the authorities to invest in economic growth and healthcare for the general Palestinian public and

9576-612: 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

9690-609: The pro- Husayni Palestinian Arab Party the pro- Khalidi Arab-Palestinian Reform Party , and the National Bloc , based mainly around Nablus . Youth organisations emerged like Young Men's Muslim Association and the Youth Congress Party , the former anti-Zionist, the latter pan-Arab. The Palestinian Boy Scout Movement , founded early in 1936, became active in the general strike. Women's organisations, which had been active in social matters, became politically involved from

9804-490: The rebel armed bands were supported by villagers, It was quickly evident that the only way to regain the initiative from the rebels was by initiating measures against the villagers from which the rebels and saboteurs came ... I therefore initiated, in co-operation with the Inspector-General of Police R. G. B. Spicer, village searches. Ostensibly, these searches were undertaken to find arms and wanted persons, actually

9918-476: The reserves, called the "Reserve Commando Brigade", based on the reserve battalions of the 810th Brigade 'Hermon', which was closed as part of the multi-year Gideon plan. Most of the soldiers off the brigade completed their service in the Egoz unit. In September 2020, the brigade transferred command to the 99th Infantry Division ( Reserve ), where it serves as a commando reserve force. The Yiftach Brigade participated in

10032-511: The revolt. A more dominant role on the Arab side was taken by the Nashashibi clan , whose NDP party quickly withdrew from the rebel Arab Higher Committee , led by the radical faction of Amin al-Husseini, and instead sided with the British – dispatching "Fasail al-Salam" (the "Peace Bands") in coordination with the British Army against nationalist and Jihadist Arab "Fasail" units (literally "bands"). According to official British figures covering

10146-460: 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

10260-528: 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

10374-404: The same time, Jewish immigration peaked in 1935, just months before Palestinian Arabs began their full-scale, nationwide revolt. Over the four years between 1933 and 1936 more than 164,000 Jewish immigrants arrived in Palestine, and between 1931 and 1936 the Jewish population more than doubled from 175,000 to 370,000 people, increasing the Jewish population share from 17% to 27%, and bringing about

10488-2560: The sea.'" 1936%E2%80%931939 Arab revolt in Palestine Revolt suppressed [REDACTED]   United Kingdom [REDACTED] NDF (from 1937) [REDACTED] Jewish National Council [REDACTED] Arab Higher Committee (1936–October 1937) Central Committee of National Jihad in Palestine (October 1937 – 1939) [REDACTED] Society for the Defense of Palestine [REDACTED] General Arthur Grenfell Wauchope High Commissioner and Commander-in-chief (1932–1938) [REDACTED] Sir Harold MacMichael , High Commissioner (1938–1944) [REDACTED] Lt.-General John Dill , GOC (1936–1937) [REDACTED] Lt.-General Archibald Wavell , GOC (1937–1938) [REDACTED] Lt.-General Robert Haining , GOC (1938–1939) [REDACTED] Major-General Bernard Montgomery ; Commander, 8th Infantry Div. (1938–1939) [REDACTED] Air Commodore Roderic Hill ; AOC , Palestine and Transjordan (1936–1938) [REDACTED] Air Commodore Arthur Harris ; AOC, Palestine and Transjordan (1938–1939) [REDACTED] Admiral Dudley Pound ; Commander-in-Chief, British Mediterranean Fleet (1936–1939) Political leadership: Raghib al-Nashashibi (from 1937) Political leadership: [REDACTED] Mohammed Amin al-Husayni (exiled) [REDACTED] Raghib al-Nashashibi (defected) [REDACTED] Izzat Darwaza (exiled) Local rebel commanders : [REDACTED] Abd al-Rahim al-Hajj Muhammad (General Commander)   † [REDACTED] Arif Abd al-Raziq Regional Commander (exiled) Abu Ibrahim al-Kabir (Regional Commander) Yusuf Abu Durra (Regional Commander)   [REDACTED] Fakhri 'Abd al-Hadi (defected) Abdallah al-Asbah   † Issa Battat   † Mohammed Saleh al-Hamad   † Yusuf Hamdan   † Ahmad Mohamad Hasan   † Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni (exiled) Wasif Kamal Abdul Khallik   † Hamid Suleiman Mardawi   † Ibrahim Nassar Mustafa Osta   † Mohammad Mahmoud Rana'an Farhan al-Sa'di   [REDACTED] Hasan Salama A popular uprising by Palestinian Arabs in Mandatory Palestine against

10602-410: The six month strike, later described the disturbances as "an open rebellion of the Palestinian Arabs, assisted by fellow-Arabs from other countries, against Mandatory rule" and noted two unprecedented features of the revolt: the support of all senior Arab officials in the political and technical departments in the Palestine administration (including all of the Arab judges) and the "interest and sympathy of

10716-475: The strike were harsh from the outset and grew harsher as the revolt deepened. Unable to contain the protests with the two battalions already stationed in the country, Britain inundated Palestine with soldiers from regiments all over the empire, including its Egyptian garrison. The drastic measures taken included house searches without warrants, night raids, preventive detention, caning, flogging, deportation, confiscation of property, and torture. As early as May 1936

10830-595: 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

10944-532: The three, Israel Chazan, was from Thessaloniki . The Salonican community 's request that permission be granted to allow them to conduct a solemn funeral for Chasan was turned down by the district commissioner , who had allowed al-Qassam a ceremonial burial some months earlier. The refusal sparked a demonstration by 30,000 Jews in Tel Aviv who overcame the police and maltreated Arab labourers and damaged property in Jaffa . The following day, two Arab workers sleeping in

11058-540: 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

11172-455: 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,

11286-426: The whole revolt, the army and police killed more than 2,000 Arabs in combat, 108 were hanged , and 961 died because of what they described as "gang and terrorist activities". In an analysis of the British statistics, Walid Khalidi estimates 19,792 casualties for the Arabs, with 5,032 dead: 3,832 killed by the British and 1,200 dead due to intracommunal terrorism, and 14,760 wounded. By one estimate, ten percent of

11400-595: 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

11514-564: Was a peasant-led resistance movement provoked by British repression in 1936 in which increasingly British forces were targeted as the army itself increasingly targeted the villages it thought supportive of the revolt. During this phase, the rebellion was brutally suppressed by the British Army and the Palestine Police Force using repressive measures that were intended to intimidate the whole population and undermine popular support for

11628-499: 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

11742-483: Was based on the Peel plan. Reporting in 1938, the Commission rejected the Peel plan primarily on the grounds that it could not be implemented without a massive forced transfer of Arabs (an option that the British government had already ruled out). With dissent from some of its members, the Commission instead recommended a plan that would leave the Galilee under British mandate, but emphasised serious problems with it that included

11856-471: Was celebrated as Palestine Day. The expansion of education, the development of civil society and of transportation, communications, and especially of broadcasting and other media, all facilitated notable changes. The Yishuv itself, at the same time, was steadily building the structures for its own state-building with public organisations like the Jewish Agency and the covert creation and consolidation of

11970-547: 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

12084-462: Was for transfer of 225,000 Palestinian Arabs from the proposed Jewish state to a future Arab state and Transjordan. It is likely that Zionist leaders played a role in persuading Peel to accept the notion of transfer, which had been a strand of Zionist ideology from its inception. The Arab Higher Committee rejected the recommendations immediately, as did the Jewish Revisionists . Initially,

12198-474: Was further reinforced from England. The police were placed under the operational control of the army commander, and military officials superseded the civil authorities in the enforcement of order. In October the Old City of Jerusalem, which had become a rebel stronghold, was reoccupied by the troops. By the end of the year a semblance of order had been restored in the towns, but terrorism continued in rural areas until

12312-476: Was introduced and a special concentration camp was opened near Acre. In November 1937, the Irgun formally rejected the policy of Havlagah and embarked on a series of indiscriminate attacks against Arab civilians as a form of what the group called "active defense" against Arab attacks on Jewish civilians. The British authorities set up military courts, which were established for the trial of offenses connected with

12426-495: Was largely clan-based ( hamula ) , with an urban land-holding elite lacking a centralised leadership. Traditional feasts such as Nebi Musa began to acquire a political and nationalist dimension and new national memorial days were introduced or gained new significance; among them Balfour Day (2 November, marking the Balfour Declaration of 1917), the anniversary of the Battle of Hattin (4 July), and beginning in 1930, 16 May

12540-436: 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

12654-475: Was murdered in his home outside Jerusalem by an Arab assassin, one of three Jews killed by Arabs on 22 August, and one of 73 Jews killed since the beginning of the Arab armed insurrection. The strike was called off on 11 October 1936 and the violence abated for about a year while the Peel Commission deliberated. The Royal Commission was announced on 18 May 1936 and its members were appointed on 29 July, but

12768-404: 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

12882-698: Was removed from the leadership of the Supreme Moslem Council and the General Waqf Committee, the local National Committees and the Arab Higher Committee were disbanded; five Arab leaders were arrested and deported to the Seychelles ; and in fear of arrest Jamal el-Husseini fled to Syria and Haj Amin el-Husseini to Lebanon; all frontiers with Palestine were closed, telephone connections to neighbouring countries were withdrawn, press censorship

12996-560: Was repeatedly bombed at various points along its length. Other attacks were on railways (including trains) and on civilian targets such as Jewish settlements, secluded Jewish neighbourhoods in the mixed cities, and Jews, both individually and in groups. During the summer of that year, thousands of Jewish-farmed acres and orchards were destroyed, Jewish civilians were attacked and murdered, and some Jewish communities, such as those in Beisan and Acre , fled to safer areas. The measures taken against

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