Table of Contents
Setting the Stage: From Partition to War
The 1947-1949 war did not erupt in a vacuum. It followed mounting tensions during the British Mandate, crystallized around the question of who would control and inhabit the land once Britain withdrew. When the United Nations approved a partition proposal in November 1947, it provided a political trigger but not a mutually accepted solution. The period from late 1947 to 1949 is thus best seen as a connected sequence: civil war between Jewish and Arab communities in Mandatory Palestine, followed by interstate war between the new State of Israel and neighboring Arab states, and concluding with armistice agreements that reshaped the map and lives of millions.
Two key processes unfolded in parallel: the military struggle over territory and the dramatic displacement of populations. Both would leave consequences that still define the conflict today, including the emergence of Israel as a sovereign state, the Palestinian Nakba, the creation of a massive refugee population, and the drawing of armistice lines that became known as the “Green Line.” This chapter traces these interconnected developments and their immediate and lasting impacts.
The Civil War Phase (November 1947 - May 1948)
After the UN voted to partition the territory, the conflict initially took the form of inter-communal violence within Mandatory Palestine rather than a conventional war between states. The British, preparing to leave, gradually reduced their involvement, creating power vacuums across the country. Jewish and Arab armed groups began fighting over control of roads, cities, and strategic areas allocated or contested under the plan.
On the Jewish side, the main organized force was the Haganah, a paramilitary organization that had been building structures, intelligence networks, and supply lines for years. Alongside it operated more radical groups, such as the Irgun and Lehi, which pursued their own tactics, often including bombings and attacks that provoked fierce controversy at the time and afterwards. On the Arab side, local Palestinian Arab fighters and volunteers, joined later by the Arab Liberation Army, attempted to block the implementation of partition and resist the consolidation of Jewish control.
The civil war period was characterized by attacks on mixed cities, ambushes on roads, and battles over neighborhoods and villages. Strategic control of communication lines was crucial. Jewish and Arab communities alike often became isolated or encircled, leading to shortages of food and medical supplies. This phase saw both sides targeting not only combatants but also transportation convoys, markets, and residential zones, contributing to a growing climate of fear.
In early 1948, the Haganah launched coordinated operations to secure the territory allocated to the Jewish state and key routes linking Jewish population centers. Some of these operations involved the capture or depopulation of Arab villages considered strategically threatening. At the same time, several Jewish communities, particularly isolated settlements, came under siege or attack from Arab forces. The result was a steadily escalating cycle of violence in which the lines between civilian and military spheres were frequently blurred.
By the time the British Mandate ended in May 1948, the civil war had already altered the demographic and territorial landscape. Many Palestinian Arab communities had fled front-line areas or been expelled; some Jewish areas had been overrun or abandoned. The ground was prepared both militarily and demographically for the next, larger phase: open war between states.
The Creation of Israel and the Entry of Arab Armies
On 14 May 1948, as the British departed, Jewish leaders declared the establishment of the State of Israel in part of the former Mandate territory. This declaration transformed the nature of the conflict. Almost immediately, armies from neighboring Arab states (primarily Egypt, Transjordan (later Jordan), Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq) entered the fighting. What had been an internal, though internationalized, struggle became a regional war.
The stated aims of the Arab states varied. Publicly, many framed their intervention as a defense of the Palestinian Arabs and a rejection of partition. Internally, some also pursued their own strategic objectives: control of particular areas, influence over the Palestinian cause, and regional prestige. Jordan’s Arab Legion, for instance, focused on areas allocated to the Arab state, especially the central highlands and East Jerusalem, reflecting Jordan’s interest in the West Bank.
Israel’s new government and military leadership sought primarily to ensure the survival of the nascent state, defend and consolidate the area under its control, and, where possible, expand its territory beyond the UN plan’s proposed borders. While initially facing shortages of weapons and trained officers, Israel’s military capacity grew as the war progressed, aided by arms shipments from abroad and mobilization of much of the Jewish population.
The war unfolded in several distinct campaigns and truces. Cities such as Jerusalem became focal points; control over access roads, water sources, and key high ground was decisive. Fighting involved both set-piece battles between regular armies and continuing operations against villages and towns. Despite some Arab advances, the overall momentum gradually shifted toward Israel, which organized its forces into a more coherent army and took advantage of fragmented Arab command structures and differing political agendas.
The entry of Arab states internationalized the conflict diplomatically as well as militarily. The newly formed UN became involved in ceasefire negotiations and sent mediators to try to halt the fighting. Yet the armistices that eventually ended hostilities would not reverse most territorial changes on the ground nor address the rapidly escalating refugee crisis.
The Making of the Palestinian Nakba
For Palestinians, the 1947-1949 war is remembered as the Nakba, the “Catastrophe,” a term that captures both the mass displacement and the perceived loss of homeland and political horizon. During the war, a large portion of the Arab population of what became Israel fled, were expelled, or were otherwise displaced from their homes. By the end of the conflict, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were living as refugees in neighboring countries or in remaining parts of Palestine outside Israel’s control.
The causes of this displacement were multiple and contested. In some cases, civilians fled advancing front lines, fearing violence or reprisals; in others, they were directly ordered or pressured to leave by local commanders or enemy forces. Certain Jewish military operations involved the deliberate expulsion of villagers seen as security threats or as obstacles to establishing territorial continuity. Isolated massacres and atrocities on both sides, some especially notorious in Palestinian memory, contributed to widespread panic and flight.
As fighting continued, patterns solidified. Many who left did so expecting to return once hostilities ceased, leaving behind property, land, and possessions. However, subsequent Israeli policies regarding the return of refugees and the treatment of their abandoned properties transformed temporary displacement into a long-term exile. Laws and administrative mechanisms were developed to classify absent Palestinians as “absentees” and to transfer their properties to state or quasi-state bodies for Jewish settlement and public use.
The Nakba was not only a physical displacement but also a profound social and psychological rupture. Palestinian society, which had been organized around towns, villages, family networks, and land-based livelihoods, was fragmented. Refugee camps in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria became new centers of Palestinian life, but under conditions of dependency and insecurity. The sense of collective loss and injustice that arose in this period became a foundational element of Palestinian national consciousness, shaping politics, culture, and identity in the decades that followed.
Israeli State-Building and Demographic Transformation
On the Israeli side, the same war that brought catastrophe for Palestinians was seen as a war of independence and survival. The new state emerged with a much larger territory than that envisioned for the Jewish state in the UN plan and with a Jewish majority that would define its character. These outcomes were not accidental by-products; they were closely linked to wartime decisions about land, security, and population.
In the immediate aftermath of the war, Israel faced immense challenges: absorbing immigrants and refugees from Europe and the Middle East, creating national institutions, and securing borders still considered fragile. The demographic shift inside Israel was striking. Many Palestinian Arabs who remained within the new state’s boundaries became a minority under military administration, while large numbers of Jews, including Holocaust survivors and Jews expelled or fleeing from Arab countries, arrived and were settled, often in former Palestinian localities or on reallocated land.
The state pursued policies that aimed to consolidate control over the land and integrate newcomers. This included land nationalization, legal frameworks to manage and redistribute former Arab properties, and the establishment of new agricultural and urban communities. While these processes were presented domestically as part of nation-building and development, for Palestinians they represented the entrenchment of dispossession.
The war also helped cement new political and social hierarchies within Israel itself. Pre-state institutions such as the Haganah were transformed into official state structures, giving their leaders central roles in politics and the military. The ethos of self-reliance, sacrifice, and security that emerged from the war would shape Israeli political culture, just as the memory of loss and displacement would shape Palestinian society.
The Armistice Agreements and the Green Line
Active fighting gradually subsided through a series of UN-mediated armistice agreements signed between Israel and its neighboring states in 1949. These agreements with Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria did not constitute formal peace treaties; rather, they were military arrangements designed to stop hostilities and define ceasefire lines. Yet the lines they drew had enormous political and symbolic significance.
The armistice demarcations came to be known collectively as the “Green Line,” after the color used to draw them on maps. They left Israel with control of about 78 percent of the former Mandate territory, more than the area originally proposed for the Jewish state under the UN partition. The Gaza Strip came under Egyptian administration, and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, came under Jordanian control. No independent Palestinian state emerged from the conflict.
These lines were explicitly defined as temporary, reflecting the intention that final borders would be agreed upon in future negotiations. Nonetheless, over time they became a de facto boundary between Israel and its neighbors, and later a reference point in discussions about a possible two-state arrangement. The lack of a Palestinian signatory to the armistices underscored that Palestinians themselves were not recognized as a sovereign party to this diplomatic process, despite bearing some of its most profound consequences.
The armistice arrangements also included provisions concerning demilitarized zones, prisoner exchanges, and guarantees against renewed hostilities. In practice, many of these provisions were fragile or contested. Disputes over small tracts of land, access to water, and military patrols around the Green Line led to recurring incidents and tensions, foreshadowing future confrontations. Still, the basic territorial outcomes of 1949 remained in place until the next major reconfiguration in 1967.
Refugees, Statelessness, and New Borders
The war reshaped not only territorial control but also the legal and political status of people. For the Palestinian refugees who left or were forced from areas that became Israel, the end of fighting did not bring a resolution. Most found themselves in neighboring states or in parts of Palestine outside Israel’s jurisdiction, without citizenship in a recognized Palestinian state and often without secure legal status in their host countries.
The drawing of new borders stranded many communities on different sides. Families were divided between the area inside the Green Line and the Gaza Strip, West Bank, or beyond. These borders were difficult to cross and were enforced with varying degrees of strictness by Israel and the neighboring Arab governments. Cross-border raids, infiltration attempts by refugees hoping to return to their lands or recover possessions, and Israeli military responses led to ongoing low-level violence and tightened restrictions.
The refugees’ lack of recognized political representation at the time compounded their vulnerability. While Arab states spoke on their behalf in international forums, each state’s domestic considerations influenced refugee policy. Over time, separate refugee communities developed distinct experiences of integration, marginalization, or restriction, depending on the host country. The shared memory of origin and displacement, however, created a strong sense of common identity and grievance across borders.
Emerging international norms and institutions began to engage with the refugee issue. A specific UN agency was established to provide relief and basic services, reflecting the recognition that this was not a short-term emergency but a protracted situation. Nevertheless, the central political questions, whether refugees could return, receive compensation, or be resettled elsewhere, remained unresolved, and the new borders solidified the separation between home and exile.
Transforming the Conflict: From Local Struggle to Protracted Dispute
By the time the armistice agreements were concluded, the character of the conflict had fundamentally changed. Before the war, the main question had been how to share or govern a single territory under international mandate. After the war, the reality was one of an established Israeli state, fragmented Palestinian communities with large refugee populations, and neighboring Arab states that now held parts of the contested land and bore responsibility for its residents.
This transformation set the stage for future phases of the conflict. For Israel, the war’s outcome was both a founding moment and a source of unresolved anxiety, especially regarding international legitimacy, security, and the presence of a significant Palestinian Arab minority within its borders. For Palestinians, the Nakba turned the struggle from one focused primarily on political representation within a shared territory into a struggle centered on return, rights, and recognition after displacement and statelessness.
Arab states, having intervened and failed to prevent the establishment of Israel or the displacement of Palestinians, emerged from the war with new burdens and resentments. The unresolved questions of refugees, borders, and the fate of the remaining parts of Palestine became sources of internal and regional contention. Over time, these issues would feed into coups, ideological shifts, and new alliances across the Middle East.
The 1947-1949 war thus did far more than change maps; it redefined the central actors, issues, and narratives of the conflict. It produced parallel foundational stories (Israeli independence and Palestinian catastrophe) that continue to shape how each side understands its own history and the legitimacy of competing claims. The consequences of these years, both material and symbolic, still frame debates about territory, refugees, security, and justice in the Israel-Palestine conflict.