The 1948 War

Abstract

Israeli historians have shown that the 1948 war might have been averted had Israel explored a number of opportunities to reach agreements with the Palestinians, as well as with Egypt, the most important Arab country. Even during the Arab invasion, the Arab armies were small, uncoordinated, and lacking in the capability to destroy Israel; their primary intentions were to counter the territorial goals of their Arab rivals. Nonetheless, their bloodthirsty anti-Semitic rhetoric ensured that Israel would regard the attack as designed to annihilate it. Even before the invasion, the Zionists began the process of expelling some 700,000–750,000 Palestinians from the territories it intended to include in the state of Israel. These actions became known as the “Nakba” (Arabic for “catastrophe”), or in the modern term, “ethnic cleansing.” and they continue to haunt the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, especially on the issue of “the right of return.”