The 1948 War and the Creation of Israel

The history of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War dates back to at least the late 19th century and the beginnings of the Zionist movement. In response to intense persecution in Eastern Europe, Russia and elsewhere, some Jews began to speak of the need for a homeland for the Jewish people. At the First Zionist Congress, held in Basel, Switzerland in 1897 the World Zionist Organization was created, and prominent Zionist leaders, such as Theodore Herzl, proposed a return to the land of Palestine, the Biblical Jewish homeland. Negotiations with the Ottoman Empire, however, proved unsuccessful. As a result, the WZO opted for small-scale immigration to Palestine.

This policy intensified after World War I, when the British took control of Palestine from the Ottomans. The famous Balfour Declaration, issued by British Foreign Secretary Lord Balfour, proclaimed British support for the Zionist goal of a Jewish national home in Palestine; as a direct result, Jewish immigration to Palestine increased dramatically throughout the first half of the 20th century. After World War II and systematic murder of approximately six million Jews in Europe at the hands of Nazi Germany, both immigration to Palestine and international support for the creation of a Jewish national homeland surged to their highest levels.

Meanwhile, the influx of hundreds of thousands of Jews caused increasingly heated friction with the native population of Arabs. Attempts by the British to mediate the two factions failed, as did their attempts to limit Jewish immigration. Finally, the British gave up and turned the territory over to the United Nations, which issued a partition plan for the territory - essentially dividing it into a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Arabs rejected this plan, saying it gave far too much land to the Jewish state, given their respective populations. The Zionists, however, responded by declaring the creation of the state of Israel on May 14, 1948.

War promptly ensued, with armies from the neighboring Arab states of Egypt, Jordan and Syria invading the nascent state. The result was a resounding victory for Israel, and in midst  of the conflict nearly all of Israel's Arab inhabitants (~90%) either fled or were forcibly driven from their homes by the Israeli army. To this day, these refugees (several million in number) are unable to return to their homes; their fate is perhaps the most significant obstacle in the negotiation of a Palestinian-Israeli peace agreement.