The 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine (29 November 1947 – 14 May 1948) was the first phase of the 1948 Palestine war (29 November 1947 – 10 March 1949). It broke out after the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a resolution on 29 November 1947 recommending the adoption of the Partition Plan for Palestine.
During the civil war, Palestine's Jewish and Arab communities clashed (the latter supported by the Arab Liberation Army) while the British, who had the obligation to maintain order, organized their withdrawal and intervened only occasionally.
At the end of the civil war phase of the war, from April 1948 to mid-May, Zionist forces embarked on an offensive (Plan Dalet) that involved conquering cities and territories in Palestine allocated to a future Jewish state, as well as those allocated to the corpus separatum of Jerusalem and a future Arab state according to the 1947 Partition plan for Palestine. This offensive greatly accelerated the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight, which was effected by various violent means, including a number of massacres such as the widely publicized Deir Yassin massacre.
When the British Mandate of Palestine ended on 14 May 1948, and with the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, the surrounding Arab states—Egypt, Transjordan, Iraq, and Syria—invaded what had just ceased to be Mandatory Palestine occupying its Arab areas then immediately attacking Israeli forces and several Jewish settlements. The conflict thus escalated and became the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.
Background
Under the control of a British administration since 1920, Palestine found itself the object of a battle between Palestinian and Zionist nationalists, groups that opposed both the British mandate and each other.
The Palestinian opposition culminated in the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, a deadly civil conflict that saw the deaths of nearly 5,000 Palestinian Arabs and 500 Jews and drove much of the Palestinian political leadership, including Amin al-Husseini, leader of the Arab Higher Committee, into exile. Britain also reduced Jewish immigration in response to the violence, as legislated by the 1939 White Paper.
After World War II and The Holocaust, the Zionist movement gained attention and sympathy. In Mandatory Palestine, Zionist groups fought against the British administration. In the two and a half years from 1945 to June 1947, British law enforcement forces lost 103 dead and sustained 391 wounded by Jewish militants. Palestinian Arab nationalists reorganized, but their organization remained inferior to the Zionists'.
On 15 August 1947, the Haganah blew up the house of a Palestinian family near Petah Tikva, killing 12 occupants, including a woman and six children. After November 1947, the dynamiting of houses formed a key component of most Haganah strikes.
Diplomacy failed to reconcile the different points of view on Palestine's future. In early November, the Haganah began mobilizing for war, and issued an order that all men between 17 and 25 register. On 18 February 1947, the British announced their withdrawal from the region and on 29 November, the General Assembly of the United Nations voted to recommend the adoption and implementation of the partition plan with the support of the big global powers, though the Arab states opposed it.
Beginning of the civil war (30 November 1947 – 1 April 1948)
In the aftermath of the adoption of Resolution 181(II) by the United Nations General Assembly recommending the adoption and implementation of the Plan of Partition, the manifestations of joy of the Jewish community were counterbalanced by protests by Arabs throughout the country and after 1 December, the Arab Higher Committee enacted a general strike that lasted three days.
A "wind of violence" took hold of the country, foreboding civil war between the two communities. Murders, reprisals, and counter-reprisals resulted in dozens killed on both sides in the process. The impasse persisted as British forces did not intervene to stop the violence.
The first casualties after the adoption of Resolution 181(II) were passengers on a Jewish bus near Kfar Sirkin on 30 November, after an eight-man gang from Jaffa ambushed the bus killing five and wounding others. Half an hour later they ambushed a second bus, southbound from Hadera, killing two more, and shots were fired at Jewish buses in Jerusalem and Haifa. This was said to be a retaliation for the Shubaki family assassination, the killing ten days earlier of five Palestinian Arabs by Lehi near Herzliya.
Irgun and Lehi (the latter also known as the Stern Gang) followed their strategy of placing bombs in crowded markets and bus stops. On 30 December, in Haifa, members of the Irgun threw two bombs at a crowd of Arab workers who were queueing in front of a refinery, killing 6 and injuring 42. An angry crowd massacred 39 Jewish people in revenge until British soldiers reestablished calm. In reprisal, soldiers from the Palmach and the Carmeli brigade attacked the villages of Balad ash-Sheikh and Hawassa. In what became known as the Balad al-Shaykh massacre, between 60 and 70 villagers were killed.
In early 1948, forces under the command of Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni set up a blockade of Jerusalem, with its 100,000 Jewish residents. To counter this, the Yishuv authorities tried to supply the city with convoys of up to 100 armoured vehicles, but the operation became increasingly impractical as casualties in the relief convoys surged. By March, Al-Husayni's tactic had paid off. Almost all the 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 the Jewish settlements in the highly isolated Negev and North of Galilee was even more critical.
From January onward, operations became increasingly militarized. In all the mixed zones where both communities lived, particularly Jerusalem and Haifa, there were increasingly violent attacks, riots, reprisals and counter-reprisals. Isolated shootings evolved into all-out battles. Attacks against traffic, for instance, turned into ambushes as one bloody attack led to another.
On 22 February 1948, supporters of Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, with the help of certain British deserters, organized three attacks against the Jewish community. Using car bombs aimed at the headquarters of the Zionist Palestine Post newspaper, the Ben Yehuda St. market, and the backyard of the Jewish Agency's offices, they killed 22, 53, and 13 Jews respectively, a total of 88 fatalities. Hundreds of others were injured.
In retaliation, Lehi put a landmine on the railroad track in Rehovot on which a train from Cairo to Haifa was travelling, killing 28 British soldiers and injuring 35. This was copied on 31 March, close to Caesarea Maritima, which led to the death of 40 people and injured 60, mostly Arab civilians.
David Ben-Gurion reorganized the Haganah and made conscription obligatory. Every Jew in the country had to receive military training.
Allied Powers' policies
This situation caused the United States to withdraw its support for the partition plan and instead propose a trusteeship for Palestine in March 1948, thus encouraging the Arab League to believe that the Palestinian Arabs, reinforced by the Arab Liberation Army, could quash the partition plan. The British, on the other hand, decided on 7 February 1948 to support Transjordan's annexation of the Arab part of Palestine.
Population evacuations
While the Jewish population had received strict orders requiring it to hold its ground everywhere at all costs, the Arab population was more affected by the general conditions of insecurity to which the country was exposed. By the end of March 1984, 100,000 Arabs from the urban upper and middle classes in Haifa, Jaffa and Jerusalem, and from villages in Jewish-dominated areas such as the Jordan Valley, had evacuated Arab centres in the East, or had fled the country altogether.
Fighters and arms from abroad
As a consequence of 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 World War II, which helped improve the army's equipment and logistics. The Jewish Agency had set aside $28 million for foreign arms purchases alone. By comparison, the Arab Higher Committee's total budget at this time amounted to $2,250,000, equivalent to the Haganah's annual budget in prewar times.
Several Arab Liberation Army regiments intervened in Palestine, each active in 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.
German and Bosnian WWII veterans, including a handful of former intelligence, Wehrmacht, and Waffen SS officers, were among the volunteers fighting for the Palestinian cause. Veterans of WWII Axis militaries were represented in the ranks of the ALA forces commanded by Fawzi al-Qawuqji (who had been awarded an officer's rank in the Wehrmacht during WWII) and in the Mufti's forces, commanded by Abd al-Qadir (who had fought with the Germans against the British in Iraq) and Salama (who trained in Germany as a commando during WWII and took part in a failed parachute mission into Palestine). In addition, roughly 100 to 200 British soldiers and police officers, many of whom had developed bitterness towards the Zionist movement and/or pity for the Palestinians over the course of the British counterinsurgency campaign against the Zionists, deserted to help the Palestinians. In contrast, only 17 deserters fought for the Yishuv.
Benny Morris writes that the Yishuv was more successful in attracting and effectively deploying foreign military professionals than its Arab adversaries. He concludes that the ex-Nazis and Bosnian Muslims recruited by the Palestinians, Egyptians, and Syrians "proved of little significance" to the outcome of the conflict.
Death toll
In December 1947, the Jewish death toll was estimated at over 200, and, according to Alec Kirkbride, by 18 January 1948, 333 Jews and 345 Arabs had been killed while 643 Jews and 877 Arabs had been injured. The overall death toll between December 1947 and January 1948 (including British personnel) was estimated at 1,000 people, with 2,000 injured.
Ilan Pappé estimates that 400 Jews and 1,500 Arabs were killed by January 1948. Morris says that by the end of March 1948, the Yishuv had suffered about a thousand dead. According to Yoav Gelber, by the end of March, 2,000 were dead and 4,000 wounded. These figures correspond to an average of more than 100 deaths and 200 casualties per week among a population of 2,000,000.
Intervention of foreign forces in Palestine
Violence kept intensifying with the intervention of military units. Although responsible for law and order up until the end of the mandate, the British did not try to take control of the situation, being more involved in the liquidation of the administration and the evacuation of their troops. Furthermore, the authorities felt that they had lost enough men already in the conflict.
The British either could not or did not want to impede the intervention of foreign forces into Palestine. According to a special report by the UN Special Commission on Palestine:
- During the night of 20–21 January, a force of 700 Syrians in battle dress, well-equipped, with mechanized transport, entered Palestine 'via Transjordan.'
- On 27 January, 'a band of 300 men from outside Palestine, was established in the area of Safed in Galilee and was probably responsible for the intensive heavy weapon and mortar attacks the following week against the settlement of Yechiam.'
- During the night of 29–30 January, a battalion of the Arab Liberation Army, 950 men in 19 vehicles commanded by Fawzi al-Qawuqji, entered Palestine 'via Adam Bridge and dispersed itself around the villages of Nablus, Jenin, and Tulkarem.'
This description corresponds to the entry of Arab Liberation Army troops between 10 January and the start of March:
- The Second regiment of Yarmouk, under the orders of Adib Shishakli entered Galilee via Lebanon on the night of 11–12 January. The battalion passed through Safed and then settled in the village of Sasa. A third of the regiment's fighters were Palestinian Arabs, and a quarter were Syrian.
- The 1st Yarmouk regiment, commanded by Muhammad Tzafa, entered Palestine on the night of 20–21 January, via the Bridge of Damia from Jordan and dispersed around Samaria, where it established its HQ, in the Northern Samarian city of Tubas. The regiment was composed chiefly of Palestinian Arabs and Iraqis.
- The Hittin regiment, commanded by Madlul Abbas, settled in the west of Samaria with its headquarters in Tulkarem.
- The Hussein ibn Ali regiment provided reinforcement in Haifa, Jaffa, Jerusalem, and several other cities.
- The Qadassia regiment were reserves based in Jab'a.