4.7   Arab-Israeli War

. Arab-Israeli War The Treaty of Versailles ( ) had provided for mandates in Turkish Arab Empire. France was given the mandate for Syria and Lebanon, and Britain for Iraq, Palestine and Jordan. This arrangement upset the Arabs since they had expected independence at the end of World War I. Britain’s promise to Zionist leaders that it would allocate one of the Arab lands, Palestine, to Jewish settlers from Europe further embittered the Arabs. There was growing Arab antagonism towards Zionist settlers, as they bought land from rich Arabs and evicted the local peasant families who had been cultivating it for centuries. At the end of October , the Jewish underground organizations like Irgun Zvai Leumi (Zionist Para-military Organization) and the Stern Gang (Zionist Terrorist Organization) began to launch terror attacks on a large scale. Railways, bridges, airfields and government offices were blown up. The British government, presented the dispute to the UN for a decision. Succumbing to the pressure of great powers, the UN resolved to partition the British mandate of Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state ( November ). Clashes broke out almost immediately between Jews and Arabs in Palestine. Zionist Movement: In Palestine, the ancient home of Jews, only a few thousand Jews were living in . Some million were scattered around Europe and North America. (This is referred to as the Diaspora.) In , Thodore Herzel, a Viennese journalist, published a pamphlet called The Jewish State in which he called for the creation of a Jewish national home. Next year ( ) the World Zionist Organisation was founded. The Israelis, won control of the main road to Jerusalem and successfully repulsed repeated Arab attacks. As a result of separate armistice agreements ( Feb-June) between Israel and each of the Arab states, a temporary frontier was fixed between Israel and its neighbours. In Israel, the war is remembered as its War of Independence. In the Arab world, it is treated as the Nakbah (“Catastrophe”) as a large number of Arabs became refugees. Israel was admitted into the UN immediately much against the wishes of Arabs.