By the 1930s, Palestine was a small piece of land carrying two peoples' hopes. Jewish settlers wanted a homeland. Arab Palestinians wanted to stay on land their families had farmed for generations. Both could not fully get what they wanted.
The Second World War (1939–1945) made this crisis explosive. The Holocaust — the Nazi genocide that killed six million Jews — convinced many Jews, and much of the watching world, that Jews urgently needed a state of their own where they could never again be defenceless.
Cause and consequence: WWII changed everything: Before 1939, Britain was already limiting Jewish immigration to Palestine to calm Arab anger (the 1939 White Paper). After the Holocaust, tens of thousands of Jewish refugees in Europe had nowhere else to go. Illegal immigration ships kept arriving, and world sympathy for a Jewish homeland grew fast.
Britain had ruled Palestine since 1920 as a mandate. By 1947 it was exhausted by the cost, by Jewish underground groups attacking British forces, and by unrest from both sides. It handed the whole problem to the brand-new United Nations.
- UNSCOP (1947) — the UN's special committee investigated and recommended partition: splitting Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state, with Jerusalem under international control.
- UN Resolution 181 (November 1947) — the UN General Assembly voted to accept the partition plan. Jewish leaders accepted it, even though their state would be a patchwork of separate areas.
- Arab rejection — Palestinian Arab leaders and the surrounding Arab states rejected partition outright. They argued the UN had no right to give away Arab-majority land, and that Jews (about a third of the population) were being awarded over half the territory.
- Civil war, Dec 1947 – May 1948 — as soon as the UN voted, fighting broke out between Jewish and Arab militias inside Palestine, months before any Arab army crossed a border.
Debate: was partition fair?: This is a genuine historical argument, not just background. Supporters of partition point out Jews had lived in the region for millennia and desperately needed refuge after the Holocaust. Critics point out that Palestinian Arabs, roughly two-thirds of the population, never agreed to lose their homeland and were not responsible for European antisemitism. A strong essay can use both sides.
On 14 May 1948, as the last British troops left, Jewish leader David Ben-Gurion declared the creation of the State of Israel. He led the Jewish Agency (the main Zionist political body) and became Israel's first prime minister — the clearest example of an individual shaping this story.
The next day, armies from Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq invaded, acting partly through the Arab League, a coalition of Arab states formed in 1945 to coordinate on shared Arab interests, including opposing a Jewish state.
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On paper, the invading Arab armies looked far stronger than the new Israeli state. In practice, Israel won a decisive victory by 1949 — and historians still argue why.
Reasons often given for Israeli victory
- Jewish forces were united under one command (the Haganah, which became the Israeli army); Arab armies barely coordinated with each other.
- Jewish immigrants and defence groups had years of organising and smuggling weapons before 1948; Arab Palestinian society was less militarily prepared.
- Arab states had their own rival goals — Jordan's King Abdullah wanted the West Bank for himself, not a Palestinian state, which weakened Arab unity.
- Israel received crucial arms shipments, including from Czechoslovakia, at a key moment in the war.
Reasons often given for the Arab defeat
- Some historians argue Arab forces were actually similar in size to Israeli forces by mid-1948, challenging the 'tiny Israel against five armies' story.
- Arab governments prioritised their own territorial gains over a united Palestinian cause.
- Palestinian Arab society had lost much of its leadership after the 1936–1939 Arab Revolt was crushed by Britain.
- Poor coordination and mutual distrust between Arab states undermined any single strategy.
This is a perfect 'to what extent' debate: Paper 3 loves claims like 'Israeli victory in 1948 was mainly due to Arab weakness rather than Israeli strength.' Notice both sides of the comparison above give you material to argue either way — that is exactly what the exam wants.
The human cost fell heavily on Palestinian Arabs. Around 700,000 fled or were expelled from their homes during the fighting — an event Palestinians call the Nakba. Whether this was mostly a result of war chaos or deliberate Israeli policy is itself a fierce historical debate.
| Outcome of the 1948 war | Detail |
|---|---|
| Israel's territory | Israel ended up controlling about 78% of former Mandate Palestine — more than the UN partition plan had given it. |
| Egypt | Occupied the Gaza Strip. |
| Jordan | Occupied and later annexed the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. |
| No Palestinian state | The Arab state envisioned by the UN partition plan never came into being. |
| Refugees | Roughly 700,000 Palestinians became refugees; hundreds of thousands of Jews later left Arab countries for Israel too. |
So the 1948 war did not just create Israel — it also created the unresolved refugee question and the failure to create a Palestinian state, both of which fuel every later stage of the conflict.
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1948 did not settle anything — it just set the pattern. Over the next 25 years, three more major wars redrew the map and reshaped the conflict.
1956 — Suez Crisis
Egypt's leader Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal. Israel invaded Sinai alongside Britain and France, who wanted the canal back. US and Soviet pressure forced a withdrawal, but Nasser emerged as an Arab hero for standing up to old colonial powers.
1967 — Six-Day War
Israel launched a pre-emptive strike after Egypt massed troops and blocked Israeli shipping. In just six days, Israel captured the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza (from Egypt), the West Bank and East Jerusalem (from Jordan), and the Golan Heights (from Syria) — a massive, humiliating Arab defeat.
1973 — Yom Kippur / October War
Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur to reclaim lost land. Early Arab gains were reversed once Israel counterattacked, but the war restored Arab pride and pushed both sides towards eventual negotiation.
Suez humiliates the old powers → 1967 humiliates the Arab states → 1973 restores Arab pride enough to talk peace.
The 1967 war was the single biggest turning point after 1948. Israel now occupied territory home to over a million Palestinians, and Israeli settlements — Jewish communities built on this occupied land — began soon after, which Palestinians and most of the international community view as illegal.
Territorial change fuels the conflict: Each war left Israel controlling more land than before. Supporters of Israel's actions argue the land was captured in wars Israel did not start (1948, 1967) or fought defensively. Critics argue continued occupation and settlement-building after 1967 made a lasting peace harder, not easier.
With Arab states unable to win back Palestinian land by force, a new kind of resistance grew. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was founded in 1964 to represent the Palestinian national cause, and from 1969 it was led by Yasser Arafat.
- Aims — the PLO's founding goal was to liberate Palestine; over time its stated goal shifted from destroying Israel towards a Palestinian state alongside it.
- Methods — the PLO used guerrilla attacks and, in its early decades, hijackings and other actions the West classed as terrorism, alongside diplomacy.
- Search for support — Arafat sought backing from Arab states, the Non-Aligned Movement and the UN, addressing the UN General Assembly in 1974 and winning growing international recognition for the Palestinian cause.
- Israeli response — Israel treated the PLO as a serious security threat, leading to conflict including Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, where the PLO had based itself after being expelled from Jordan in 1970.