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Truthlytics - Beyond The Headlines

What Happened in the Arab-Israeli Wars?

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The Arab-Israeli Wars

Israel often promotes a narrative that the Arab nations surrounding it hate Israel because they hate Jews, which is why they always attack Israel. The narrative also promotes the claim that Israel has never attacked any other country unprovoked, and that they are always attacked for no reason. The Israeli “side” is most often retold in the media, but the Arab and Palestinian perspective is often lost. This article aims to give context behind the Arab-Israeli wars that many people may not be aware of.

Israelis claim to be constantly under threat, which is why they have to strike first. When the media reports on the wars Israel is involved in—most of which they initiated—they often use the passive voice to describe the devastation, which takes accountability away from Israel.  Historical evidence challenges that simple view and reveals a complex and contentious history in the middle east.

They ignore the history of the colonization of Palestine, often promoting the idea that Palestine was a “land without a people for a people without a land,” which conflicts with another Israeli narrative that the Palestinians left their homes voluntarily to make room for the Jewish settlers. Israel was created as a settler-colonial project which displaced an Indigenous population.

Palestinians were forced to emigrate to neighboring Arab nations, or forced into internal refugee camps, such as Gaza. The Palestinian resistance formed before the 1948 Nakba, and it has only grown since then, culminating in extremist groups and Intifadas.

Zionist rhetoric portrays the Israeli settlers as innocent, only acting in self-defense, while the Arabs attack them. They repeat that Israel was attacked without provocation, ignoring the reasons behind the Arab uprisings. The “self-defense” argument is used relentlessly to justify attacking and killing Palestinian civilians, which is not a protected act of self-defense.

Civil War – 1947

The civil war in Mandatory Palestine began on November 30, 1947, the day after the United Nations voted to create the Partition Plan for Palestine, which would create the state of Israel and take land away from the Indigenous population. The war culminated in the First Arab-Israeli War, which is known as the War of Independence in the state of Israel.

The Arab population fought the civil war, supported by the Arab Liberation Army, against the non-Arab Jewish population, and the British planned to withdraw from the land that they had been in control of for decades. The Arabs were opposed to the creation of Israel and the Arabs quickly mobilized and organized a general strike, and the violence from the civil war continued. They joined forces to defend Palestinian land after the UN partition plan.1

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A historic map of the Palestine Partition Plan, Israeli territory in blue, and Palestinian territory in orange,
from the United Nations Cartographic Section, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

First Arab-Israeli War, or the War of Independence – 1948

On May 14, 1948, Israel’s founding Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, declared the state of Israel, which initiated the First Arab-Israeli War. The Israeli’s aimed to seize more land after the United Nation’s partition plan had given Israel more than half of historic Palestine. By 1949, the Israelis seized 60% of the land that the UN had allotted for the Palestinians.

During the war, Israel expelled around 750,000 Palestinians in an ethnic cleansing campaign known as the Nakba. They destroyed between 400 and 600 villages completely, killed tens of thousands of people, and sexually assaulted people.

Despite claiming that they were vulnerable, Israel had a significant military advantage during the 1948 war. David Ben Gurion said that it was 700,000 weak Jews “pitted against 27 million Arabs,” this propelled the narrative that Israel was the small David fending off the evil Arab Goliath.

In reality, there were around 13,000 Arab troops from the Arab Liberation Army, Saudia Arabia, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, and Transjordan. In the war, up to 7,000 Arab troops were killed, and upwards of 13,000 Palestinian civilians and resistance fighters were killed. In total, 6,373 Israelis were killed, 4,000 of whom were troops.

Initially, Israel’s forces numbered around 30,000 in the 1948 war, later rising to 117,000. Their military consistently outnumbered the Arab troops against them. Israel’s victory in the 1948 war was due in part to a secret arms deal with Czechoslovakia, which circumvented the international embargo that prevented new weapons from entering Israel.2

The Second Arab-Israeli War, or the Suez Canal Crisis – 1956

Israeli, French, and British forces invaded the Sinai Peninsula with the goal of reopening the Suez Canal, which had been under blockade by the Egyptians for eight years. Egypt nationalized the canal for several reasons including to bring more revenue to Egypt and to protest western imperialism.

Israel’s military goal was to reopen vital shipping routes blocked by Egypt. Israel invaded via land while Britian and France conducted airstrikes and naval blockades.  Combined, they had nearly three times as many troops as the Egyptians and suffered very little in comparison.

In this war, several thousand Egyptian troops were killed and wounded, at least 30,000 were captured, and about 1,000 civilians were killed, primarily in Gaza.

The war ended after a little over one week with much international condemnation and political fallouts between the western powers. Israel gained territory in the Sinai Peninsula, which has historically always been under Egyptian control.

The PLO’s foundation – 1964

The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was founded in 1964 as a unifying organization for Palestinian resistance. The PLO waged guerrilla warfare against the Israeli settlers, their goals were to reclaim their land and eliminate the state of Israel.

In 1993, the PLO and Israel signed the Oslo Accords, agreeing to coexist peacefully. The PLO was labeled a terrorist organization by Israel and western powers like the United Kingdom and the United States. Arab nations saw the PLO as a legitimate representative of Palestinian resistance. There is no doubt that both the PLO and Israel have engaged in terrorist activities which target civilians.3

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A map of Israel and the territories it occupied after the Six-Day War, by Ling Nut, derivative work: Rafy,
CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

The Third Arab-Israeli War, or the Six-Day War – 1967

Israel launched a preemptive attack on Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq, on 5 June 1967, destroying their military capabilities so they could not retaliate or prevent Israel from occupying territories. They occupied the following areas: the Sinai Peninsula, Egyptian land; the Gaza Strip, Egyptian controlled land; the West Bank, Jordanian controlled land; and later the Golan Heights, Syrian land. They expelled another 413,000 Palestinians due to the violence, most of whom were displaced during the six days of war.

Due to this unprovoked war, Palestinian resistance in southern Lebanon surged. They frequently targeted Israel’s northern border with rockets, and Israel responded by sending warplanes to destroy villages as far north as Beirut, over 300 kilometers away from Israel.

Upwards of 18,200 Arabs from Egypt, Syria and Jordan were killed or went missing in the war, and another 5,462 were captured. Compared to the Israeli casualties of up to 983 killed and 15 captured, they again won the war relatively unscathed.

Israel frequently attacks civilians and cities which have nothing to do with the attacks they are responding to, which only prompts more retaliatory attacks. In December 1968, Palestinian militias machine gunned an Israeli plane at the Athens International Airport. Israel launched a retaliation attack and destroyed 12 civilian planes and 2 cargo planes at the Beirut International Airport.

After the quick war, Israel’s dominance was solidified, and military support from the US skyrocketed, despite the evidence that they had attacked the USS Liberty in international waters. The US Naval vessel was on a secret mission to monitor Arab communications, and Israel was aware of the ship’s presence in the sea. Israel had attacked from the air and sea, killing 34 on board. Both countries have claimed it was an accident, but the families of those who died believe it was intentional.4

The Fourth Arab-Israeli War, or the Yom Kippur War – 1973

Israel started the three previous wars, but Egypt and Syria started the fourth when they launched an attack to reclaim territories lost in the previous 1967 war. Egypt and Syria were joined by the Arab Expeditionary forces, which was made up of troops from Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Tunisia, Morocco, Cuba, and even North Korea.

Up to 2,800 Israeli, and up to 18,500 Arab troops died in the war  The war ended in a peace agreement in 1979. Egypt regained the Sinai Peninsula in exchange for recognizing Israel. However, the broader Arab-Israeli conflict remained unresolved, with Arab nations offering a two-state solution that was rejected by the U.S.

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An aerial view of the stadium used as an ammunition supply site for the Palestine Liberation Organization during a confrontation with the Israelis,
by Phan Robert Feary, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Fifth Arab-Israeli War, or the First Lebanon War – 1982

Barely six weeks after Israel completely withdrew from the Sinai, they launched attacks on Lebanon. Israel needed a reason to invade Lebanon, so they blamed the Palestinian Liberation Organization in Lebanon for an attempted assassination of Israeli, Slomo Argov.

The PLO had a faction called Fatah, and that group had a splinter called the Abu Nidal organization, and they were against the PLO. The Abu Nidal organization, which was not even in Lebanon, attempted to Argov, and Israel used that as cannon fodder to attack Lebanon.

Israel broke the ceasefire that they had in place with the PLO in Lebanon when they began this war. They wanted to crush Palestinian resistance, but in all their bombing of Beirut they did not hit a single PLO target or kill any of its senior leadership. They did, however, kill upwards of 20,000 Lebanese and Palestinians, primarily civilians, and wound over 30,000 more in ten weeks.

Much of Beirut was destroyed in the bombing, thousands of people were displaced, Hezbollah formed to resist the Israeli invasion. The Sabra and Shatila refugee camps were raided and up to 3,500 civilians were murdered, in addition to the 20,000 other deaths. In the same year, Israel also annexed the Golan Heights, a Syrian territory they had occupied since 1967, fueling further hostility.5

The Sixth Arab-Israeli War, or the Second Lebanon War – 2006

Hezbollah initiated this war by launching rockets to distract the IDF while they invaded in an attempt to release the hostages that Israel had been holding for years. The Lebanese resistance fighters, labeled terrorists by Israel and the west, killed Israeli troops, and captured two as a bargaining chip. Israel retaliated by attacking Lebanese civilian areas, killing over 1,100 people, and displacing a million more in a month.

Lebanese and Palestinian refugees in Lebanon did not hate Israel because it was a Jewish state; they hate Israel because Israel has repeatedly bombed and killed civilians in Lebanon for decades, and they still are to this day.

Hezbollah was widely criticized for initiating the war, but they fought the IDF off well enough for them to retreat.6

Conclusion

Tension did not begin with the 1947 civil war, and it did not end with any of the peace treaties or the Oslo Accords. The simplistic narrative presented by Israelis and Zionists worldwide does not accurately represent their military aggression, territorial expansions, intentional attacks on civilians, or the mass displacements which continue until this day. The Palestinian struggle for self-determination remains a core issue, even throughout this current genocide of Palestinians, which is a genocide according to the definition outlined in the United Nations Genocide Convention of 1948.

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