1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine
| 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the intercommunal conflict in Mandatory Palestine, the 1948 Palestine War and the decolonisation of Asia | ||||||||
Palestinian fighters in front of a burning Haganah armoured supply truck near the city of Jerusalem (March 1948) | ||||||||
| ||||||||
| Belligerents | ||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | ||||||||
|
David Ben-Gurion Yaakov Dori Yigael Yadin Yigal Allon Menachem Begin |
Fawzi al-Qawuqji Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni † | Gordon MacMillan | ||||||
| Strength | ||||||||
|
15,000 (start) 35,000 (end) |
Arabs: A few thousand British deserters: ~100–200 | 70,000 | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | ||||||||
|
9 April: 895 killed |
9 April: 991 killed |
9 April: 123 killed 300 wounded | ||||||
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The 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine was the first phase of the 1948 Palestine war. 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, the Jewish and Arab communities of Palestine 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 on an occasional basis.
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, and immediately attacked Israeli forces and several Jewish settlements. The conflict thus escalated and became the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.