In one of our previous videos on modern warfare, we covered the Six-Day War between Israeli
and the Arab States surrounding it, but this wasn’t the first time the adversaries had
clashed. In the aftermath of World War II, British withdrawal
from its Mandate in Palestine split open a power vacuum into Palestinian and Jewish interests
flowed. This eventually resulted in the dawn of Jewish statehood in the Middle-East and
the First Arab-Israeli War. Welcome to our series on
the modern warfare! If you are interested in the history of this era, don’t forget
to check out our second channel – The Cold War – the link
Tensions between Arab Palestinian and Jewish communities in the British Mandate of Palestine
had been increasing ever since the end of the First World War, heightened with broken
Imperial promises to both sides. This state of affairs
finally exploded into civil war following the UN vote
for a partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states on November 29th 1947, a solution
which the Palestinians and the Arab League refused.
As small-scale skirmishes gradually escalated throughout late 1947 and early 1948, Palestinian
Arab group - the Arab Liberation Army proved incapable of defeating their better organised
opponents. Due to the chaos, tens of thousands of
Palestinian refugees fled into neighboring Arab states, further enflaming the public
of those countries to demand war. A full-scale conflict
was prevented until in May of 1948, as the area
was still a British Mandate, but this state of affairs was set to expire on the 15th.
At 4PM on the afternoon of May 14th 1948, eight hours before
British sovereignty dissolved, David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the establishment of the State
of Israel, becoming its first prime minister. That night,
armies of five Arab nations surrounding Israel attacked the newly created state, starting
the First Arab-Israeli War.
While it has been popular to tout the phrase ‘one army against seven’ to describe the
military situation, it gives off an impression which
is incorrect - that the combined Arab nations drastically outnumbered their enemy. A breakdown
instead shows that the total strength of about 23,500 soldiers, 10,000 of which were from
the Egyptian army. Egypt possessed the most extensive military establishment in the region
which had also been supplied and trained by Britain. Their ground forces were organised
into three infantry brigades, one tank brigade comprising 50 tanks and three artillery battalions
armed with 65 howitzer artillery pieces. In the
air, Egypt could field five squadrons of 18 fighting aircraft each and one transport squadron.
Iraq
appeared similarly powerful on the surface, but only sent 3,000 men in the initial attack.
The bulk of Iraqi ground forces were structured
in three divisions - two infantry and one ‘training’
division, supported by an armoured battalion of 15 to 20 tanks and 70 to 80 artillery pieces.
The Iraqi airforce consisted of 80 aircraft overall,
but only half of these were fully operational and
combat ready. In addition, the relatively elite Arab Legion
of Transjordan supplied 4,500 well trained, British-
led soldiers. 3,000 more came from Lebanon, 3,000 from Syria and a token contingent from
Saudi Arabia. In comparison to the efforts of their Arab enemies, the Israelis had mobilised
almost their entire resource base and able-bodied population for the conflict, having, according
to Ben-Gurion’s diary, 29,677 troops at the outbreak of the war. Israel had only
3 Sherman tanks at the start of the conflict.
On the southern front, Egyptian forces launched thrusts across the border from eastern Sinai
in a three-pronged assault. The Egyptian command,
under the authority of General Ahmed Ali al- Muwawi, believed it necessary to capture a
number of strongpoints in order to secure the rear
lines. To this end, forces were committed to assault and capture a number of Jewish
communities in the northern Negev region, known plurally
as kibbutzim. The first target was Kfar-Darom, a
religious 10 kilometres to the south of Gaza. This settlement had already withstood an attack
by fighters of the Muslim Brothers group, and
it now came under attack from the Egyptian army.
After an initial artillery barrage, eight tanks followed by infantry approached Kfar-Darom,
but retreated in short order after suffering repeated
direct hits from the settlement’s only PIAT projector and being pelted with molotov cocktails. Similar
stiff resistance was faced at the neighboring kibbutz of Nirim, where around
40 entrenched Israeli defenders managed to repel
sustained assaults from a thousand Egyptian troops supported by artillery and mortar fire.
Both settlements were eventually bypassed for fear
of stalling the main thrust. As these initial ground
attacks were going on, airfields around Tel-Aviv were attacked by Egyptian Spitfires, causing
heavy economic damage and moral damage. However, the fortune of Egypt’s pilots soon turned
due to improving Israeli air defence and an accidental strike on the British held Ramat
David Airfield, which led to heavy losses at the
hands of British fighter aircraft. By the end of May,
almost all of the Spitfire squadron’s planes and a significant number of its best pilots
were lost. On land, a meticulously planned offensive
was launched against the kibbutz of Yad-Moerdechai, which was situated atop a hill which held
a dominating position over the main coastal road. Its
defenders held out for five days and inflicted heavy casualties before falling back.
The advancing Egyptian column aiming for Tel-Aviv came to a halt around 30 kilometres south
of the city at a place called Isdud, where it dug in. Just before sunset on May 29th,
the newly formed Israeli Defense Forces launched Operation
Pleshet, beginning with an air attack by a squadron of four recently imported Czech Avia
S-199. They strafed Isdud in an assault which, while being ineffective conventionally, had
a drastic impact on morale. The Israelis were elated
that they now had air capability, while the Egyptians were extremely unnerved of future
attacks from above. The next blow was struck on the
ground. Israel feared that the Egyptians would resume their advance on Tel-Aviv, and ordered
the Giv’ati and Negev Brigades to assault and
destroy the enemy vanguard. 2,000 Israelis fought a 2,500 strong force of entrenched
Egyptian troops, suffering heavy casualties after only
making slight gains. Nevertheless, Operation Pleshet
panicked the Egyptian command, with General Al-Muwawi informing Cairo that he ‘could
not advance one step further’ without risking
total disaster. Any plans of advancing on Tel-Aviv
were cancelled, and the Southern front bogged down.
On the Jordanian front, ‘Etzioni, Palmah Harel and Alexandroni Brigades each responsible
for defending different areas were facing the
Arab Legion. The Legion’s push into the West Bank
was initially relatively unopposed, with many left-behind Legion units in Palestine facilitating
easy progress, While the First Brigade advanced towards Nablus and fanned out around the
town, the Third Brigade headed north from Jericho and then west, deploying around Ramallah.
Two days later, the Third Brigade’s Fourth Regiment was ordered to the critical fort
of Latrun - located right on top of the western approach
to Jerusalem. This key point had switched hands
between Arab forces and Jews multiple times just before the Mandate expired, but was occupied
by the Fourth Regiment without any trouble. So, on May 18th, the road from the coastal
plain to Jerusalem was severed, preventing the Israelis
from reinforcing or resupplying their troops in
besieged Jerusalem. Around the city itself to north and south, fighting was extremely
fierce. Jewish forces successfully repelled Jordanian
assaults at the Notre Dame Cathedral on the northern approaches, while a combined Arab
force - assisted by an Egyptian contingent of
several hundred, attacked the Ramat Rachel kibbutz from the south on May 21st. The settlement
was taken and retaken until it was eventually secured by the defenders on May 25th. While
Jewish Jerusalem held its ground against the persistent Legion attacks, the Jewish Quarter
of the Old City surrendered on May 28th, with only
36 of its 300 fighters still capable of fighting. Under the terms of surrender, civilians were
allowed to leave for Israeli-held West Jerusalem, while soldiers and men of fighting age would
become prisoners of war. The professional Legionnaires protected them against the locals,
even using the lethal force, escorting their defeated foe to safety. Realising the situation
in the Holy City was worsening, Prime Minister Ben-Gurion ordered Israeli forces to assault
the Legion-garrisoned Latrun fort and break through
to Jerusalem. On May 25th, May 30th and June 9 th IDF launched ultimately disastrous assaults,
often by untrained troops against entrenched Jordanian fighters. By June 10th, an alternative
route to West Jerusalem had been opened which was dubbed the ‘Burma Road’, nicknamed
after the British World War II supply route against
the Japanese. In Galilee, the first phase of the war saw
Iraqi, Syrian and Lebanese forces launching attacks into
the former Mandate. After suffering some heavy casualties advancing through the upper Jordan
Valley, an Iraqi army of one armoured and two infantry brigades set up in the Samaria
region, between the towns of Nablus, Jenin and Tulkarm.
This force launched an assault towards Natanya from these positions on May 25 th
ended in defeat, but the prospect that an Iraqi
breakthrough could slice the Jewish state in two worried high command so much that it
ordered a counterattack on May 29th, aimed at occupying
strong defensive positions opposite the Iraqis. In
the Battle of Jenin, Israeli forces occupied the city, but were subsequently dislodged
after three days of heavy fighting. Similarly, to their
Egyptian allies, this pyrrhic victory panicked the Iraqi
forces and dissuaded them from attacking again. Even further north, a Syrian force comprising
an infantry brigade, a mechanised battalion, an artillery regiment and a company of tanks
crossed into Israel on May 15th, seeking to storm
a cluster of kibbutzim around the Sea of Galilee before
pushing into the Jewish heartland. The kibbutzim resisted far longer than anticipated and the
Syrians captured Zemakh only on the 18 th . Despite this success, the Syrians failed
to occupy Degania, and this setback eventually forced
a withdrawal from Zemakh. They subsequently redeployed in the hills to the east. Finally,
Lebanese forces crossed the border and captured Malkiya on May 15th, lost it on the 18th,
and then finally recaptured it on June 6th, only four
days before the first truce began.
The four-week UN backed truce started on June 11th was beneficial for both sides, which
began to break the terms immediately. The Arab armies
were in desperate need of reorganisation and replenishment, but their efforts in bolstering
the war effort was nothing compared to that of the
Israelis. What had previously been the semi-legal Haganah concluded its transformation from
an underground militia into a fully-fledged army
during the truce in terms of command and control capacity, manpower potential and weaponry.
The IDF doubled its numbers from around 35,000 to 65,000. More crucial, however, were the
massive quantities of badly-needed armament which
reached Israeli shores. 25,000 rifles, 5,000 machine guns and more than 50 million rounds
of ammunition from Czechoslovakia, in addition
to heavier equipment such as tanks, heavy artillery
and armoured cars. Because of this transformation, the army facing the Arabs after the truce
was massively different from the force they had
met on May 15th. One British official stated that
“The Arabs lost the initiative in Palestine during the four weeks, and the Jews were able
to re- equip themselves.”. This fact allowed the
IDF to subsequently seize the initiative as the first
truce ended. The day before hostilities were due to resume,
Egyptian forces in the south launched a series of
attacks to solidify their stranglehold on the Negev region. However, they were quickly
counterattacked by the IDF and spent the subsequent 8 days in heavy fighting for the region. Just
before the second truce on the 18th, the Israeli forces managed to break through Egyptian lines,
tenuously linking the isolated Jewish Negev settlements with the heartland. Nevertheless,
attacks on Jewish convoys were quite frequent. In
the north, Israeli armies launched an assault on Syrian
positions near Mishmar-Hayarden in an attempt to push the enemy back over the Jordan River
on the 9th. This failed, but a subsequent offensive
dubbed Operation Dekel brought Lower Galilee under control from Haifa Bay to the Sea of
Galilee. The main IDF offensive, known as Operation
Danny, was directed against the Arab Legion on the Jordanian front. Israeli forces, led
by General Yigal Allon, launched a pincer maneuver
from southwest and northwest, occupying Lydda, then Ramle and the springs at Ras el-Ein.
When the second UN organised truth went into effect on July 18th, the IDF had gained 1,000
square kilometres of territory and Arab pressure on
Jerusalem had been reduced. After UN attempts at negotiating a peace settlement
during the second truce failed, the war entered its most intense phase on October
15th. Despite Egyptian weakness and overextension on
the southern front, Prime Minister Ben-Gurion realised that he needed to seize the sparsely
populated Negev region if his Jewish State was to be secure in the long term. As things
stood, the frontline was far too close to Israel’s
core on the Mediterranean coast. Under the command of
General Yigal Allon, Operation Yoav was planned, comprising three infantry brigades with
artillery and air support. Facing them was a 15,000 strong, well-fortified Egyptian army
which possessed heavy firepower. Nevertheless, despite
its good position, the lack of the defensive depth was a vulnerability. At 6PM on the 15th,
the Israeli airforce of 4 Czech Avia S-199s, 7
Spitfires and 3 B-17 bombers hit the Egyptian airfield at El’Arish and key targets in
Gaza and Majdal from above. This air attack achieved
complete surprise, and the IAFs superior airmen would subsequently ensure superiority in the
skies through the operation. Unfortunately, some of
the bombing runs were off-target and many refugees were accidentally killed at the village
of al- Jura, one of many occasions civilians would
become unintentional casualties during this war.
The ground attack of Yoav began in the evening, with multiple thrusts into Israeli lines.
Fighting continued for around a week, and by the time
it was over on the 22nd, had driven the Egyptians from their coastal positions from Isdud to
Gaza and expelled them from the Judean and Hebron
hills. Their extended line of defence had been shattered and the capital of Negev - Beersheba
fell
to the IDF. To make the Egyptian situation worse, an entire 4,000 strong brigade had
been trapped in what would come to be known as
the Faluja pocket. They would stay trapped for the
remainder of the war. On the seas, minor battles took place between
Israeli and Egyptian corvettes near Majdal. However, a more significant operation on the
22nd saw an IDF commando group use explosive- packed boats to ram the Egyptian flagship
Emir Farouk, sinking it and damaging its minesweeper escort. Buoyed by their successes
in the south, Operation Hiram was launched in
Galilee by four infantry brigades led by General Moshe Carmel. In some 60 hours of fighting,
800 Arab fighters were and taken Prisoner. Israeli troops managed to expel the ALA and
a Syrian battalion from Upper Galilee and also
drove all Lebanese soldiers out of Israel. They
subsequently thrust 5 miles into Lebanon, capturing numerous border villages and reaching
as far as the Litani River before coming to a halt
when yet another UN ceasefire came into effect. The
fronts largely quietened down at this point as the two sides once again stopped to catch
their breath. In Operations Hiram and Yoav, the
IDF had expanded Israel’s holdings, demolished the
ALA, badly blasted apart the Egyptians and had linked the Negev settlements with the
Jewish heartland. It was a positive turn, but there
was still work to do. The strains of extensive Israeli mobilisation
was becoming economically untenable. The war had
to be ended, but the status quo, especially on the southern front, was still unacceptable
to Jewish leaders. Egypt remained in control of the
Gaza strip and Faluja pocket areas of Mandatory Palestine, fortified in a chain of strong
points between 'Auja al-Hafir and Bir Aslug - just south
of Beersheba. However, its army was on the verge of collapse, and realistically had to
either withdraw from Palestine completely or conclude
a peace with Israel. Neither of these methods succeeded due to political pressures. So,
hoping to push the Arab enemy off the soil Israel
viewed as its own, Operation Horev began on December 22nd. It was initiated by air and
artillery strikes on positions along the Mediterranean
coast and Gaza strip, followed by initial ground
attacks on the northern part of the front. Fighting at locations such as Hill 86 and
‘Abasan was inconclusive due to strong Egyptian defences,
but it didn’t matter - these attacks were a
diversion. Egyptian commanders had concentrated its forces just where the IDF wanted them
to. Israel’s main thrust was to be made against
fortifications at Bir Tamila and ‘Auja al-Hafir. Despite initial problems due to inclement
weather, the highly mobile Eighth and Negev Brigades
penetrated thin Egyptian lines with relative ease. Aiming to execute a vast encirclement
maneuver which would either trap the enemy armies or force them to retreat, IDF units
pushed towards el-Arish and launched raids deep into
the Sinai Peninsula. This was a stunning success and Egypt’s defeated army was made to retreat
into their own lands as far as Abu Ageila in the
centre and el-Arish in the north, else it risked being cut off.
However, diplomatic pressure from Britain forced a withdrawal from Egyptian territory
after one final attack against Rafah, bottling the Egyptian
army inside the Gaza Strip and capturing the high ground around the town. By now, the Egyptian
government had realised the threat its forces faced and, on the 6th of January, announced
its intention to enter peace negotiations. On the
following day, the guns on Israel’s southern front fell silent. On February 24th, Israeli
signed a treaty ending hostilities, granting Egypt
the Gaza Strip and Israel the Negev region. Now the
largest Arab nation had come to the table, the others soon followed. Negotiations with
Lebanon began on March 3rd and were successfully concluded
in three weeks - the international border was respected and Israel would withdraw from
any occupied Lebanese territory. Jordanian talks
concluded on April 3rd, with King Abdullah retaining control of the West Bank and East
Jerusalem. Finally, after some difficulties due to internal strife, Syria signed an armistice
on July 20th. This peace was tenuous, and the Israeli
victory made future conflict in the region inevitable.
We are planning to cover more modern conflicts both on the Kings and Generals and our second
channel The Cold War – the link to which you can find in the description or in the
top right corner, so make sure you are subscribed to
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