292 • 17 ISRAEL'S REBIRTH AND THE RISE OF ARAB NATIONALISMISRAEL'S WAR FOR INDEPENDENCEHow and why did Israel win the war? The Arab states were bigger and more
populous. Some had large standing armies and ample military equipment.
On 14 May 1948, when the Jewish Agency leaders declared Israel indepen¬
dent, the Arabs seemed likely to win. Armies of Egypt, Transjordan, and sev¬
eral other Arab countries invaded Israel the next day. If for them the war was
just starting, for the Israelis (as the Jews of Palestine now called themselves)
it had been going on for years. As we saw in Chapter 16, it had been escalat¬
ing since World War II, chiefly against the British. Consequently, there were
already many experienced Jewish fighters. But they had not all belonged to
the same force. Aside from Haganah, which had become the military arm of
the Jewish Agency, several of the political parties had their own militias. The
best known was the Irgun Tzvei Le'umi, attached to the party that hoped to
set up the Jewish state on both sides of the River Jordan. Under Menachem
Begin, the Irgun conducted many terrorist attacks, of which the most noto¬
rious were the bombing of Jerusalem's King David Hotel in 1946 and the
Dayr Yasin massacre of 1948. The Israelis were divided at first, for the Irgun
and the even more extreme Stern Gang resisted absorption into Haganah,
but the prospect of an Arab invasion and what they viewed as the dire con¬
sequences of an Arab victory welded the people together. In a few weeks, the
new Israel Defense Force (IDF) grew in numbers, equipment, and experi¬
ence. Also, having anticipated an attack, the Israelis' had implemented their
Plan Dalet, which called for the extension of Israel's borders beyond the UN
partition lines and the removal of as many Palestinian Arabs as possible.
They began implementing this plan before the Arab armies attacked.
The Contending Forces
The opposing Arab armies turned out to be smaller than expected. Coun¬
tries such as Egypt held back most of their troops to preserve order at
home. Saudi Arabia once promised to send 40,000 men, but as of October
1948 only 700 were on the field. Lebanon's 2,000 soldiers were little more
than a glorified police force. The best-equipped and -trained army was
Transjordan's Arab Legion, but its field strength of 10,000 could hardly
match the IDF, which grew to 100,000 men and women. The Israelis com¬
mitted more troops to battle than all the Arab armies combined. This may
not have been true in May 1948, when the reported success of several Arab
guerrilla groups (and the Muslim Brothers from Egypt) against the Jews in
Palestine drew flocks of volunteers to join the regular armies of Egypt,
Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan, and Iraq.