In mid-October 1948 fighting was once more
renewed between the Israelis and the Egyptians,
who continued to hold parts of the Negev that
had been assigned to Israel by the original UN
partition plan. The fighting ended in the defeat of
the Egyptians in January 1949. Egypt’s Arab
allies, far from helping, took advantage of the cat-
astrophe. King Abdullah of Transjordan, who had
already stopped fighting on 1 December 1948
and arranged a ceasefire with the Israelis, declared
the union of Palestine and Transjordan, annexed
the West Bank and henceforth called his kingdom
Jordan. This wily Arab ruler, alone among the
Arab leaders, had greatly profited as regards terri-
torial expansion from the Arab–Israeli War and
drew upon himself the especial hatred of the
Egyptians. Under the auspices of the UN, Israel in
the spring of 1949 concluded armistice agree-
ments with all its neighbours, Egypt, Jordan, Syria
and the Lebanon, but not with Iraq. It was not
peace, because the Arab nations would not accept
a permanent peace treaty with Israel, and the
Arab refugee question continued to fester as the
refugees lived mainly in makeshift camps sustained
by the UN Relief Organisation. In the aftermath
of the war, over the next decade, the centuries-old
tradition in some Muslim Middle Eastern nations
of tolerating Jewish communities in their midst
was broken. Almost half a million Jews were dri-
ven out but, unlike the Arab refugees, they had a
new home waiting for them in Israel. The influx
enormously strengthened Israel, which as a result
of the war had already gained considerable terri-
tory in the north, part of the West Bank and land
in the south. Israel’s territory had become more
integral, instead of being divided into three parts
connected only by two narrow land bridges. The
Arabs felt humiliated by the victory of the Jews,
whom they saw as Western imperialist intruders,
and the British as the once dominant Middle
Eastern power were blamed for the debacle. Some
600,000 Palestinian Arabs deprived of their farms
and property became penniless refugees. Hopes
for a Palestinian Arab state were thwarted, and the
Palestinian Arabs nursed a burning sense of injus-
tice. The Palestinian question and hatred of Israel
and Zionism also became powerful and emotive
weapons in the political struggles of the Arab
states themselves.
The Arab–Israeli War also showed up the rival-
ries of the Arab states and their competition for
land, leadership and influence. In the war itself
they were more intent on gaining their own
objectives than on helping each other or the
Palestinian Arabs. The rivalry and bitterness
between them was never submerged for long.
Their disunity, their general military backward-
ness and the traditions of their societies in which
the poor were exploited for the benefit of the rich
landowners left them no match for an Israeli state,
ardent, nationalist, modern and progressive, in
which all Jews felt they had a stake and whose
continued strength and existence they felt was
their only guarantee against a second Holocaust.
1
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