Topic summary
1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine
Yaakov Dori
Yigael Yadin
Yigal Allon
Menachem Begin
Fawzi al-QawuqjiAbd al-Qadir al-Husayni†35,000 (end)
British deserters: ~100–200
895 killed
991 killed
123 killed
300 wounded
The 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine (29 November 1947 – 14 May 1948) was the first phase of the 1948 Palestine war (29 November 1947 – 10 March 1949). 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, Palestine's Jewish and Arab communities 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 occasionally.
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 Palestineended 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 occupying its Arab areas then immediately attacking Israeli forces and several Jewish settlements. The conflict thus escalated and became the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.