Following the End of the Second World War, the British Mandate of Palestine Came to an End

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Following the end of the Second World War, the British Mandate of Palestine came to an end. The formation of the state of Israel on 14 May 1947coincided with the emergence of Arab nations from mandatory rule. Transjordan gained its independence from Britain in 1946, followed by Syria and Lebanonthat same year. At the behest of the British, the Arab nations of Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Transjordan and Yemen formed the Arab League to coordinate policy between the fledgling states. Israel’s declaration of independence and the subsequent refusal of its neighbours to recognise its sovereignty, together with actions such as the 1948 War and the Suez Crisis of 1956 all contributed to a complete lack of trust and feeling of contempt between the Middle-Eastern States. This mutual distrust manifested itself in the rapid militarisation of the region from the outbreak of conflict between the Arab and Israeli people in 1947, through the 1948 War and beyond.

Upon the withdrawal of the British from Palestine in 1947, it fell upon the United Nations to reach a conclusion to the Arab-Israeli conflict. A two-state solution was decided upon by the U.N. in 1947 which would divide Palestine. Roughly 60% of the land was to become a sovereign Israeli state, with 40% allocated for the Arab population.[1]The remainder, the fiercely contested and coveted city of Jerusalem was, because of its religious significance to both sides, to be administered by the U.N. The terms of the partition were acceptable to the Israelis, who were relieved to have a sovereign and recognised land of their own. In contrast, the proposal was rejected by the Arab League, believing that the Arab Palestinians were the rightful inhabitants of the land of Palestine, and that any recognition of the state of Israel was in contradiction to this.[2]

As a result of the partition of Palestine, the 1948 Arab-Israeli War was preceded by a period of civil war between the Jewish and Palestinian Arab forces in the British Mandate of Palestine.As a result of the ethnic violence, large numbers of Palestinian Arabs fled the region.[3]With the Israeli declaration of independence of May 1948, the conflict was transformed from a civil war between Israelis and Arabs, to a war between the sovereign Middle-Eastern states. Within hours, the nations of the Arab League had attacked the embryonic Israeli state, leading to the first Arab-Israeli war and elevating the military to the highest level of importance, strategically, economically and politically, to the conflicting Middle-Eastern states. The conduct and evolution of the war and the respective nations’ war aims was to have a significant outcome for the relationship between the military and civil society. Benny Morris, author of ‘1948: The First Arab-Israeli War’, outlines the war aims of Israel which were to have a profound affect on the subsequent militarisation of the region and of its politics.[4]Morris concludes that Israeli war aims were simple. Israel faced an existential threat, with Arab rhetoric promising the destruction of Israel and its people, just three years after the end of the Holocaust in Europe. For Israel, the aim of the 1948 War was simply survival. As the war progressed favourably for Israel, its war aims evolved. The opportunity to expand the Jewish state beyond the borders of the U.N. 1947 partition appeared, with isolated Jewish settlements added to Israeli territory along with land to provide strategic depth and defensible borders. Lastly, and most controversially, military and political leaders in Israel favoured reducing “Israel’s…large and hostile Arab minority, seen as a potential powerful fifth column, by belligerency and expulsion.”[5]

Plan Dalet (Plan D) was the operation conducted by the Haganah, later to become the Israeli Defence Forces, to complete such a reduction of Arabs within Israeli borders.[6]Many academics, including Illan Pappe suggest that Plan D was about capturing as much of Palestine as possible and expelling as many Arabs as was possible.[7] Pappe goes as far as to call the plan a “blue print for ethnic cleansing.” Morris, on the other hand, believes that the plan was purely defensive and understandable, given the existential threat which Israel faced.[8]To this day, the consequences of Plan D are a major contributing factor to the Arab-Israeli conflict, with many historians divided between the belief that the Israeli actions constituted ethnic cleansing and others who claim that the act was purely defensive andentirely acceptable. In actuality both opinions are most likely correct. While a small, fledgling nation like Israel, surrounded by hostile neighbours, will naturally want to expand its territory and strategic depth to aid defensive measures, it is also entirely understandable for such a nation to take the opportunity of war to expel a large minority of largely hostile and unsympathetic people. As a result of the war and Plan D, around 700,000 Arabs fled or were forced from their homes in Palestine to be settled in Palestinian refugee camps throughout the Arab world.[9]Although 300,000 Jewish refugees were created as a result of the war, mainly from Arab nations, the Jews were absorbed by the Israeli state.[10]The demographic outcome of the war was compounded by the refusal of Arab states to absorb Arab refugees meaning they have become a major issue in the conflict post-1948.[11]

With Arab popular sentiment driving military intervention against the creation of Israel, the nations of the Arab League were falling over one another to declare war on Israel, with most Arab leaders desperate to show themselves as the true champion of Arab nationalism and covetous of the land up for grabs in Palestine.[12] As a result, the military was to play anincreasingly crucial role in formation of the Arab states. This is particularly true in the case of Egypt. European interventionism in Egyptian affairs had resulted in the emergence of a nationalistic element in Egyptian society from the British occupation of 1882.[13]The 1919 nationalistic revolution in Egypt against British rule led to British recognition of Egyptian independence in 1922. With the Armistice of 1918, the division of the Ottoman Empire became a paramount concern for the victorious allies. The lands of the vanishing empire were divided along linguistic and ethnic lines, with separate Turkish and Arabic language areas, before subdivision into spheres of influence for France and Britain and autonomous states.[14]Arab nationalism was elevated into the central political arena due to the void left by behind by the Ottoman Empire and the ill-will felt towards France and Britain. The language of nationalism was of use to both the military and the politically minded as it spoke to the entire nation, which had heretofore been ignored in favour of the urban elites.

The post-Second World War era in the Middle East was heavily influenced by the creation of such a vast and varied number of states, all espousing nationalism, whether it be Arab or Israeli. The reorientation of the Middle East in the changing environment of global politics, coupled with the creation Israel and the rise of new classes to power in Arab states led to the Middle-Eastern states becoming heavily dependent on their own militaries, which had an ever increasing involvement in the political sphere from 1947. The imposition of the state of Israel upon the lands of Palestine was an affront which the Arab states would never accept and many of the ruling regimes of the Arab world began to topple as a result. Egypt fell first, with its King and nationalist party swept away in the Free Officer Movement Revolution of 1952, led by Gamal Abdel Nasser, which imposed a militaristic, nationalist, revolutionary government in Egypt.[15] The ongoing conflict with Israel and the interference of Britain and France came to a head with the Tripartite Aggression of 1956, when Britain,France andIsrael attacked Egypt. Despite significant losses, the Egyptians claimed a political victory as it left the Suez Canal in Egyptian hands and, equally importantly, for Egypt, Nasser and Arab nationalism, it was affirmation of the strength of Arabism in the face of western aggression and Israeli attacks.[16]Egypt emerged from the conflict as the undisputed centre of Arab nationalism, with Nasser its pre-eminent figure. Arabs leaders began to look increasingly towards Cairo, Washington and Moscow and not Paris and London as a result of the events of 1956.The Suez Crisis was also to bring the Middle-East into the new world structure being carved out by the United States and Soviet Russia. This imposition of the world superpowers upon the Middle-East had massive consequences for the militaries and foreign policy of the states of the region. The region became increasingly militarised with the intervention of the Soviet Union and the U.S. ensuring the region was to play a crucial role in world politics. The military was seen as a positive influence on the emerging states, both Arab and in Israel.[17]It was able to act at a national state level, reinforcing cohesion while encouraging national pride, secularism and political participation. In many cases the military was also seen as a progressive influence on fledgling states economically, politically and socially.

The U.S. emerged from the Suez Crisis as the dominant Western power in the region having benefitted greatly from the Anglo-French disaster and was on course to inherit Israel from Britain and France. As the U.S. held little goodwill towards Egypt’s revolutionary government, the Egyptians encouraged Soviet intervention in the region to act as a counterweight to the U.S.[18] Even prior to the Suez Crisis, the U.S. was keen to bolster friendly militaries in the Middle-East with $396,250,000 appropriated for military assistance and a further $760,000,000 for technical assistance to friendly nations, both Israel and the Arab League.[19]With Israel’s position in the region, it was forced to favour friendly relations with Western nations over its neighbours. Thus, Israel’s participation in Western Middle-Eastern defence arrangements became a matter of near obsession for the Israeli government.[20]Suffering from acute insecurity and isolation within the region, Israel was more than keen to join friendly defensive pacts in return for arms and security. All these aims were assured with Israel’s association with such pacts against the Soviet Union in the 1950s, in return for very significant arms deals. On the other hand, the Arab League States’ militaries benefitted greatly from increased Soviet interest in the region.[21]

The extreme tension which was to arise from the reorganisation of the political landscape in the Middle-East, post World War Two, allowed the military to take on a significant role in the politics of the region. Struggles for national liberation, Israeli independence, the emerging Arab-Israeli conflict and the events of 1948 and 1956 ensured that military might was seen as key to survival in such a belligerent and antagonistic region. Arab armies play an even closer role in the political development of their respective states due to the direct involvement of the military in Iraq, Egypt and Syria. The military intervention into politics had become so commonplace at the time that there was a much greater frequency of military governments in the Middle-East than in the Developing World from 1950-1960.[22]The Suez Crisis gave new impetus to the militarisation of the region as the conflict over Palestine grew to an inter-state conflict, more concerned with regional hegemony. In the case of Israel, the military was absolutely crucial to the development of the state. Facing an existential threat from its inception, the embattled Israelis could only rely on their military to ensure their survival, amid blistering Arab rhetoric and constant conflict. Their need for security is understandable, and this manifested itself in the production of an extremely powerful military, given the size of the state, and one which was to play a central in Israeli politics over the coming decades.

Bibliography

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Galnoor, Itzhak, The Partition of Palestine: Decision Crossroads in the Zionist Movement. New York: StateUniversity of New York Press, 1995.

Gordon, J. Blessed Movement. Egypt’s Free Officers and the July Revolution. Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1992.

Khalidi, Rashid. “Consequences of the Suez Crisis in the Arab World.” In The Modern Middle East: A Reader, edited by Albert Hourani, Philip S. Khoury and Mary C. Wilson, 535-547. Berkley: University of California Press, 1993.

Mansfield, Peter. A History of the Middle East.New York: Viking, 1991.

Morris, Benny. 1948: The First Arab-Israeli War. New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 2008.

Morris, Benny. Reconsidering the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Recorded in Sheikh Zayed Theatre, London School of Economics, 14 June 2011, video recording.

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Podeh, Elie. “The Desire to Belong Syndrome: Israel and Middle-Eastern Defence, 1948-1954.” In The Modern Middle East: A Reader, edited by Albert Hourani, Philip S. Khoury and Mary C. Wilson, 121-149. Berkley: University of California Press, 1993.

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Spain, James W. “Middle East Defence: A New Approach.” Middle East Journal vol. 8, no.3 (Summer, 1954): 251-266.

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Yapp, M. “The Near East since the First World War” In History of the Modern Middle East, edited by W.L. Cleland, 211-265. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2004.

[1] Itzhak Galnoor, The Partition of Palestine: Decision Crossroads in the Zionist Movement (New York: State University of New York Press, 1995), 289.

[2] Morris, Benny. Reconsidering the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Recorded in Sheikh Zayed Theatre, London School of Economics, 14 June 2011, video recording.

[3] Ibid.

[4]Ibid.

[5]Ibid.

[6]Benny Morris, 1948: The First Arab Israeli War (New Haven. YaleUniversity Press, 2008), 116-120.

[7]Illan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine(Oxford, Oneworld Publications, 2011).

[8] Morris, Benny. Reconsidering the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Recorded in Sheikh Zayed Theatre, London School of Economics, 14 June 2011, video recording.

[9]Ibid.

[10]Benny Morris, 1948: The First Arab Israeli War (New Haven. YaleUniversity Press, 2008), 412.

[11] Benny Morris. Reconsidering the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Recorded in Sheikh Zayed Theatre, London School of Economics, 14 June 2011, video recording.

[12]Ibid.

[13] Osama Shams El-Din, “A Military History of Modern Egypt from the Ottoman Conquest to the Ramadan War” School of Advanced Military Studies United States Army Command and General Staff College

[14] Mary C. Wilson, ed. The Modern Middle East: A Reader (Berkley. University of California Press, 1993), 342.

[15]Ibid. 529.

[16]Ibid. 529.

[17]Elizabeth Picard, “Arab Military in Politic: from Revolutionary Plot to AuthoritarianState.” In The Modern Middle East: A Reader, edited by Albert Hourani, Philip S. Khoury and Mary C. Wilson (Berkley: University of California Press, 1993), 552.

[18]Rashid Khalidi, “Consequences of the Suez Crisis in the Arab World.” In The Modern Middle East: A Reader, edited by Albert Hourani, Philip S. Khoury and Mary C. Wilson (Berkley: University of California Press, 1993), 537.

[19] James W. Spain, “Middle East Defence: A New Approach.” The Middle East Journal vol. 8, no.3 (Summer, 1954), 252.

[20] Elie Podeh, “The Desire to Belong Syndrome: Israel and Middle-Eastern Defense, 1948-54.” The Modern Middle East: A Reader, edited by Albert Hourani, Philip S. Khoury and Mary C. Wilson, 121-149. Berkley: University of California Press, 1993. 121.

[21]Ibid.

[22]Elizabeth Picard, “Arab Military in Politic: from Revolutionary Plot to AuthoritarianState.” In The Modern Middle East: A Reader, edited by Albert Hourani, Philip S. Khoury and Mary C. Wilson (Berkley: University of California Press, 1993), 552.