Arab fighters near a destroyed trunk on the road to Jerusalem. Source: Wikimedia Commons
The Palestinian civil war
november 1947 – may 1948
Immediately following the United Nations’ vote to partition Palestine, on November 29, 1947, Arabs attacked Jews throughout Palestine. A civil war broke out between Jews and Arabs. It was vicious and bloody on all sides. The Jews were at a strategic disadvantage, with territory that was hard to defend, and were weak in numbers and weapons. The Arabs, too, struggled to organize but they had the backing of the surrounding Arab states. There was terrorism on both sides. The Arabs cut off Jewish settlements from one another and made the road between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem almost impassable, stranding 100,000 Jews in Jerusalem behind a siege. This era marked the beginning of the Palestinian exodus, as several hundred thousand Palestinians fled fighting all over the country, especially from Haifa. The civil war turned into a full-fledged war once Israel declared independence on May 14, 1948.