1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War »

Benny Morris is professor of history in the Middle East Studies Department of Ben-Gurion University, Israel. He is the leading figure among Israel's "New Historians," who over the past two decades have reshaped our understanding of the Israeli-Arab conflict. His books include Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001; Israel's Border Wars, 1949-1956; and The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited.

This history of the foundational war in the Arab-Israeli conflict is groundbreaking, objective, and deeply revisionist. A riveting account of the military engagements, it also focuses on the war's political dimensions. Benny Morris probes the motives and aims of the protagonists on the basis of newly opened Israeli and Western documentation. The Arab side—where the archives are still closed—is illuminated with the help of intelligence and diplomatic materials.

Morris stresses the jihadi character of the two-stage Arab assault on the Jewish community in Palestine. Throughout, he examines the dialectic between the war's military and political developments and highlights the military impetus in the creation of the refugee problem, which was a by-product of the disintegration of Palestinian Arab society. The book thoroughly investigates the role of the Great Powers—Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union—in shaping the conflict and its tentative termination in 1949. Morris looks both at high politics and general staff decision-making processes and at the nitty-gritty of combat in the successive battles that resulted in the emergence of the State of Israel and the humiliation of the Arab world, a humiliation that underlies the continued Arab antagonism toward Israel.

The Washington Post - Glenn Frankel

[Benny Morris] first came to prominence with his 1988 book, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949, a ground-breaking, revisionist account of how Israeli forces uprooted and expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during Israel's independence war. His new book is an ambitious, detailed and engaging portrait of the war itself—from its origins to its unresolved aftermath—that further shatters myths on both sides of the Israeli-Arab divide.

Acknowledgments ix

Abbreviations xi

List of Maps xiii

1 Staking Claims: The Historical Background 1

2 The United Nations Steps In: UNSCOP and the Partition Resolution 37

3 The First Stage of the Civil War, November 1947-March 1948 75

4 The Second Stage of the Civil War, April-mid-May 1948 113

5 The Pan-Arab Invasion, 15 May-11 June 1948 180

6 The First Truce, 11 June-8 July 1948, the International Community, and the War 264

7 The "Ten Days" and After 273

8 Operations Yoav and Hiram 320

9 Operation Horev, December 1948-January 1949 350

10 The Armistice Agreements, January-July 1949 375

11 Some Conclusions 392

Notes 421

Bibliography 493

Index 507

Illustrations follow page 270