1948 Arab-Israeli War: Encyclopedia II - 1948 Arab-Israeli War - Aftermath

1948 Arab-Israeli War - Aftermath

1948 Arab-Israeli War - 1949 Armistice Agreements

In 1949, Israel signed separate armistices with Egypt on February 24, Lebanon on March 23, Transjordan on April 3, and Syria on July 20. Israel was generally able to create its own borders, comprising 78 percent of Mandatory Palestine, 50 percent more than the UN partition proposal allotted it. These cease-fire lines were known afterwards as the "Green Line". The Gaza Strip and the West Bank were occupied by Egypt and Transjordan respectively.

1948 Arab-Israeli War - Casualties

Israel lost about 1% of its population in the war: 6,373 of its people. About 4,000 were soldiers and the rest (about 2,400) were civilians.

The exact number of Arab losses is unknown but are estimated at between 5,000 and 15,000 people.^[57]

1948 Arab-Israeli War - Demographic outcome

Between 700,000 and 750,000 Arab Palestinian refugees were created during this conflict. More than 600,000 of the Jews living in Arab countries and territories fled or immigrated to Israel, with another 300,000 seeking refuge in various Western countries, primarily France.

The humiliation of the Arab armies at having been routed by the Jewish forces, together with the rising nationalist frenzy in Arab nations, contributed to rising hatred for the Jews living in Arab lands. The status of Jews in Arab states varied greatly from state to state. Some observers maintain that the Jewish populations were more "prevented from leaving" than "expelled." Their civil liberties, too, were in many cases vastly inferior to those of their Muslim fellow citizens. For example, in Yemen, Jews were and are prohibited from carrying weapons of any type, even to the point of prohibiting traditional ceremonial Yemeni knives, carried by a large portion of the Yemeni population. The net result was that after over two thousand years of living in Arab controlled countries, the atmosphere was sufficiently anti-Jewish that entire communities of Jews in the hundreds of thousands felt they had no option but to take leave of old homes and move to the uncertainties of the new Jewish state of Israel, in effect becoming "refugees" in everything but name. These war-intensified fears came upon the heels of the Holocaust, which ended with the defeat of Nazi Germany three years before the founding of the state of Israel.

Arab Palestinians have staged annual demonstrations and protests on May 15 of each year, one day after the anniversary of Israel's declaration of independence. The popularity and number of participants in these annual al Nakba demonstrations has varied over time, though the increasing anti-Israeli sentiment in the Middle East has tended to increase the attendance in recent years. During the al-Aqsa Intifada after the failure of the Camp David 2000 Summit, the attendance at the demonstrations against Israel increased exponentially.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Aftermath", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki