How Did Israel Survive After It's Birth in 1948 When War Was Already Happening?

Nadene Goldfoot                                           

Palestinian irregulars of the Holy War Army, approaching al-Qastal village near Jerusalem to take it back from Palmach.On the night of April 7-8, under the command of Abd al-Qadir al-Husseini, Palestinian irregulars counterattacked the Haganah occupiers of Castel. The Palestinians are seen here moving to the counterattack.

  The real question should be how did it manage to survive before its birth when in the womb, so to speak?  A Civil War was happening between the Arab and Jewish communities in Eretz YIsrael that started after November 29, 1947.  This war was started by the Arabs.  They refused to accept the UN partition resolution.  The proposed Arab state never came into being, the Arab areas being taken over by Jordan and Egypt, and the recommended economic union was not implemented.  These changes were incorporated in the Rhodes Agreements between Israel and Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria when the military phase of Israel's War of Independence was ended.  

From the beginning of April 1948, units of Arab irregulars  entered the country from Syria, Lebanon and Egypt to reinforce local Arabs in their attacks of Jewish communities and to block the main roads.  
                                                            

Then on May 14, 1948, the very day the Jews announced statehood, Eretz Yisrael was invaded by the regular armies of Egypt, Transjordan, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon and the Saudi Arabian contingent in about 5 minutes after the radio announcement.  
                                                       

Aftermath of the car bomb attack on the Ben Yehuda St., which killed 53 and injured many more.

The next day, Azzam Pasha, Secretary General of the Arab League, proclaimed in Cairo: "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and Crusades." They had been known as the League of Arab States. The Arab League was formed in Cairo on 22 March 1945 initially with six members: Egypt, Iraq, Transjordan (renamed Jordan in 1949), Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. Yemen joined as a member on 5 May 1945. Currently, the League has 22 members, but Syria's participation has been suspended since November 2011.  Their major trading partner was THE UNITED KINGDOM.  

The Egyptian army attacked and got as far as 30 km south of Tel Aviv.  Arab forces besieged Jerusalem. The Iraqi army got 15 km from the Mediterranean and threatened to cut Israel in two.  The Syrian army advanced west into the Upper Galilee and was set to amputate Israel's finger in the north. 
                                                      

War of Independence

Israel only had 650,000 population and really had no army to speak of at all. They depended on the Haganah to defend all these people and they were so poorly equipped to do so.  Yet they managed to drive back these invading forces.  It was a matter of do or die.  The fighters penetrated into the Sinai peninsula to drive out the Egyptian invaders.  Today Israel has a Jewish population of over 6 million, the very number they lost in the Holocaust from 1939-1945.  The need for the return to Eretz Yisrael was great as the climate was continually bad for them in the other parts of the world as it had been before WWII.  

"While the Jewish population was ordered to hold their ground everywhere at all costs, the Arab population was disrupted by general conditions of insecurity. Up to 100,000 Arabs from the urban upper and middle classes in Haifa, Jaffa and Jerusalem, or Jewish-dominated areas, evacuated abroad or to Arab centres to the east."
                                                    

Jewish fighters in War of Independence

6,000 Jews were killed in this War of Independence;  more than in all the subsequent wars combined.  

A truce was called and negotiations for an armistice began.  During 1949, separate armistice agreements were signed between Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.  In each agreement it was laid down that the purpose was to create the transition from the truce to permanent peace.  Nobody foresaw that instead of leading to peace, the Egyptian agreement would dissolve in 7 years in another war, and the after 18 years, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon would also start another war with Israel.   
                                   

1949 Armistice Agreements:

• Establishment of the State of Israel beyond the borders proposed by the Partition Plan
• Establishment of All-Palestine Government in the Gaza Strip under Egyptian patronage
• Jordanian rule of West Bank and East Jerusalem
• Syrian foothold North and South of Sea of Galilee

                                            

Israel has had to fight in 12 major wars:
1947-1949  The Israeli War of Independence
1956   The Suez Campaign
1967   The Six Day War
1973   The Yom Kippur War
1982   Operation Peace for Galilee
1985-2000  South Lebanon Conflict
1987-1993  1st Intifada
2000-2005  2nd Intifada
2006  Lebanon War
2008-2009  Gaza War
Operation Pillar of Defense  2012
Operation Protective Edge  2014  
                                                    

No nation should be forced to go to war time and time again, not in these centuries when people had created THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS to stop wars followed by the better plan of the United Nations.  

Knesset in Jerusalem

 No nation should be surrounded by neighbors who dream of its destruction-and by that I mean that Palestine, who does, should not become a state with Israel's original land.  That is close.  It's in Israel's back yard lot.  It's bad enough to have neighbors already who are just beginning to get used to Israel, hopefully now accepting peace with Israel.
                                                  

No nation should have to explain year after year that it has the right to live, and to defend itself over and over again. 

 No nation should be judged at the United Nations by Middle Eastern countries hatefully minded to Israel, and picked upon continually while other actual warlike nations are given the green light and their actions against others are ignored, never to be brought up for discussion.  
                                                        

Moshe Dayan 1915-1981
Haganah member as a teen, a founder of Palmah
lost his eye fighting in Lebanon when in British army.
In Independence fought Syrian army, was minister of
Defense of Israel just before 6 day war.  

Israel has had to do all these things.  
                                                          
Throughout all of this, Israel continues to progress and grow in a way that only benefits the world.  This happens in their scientific achievements in so many ways, now in medical ways, finding ways to fight the coronavirus for one.  She shares so much with the world while her hospital near Gaza has had to go underground from attacks of rockets, missiles and mortars.  

Israel is a miracle.  It's the most ancient of all countries and is here despite the unacceptance it has found for 3,000 years.  Israel has a purpose in mind, a job to do, to be a light for people, something to live up to in expectations of itself.  It notes when others have lent a helping hand when it was pushed down and trodded upon, which is not forgotten.  It's a light for them to show where their goal must be.  
    

Resource:                                        

Movie:  Cast A Giant Shadow with Kirk Douglas, Senta Berger, Frank Sinatra
Facts about Israel from Information, Foreign Affairs, Jerusalem
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_League
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Israel

The True Legal Facts On THE GREEN LINE Near Jerusalem and WHY

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                          

                                                                           

THE GREEN LINE is not a permanent boundary.  It never was and never was intended to become one.

Israel was declared a state on May 14, 1948 when the British  mandate ended after 30 years. Israel announced its statehood and about 5 minutes later was attacked by all her Arab neighbors.  Attacks on the Jews had started before on November 29, 1947.  The Arabs had become violent when they heard the United Nation's resolution on Palestine, and this lasted until the signing of the Armistice Agreements in 1949.  This Arab-Israeli conflict was called Israel's War of Independence.
                                                                             

What had started as a civil war between the Arab and Jewish communities in the Land had been started by the Arabs who refused to accept the resolution from the UN.  From the beginning of April 1948, units of Arab irregulars crossed into the country from Syria, Lebanon and Egypt to reinforce local Arabs in their attacks on the Jewish neighborhoods.  The Arabs were attempting to block the main roads, too.

On May 14, 1948, Israel was invaded by the regular armies of Egypt, Transjordan, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon and there was even a Saudi-Arabian contingent.  They had come up from the south.  The next day, Azzam Pasha, Secretary-General of the Arab League, proclaimed in Cairo:  "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and Crusades."  

Where were the forces of Israel standing and where were the Arabs standing after the War of Independence in 1948?  

This is important.  Israel's pre-1967 borders reflect this fact.  Professor Judge Stephen M. Schwebel, former President of the INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE wrote the International Law "Justice" and said that the 1949 armistice demarcation lines are not permanent borders. This judge has: 

1.  served on the International Court of Justice since January 15, 1981.  
2. He was Vice-President of the Court from 1994 to 1997 and 
3. President from 1997 to 2000.  
4.  He is the former Deputy Legal Adviser of the US Dept. of State. 
5.  He was the Burling Professor of International Law at the School of Advanced International Studies  of the Johns Hopkins University in Washington.  

His opinions quoted are not from his position as a judge of the International Court of Justice.  

He said that the armistice demarcation lines of 1949   are not permanent borders.  The agreements in 1949 preserved the territorial claims  of all parties and didn't purport to make definite boundaries between them. 
                                                                            

Esau, father of Arabs, and twin brother, Isaac, father of Jews.

The UN Security Resolution 54 of July 15, 1948 called upon the Arabs to accept a truce and stop their aggression.

Israel had indicated they accepted in principle a prolonging of the truce and that the States members of the Arab League had rejected the many appeals of the UN Mediator and of the Security Council's resolution 53 written on July 7, 1948 for the prolongation of the truce in Palestine.

Israel sees that there is consequently a renewal of hostilities in Palestine shown in the UN Security Council Resolution 54 in 1948.  

The demarcation line that emerged in the aftermath of the war was drawn up under the auspices of the UN mediator, Dr. Ralph Johnson Bunche.  That new boundary reflected the ceasefire lines of 1949 and was labeled, THE GREEN LINE.   A green pencil was used to draw the map of the armistice borders, thus the name.  

This 1949 so-called GREEN LINE didn't set out to "demarcate the Palestinian state."  THE GREEN LINE referred to demarcation lines separating Israelis from Arab forces at the conclusion of the 1948 War of Independence.  The armistice lines were NEVER intended to set permanent borders.  

One must remember their history.  JUDEA AND SAMARIA, CALLED THE WEST BANK BY JORDAN, was occupied by Jordan until 1967.  Because Jordan had attacked Israel and Israel had won the fight-Israel won Judea and Samaria.  It was originally supposed to be a part of the Jewish Homeland, and only because Jordan's King Abdullah I had stolen it and made it part of his kingdom-with the okay from England, of course, did it not become part of Israel in the first place in the final talks.  

The Armistice Agreement says clearly in Article V:

1. The Armistice Demarcation Line is not to be construed in any sense as a political or territorial boundary, and is delineated without prejudice to rights, claims and positions of either Party to the Armistice as regards ultimate settlement of the Palestine question.

Remember, the UN offered the Arabs their own Palestine before 1948 when they divided the land and the Arabs refused it on the grounds that they wanted all of the land; their half and the Jews' half.  The Jewish contingent had accepted the land promised minus 80% of it which had gone to King Abdullah.  They figured something was better than nothing.  
                                                                                

As of 1973, modern Israel has never known permanent boundaries.  Until 1967, its boundaries consisted of temporary armistice lines, agreed upon in 1949.  Since 1967's 6 Day War, and pending a peace settlement, cease-fire lines demarcate the area under Israeli control.  The cease-fire lines are 842 km (523 miles) long compared with the armistice lines which were 951 km (570 miles ) long.  Most of the urban regions of Israel are less than 2 hours away from the  nearest cease-fire lines.  Before 1967, the armistice lines bisected Jerusalem and were 20 minutes away from Tel Aviv.  

Originally, THE GREEN LINE was a term used to define Israel's borders with Jordan from the 1948 Independence War until the 1967 Six Day War.  That's when they first used the green marker negotiating an armistice in 1949 to show a border between the 2 countries.  

Today, THE GREEN LINE is used to show the pre -1967 border with Judea and Samaria and East Jerusalem, though East Jerusalem is now united with the rest of the city and is Israel's capital.  During the past 20 years of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, THE GREEN LINE  had become the generally accepted land marker used in land for peace negotiations.  

The Palestinians have a population of about 2.5 million over THE GREEN LINE and believe that all areas over the green line should be part of their future state.  

Israel maintains that the old 1949 GREEN LINE borders are indefensible.  At its narrowest point from the Mediterranean coast to the demarcation line, Israel is only about 9 miles wide.  It has also proposed land swaps of small areas of Israeli territory within the THE GREEN LINE in exchange for incorporating into Israel similar areas over THE GREEN LINE with large Israeli populations.  Israel has repeatedly offered as much as 95% of Judea and Samaria for a Palestinian state in exchange for peace and did that at Camp David in 2000.  It was refused.
                                                                                 

United Fatah and Hamas Terrorists creating Palestine

In 1980 I moved to Israel to teach English as a 2nd language.  On May 31, 1980, before I got there, the 4th Fatah Organization Convention from Damascus, Syria stated that " The Fatah movement-...aim is the liberation of Palestine in its entirety, and the extermination of the Zionist entity economically, politically, militarily, culturally and idealistically.  They are just a little bit nicer than the religious leader in Qatar, Qaradawi, who threatens to kill Jews with his bare hands.  

Israel has also reportedly offered Palestinian leadership the option of establishing the capital of a future state in East Jerusalem, a move that is considered controversial by many Israelis, but that offer is now moot.  The Palestinians had their chance, and have not changed since 1948.  The Pope just recognized Palestine.  They'll now have no need to recognize Israel, will they !  

The Arabs refuse to recognize Israel as a state, and Obama refuses to back off from demanding a 2 state solution.  I have the feeling he expects Israel to back down on all points, even expecting recognition from the Palestinians, whether they are Fatah or Hamas.   It's like expecting North Korea to make nice with South Korea.    Neither party is anxious for another get-together.    Their political and religious positions will not allow them to do so.  Many times Fatah and Hamas have united and broken apart.  It is Hamas who has the charter of their goal to destroy Israel and kill Jews.  Fatah is in agreement with them but just isn't as overtly active in practice.  They are more insidious about it.  

The EU and Obama, following at their heels, is again pounding the table to come to a peace agreement.  Israel has already celebrated their 67th birthday and are living their lives, planning and building on land that they feel is theirs since no peace agreement has been reached, even though they've offered the Palestinians, who had lost the many wars of 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, etc, etc, everything except the moon.

We've come to the position where Israel can manage even when under attack.  For 67 years they've been coping.  Their people have turned into warriors defending their land.  They're believing in the future and building  because they have small children.  They are continuing their study of their laws, something that gives them security.  It would be nice to have peace with the Palestinians.  They've become extremely creative and lead the world in start-up businesses, 2nd to the USA.  I believe the Arabs really need it more than the Israelis at this point.  They need to alter their culture of death and hate into something much better. Recognizing Israel's rights and wanting peace would be their turn-around.   They have brains but are not using them, and their people are not benefiting from their leadership at all.  They're led into fighting and are losing their lives faster.  

All this points out why Israel feels they have the right to build in land they won in 1967's war that they did not start.  Obama keeps saying they must go back to the 1967 lines.  Why?  To be destroyed?  General Obama can lead his own people, but this is not the decision of our Israeli Generals.  This would be suicide.  
                                                                       

Syrian missiles to be used against Israel

Today, Israel is facing missiles from Lebanon and Syria and a possible A bomb in the near future from Iran.  This little gutsy state is determined to live and must do so.  6 million Jews who live there and the 1.7 Israeli Palestinians' lives depend on this state.  What would happen to the 6 million Jews of the USA and the 2 million scattered among the rest of the nations think would happen to them if Israel is destroyed?  When Israel won the 67 war, Israelis were the heroes of the day.  If they lost, all Jews everywhere would be attacked with anti-Semitic ferocity.  It would be Nazi Germany all over again.  Today there are more anti-Semitic attacks on Jews everywhere because the world leaders are caving into the constant demands of the Palestinians and the anti-Semitism from their brothers.  Our world leaders are not leading, they are following.  All it would take is some strong leadership in Israel's favor, not in her destruction.  

In 1947, the Arabs rejected the UN partition plan which would have created a Palestinian state.  

From 1948 to 1967, Judea and Samaria and Gaza were ruled by Arabs.  No thought was given to forming their own state.  It is ironic that the Arabs demand that Israel do for a Judea and Samaria and Gaza  what they were unwilling to do when they occupied the area.  

Up to this president, Obama,  the US had opposed the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.  Their position had been that it is not the answer.  President Bush had said that:

   "In all likelihood, such a state would become a radical nation dominated by the PLO or Islamic extremists such as Hamas.  The strong support for Iraq shown by residents of the territories during the Gulf War is but one recent example of the sort of radicalism that would likely envelop  such a country. "

   "The greatest danger, however, would be that a Palestinian state could serve as a forward base in a future war for Arab nations that have refused to make peace with Israel.  "In Israeli hands, Judea and Samaria represents a tremendous defensive asset whose possession by Israel deters Arab foes from even considering attack along an "eastern front."  This is a report by the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies.  "Today, and Arab coalition attacking from east of the Jordan "would face very difficult fighting conditions" because if would be fighting uphill from the lowest point on the face of the earth:  the Dead Sea and the Rift Valley that runs below it."  The mountain ranges in Judea and Samaria constitute "Israel's main line of defense against Arab armies from the east.  "

  

Reference: Facts About Israel, Division of Information, Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Jerusalem
Myths and Facts-by Mitchell G. bard, Joel Himelfarb, 1992
 http://www.ejjp.org/8-ejjp-statements/2-the-green-line-israel-palestine.html
http://www.adl.org/israel-international/israel-middle-east/content/AG/the-green-line.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/#.VV6aYdJViko
http://www.mythsandfacts.org/article_view.asp?articleID=191

Israel's Loftiest Goals Met By War: 1947

Nadene Goldfoot
Israel stated their goals of the new state clearly on May14, 1948 in their Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel.  "The state of Israel will be open for Jewish immigration and for the in-gathering of the exiles.  It was created by idealists with a Utopia in mind.  After all, here they were establishing a country with the principals of Judaism at the heart of it in a modern age.

 They did their very best.  This was at a time that many Jews were living in refugee camps, survivors of the Holocaust with no country to go to, except the hope of Israel.  Remember the book, EXODUS by Leon Uris?  In 1947 the British forced the ship Exodus 1947, carrying 4,500 Holocaust survivors headed for Palestine, to return to Germany

In 1945:  "With few possibilities for emigration, tens of thousands of homeless Holocaust survivors migrated westward to other European territories liberated by the western Allies. There they were housed in hundreds of refugee centers and displaced persons (DP) camps such as Bergen-Belsen in Germany. The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) and the occupying armies of the United States, Great Britain, and France administered these camps."

It will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants.  
It will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel.
 It will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all the inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex. 
 It will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture.  It will safeguard the holy places of all religions and
It will be faithful to the principles of the charter of the United Nations."

November 29, 1947 was the date the UN voted to establish the Jewish state and was about 2 years after the end of World War 2 when 6 million Jews had been slaughtered by the Nazi regime.  They wanted to  divide the land originally planned to go to the Jewish Homeland into 2 sections; one for the Jews and the other for the Arabs which the Arabs refused. This was because the Arabs had raised the riot act when they realized it was all going to go to the Jews.  and they now wanted it all for themselves.    The next day the Arabs attacked the Jews in the land and war was on.  The United States was the first under Harry Truman to recognize Israel, born on May 14, 1948, the date the British mandate was up.  It was accepted by the United Nations.  However, the Arabs continued to fight against the new state and the war continued for another year, known as "The War of Independence."  It wasn't over until 1949 with an Armistice Agreement referred to as the "Green Line."  

May 14, 1948 was the date the British Mandate was up and they left the country.  Jews were on their own to defend their newly reclaimed land.   The population of Jews was 650,000 that May. We had the right number to start off with.  Most were living in Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem.  It is remembered that Moses left Egypt with 600,000.  At the birth in 1948 many Jews were forced out of the Arab homes and immigrated to Israel. .  By December  1952 we had 1,629,500.  By the 1972 census there were 3,164,000 Jews in Eretz Israel.    Today we have about 6,500,000 Jews living in Israel.  1.4 million Arabs also call Israel home and are citizens.  The Druze and Circassians even serve in the IDF at their insistence. Otherwise, Arabs are not required to serve.   

In another section of the declaration, it said that " We appeal to the Jewish people throughout the Diaspora to rally round the Jews of Eretz-Israel in the tasks of immigration and upbuilding and to stand by them in the great struggle for the realization of the age-old dream--"The Redemption of Israel."  Placing our trust in the Almighty, we affix our signatures to this proclamation...in the city of Tel Aviv, on this Sabbath eve, May 14, 1948.  38 people signed this including David Ben Gurion, Golda Myserson (Meier), and David Zvi Pinkas.

To redeem means to buy back,  to repurchase, to get or win back, to liberate by payment; ransom, to free by force, to change for the better, reform, repair, restore, reclaim, to make good, to offset the bad effect of to make worthwhile, rescue, and that the Jews did.  They bought land legally from Arab landowners many times over, and these landowners weren't living on the land anymore.  They had found greener pastures in France and other countries abroad to enjoy their life.

Amos the Prophet had stated: Amos 9:14-15
I will bring back my exiled people Israel; they will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them. They will plant vineyards and drink their wine; they will make gardens and eat their fruit. I will plant Israel in their own land, never again to be uprooted from the land I have given them,” says the Lord your God.

Another section states: "  After being forcibly exiled from their land (in 70 CE) , the people kept faith with it throughout their dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom......This right was recognized in the Balfour Declaration of the 2nd November 1917, and re-affirmed in the Mandate of the League of Nations...gave international sanction to the historic connection between the Jewish people and Eretz Israel and to the right of the Jewish people to rebuild its national home."   Israel did whatever they had to in establishing the homeland once more.  It was all legal.  It was on ancient, forgotten, neglected, unwanted land.  They have done what Amos prophesied.

Resource: Facts About Israel, Published by the Division of Information, Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Jerusalem
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Peace+Process/Guide+to+the+Peace+Process/Declaration+of+Establishment+of+State+of+Israel.htm
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005129
Webster's 7th New Collegiate dictionary
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Arab%E2%80%93Israeli_War
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/Dec_of_Indep.html
http://www.watchmanbiblestudy.com/Articles/1948PropheciesFulfilled.htm