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1948 Arab–Israeli War

On 14 May 1948, the day on which the British Mandate over Palestine expired, the Jewish People's Council gathered at the Tel Aviv Museum and approved a proclamation that declared the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel, to be known as the State of Israel. The declaration was made by David Ben-Gurion, the Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization.

There was no mention of the borders of the new state other than that it was in Eretz Israel. An official cablegram from the Secretary-General of the League of Arab States to the UN Secretary-General on 15 May 1948 stated publicly that Arab Governments found "themselves compelled to intervene for the sole purpose of restoring peace and security and establishing law and order in Palestine" (Clause 10(e)). Further in Clause 10(e):

The Governments of the Arab States hereby confirm at this stage the view that had been repeatedly declared by them on previous occasions, such as the London Conference and before the United Nations mainly, the only fair and just solution to the problem of Palestine is the creation of United State of Palestine based upon the democratic principles...

That day, the armies of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Iraq invaded what had just ceased to be the British Mandate, marking the beginning of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. The nascent Israeli Defense Force repulsed the Arab nations from part of the occupied territories, thus extending its borders beyond the original UNSCOP partition. By December 1948, Israel controlled most of the portion of Mandate Palestine west of the Jordan River. The remainder of the Mandate consisted of Jordan, the area that came to be called the West Bank (controlled by Jordan), and the Gaza Strip (controlled by Egypt). Before and during this conflict, 713,000 Palestinian Arabs fled their original lands to become Palestinian refugees, in part due to a promise from Arab leaders that they would be able to return when the war had been won, and also in part due to attacks on Palestinian villages and towns by Israeli forces and Jewish militant groups. During the war, official Israeli documents subsequently uncovered by Benny Morris and Benjamin Kedar have revealed that Israel conducted a biological warfare campaign codenamed "Cast Thy Bread" to covertly poison Palestinian wells to prevent villagers from returning. Many Palestinians fled from the areas that are now Israel as a response to massacres of Arab towns by militant Jewish organizations like the Irgun and the Lehi (group) (See Deir Yassin massacre). The War came to an end with the signing of the 1949 Armistice Agreements between Israel and each of its Arab neighbours.

The status of Jewish citizens in Arab states worsened during the 1948 Israeli-Arab war. Anti-Jewish riots erupted throughout the Arab World in December 1947, and Jewish communities were hit particularly hard in Aleppo and British-controlled Aden, with hundreds of dead and injured. In Libya, Jews were deprived of citizenship, and in Iraq, their property was seized. Egypt expelled most of its foreign community, including Jews, after the Suez War 1956, while Algeria denied its French citizens, including Jews, of citizenship upon its independence in 1962. Over the course of twenty years, some 850,000 Jews from Arab countries immigrated to Israel and other countries.