ABSTRACT
What the rest of the world calls the first Arab-Israeli war, or the 1948 war, is, for the Jews, the War of Independence, and for the Palestinians, al Nakba (the Catastrophe). The variety of names is an indication, of course, of the different points of view regarding the war and its outcome, although all these names-and particularly the last two-imply homogeneity with the camps, it could be better described as Israel’s war against the Palestinians, the Egyptians, Jordanians, the Syrians, the Lebanese, the Iraqis and the ALA. All the Arab parties involved had only one thing in common, and that was their refusal to accept the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. The Arab camp, however, was divided over the extent of its opposition to the idea, over the extent of the means to be invested in the effort to prevent the establishment of the Jewish State, and over the level of the inter-Arab cooperation on this matter. The matter becomes even more complicated when we recall that while some of the Arab Armies invaded Palestine in order to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state, Transjordan crossed the border to achieve goals that had little to do with that cause. Its behavior contributed decisively to the course of the fighting, and hence it would be much more accurate to speak of the 1948 Arab wars against Israel instead of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
