ABSTRACT
The effects of the first Arab-Israeli conflict were far-reaching and quite long-lasting across the entire Middle East. The Arab world now confronted a new enemy, Israel, which it identified as the latest incarnation of an old one: European colonialism and imperialism. Israel saw itself, in contrast, as the modern incarnation of a centuries-old dream to establish a Jewish homeland. The impact of defeat was felt quite differently in various Arab nations, but nowhere was it felt more bitterly than among the Palestinians. At that time, Egypt recognized the 'All-Palestine Government', created by the Arab League in September 1948 during the war, as the official government of Palestine, to administer Gaza until the eventual recovery of all mandate lands from Israel. Egypt fielded one of the largest military contingents in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and suffered the greatest losses among the Arab armies, but another real impact of the war was the damage it did to King Farouk's legitimacy.
