ABSTRACT
The 1948 war between the nascent state of Israel and a number of surrounding Arab states was the first of three wars between Israel and its Arab neighbours. Of the three, the 1948 war was arguably the most significant for the region. By the war’s end, Israel had become a de facto state, its territory had expanded by 50 per cent over what the UN’s partition plan had envisaged, and somewhere between three-quarters of a million and one million Palestinians had become refugees (Map 86). The region – the Arab world in particular – is still reeling from the effects of what the Israelis refer to as the War of Independence, and most Arabs refer to simply as the Catastrophe. Jewish State: pre- and post-1948 war https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780203805510/22f9ab71-c55c-4c4a-ba92-f9a2b09668b9/content/map86_C.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>
