THE SHORT ANSWER
Israel was established on May 14 1948. The following day five Arab armies invaded and a war began. Israel won. But the war also displaced approximately 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes. Both of those things happened at the same time. Both shaped everything that followed. Here is the confirmed plain language explanation of how it happened and why it still matters today.
WHAT CAME BEFORE — THE WORLD THAT CREATED THE PRESSURE FOR A JEWISH STATE
For nearly 2,000 years after the Roman Empire destroyed Jerusalem in 70 CE Jewish people lived as minorities in countries across Europe, the Middle East, and beyond. In many of those countries they faced legal discrimination, violence, and periodic massacres called pogroms. They were barred from owning land in some places, barred from certain professions in others, forced to live in designated areas called ghettos, and subjected to cycles of tolerance and persecution depending on who was in power.
In the late 1800s a movement called Zionism emerged among Jewish people primarily in Europe. Zionism held that Jewish people needed their own country — a place where they would be safe from persecution and could govern themselves. The movement's founder, Theodor Herzl, argued that Jewish people could never be fully safe as minorities in other people's countries no matter how assimilated they became.
Zionists identified the ancient Jewish homeland — the land then called Palestine under Ottoman and later British control — as the site for this Jewish state. Jewish immigration to Palestine increased significantly in the early 1900s. By 1947 approximately 600,000 Jewish people lived in Palestine alongside approximately 1.2 million Arab Palestinians.
Then came the Holocaust.
Between 1933 and 1945 Nazi Germany systematically murdered six million Jewish people — approximately one third of all Jewish people in the world. The scale of that genocide — the deliberate industrial murder of an entire people — shocked the world and made the case for a Jewish homeland feel not just desirable but urgently necessary. Where else could Jewish people go after what had just happened to them in Europe?
The pressure to establish a Jewish state became overwhelming after World War Two ended in 1945.
THE UNITED NATIONS PLAN
In 1947 the newly formed United Nations — which had been established after World War Two to prevent future conflicts — took up the question of Palestine. Britain, which had controlled Palestine since World War One, told the UN it could no longer manage the territory and wanted to hand it back.
The UN proposed a partition plan in November 1947. The plan divided Palestine into two states — one Jewish and one Arab — with Jerusalem placed under international administration because it was holy to Jews, Muslims, and Christians simultaneously.
Under the plan Jewish people would get approximately 56 percent of the land — including much of the more fertile coastal area and the Negev desert. Arab Palestinians would get approximately 44 percent — including most of the West Bank and Gaza.
Jewish leaders accepted the partition plan. They were getting a state — something they had been working toward for decades.
Arab leaders rejected it. Their position was that the land was Arab land and that Jewish immigrants had no right to claim any portion of it as a separate state. They believed the UN had no authority to divide the land without the consent of the majority population — which was Arab.
Both positions made sense from each side's perspective. That is what made the situation so impossible.
THE WAR OF 1948
On May 14 1948 Jewish leaders declared the establishment of the State of Israel. It was the day before the British mandate over Palestine was set to expire.
The United States recognized Israel eleven minutes after the declaration — the first country to do so. The Soviet Union recognized Israel three days later.
The following day — May 15 1948 — Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon invaded. The Arab armies said they were fighting to prevent the partition of Arab land. Israel called the war its War of Independence.
The war lasted until early 1949. Israel won. By the time armistice agreements were signed Israel controlled approximately 78 percent of the land — significantly more than the UN partition plan had allocated. The remaining 22 percent was divided between Egypt which controlled Gaza and Jordan which controlled the West Bank.
No Palestinian state was established. The Arab Palestinian community that had lived in the land had been promised by Arab leaders that they would return after the Arab armies won. They did not win.
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE PALESTINIANS
During and after the 1948 war approximately 700,000 Palestinians — more than half the Arab Palestinian population — fled or were expelled from their homes.
Some fled in fear of the fighting. Some were expelled by Israeli forces. Some left after hearing about massacres — the most notorious was at the village of Deir Yassin in April 1948 where approximately 100 to 120 Palestinian civilians were killed by Jewish paramilitary forces. The violence spread fear and many Palestinians left expecting to return when the fighting stopped.
They were not allowed to return. Israel passed laws preventing Palestinian refugees from reclaiming their property. The villages many of them had come from were demolished or repopulated by Jewish immigrants. The 700,000 Palestinians who left ended up in refugee camps in the surrounding countries — Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon — and in Gaza and the West Bank.
Palestinians call what happened in 1948 the Nakba — Arabic for catastrophe. It is the defining event of Palestinian national identity the way the Holocaust is the defining event of modern Jewish identity. Both happened in the same decade. Both shaped everything that came after.
The Palestinian refugee population and their descendants now number approximately 5.9 million people — confirmed by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. Most have never been able to return to the specific places their families came from. The question of what happens to Palestinian refugees — whether they have a right to return and if so how — has been one of the central unresolved issues in every peace negotiation since 1948.
WHAT ISRAEL SAYS AND WHAT PALESTINIANS SAY
Israel's position is that the 1948 war was a war of survival imposed on a newly established state by surrounding Arab armies. Israel says the Palestinian refugee crisis was a result of that war — a war Israel did not start — and that Palestinian leaders and Arab states bear significant responsibility for the outcome. Israel points out that approximately 850,000 Jewish people were expelled from Arab countries after 1948 and were absorbed into Israel. Israel says it has the right to exist as a Jewish state in the Jewish ancestral homeland.
Palestinian leaders say the partition plan was unjust because it gave the majority of the land to a minority population — Jewish immigrants who had arrived mostly in the previous 50 years — at the expense of the Arab majority that had lived there for centuries. Palestinians say the refugee crisis was caused by deliberate expulsion not voluntary flight and that international law gives refugees the right to return to their homes.
Both of those positions have elements confirmed by history. Both have elements that are disputed.
WHY 1948 STILL MATTERS TODAY
Everything in the current conflict connects back to 1948.
Hamas and Hezbollah both trace their founding grievances to 1948 and the Palestinian displacement. The Palestinian refugee question is unresolved 75 years later. The borders established by the 1948 armistice are disputed. The question of whether a Palestinian state will ever be established — alongside Israel or instead of it — is the central unresolved political question of the conflict.
When you hear the phrase two-state solution that refers to an agreement where Israel and a Palestinian state exist side by side — roughly the arrangement the UN proposed in 1947 that was rejected and never implemented. When you hear the phrase right of return that refers to the Palestinian demand that refugees from 1948 and their descendants be allowed to return to their original homes — a demand Israel rejects because it would change the demographic character of Israel as a Jewish state.
Those two unresolved questions — borders and refugees — have been at the center of every peace negotiation since 1948. No negotiation has resolved them.
Next in the series: What Is Hamas — where it came from, what it wants, and what happened on October 7.
Sources: United Nations confirmed partition plan vote November 1947 and armistice agreements 1949 · Holocaust Museum confirmed six million Jewish people killed and Holocaust timeline · Britannica confirmed Zionism origins and Herzl · Library of Congress confirmed British mandate history · AP confirmed refugee count at 700,000 and UNRWA 5.9 million descendants · BBC confirmed Deir Yassin massacre and village demolitions · CFR confirmed Israel recognition by U.S. and USSR · National Archives confirmed UN partition plan percentage allocations
Now you know. Middle East Explained Series at readida.com