This paper will discuss the political and military aspects of the Arab-Israeli wars. The specific conflicts covered will be the 1948 War for Independence, the 1956 Sinai Crisis, the 1967 Six-Day War, the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and the 1982 invasion of southern Lebanon. Besides providing accounts of each conflict, the paper will also examine some of the long-term political and military trends which can be found in the wars. Finally, the paper will discuss some of the reasons for the consistent military successes of the Israelis.
After the First World War, Palestine was mandated to Great Britain by the League of Nations and the Treaty of Versailles. Conflict between the Palestinian Jews and Arabs was minimal, mainly because there were only 55,000 Jews in Palestine in 1920. The burgeoning Zionist movement tried to promote Jewish immigration into Palestine, but immigration did not really accelerate until the Nazi takeover in Germany in the 1930s. By 1939, the Jewish population in Palestine reached 450,000, one-third of the total Palestinian population. The Jewish community in Palestine was more organized than the Arab community, with communal organizations exercising governmental functions; overall, the Jews had a higher degree of political and economic maturity than the Arabs. The British grant of considerable religious autonomy had the effect of splitting the Arab population into separate Muslim, Christian, and Druze communities.
Conflict between the Arabs and Jews came naturally as Jewish immigration increased during the 1930s and 1940s, but it was exacerbated by contradictory British policies towards Palestine. In effect, the British ended up promising both communities their own separate states in the same geographical area. After the Second World War, plans were drawn up for the partition of Palestine into two separate states; most of the Jewish community was willing to accept such a partition, but the Arab community...