was not. In November of 1947, the United Nations passed a resolution which effected such a partition and the British began the withdrawal of troops from Palestine. As these troops pulled out, Arab military bands began attacking Jewish settlements and both sides began expanding their existing military forces; by May of 1948, open warfare broke out in Palestine.
The military forces of both sides were rather small, by European standards, and lacked uniform training. Overall, the Jewish forces enjoyed a higher degree of training then most of the Arab forces and could field more men than the Palestinian Arabs. The Haganah, the underground Army of the Jewish Agency, was the official armed force of the Zionist movement and could muster 4,000 regulars and 37,000 reservists. The Irgun was a paramilitary organization which had carried out small-scale attacks against Arab and British interests during the 1930s and 1940s; it contained about 2,000 men in 1947. The main problem suffered by the Jewish forces was a shortage of weapons: there were not enough small arms to equip all of the reservists and there was a complete lack of artillery or armor in the Spring of 1948.
While the Arabs lacked the numbers of well-trained men possessed by the Jews, they had the single best-trained force in the Middle East, the Arab Legion. The Arab Legion had been trained by the British Army and in 1948 was still commanded by British Army officers. These officers had transformed the Legion from a desert frontier force into a modern army by combining British discipline and organization with the inherent qualities of the Bedouin. The Legion was organized into three brigade groups, each possessing infantry, armor, and artillery elements. The next strongest Arab force was the British-trained Egyptian Army, which eventually committed 5,000 troops to the fighting in Palestine. Syria eventually committed 8,000 troops, Lebanon committed 2,000, and Iraq co...