Ben-Gurion’s Fight over Israel’s Military Was Not Just about Its Preparedness

Martin Kramer’s new essay in Mosaic is the most recent installment in a series by him reconsidering the events surrounding Israel’s declaration of independence in May 1948. As with its predecessors, the present essay, focusing on the military issue, has much of interest to say, though I fear that in the end it is less significant than his prior contributions.

The first Arab-Israeli war—which transformed the geopolitics of the Middle East—ran from November 1947 until July 1949, when the last of the armistice agreements between the newborn state of Israel and its Arab neighbors was signed. It roughly consisted of two parts: a civil war, from November 1947 until mid-May 1948, between the Arab inhabitants of Palestine (who later came to call themselves “Palestinians”) and the country’s Jewish community, followed by a conventional war, from May 1948 to July 1949, between the state of Israel and the neighboring Arab states.

The civil war began on November 30, 1947, with sporadic attacks by Palestine Arab militiamen on their Jewish neighbors. Some 1,700-1,800 Jews were eventually killed in that war. The conventional war began with the invasion of Palestine/Israel by armies of neighboring Arab states on May 15, 1948.