The aftermath of the partition resolution of November 1947, was the first phase of war in Palestine, the first phase which was a civil war between the Jews and the Arabs in Palestine which lasted from December 1947 until May 1948. The second phase that which begins in May 1948 is no longer a civil war between the Jews and the Arabs in Palestine, but a struggle between the Israeli army established in independent Israel, and the invading armies of the neighboring Arab states. The Arabs rejected partition. For them, it was a case of injustice that was totally unacceptable. And therefore, the Arabs went to war against this UN resolution with the objective of scuttling its implementation. In this first phase of the war, external Arab forces also participated, though not the regular armies of the Arab states. But the invasion of Palestine by an Arab army known as the Arab Liberation Army, which had a few thousand fighters, which joined the Palestinians in their fight against the Jewish population in Palestine. The first phase of the war was a fight for the roads of Palestine. The fight for the control of the territory, in which the Jews were in a very vulnerable situation. It was extremely difficult for the Jews to control the roads of Palestine when there were significant Arab populations interspersed between the Jewish residential parts of Palestine. And by March 1948 with the great difficulty of maintaining control of the roads, it looked as though the Jews were on the verge of defeat. And indeed in March 1948, the United States suggested that the idea of partition be abandoned. And that a U.N. trustee should be imposed on Palestine. Partition, they thought, was not working. These were very undesirable developments, from the Jewish point of view. If there was to be no partition, they would be no state for the Jewish people. The British in the meantime were preceding with the withdrawal of their forces from Palestine. But on the Jewish side, there was a dire situation of panic, where Jerusalem with the Jewish population of a hundred thousand, was under siege, completely cut off from the rest of the Jewish community in Palestine. The policy of sending convoys along the roads of Palestine to link up the different Jewish sections of Palestine was ineffective, and it was very easy for Arab irregulars at any given point on the way to cut off Jewish traffic from one point to another. The Jewish side had to change tactics. And this called for the implementation of new plans. The most important of these was the implementation of a plan of offense which was called, Plan D. And Plan D was implemented by the Jewish forces in April of 1948 in an effort by organized offensives of regular forces to control all of the territory of the Jewish State. That meant the conquest of Arab towns and villages that were inside the Jewish state, something the Jewish forces had never done in the struggle for Palestine until that point. This gave rise to very important questions such as, what is to be done with the Arab population, in these villages and towns that are conquered by the Jewish forces? According to Plan D, this population was to remain in place, unless they resisted the Jewish occupation. And if they did resist, it was possible to remove them. Plan D was implemented in April, and allowed for the opening of the road to Jerusalem. And allowed for the conquest of territory that enabled the Jews to prepare effectively for the expected invasion of the Arab regular armies. [SOUND] This was the turning point of the war. This was the transition from the defensive to the offensive by the Jewish forces. And this was the very effective use of the Jewish force capabilities. The ability to wage concentrated offensive that were much harder for the Arabs to resist. Essentially, the Jews in this struggle in April, won the fight for the approaches to Jerusalem. And Jerusalem's Jewish population was linked up to the rest of the Jewish community in Palestine, and the siege was ended. [SOUND] But in the struggle, there were some unprecedented clashes of extreme violence between the Jews and the Arabs in Palestine. One of these was the infamous battle in the village of Deir Yassin just outside Jerusalem. Where Jewish forces again of the right wing underground of the Irgun carried out a massacre of the Arabs in the village of Deir Yassin. For this massacre, revenge was taken on the Jews at least twice. Once, in the massacre of a convoy of doctors and nurses, going from one side of Jerusalem to the Hadassah Hospital on the other side of Jerusalem, where nearly 100 doctors and nurses were murdered by the Arabs. A month later, the Jewish settlement area of the Etzion Bloc was overrun by Arab forces. And many of the Jewish defenders who were taken prisoner were massacred as well. There was an initial exaggeration of the losses of Deir Yassin. And it, it was said that more than 200 Arabs had been killed in that, massacre. In fact, the numbers were far less. Somewhere around 100, but the report on Deir Yassin, that was made in the Arab media at the time, exaggerated the losses actually in an effort to convince the Arab population to remain, to stand and fight. By exaggerating the losses, the attempt was to convince the Arabs that this would be your fate if you did not stand up and fight to the Jews. But that was not the effect of this effort. The effect of this propaganda effort was actually to encourage more Arab flight and was one of the turning points in the war in the creation of the acceleration of the refugee problem. [SOUND] But it was the fight for the breakthrough to Jerusalem and incidents like Deir Yassin and the creation of the Arab refugee program as a consequence, that popular Arab pressure on Arab governments to go to war increased a pace. [SOUND] Under the pressure of war, Arab society was on the verge of collapse. The leadership was still outside the country. And as Arab society continued to falter, so the Jews continued to organize the government machinery of the state, they were about to declare. The Jews had unquestionably won this part of the war. And Israel declared its independence on May the 14th, 1948 as the British mandate came to an end. And as the last of British soldiers left Palestine forever.
