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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Israel
Index
United Nations checkpoint in the occupied territories,
on the road to Damascus
Courtesy Jean E. Tucker
A view of a Palestinian refugee camp in Gaza
Courtesy International Committee for the Red Cross (Jean-Luc Ray)
When Israel achieved its independence on May 14, 1948, the
Haganah became the de facto Israeli army. On that day, the country
was invaded by the regular forces of Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, and
Syria. Eleven days later, Israel's provisional government issued an
order that provided the legal framework for the country's armed
forces. The order established the official name Zvah Haganah Le
Yisrael and outlawed the existence of any other military force
within Israel.
The dissident Irgun and Stern Gang were reluctant to disband.
Fighting between Irgun and regular military forces broke out on
June 21 when the supply ship Altalena arrived at Tel Aviv
with 900 men and a load of arms and ammunition for the Irgun. The
army sank the ship, destroying the arms, and many members of the
Irgun were arrested; both organizations disbanded shortly
thereafter. A more delicate problem was how to disband the Palmach,
which had become an elite military unit within the Haganah and had
strong political ties to the socialist-oriented kibbutzim.
Nonetheless, David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister and
minister of defense, was determined to see the IDF develop into a
single, professional, and nonpolitical national armed force. It was
only through his skill and determination that the Palmach was
peacefully abolished and integrated into the IDF in January 1949.
The ranks of the IDF swelled rapidly to about 100,000 at the
height of the War of Independence. Nearly all able-bodied men, plus
many women, were recruited; thousands of foreign volunteers, mostly
veterans of World War II, also came to the aid of Israel. The newly
independent state rapidly mobilized to meet the Arab invaders; by
July 1948, the Israelis had set up an air force, a navy, and a tank
battalion. Weapons and ammunition were procured abroad, primarily
from Czechoslovakia. Three B-17 bombers were bought in the United
States through black market channels, and shortly after one of them
bombed Cairo in July 1948, the Israelis were able to establish air
supremacy. Subsequent victories came in rapid succession on all
three fronts. The Arab states negotiated separate armistice
agreements. Egypt was the first to sign (February 1949), followed
by Lebanon (March), Transjordan (April), and finally Syria (July).
Iraq simply withdrew its forces without signing an agreement. As a
result of the war, Israel considerably expanded its territory
beyond the United Nations (UN) partition plan for Palestine at the
expense of its Arab neighbors. Victory cost more than 6,000 Israeli
lives, however, which represented approximately 1 percent of the
population. After the armistice, wartime recruits were rapidly
demobilized, and the hastily raised IDF, still lacking a permanent
institutional basis, experienced mass resignations from its
war-weary officer corps. This process underscored the basic
manpower problem of a small population faced with the need to
mobilize a sizable army during a wartime emergency. In 1949, after
study of the Swiss reservist system, Israel introduced a
three-tiered system based on a small standing officer corps,
universal conscription, and a large pool of well-trained reservists
that could be rapidly mobilized.
In early 1955, Egypt began sponsoring raids launched by
fedayeen (Arab commandos or guerrillas) from the Sinai Peninsula,
the Gaza Strip, and Jordan, into Israel
(see
fig. 1). As the number
and seriousness of these raids increased, Israel began launching
reprisal raids against Arab villages in Gaza and the
West Bank (see Glossary)
of the Jordan. These retaliatory measures, which cost the
lives of Arab civilians and did little to discourage the fedayeen,
became increasingly controversial both within Israel and abroad.
Shortly thereafter Israeli reprisal raids were directed against
military targets, frontier strongholds, police fortresses, and army
camps.
In addition to these incidents, which at times became
confrontations between regular Israeli and Arab military forces,
other developments contributed to the generally escalating tensions
between Egypt and Israel and convinced Israeli military officials
that Egypt was preparing for a new war. Under an arms agreement of
1955, Czechoslovakia supplied Egypt with a vast amount of arms,
including fighter aircraft, tanks and other armored vehicles,
destroyers, and submarines. The number of Egyptian troops deployed
in Sinai along the Israeli border also increased dramatically in
1956. In July Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal; shortly thereafter
Egypt closed the Strait of Tiran, at the southern tip of Sinai, and
blockaded Israeli shipping.
Data as of December 1988
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