What would happen if The Arab alliances manages to win the 1948 war against the Zionists? How would the world react, especially the great powers who had supported the creation of a Jewish state? How would the history of the region develop after this?
What if Israel loses the 1948 war?
- Thread starter VictorVanBakker
- Start date
Easy.
There would be no Israel. If the Arabs won, then the Jews would have been expelled from Palestine, and there would be an Arab Palestine in its place.
There would be no Israel. If the Arabs won, then the Jews would have been expelled from Palestine, and there would be an Arab Palestine in its place.
A humanitarian disaster would probably ensue, why the Jews fought so hard against all odd? Because they knew no other country is going to give shelter to them. I don't think the Arabs would cause the second holocaust, "Push the Jews to the sea" Nasser rhetoric is a few years too earlier, that's asking the Great Powers to go there intervening.
Also, "Palestine" is going to be Arab, yes, but there'll be no State of Palestine, the area is going to be divided by the victors, which will be the hot spot for future wars.
Also, "Palestine" is going to be Arab, yes, but there'll be no State of Palestine, the area is going to be divided by the victors, which will be the hot spot for future wars.
There would be no Arab Palestine the whole thing would have been annexed by jordan.
in 1948, was there the extreme hatred between the Palestinians and Israelis that there is today? I wonder if you wouldn't have a Palestinian state with some Jewish enclaves, instead of the 'expulsion of all the Jews'... weren't there some Jewish enclaves already in Palestine for quite some time before 1948?
takerma
Banned
They were in low level state of war for a few decades at that point.
No I think Jews are screwed and bad. There will be no organized Holocaust most likely just some massacres(few tens of thousands killed, women raped that sort of thing) and full expulsion.
Yeah there is no palestinian state of any kind, Jordan becomes bigger basically. I wonder whose USSR and USA would back?
wait what? why do you think that would be? I'm assuming this is based on the false narrative that the foreign arab countries did all the fighting, which has been disproven historically by every credible academic. The majority, if not all of the fighting was done by local Palestinian arabs, with the foreign arab nations sending expeditionary forces that numbered no more than 10,000 men each.
I think an Independent Palestinian state, with Gaza to egypt and the west bank to Jordan, is much more likely.
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You'll have to avoid the tacit understandings between King Abdullah of Transjordan and the Jewish League which called for splitting Palestine between them. Transjordan was by far the strongest Arab army and the only one capable of actually defeating the Zionist/Israeli forces. In actuality, they weren't really trying to beat Israel, and only trying to secure the West Bank/Jerusalem.
Now, this shouldn't minimize that the Jordanian army *did* engage in massacres and ethnic cleansing of Jewish residents of the areas they invaded. And Jordanians and Israelis clashed over control of Jerusalem. But Transjordan had no interest in trying to seize the coast or the areas of heaviest Jewish settlement.
They're in the sea. Before the Americans or the British could properly react it would be over.
There was some really brutal rhetoric in the run up to the War for Independence. Some senior Arab leaders were spouting really serious threats like:
which the speakers probably saw as political statements, but many of the rank and file seemed to accept as straight up instructions.
See http://www.meforum.org/3082/azzam-genocide-threat for the entirety of the discussion with Pasha
There was some really brutal rhetoric in the run up to the War for Independence. Some senior Arab leaders were spouting really serious threats like:
which the speakers probably saw as political statements, but many of the rank and file seemed to accept as straight up instructions.
See http://www.meforum.org/3082/azzam-genocide-threat for the entirety of the discussion with Pasha
Is it possible at all though? They don't have large trained troops or a continuous supply of weapons and munitions. Most likely end up in a bloodier war, but more or less the same outcome.
At the same time of the war there was a massive operation going on to bring Jews to Israel/Palestine (or the camps on Cyprus) by sea, of course all illegal by British laws. If the war is really going bad it's not unreasonable to think that those same networks and boats might be used to evacuate Jewish civilians. To Cyprus?
Neither side was heavily armed. The Arab forces were better armed than the Israelis, and by a fair margain, but both were mainly small arms. The best force in the region was the Arab Legion, which was well equipped and consisted of two full brigades plus smaller formations, including armored car companies, and was very well trained and commanded by experienced British officers. The Egyptians were very potent on paper, but most of their forces were poorly trained.
If the Israeli militias, many of them fresh out of the refugee camps, had broken, or if the Arab Legion had been given an unlimited AO, instead of being held mainly in check by the Jordanian king (who main wanted to ensure his territorial desires were in hand), it could have gone quite badly indeed.
Given the political climate of the late 1940s it would have been far easier than say 1938. A portion of the recent emmigrants were still citizens of the nations they had come from & still had passports. They'd be able to wiggle back home. Temporarily a lot of them would be in refugee camps on places like Cyprus, Crete, Lybia - where ever the US & Britain had firm control and military bases.
Stalin might revive the effort for a Jewish enclave in Siberia. It would attractive to some of those of communist or socialist tendencies. The largest portion would drift off to North America, and a secondary group to S America. A few S American nations had been welcoming to Jews and that would have continued, at least those with a little cash & trade skills or professions the US in a fit of post WWII feel good had seen the selection of a Jewish woman as Miss America in 1946 & a lot of barriers to Jews were falling away internally. Their integration into the armed forces in both world wars vs Jewish regiments & divisions reduced barriers to holdouts like wealthy suburbs, country clubs, or clueless business owners/managers.
This influx of survivors of two 'expulsions' would have significant social and political effects on the US as the 1950s segued into the 1960s.
At least a portion of them.
700,000 Palestinians were expelled after the Israeli victory OTL (out of a population of 1 million Arabs and 500,000 Jews in prewar Palestine). There's really no reason to think the Arab forces wouldn't do the same treatment if they had won instead, and there were already massacres against Israeli settlements going on during the war.
I've seen it claimed that Stalin's anti-Semitism would prevent him from taking in any substantial number of Israeli refugees, especially considering how politicized they would be, with an ideology that was considered to be in opposition to Soviet communism. It's one thing to support them having their own country somewhere else and another thing entirely to bring them into your own country. But, it might be possible. Maybe he uses it as an excuse to deport Jews in the USSR to Siberia as well.
How vested was Britain in the idea of a no Jewish Israel? Or the opposite, on the other hand?
So basically a Jewish West Bank and Gaza Strip? That would just be terrible to say the least.
Some sort of international meditation would've happened. This is 3 years after the publication of the horrors of Auschwitz after all. No way in hell the international community is going to accept another large scale massacre of Jews.
If the Arabs somehow manage to coordinate a proper offensive (pretty much every single Arab state in the region wanted a piece of Palestine for one reason or another) and manage to contain the Zionists, I'd imagine some sort of siege would occur around Tel Aviv, Jaffa Haifa and maybe Acre. The Arab states squabble over the loot whilst the news of the ethnic cleansing undertaken by the Arab forces swing international opinion in favour of a meditated solution. Israel is established in a miniature version along the coastal strip from Tel Aviv to Haifa and maybe 10-20 kilometers inland.
Then the grand Arab coalition collapses into infighting over who gets to keep Jerusalem and the title of leader of the Arabist movement.
If the Arabs somehow manage to coordinate a proper offensive (pretty much every single Arab state in the region wanted a piece of Palestine for one reason or another) and manage to contain the Zionists, I'd imagine some sort of siege would occur around Tel Aviv, Jaffa Haifa and maybe Acre. The Arab states squabble over the loot whilst the news of the ethnic cleansing undertaken by the Arab forces swing international opinion in favour of a meditated solution. Israel is established in a miniature version along the coastal strip from Tel Aviv to Haifa and maybe 10-20 kilometers inland.
Then the grand Arab coalition collapses into infighting over who gets to keep Jerusalem and the title of leader of the Arabist movement.