Arab-Israeli War Research Articles

The Development of the Jordanian National Guard in the 1950s

After the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Palestinians living in the West Bank began to infiltrate Israel. These infiltrations were characterised by robberies and break-ins, and sometimes the killing of Israelis. Israel responded to these actions with military raids and harm to the civilian population in the villages of Jordan from which these infiltrators set out and crossed the border. As a result, a defensive Jordanian National Guard was developed. Shaul Bartal presents the Jordanian military concept behind the Jordanian National Guard and outlines its military successes in repelling Israeli attacks in the period preceding the 1956 Suez Crisis. ◼

Semites, Antisemites, and Bernard Lewis: The Life and Afterlife of a Seminal Book

Abstract: In 1986, Bernard Lewis published a highly influential book, Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice . For Lewis, who was then the pre-eminent British-American historian of the Islamic world, the book represented a departure from his prior research agenda. Although Lewis was Jewish, his scholarly work had touched little on Jews. In this book (and its companion, The Jews of Islam ), Lewis portrayed the legacy of Islam as one of broad toleration of Jews, tinged with contempt but void of hatred. He traced the outbreak of virulent antisemitism among Arabs not to the tradition of Islam, but to the influence of European and especially Nazi antisemitism. This interpretation may have been inspired and reinforced by Lewis's own personal exposure to Arab antisemitism during the Second World War and in the aftermath of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

A New Member of BRICS — Egypt

The article analyzes the political, economic and cultural development of Egypt over several millennia. It is claimed that Egypt is an ancient civilization, the «heart» of the Arab world and a recognized regional leader. The author explores the history of various state entities that existed on the territory of modern Egypt in the era of the Ancient World, Antiquity, the Middle Ages and Modern times. The emphasis is consistently placed on the rule of the pharaohs, Egypt’s presence in the Persian and especially the Greco-Roman world, the periods of the Arab conquest, Ottoman and British rule, the functioning of the independent Kingdom of Egypt and the Arab Republic of Egypt that succeeded it in 1953. The article contains a detailed overview of key events in the country’s internal life over the past 70 years, as well as Cairo’s activities in the international arena, including participation in the Arab-Israeli wars, relations with global and regional actors in the second half of the XX – early XXI centuries, the current position of the state as one of the leaders of the African continent. It is indicated that Egypt ranks first in Africa in terms of GDP, third in terms of population, has serious scientific and technical potential and advanced financial system by regional standards, actively attracts foreign investment and new technologies. In the field of foreign policy, Egypt, while maintaining relations with Western powers, is intensely cooperating with new centers of power, including Russia. The author concludes that today the Arab Republic of Egypt is a powerful regional actor that is diversifying its foreign policy and economic ties, as reflected by the country’s entry into the BRICS.

SOVIET SERVICEMEN IN LOCAL WARS OF THE 2nd HALF OF THE 20th CENTURY (ON THE EXAMPLE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF BELARUS): HISTORICAL AND STATISTICAL ASPECT

The article contains the description of main directions of the study of the representatives of Belarus who took part in local wars and military conflicts in 1950 – 1980th on the territory of foreign states as Soviet servicemen and civilian specialists. Author describes how to detect the main categories of warriors (military advisers, military specialists, interpreters, etc.; officers, junior commanders, privates) in different countries, the specifics of Soviet participation in different military conflicts and it’s intensification at different stages. For example the author uses wars in Vietnam, Angola, Ethiopia and Arab-Israeli wars.

In-Between Categories: Documenting Greek Children’s Legal Belonging in the Suez Canal Region

This paper looks at the complex manner in which children were documented in Ottoman Egypt and their access to citizenship later in postcolonial Egypt. It discusses the making of social and political categories, like citizenship and statelessness, and how Greeks moved through those categories. This paper also analyzes how these categories were imposed, first by the Ottoman Empire and then by the Egyptian nation-state. The end of the Ottoman Empire in 1922, and the declaration of the Egyptian Republic in 1953, the Suez Crisis in 1956, the Arab-Israeli Wars in 1967 and 1973, and the new labor laws of the 1950s and 1960s, among other events, impacted Greeks and others who lived in Egypt at that time. The impact among Greeks in Suez Canal cities was particularly evident in the community’s cohesion, as most evacuated the cities in 1967 with almost everyone else following in 1973. These economic and political factors, and the social processes the community underwent, defined Greek children’s relation with the Egyptian postcolonial state.

Not Your Good Germans: Holocaust Memory, Anti-Fascism, and the Anti-Zionism of the Jewish New Left

Abstract It is often assumed that the 1967 Arab–Israeli War and the emergence of Black Power engendered a split between Jews and the New Left. Some understand the rise of Holocaust memory in the late 1960s as an expression of Jewish nationalism, while others locate increased public expression of Holocaust memory within the context of a late 1960s Jewish revival. Either way, both narratives assume the tension between left-wing Jews and Black Power and anti-imperialism, and locate a new American Jewish commonsense of Jewish nationalism abroad and a quickening of Jewish identity politics at home. Yet most prominent Jewish radicals of the 1960s and early 1970s – from Abbie Hoffman to David Gilbert – did not agree. Not only did much of the Jewish New Left in organisations such as SDS and the SWP continue to back the anti-Zionist BPP, many deployed Holocaust and Red Scare memory to formulate their revolutionary global politics.

The Land for Peace Message Between Israel and Jordan: The Case of Baqura and Ghamr

Israel has reached historic agreements in its sought-after objective of recognition—each unique. There is a similarity between agreements between Israel and neighboring states. These agreements were with Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994) . In both these, land for peace was an element. That is a legalistic interpretation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 adopted on November 22, 1967, in the aftermath of the Arab–Israeli War of 1967. There are two arguments on the land for peace concept. One is that there were more historical and significant reasons for peace than land. The other is that every millimeter of land is significant and not overlooked. Looking at both, this article examines the agreement with Jordan, focusing on two small farmland areas in the border areas referred to as Baqura and Ghamr in Arabic and Naharayim and Tzofar in Hebrew. The agreement was a land lease for 25 years (1994–2019). It could have been extended after that, yet Jordan called for its return, which Israel accepted. This is examined under four headings: Where did the land come from? The Israel–Jordan peace treaty; legal viewpoint; and private ownership versus state sovereignty. The take-out from such a message of land for peace examination is to bear the findings in mind for future agreements with Israel on how much land for peace, where, how, and why. The bottom line is that strong leadership and issues other than land may be more important in achieving a peace treaty, yet land for peace is a strong message.

קיבוץ ניצנים במלחמת העצמאות: ההיבט האנושי

In this study, I examine new aspects regarding the state of Kibbutz Nitzanim during the First Arab-Israeli War. Based on a microhistory approach of bottom-up and inside-out research, this article sheds light on the day-to-day reality in the Kibbutz, which included enthusiastic work and anxiety; feelings of discrimination and pride; bitterness and elation; all woven together to reflect people's natural – and occasionally touching – reactions. Most surviving documents of that time, such as official letters, journals, telegrams, and personal memoires, can be found at the Massuah Archive, the IDF and Defense Establishment Archives, and the Kibbutz Archive, and these have been the basis of my study. This archival material, as well as the nature of the connections that kibbutz members had with each other and themselves, shed light on the relations they formed with the enforcements, the regional brigade (Givati), and the political-security establishment. These relations deeply affected the spirit of Nitzanim residents during the siege and played a big part in determining the results of the battle over the position. Over the years, many profound discussions were held over the 1948 battle of Nitzanim. Thus far, this dispute over the reasons for the fall of Nitzanim and who was to blame for it, has left out a description of the 'simple people's' daily lives in the kibbutz. In this article, I aim to mend this. According to my findings, ordinary life (during this emergency) was highly influential and affected the endurance of soldiers there. For example, we can find descriptions of shows of leadership and solidarity alongside disciplinary infractions and despair. This polarity would eventually be conducive to the downfall of Kibbutz Nitzanim, which was captured on June 7th, 1948.

Modern Salafism in Bint al-Shāṭiʾ’s Journey to the Ḥijāz

In 1972, the Egyptian literary scholar and Islamic thinker, ʿᾹʾisha ʿAbd al-Raḥmān (known by the epithet Bint al-Shāṭiʾ), published a highly informative account of her pilgrimage journeys, ʿUmra and Ḥajj, respectively, under the title, Arḍ al-muʿjizāt: riḥla fī jazīrat al- ʿArab (Land of Miracles: Journey in the Arabian Peninsula, 1951 and 1972). The article argues that Bint al-Shāṭiʾ’s pilgrimage account should be read in light of the political and economic changes that the Arab and Islamic world was undergoing at that time. Western Imperialism, and the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and its aftermath, gave more impetus to Islamic revivalism, and Bint al-Shāṭiʾ was one of its proponents. Her oeuvre on Islam and anti-Zionism attests to her revivalist project. As a Salafist thinker well versed in history, Bint al-Shāṭiʾ advocates a return to the original Islam. Only through that return to the Qur’ān and Sunna and strong devotion to the umma can Muslims regain their strength and defeat the State of Israel. Bint al-Shāṭiʾ uses the communal aspect of pilgrimage to readdress the concept of Jihᾱd that should not only be confined to Ḥajj and ʿUmra, but equally performed against social and political injustices, such as the marginalization of women and the Israeli aggression against Palestinians. The article thus contends that Bint al-Shāṭiʾ’s pilgrimage narrative is a key component of her commitment literature.

Crossing under Fire: The Israeli 143d Armored Division at the Suez Canal, 1973

The performance of the Israeli 143d Reserve Armored Division in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, also known as the Yom Kippur War, provides a compelling example of a combined arms force that recovered from initially devastating losses to enable a complicated, if high-risk, counteroffensive across the Suez Canal to seize strategic initiative and end the war on favorable terms. This achievement, which can be examined through the operational tenets of agility, convergence, endurance, and depth, holds insights for modern militaries as gap-crossing operations remain a central requirement for Joint forces to achieve offensive success in major campaigns.

Italian Catholics and the June 1967 War: A Turning Point

ABSTRACT: This article examines the debate in the Italian Catholic world which erupted during the Arab-Israeli war of June 1967. At the time, Italy was governed by the Christian Democrats, a Catholic-based party in a center-left coalition and the Italian electorate leaned heavily towards Israel, as newspapers, magazines and many politicians feared a possible resurgent genocide against the Jews. Only a few important but minority public figures took radically different positions: Foreign Minister Amintore Fanfani and, more moderately, Prime Minister Aldo Moro together with their allies in the party. After the end of the war, many Italian Catholics changed their minds: Israel no longer risked "a new holocaust," and the tragedy of the Palestinian people became obvious.

Italian Catholics and the June 1967 War: A Turning Point

ABSTRACT: This article examines the debate in the Italian Catholic world which erupted during the Arab-Israeli war of June 1967. At the time, Italy was governed by the Christian Democrats, a Catholic-based party in a center-left coalition and the Italian electorate leaned heavily towards Israel, as newspapers, magazines and many politicians feared a possible resurgent genocide against the Jews. Only a few important but minority public figures took radically different positions: Foreign Minister Amintore Fanfani and, more moderately, Prime Minister Aldo Moro together with their allies in the party. After the end of the war, many Italian Catholics changed their minds: Israel no longer risked "a new holocaust," and the tragedy of the Palestinian people became obvious.

An unfortunate ally of the United Arab Republic.The People’s National Army of the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war

This paper discusses the combat potential of the People’s National Army of the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria in the 1960s, with a particular focus on its operations during the 1967 Arab-Israeli conflict and the consequences of that war for the further development of the Algerian armed forces. In view of the language barrier and the impossibility of conducting queries in the Algerian archives, the author relied on briefing notes prepared by the military attaché office at the Embassy of the People’s Republic of Poland in Algiers in 1964–1967. Although the military attaché did not engage in any intelligence activities against the host country and was confined to gathering information by legal means, he was nevertheless able to obtain valuable data on the PNA. That information adds to the knowledge of the Algerian armed forces and coincides with the relevant literature in English, offering a valuable supplement to the latter. The analysis of the source material demonstrates that although the PNA presented itself asone of the three strongest armies on the African continent on paper, its combat potential was seriously undermined by the country’s backwardness and internal instability, which adversely affected the organizational structure of the armed forces and deprived them of sufficiently numerous, trained reserves. This became acutely apparent in June 1967.

Towards a Shared Practice of Encampment: An Historical Investigation of UNRWA and the UNHCR to 1967

Abstract This article reconsiders refugee studies’ longstanding commitment to the notion of a near-total separation between the UNHCR and UNRWA through an historical investigation of both organizations’ early approaches to refugee encampment. Without disputing the importance of the historical and institutional divisions between the two, it seeks to point out that with respect to the practice of encampment, the two agencies gradually drew nearer to each other during their first two decades of operation, as the UNHCR extended its reach into the decolonizing world and UNRWA expanded its operations across the Middle East. The parallels became particularly clear in 1967, when the ‘Protocol on the Status of Refugees’ formalized the UNHCR’s encampment-focused expansion into the decolonizing world at roughly the same time that the second Arab-Israeli war created the conditions for UNRWA to enshrine encampment as a more or less permanent institutional strategy.

Rooted Challenges: Palestinian Refugees’ Right to Work in Lebanon

Abstract Since the Arab-Israeli War of 1948, the Palestinian refugees are still waiting to exercise their right of return, which was articulated in General Assembly Resolution 194 and approved by dozens of international resolutions. Despite the wait, Palestinian refugees continue to live in unsustainable conditions in many host countries. In these waiting stations, they are still deprived of many rights. Perhaps Lebanon is one of the most extreme waiting stations in depriving Palestinian refugees their rights, especially the right to work. Indeed, Palestinians are facing considerable obstacles to exercise their right to work in Lebanon because of policies and regulations enacted by the Lebanese government which limit this right. This paper attempts to identify the various Lebanese partisan and sectarian points of view that stand in the way of granting Palestinian refugees their right to work and the recent administrative attempts of the Lebanese government (2021) to grant them this right. In addition, it uncovers the legal and political obstacles faced by these attempts. This paper highlights the continued need of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon for various social, political and international actions to grant them their basic rights in order to preserve human dignity, which cannot be achieved without these rights.

Jesus the Jew: Survey on the Cliché in Its Context

This essay pursues the studies pertaining to the Quest for the Historical Jesus, which began in the Enlightenment era, and focuses on the dominant discourse of this quest in the present-day scholarly works on Jesus the Jew. The late-coming acceptance of the Jewishness of Jesus is now a scholarly cliché. In the context of the Gospels, to say “Jesus was a Jew” is not a really shocking or unexpected idea. The problem with the Jewishness of Jesus is why it took until the 1970s for this idea to develop. The second problem is how the assertion of the Jewishness of Jesus could develop so tremendously in the contemporary academy. That is a difficult question to answer within the borders of mere theology. Therefore, in this essay, I will have recourse to the help of politics and anthropology, and ultimately will claim that the changing of the main discourse in the New Testament scholarship on Jesus the Jew has happened for several reasons, but the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli Wars and the Prague Spring of 1968 have played more important roles than others, such as multiculturalism, the Second Vatican Council, and neoliberalism. These two events might show us the motivation for the sudden but widely accepted alteration. With the rise of the Jesus the Jew emphasis in Historical Jesus Studies, the intensity of Holocaust studies has also increased. Whereas until the 1970s there was no significant concentration of work on the Holocaust, since the 1970s this trend has been reversed and has taken a dominant place in modern academia. The Holocaust narrative has also been valorised by the changing geopolitics of the world, which has also influenced Historical Jesus Studies. With the rise of Israel in the region as a result of the Arab-Israeli wars, which made Israel one of the countries that could serve the world system, the emphasis on the Holocaust and Jesus the Jew became a kind of propaganda in the academy. However, it is not these movements that have ensured the success of this wind change. The event that led to the thawing of the Cold War was the Prague Spring of 1968. The ideal of a Socialism outside the example of the Soviet Union, which was trying to be created in Czechoslovakia, was crushed by Soviet tanks. Since the Soviet Union itself destroyed this attempt to heal the corruption within itself, the Soviet reaction must be seen as the suicide of Socialism. It is for this reason that the second power of the Cold War period ideologically withdrew from the scene. The crushing of the Prague Spring led to a spring in a different field of modern academia: the Quest for the Historical Jesus and Holocaust Studies.

Curriculum Choices for Refugees: What UNRWA’s History Can Tell Us about the Potential of UN Education Programs to Address Refugees’ ‘Unknowable Futures’

Abstract Quality education can help refugees navigate their ‘unknowable futures’. Yet, the potential of many education programs to fulfil this promise is shaped by the varied and at times, conflicting interests inherent in aid policy and practice. This article explores these tensions through a historical examination of UNRWA’s education program in the wake of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. I show how an embedded state-centric approach to policy limited the UN’s influence over the education it provided to Palestine refugees. This manifested through a narrow focus on access to education, and refugees’ ability to get jobs, at the expense of education’s social and political roles. I argue that this case has wider resonance for understanding the institutional dynamics of global refugee education policies and points to the need for a more nuanced understanding of claims by aid agencies that education necessarily helps refugees navigate their unknowable futures.

US-Israel relations at 75

ABSTRACT This article examines American Israeli relations since the establishment of the state in 1948 to the present. It presents a combination of historical and theoretical analysis. It uses the concept of ‘special relationship’ to analyse major issues in the evolution of bilateral relations including US support for Israel’s independence, Arab-Israeli wars, Palestinian terrorism, mediation, peace agreements, foreign aid, public opinion, attitudes of American Jews and a look at the future. The article reveals strong strategic ties between the two allies but also cracks that threaten to damage the special relationship, including the loss of bipartisanship support, new strategic priorities in US foreign policy, political polarisation, distancing among American Jews, demographic changes, and effects of the 2023 judicial reform in Israel.

The Shaping of Military Nursing in Israel: 1947–1958

Abstract: Unique realities influenced the development of the military nursing profession in Israel. While other countries, such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada, established military hospitals staffed by separately trained military nurses, conditions in Israel led to the development of interlocking military and civilian healthcare sectors, as the young country responded simultaneously to healthcare needs brought on by war, ongoing attacks on civilians, and massive waves of immigrants, including European Holocaust survivors and Jews from Arab countries. Relying on an analysis of documents in multiple archives, contemporaneous newspaper articles and interviews conducted with nurses who served in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War and the 1956 Sinai Campaign, this paper describes the development of the nursing profession in Israel through 1958, when military nursing was fully established as part of the civilian health sector, a reality that continues to the present.

The Shaping of Military Nursing in Israel: 1947–1958

Abstract: Unique realities influenced the development of the military nursing profession in Israel. While other countries, such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada, established military hospitals staffed by separately trained military nurses, conditions in Israel led to the development of interlocking military and civilian healthcare sectors, as the young country responded simultaneously to healthcare needs brought on by war, ongoing attacks on civilians, and massive waves of immigrants, including European Holocaust survivors and Jews from Arab countries. Relying on an analysis of documents in multiple archives, contemporaneous newspaper articles and interviews conducted with nurses who served in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War and the 1956 Sinai Campaign, this paper describes the development of the nursing profession in Israel through 1958, when military nursing was fully established as part of the civilian health sector, a reality that continues to the present.