After rejecting the United Nations Partition Plan in 1947, which would have given approximately half of geographical Palestine to the Arabs, Palestinian Arabs officially became belligerents in the conflict that persists today. Rather than accept a Jewish state after five-and-a-half months of warfare, Palestinian Arabs called upon their brethren from seven surrounding countries to invade and crush the nascent Jewish state.

This decision to invade the new Jewish state on May 14, 1948, made by the Arab League on April 10, 1948, marked a watershed event, for it changed the rules of the conflict. With the pending Arab invasion following Israel’s declaration of independence, it is no exaggeration to say the new Jewish state’s very existence hung in the balance.

The new Jewish state found it imperative to eliminate all potential pockets of Arab resistance in key areas if it was to survive. Dislodging all Arab inhabitants from sensitive areas in proximity to Jewish settlements, establishing territorial continuity between blocs under Jewish control, and ensuring control of key transportation arteries were military necessities. As May 14 approached, Israel could not afford to risk a Fifth Column at its rear to add to all other aspects of its militarily inferior situation. The cost of defeat was hammered home by a stream of dire warnings from Arab capitals, with perhaps the most chilling for Israel coming from Jamal Al-Husayni as vice-chairman of the Arab Higher Committee [AHC], who publicly declared:

“The Arabs have taken into their own hands, the Final Solution of the Jewish problem. The problem will be solved only in blood and fire. The Jews will be driven out.”

Three years after world Jewry had lost a third of its people in the Holocaust, Israelis were not about to test whether Al-Husayni’s words were mere rhetoric or a real threat, and so they prepared for the worst.

The cost to Israel to halt the Arab onslaught and gain the upper hand was horrendous. During the first four weeks following the Arab invasion, 1,600 Israelis were killed—a quarter of all the war’s casualties. On a per capita basis, it was as if the U.S. military lost 80,000 soldiers in Iraq in one month.

Objectively, the claim that Palestinian Arabs were innocent bystanders ignores the facts. The sides in the conflict were not two rival empires or caliphs. It was a conflict between two national or ethnic groups. Palestinian Arabs represented one side in the conflict—and in fact the side responsible for starting the war.

The Palestinians were also responsible for escalating the war—a move that cost the Jews thousands of lives and Palestinians their homes. By their own behavior, Palestinians assumed the role of belligerents in the conflict, invalidating any claim to be hapless victims. Explains scholar Benny Morris:

“One of the characteristics of the Palestinian national movement has been the Palestinians’ view of themselves as perpetual victims of others: Ottoman Turks, British officials, Zionists, Americans—and never to appreciate that they are, at least in large part, victims of their own mistakes and iniquities.”