Few if any states in the world have faced challenges to their legitimacy and existence like the State of Israel. Many new states in the Third World emerged out of a crucible of struggle and violence waged against an imperial power (though a majority did not), but this fledgling state was forced simultaneously into both a communal war and a war against other territorial states. Israel fought at least three different types of foes – the Palestinian Arab community that threatened communication lines between the key Jewish population centers (particularly in the early stages of the 1948 war), Arab irregular forces (of which the Muslim Brethren on the southern front were arguably the most effective), and the Arab states of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon. The latter were by far the most formidable contestants (Ziv and Gelber 1999). Suffice it to say that the forces fielded by Israel’s major military foe, Egypt, penetrated within twenty miles of Tel-Aviv (the major Jewish population center) at the furthest point of their advance. At the other point of vulnerability, the Jordanian Arab Legion overwhelmed Israel’s newly established army in the Jewish Quarter in the old city of Jerusalem (ibid.).

Rarer still did such a war of independence continue for over fifty years, as is the case between Syria and Lebanon and Israel (which are, at least in a formal sense, still at war). Syria, in fact, continues through its Hizbullah proxies to wage war against it until the very act of writing. Israel’s War of Independence ended with the signing of mere armistices rather than peace agreements with Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. All three states, despite the bitter disagreements among them, were members of the Arab League, which, as a sizeable and growing bloc, dedicated itself collectively to undoing the results of the 1948 war, the most important of which was the creation of the Jewish state.