Why did Israel win?
The simple reason for their victory was that the Israelis were always better trained, better prepared and better armed. Most of their weaponry came from the USA, which had supplied billions of dollars in aid every year since 1948. The Arab states had received weaponry and Advisers from the USSR, however as it is in any war, it’s is not how big your army is or how well supplied it is but how well they can handle pressure, violence, directions in the field and how they use their advantages. Israel spent more per capita on defence than any other country in the world and has larger proportion of its population as trained soldiers than any other country. This allowed them, unlike the Arab states that had a bigger population to call up troops from the reserves to increase their army to 300,000 to the Arab states 180,000. Though they seemed low on numbers in 1948, the Israeli defence forces were in fact very well prepared for war. David Ben-Gurion was one of those who had welded together various groups into the Israeli army. The Haganah was the official Jewish militia, formed with British help to enable the Jews in Palestine to defend themselves against attacks from Arabs. These fighters were given special anti-guerrilla training by British experts such as Orde Wingate. Moshe Dayan, who was to become a top Israeli General and later the Defence Minister, was trained by the British when he was in the Haganah.
