By the end of the war of 1948, Israel controlled 77.4% of the land of Palestine, including much of the territory assigned to the Arab state. Jewish military activities, massacres and expulsion orders caused the depopulation of 418 Palestinian villages and the flight of 750,000 Palestinians (accounting for 60% of the Palestinian people). The Palestinian people thus became a nation of refugees. The Palestinians found themselves divided into four communities. Those remaining within the borders of what became Israel became a minority within the Israeli state. Residents of, and refugees who had fled to, the West Bank became citizens of Jordan, which occupied and later annexed the West Bank. Residents of, and refugees who had fled to, the tiny and suddenly overpopulated area of the Gaza Strip lived under Egyptian administration. The rest sought refuge in neighboring Arab countries (primarily Jordan, Lebanon and Syria) and elsewhere in the Diaspora. On 11 December 1948, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 194(III) which reaffirmed the right of Palestinians to return. To this day, however, Israel has prevented the Palestinian refugees, who today number approximately 4 million, from exercising this right.
In November 1947 the United Nations ordered the partition of Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state, and the end of the British Mandate by May 15, 1948. The Arab powers of the Middle East rejected the partition plan, and soon after Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion declared Israel a state on May 14, an inevitable war broke out between the surrounding Arab states and the newly and illegally created state of Israel, but by July 1949, the war ended with Israel as a winner, and was able to establish borders far beyond and much larger territory which was assigned to them by UN-Britain under the mandate.
