For the natives of Palestine and their Arab brethren, the emergence of Israel meant disaster. Indeed, the Arabs refer to the 10month conflict with the new Jewish state and its aftermath as al-Naqba (the Disaster).
At the moment of Israel's birth some 200,000 to 250,000 Palestinians had already been driven from their homes and villages. This had taken place in the offensive begun by Jewish underground forces six weeks before the proclamation of the state.
While some of these refugees had been driven from land allocated to the Jewish state in the UN partition plan of 1947, most came from areas allotted to the Arab state which the Zionists sought to capture and annex.
This flood of hapless villagers compelled reluctant Arab governments to intervene 10 days after the Jewish state was declared. Their combined military strength was 24,000 ill-prepared troops.
They were no match for the 65,000 to 90,000 troops fielded by Israel, including 25,000 who had seen service with the British army during the second World War and 20,000 British-trained members of the Jewish Settlement Police.
Although generally portrayed as a victory for an Israeli "David" against an Arab "Goliath" and a "miracle", the 1948 Arab-Israeli war was decided by superior numbers, weapons and motivation on the Israeli side, factors which have decided all subsequent conflicts and made Israel the regional superpower.
By the time the ceasefire agreements were drawn up, Israel, which had been granted 55 per cent of Palestine in the partition plan, held 78 per cent of the country. Only 156,000 of the former 850,000 inhabitants of this area remained.
Although the UN General Assembly called upon Israel to repatriate the refugees, virtually none were allowed to return and during the first years of Israel's existence 385 of the 475 villages the refugees fled were bulldozed.
More than half the Palestinian population of 1.3 million was displaced, scattered between Gaza, the West Bank, Amman, Damascus, Tyre and Sidon. The presence of these defeated and dispirited refugees, living in makeshift encampments in Jordan, Syria and the Lebanon, deepened the searing sense of humiliation the Arabs felt at the rout of their armies and led, ultimately, to the overthrow of the corrupt regimes the people held responsible for the Naqba.
The first to go was the Syrian government, overthrown in 1949 in a series of army coups which lasted until the current President, Mr Hafez al-Assad, seized power in 1970. The second was Egypt's King Farouk, driven from power in 1952 by young army officers led by Gen Gamal Abdel Nasser, the man who inspired an entire generation with his call for "Arab unity" and independence. The third regime to be ousted was the Iraqi monarchy, in 1958, again by the army.
While the Naqba sowed the seeds of instability in the Arab world, the Palestinians, stunned by their dispersal, developed no national leadership, organised resistance or independent plan of action.
Instead, they relied on the Arabs to strive for the liberation of Palestine. Refugee youths attached themselves to various pan-Arab political parties in the vain hope that one or other Arab party would secure a military victory against Israel and lead them, like the Pied Piper, home to Acre, Ramleh or Safad. But this did not happen.
So, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, a small band of Palestinians, conspiring underground in Kuwait, formed a Palestinian liberation movement, Fateh. Its leader, Mr Yasser Arafat, believed that Palestinian guerrilla activities could serve as the vanguard of concerted Arab action.
This misreading of the situation helped precipitate the 1967 war and led to a second Naqba, when Israel occupied the remainder of Palestine, the West Bank and Gaza, as well as the Syrian Golan.
For the Palestinians and the Arabs this was a far greater disaster than that of 1948 because their new, populist leaders were responsible. After 1967 Israel could afford to lay down terms: the price for coexistence was recognition of the Jewish state within the borders of 1948. There could be no rolling back, no repatriation, no compensation. In 1967 Israel demonstrated that it was the major military power in the region and that it was in Palestine to stay. The Arabs came to terms on a formal basis with this harsh reality only at the Madrid peace conference of 1991.
Then, with the signing of the Oslo Accord between Israel and the Palestinians in 1993, they believed a solution was in sight involving Israeli withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967 in exchange for peace. But, when a Likud government committed to staying in the territories came to power in 1996, this expectation was dashed.
Once again the Middle East stands on the brink of al-Naqba.