Why did Israel and the neighboring Arab states fight the 1948 war?

The 1948 Arab-Israeli War was the culmination of long-standing tensions over the future of Palestine, which had been under British mandate since 1922.12

The conflict was primarily triggered by the United Nations Resolution 181, passed in 1947, which proposed partitioning the region into separate Arab and Jewish states. While the Jewish community accepted the plan as a legal basis for the establishment of Israel, the Arab community and the Arab League rejected it, viewing it as an injustice that ignored their aspirations for self-determination.2345

Following the UN vote, a civil war broke out between Jewish and Arab residents. When the British mandate officially ended and Israel declared independence on May 14, 1948, military forces from Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon entered the region to intervene. The Arab states sought to prevent the formation of a Jewish state, though their efforts were often uncoordinated and driven by varying national objectives. The war concluded with a series of armistice agreements in 1949, leaving Israel in control of more territory than the UN had originally proposed.1354