Quotes from Efraim Karsh

If such a state is to be established, it can only be established over our dead bodies.

The problem will be solved only in blood and fire. The Jews will soon be driven out.

It was to be divided into two distinct phases. The first began on 30 November 1947, the day after the adoption of the Partition Resolution, and ended on 14 May 1948 with the termination of the British Mandate.

It was essentially a civil war, conducted under the watchful eye and occasional intervention of the British Mandatory authorities, in which the Palestinian Arab community, assisted by a sizeable pan-Arab irregular force, sought to prevent its Jewish counterpart from laying the foundation of statehood in line with the UN resolution.

Thus ended the Iran-Iraq War, one of the longest, bloodiest and costliest Third World armed conflicts in the 20th century. After eight years of bitter fighting, untold casualties, and immeasurable suffering and dislocation, the two combatants were forced, out of sheer exhaustion and debilitation, to settle for the status quo ante existing in September 1980. Yet there was little doubt that neither of them viewed the ceasefire as the end of the conflict.

Secondly, given Iraq's position as the largest and most powerful Arab state in the Gulf, it was viewed by the revolutionary regime as the main obstacle to Iran's quest for regional hegemony. In the words of the influential member of the Iranian leadership, Hujjat al-Islam Sadeq Khalkhali: 'We have taken the path of true Islam and our aim in defeating Saddam Hussein lies in the fact that we consider him the main obstacle to the advance of Islam in the region.

Nor was Iraq's combat experience in the October War any more impressive: the armoured division that arrived at the Golan front ten days after the war began was ambushed by Israeli forces and lost some 100 tanks within a few hours.

The implications of this speech were not long in coming. On 22 September, emulating the brilliant Israeli gambit of the Six Day War in 1967, Iraqi aircraft pounded ten airfields in Iran in an attempt to destroy the Iranian air force on the ground. This failed, but the next day Iraqi forces crossed the border in strength and advanced into Iran in three simultaneous thrusts along a front of some 400 miles (644 km).