The Arab Liberation Army (Jaysh al-Inqadh al-Arabi) was an army of volunteers from Arab countries led by Fawzi al-Qawuqji. It fought on the Arab side in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and was set up by the Arab League as a counter to the Arab High Committee's Holy War Army, though in fact the League and Arab governments prevented thousands from joining either force (Sayigh, 2000, p. 14).
At the meeting in Damascus on 5 February 1948 to organize Palest...
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The Arab Liberation Army (Jaysh al-Inqadh al-Arabi) was an army of volunteers from Arab countries led by Fawzi al-Qawuqji. It fought on the Arab side in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and was set up by the Arab League as a counter to the Arab High Committee's Holy War Army, though in fact the League and Arab governments prevented thousands from joining either force (Sayigh, 2000, p. 14).
At the meeting in Damascus on 5 February 1948 to organize Palestinian Field Commands, Northern Palestine including Samaria was allocated to Qawuqji's forces, although Samaria was de facto already under the control of Transjordan (Levenberg, 1993, p. 198).
The target figure for recruitment was 10,000, but by mid-March 1948 the number of volunteers to have joined the Army reached around 6,000 and did not increase much beyond this figure. The actual number deployed might have been as low as 3,500, according to General Safwat. Its ranks included Syrians, Lebanese, including a few hundred Druze and Circassians,...
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