An army of volunteers, formed by the Arab League after the United Nations voted to partition British Mandate Palestine in late 1947. It was composed of Palestinian and other Arab volunteers and was led by an Iraqi officer, Fawzi al-Qawuqji, and Adib Shishakli, who later became president of Syria. The army’s mission was to defeat Zionism and to prevent partition. The army entered Palestine in January 1948. It briefly (May to October) controlled parts of western Galilee, but was defeated by Israeli forces by October and officially disbanded in March 1949. Its numbers were estimated at 6,000 by mid-March 1948, but might have been as low as 3,500. Volunteers were mainly Syrians, Lebanese, Palestinians, Iraqis, Jordanians, Bosniaks, Circassians, and Egyptian members of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Al-Qawuqji was an ally of King Abdullah of Transjordan. Both of them opposed the leadership of (Palestinian Jerusalemite) Mufti Hajj Amin al-Husseini, who wanted to establish an independent Palestinian state. The mufti’s forces were diminished, in part because of the role played by the Arab Liberation Army, and King Abdullah was able to annex parts of Palestine to Jordan. The Arab Liberation Army is also sometimes referred to as the Arab Salvation Army (jaysh al-inqadh).