First they invaded; five Arab armies, from Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq all descended. Israel was a state newly formed of a small core of native Sabras from the first five Aliyas along with the battered survivors of the Holocaust and a small cadre of American and British WWII veteran volunteers. After two years of desperate fighting and a cumulative loss to Israel of over one and a half percent of its population, the conflicted ended in a stalemate, with Israel holding a swath of land measuring 9 miles in width at its narrowest, and 71 miles at its broadest, extending 263 miles from the Lebanon border in the north through the Negev Desert in the south.