The 1948 Palestine War, also known as the War of Independence to Israelis (people from Israel), was a war between the new state of Israel, east Israelian Arabs, and the other states around Israel. The war began in 1947 after the announcement of the end of the British Mandate in Palestine (the British control of the region) and the separation of the land into two countries of the same size. By the end of the war in 1949 Israel had expanded (made bigger) its land beyond its given borders. The Arab state created in the UN Partition Plan (UN Separation Plan) never came into existence as its two largest parts of land, the Gaza Strip (small piece of land south of Palestine on the coast) and the West Bank (region east of Jerusalem and west of the Jordan River), went into the control of Egypt and Jordan one by one. The war continues to be an issue in the Middle East today. For Israelis, it shows the change from the Yishuv (the Jewish group in Palestine) to the state of Israel (even though the War of Independence took place). Other countries had to deal with the idea of loss and the difficulties of local arguments caused by the creation of a special Jewish State in a highly Arab region. Palestinians remember the war as The Nakba ("lit. Catastrophe," , "al-Nakba"), the war that broke up a growing nation and pushed its people away.