The First Truce ended on 8 July, with the Egyptian army initiating battle in the south. The following day the IDF went on the offensive in the northern and central fronts. In its subsequent counter-offensive in the south, codenamed ‘Mivtza An-Far’ (Operation Anti-Farouq), the IDF failed to establish a corridor from the Jewish-controlled Coastal Plain to the 20-odd, besieged Negev settlements but, together with the Negev Brigade, managed to expand its hold in the northern Negev approaches and overrun clusters of villages, including Masmiya al Kabira, al Tina, Qazaza, Tel as Safi, Qastina, Jaladiya, Juseir and Hatta, thinning the Egyptian army's line of fortifications from Majdal (Ashkelon) to the Hebron Hills (via Faluja and Beit Jibrin). In the north, in ‘Mivtza Dekel’ (Operation Palm Tree), the IDF conquered parts of the Galilee, including the towns of Shafa ‘Amr and Nazareth.

But the IDF's main effort was in the centre, where ‘Operation Dani’ was designed to fully open and secure the length of the Tel Aviv–Jerusalem road and to push back the Arab Legion from the vicinity of Tel Aviv by conquering the towns of Lydda and Ramle and, later, Latrun and Ramallah. Operation Dani attained only its first objectives, with the IDF conquering the Lydda–Ramle plain, including Lydda (today, Ben-Gurion) International Airport.

The IDF operations of 9–18 July, triggered by the Arabs' unwillingness to prolong the 30-day truce and, in the south, by the Egyptians' pre-emptive offensive, created a major new wave of refugees, who fled primarily to Jordanian-held eastern Palestine, and to Upper Galilee, Lebanon and the Egyptian-held Gaza Strip.