Well,it was a half truth for Peres to say that "the Arabs went to war". The last weeks of 1947 saw a number of aggressive actions by both Arabs and Jews.I responded with a link to a previous posting of mine, showing that the first Arab massacre of Jews occurred on the day after partition, to which Aaron responded:
There was not a Jewish attack before November 30th,but there was not an Arab attack in Haifa before the Irgun attack on December 7th.
So I went to the Palestine Post to see if there were any attacks against Jews by Arabs before December 7, 1947.
Here's what I found in date order:
Things did not appear to be idyllic in Haifa in the days after the Partition vote; at least one was killed (another Jew was killed by an Arab but it appeared to be an armed robbery) and the Jews lived in fear. And there were clearly numerous Arab attacks in that time period.