From the time it was established in March 1945, the Arab League took an active role in the Arab-Israeli conflict. By the end of World War II, the Palestinian Arabs were left leaderless, since Hajj Amin al-Husayni was in exile and spent the war years in Berlin actively collaborating with the Nazis, and his brother Jamal al-Husayni was interned in Southern Rhodesia. When the pact was signed, "The Arab League states collectively put their weight behind the basic demands of Palestine's Arabs but arrogated to themselves the right to select who would represent the Palestinians in their councils, so long as their country was not independent." (Benny Morris, Righteous Victims, 1999, p.173)

In November 1945, the Arab League reestablished the Arab Higher Committee as a supreme executive body of Palestinian Arabs but it fell apart due to infighting. In June 1946, the Arab League imposed upon the Palestinians the Arab Higher Executive (renamed in 1947 into Arab Higher Committee) with Hajj Amin al-Husayni as chairman and Jamal Hajj Amin al-Husayni as vice-chairman.

Five League members: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia coordinated the attack on the State of Israel in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and explicitly stated goal of the destruction of the newly-formed state. On May 15, 1948, the Arab League Secretary General Abdul Razek Azzam Pasha announced the intention to wage "a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades."