Even then, Irgun managed to penetrate one such security zone in March and stage a bombing attack on the British Officers' Club in Jerusalem, in the heart of a security zone. Despite extensive efforts, the British were never able to stop the insurgency. Furthermore, the extreme loyalty of the operatives of these groups made it almost impossible for British intelligence to infiltrate them, and made it difficult for British interrogators to extract information from captured members.
In addition to the militant campaign in Palestine, Irgun and Lehi attacked British targets in Europe and launched bombing attacks Britain itself. In late and early , Irgun carried out a series of sabotage attacks on British Army transportation routes in occupied Germany. At around the same time, an attempt was made by Lehi to drop a bomb on the House of Commons from a chartered plane flown from France ; this attempt was stopped just before it was to be carried out, when French police discovered Lehi members preparing to cross the English Channel in a plane that was found to be carrying a large bomb.
A number of bombs exploded in London, including one at London's Colonial Club, an establishment catering to soldiers and students from British colonies in Africa and the West Indies. The bombing caused no fatalities but injured some servicemen.
Jewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine - Wikipedia
An attempt was also made to destroy the Colonial Office in London with a large bomb, which malfunctioned after its timer broke. According to a senior police official, it would have caused a death rate similar to that of the King David Hotel bombing had it gone off. Many were intercepted, while others reached their targets but were discovered before they could go off. The British arrested thousands during their counterinsurgency campaign, often imposing severe prison terms, including for weapons-related offenses.
They also began using flogging as a judicial punishment. However, in late December , after an Irgun member was flogged, the group, delivering on a previous threat, [58] abducted and flogged several British soldiers in return, an event that became known as the Night of the Beatings. While this caused the British to end the use of flogging, they then began to apply the death penalty against convicted insurgents. Within months, four imprisoned Jewish fighters, including three Irgun men that had been arrested during the Night of the Beatings, were hanged. In some instances, Irgun abducted British soldiers and police officers, and in one instance a judge, and threatened to kill them if executions took place.
This tactic succeeded in stopping a few executions. In May , a large prison break was staged when Irgun fighters, in a coordinated attack, blasted a large hole the prison wall, and Jewish prisoners blasted their way out through the doors with smuggled explosives. Some 28 Jewish prisoners and Arab prisoners escaped. During the operation, nine fighters and escapees were killed, most of them when a getaway truck ran into a British roadblock, and five Irgun fighters and eight escapees were captured. Three out of the five fighters captured were sentenced to death in June; Irgun responded by kidnapping two British sergeants from the Intelligence Corps and threatening to kill them should the sentences be carried out.
The British Army carried out extensive search operations. The Haganah cooperated with the British search effort.
Jewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine
The British authorities decided to carry out the executions despite the danger to the hostages. On July 29, , the three were executed , and the next day the two British sergeants were killed in response. Their bodies were then hanged from trees in an orange grove near Netanya , and were booby-trapped with a bomb, which later injured a British officer attempting to cut one of the bodies down. Following this incident, British soldiers and police officers attacked civilians in Tel Aviv, killing five people, and a wave of anti-Semitic rioting swept Britain over the course of several days; the rioting began in Liverpool and spread to other major British cities, including London , Manchester , Cardiff , Derby and Glasgow , causing widespread damage to Jewish property.
The insurgency was coupled with a local and international propaganda campaign to gain sympathy abroad. The Yishuv authorities publicized the plight of Holocaust survivors and British attempts to stop them from migrating to Palestine, hoping to generate negative publicity against Britain around the world. Ben-Gurion publicly stated that the Jewish insurgency was "nourished by despair", that Britain had "proclaimed war against Zionism", and that British policy was "to liquidate the Jews as a people.
The SS Exodus incident in particular became a major media event. Propaganda against the British over their treatment of the refugees was disseminated around the world, including claims that the Exodus was a "floating Auschwitz". In one incident, after a baby died at sea aboard an Aliyah Bet ship, the body was publicly displayed to the press after the ship docked in Haifa for transfer of the passengers to Cyprus, and journalists were told that "the dirty Nazi-British assassins suffocated this innocent victim with gas.
Through a well-organized international propaganda campaign, Irgun and Lehi reached out to potential international supporters, particularly in the United States and especially among American Jews, who became increasingly sympathetic to the Zionist cause and hostile to Britain.
Their propaganda claimed that: Britain's restrictions on Jewish immigration were a violation of international law, as it violated the terms of the mandate; British rule in Palestine was oppressive and had turned the country into a police state; British policies were Nazi-like and anti-Semitic; the insurgency was Jewish self-defence; and the insurgents were winning and British withdrawal from Palestine was inevitable. This propaganda, coupled with statements and actions by British officials and members of the security forces interpreted as anti-Semitic, gained the insurgents international credibility and served to further tarnish Britain's image.
Britain was at this time negotiating a loan from the United States vital to its economic survival. Its treatment of Jewish survivors generated bad publicity, and encouraged the U.
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Congress to stiffen its terms. Many American Jews were initially politically active in pressing Congress for a suspension of the loan guarantees, but Jewish groups and politicians later retracted their support and came out in favor of the loan, fearing accusations of disloyalty to the United States. Truman put extensive pressure on the British government over its handling of the Palestine situation. The post-war conflict in Palestine caused more damage to Anglo-American relations than any other issue.
From October , opposition leader, Winston Churchill , began calling for Palestine to be given to the United Nations. During the insurgency, the British government organized a conference in London between Zionist and Arab representatives, and attempted to mediate a solution. However, these talks proved fruitless. The Arabs were unwilling to accept any solution except a unified Palestine under Arab rule, and while the Zionists adamantly refused this proposal, instead suggesting partition.
After realizing that the Arabs and the Jews were both unwilling to compromise, Bevin began considering turning the Palestine question over to the United Nations. Britain increasingly began to see its attempts to suppress the Jewish insurgency as a costly and futile exercise, and its resolve began to weaken. British security forces, which were constantly taking casualties, were unable to suppress the insurgents due to their hit-and-run tactics, poor intelligence, and a non-cooperative civilian population.
The insurgents were also making the country ungovernable; the King David hotel bombing resulted in the deaths of a large number of civil servants and the loss of many documents, devastating the mandatory administration, while IED attacks on British vehicles began to limit the British Army's freedom of movement throughout the country. The Acre Prison break and the floggings and hangings of British soldiers by the Irgun humiliated the British authorities and further demonstrated their failure to control the situation. There were also indications, such as several successful bombings in London and the letter-bombing campaign against British politicians, that the insurgents were beginning to take the war home to Britain.
In addition, British treatment of Holocaust survivors and tactics in Palestine were earning Britain bad publicity around the world, particularly in the United States, and earned the British government constant diplomatic harassment from the Truman administration. In January , all non-essential British civilians were evacuated from Palestine. Half was earmarked for Palestine. The Times reported that Palestine brought more dollars into the sterling zone than any other country, save Britain. In April the issue was formally referred to the UN.
By this time over , British soldiers were stationed in Palestine. Referral to the UN led to a period of uncertainty over Palestine's future. On September 20, , the British cabinet voted to evacuate Palestine. Although the insurgency played a major role in persuading the British to quit Palestine, other factors also influenced British policy. Britain, facing a deep economic crisis and heavily dependent on the United States, was facing a massive financial burden over its many colonies, military bases, and commitments abroad. At the same time, Britain had also lost the centerpiece of the rationale of its Middle East policy after the end of the British Raj in Colonial India.
Britain's Middle East policy had been centered around protecting the flanks of its sea lines of communication to India. After the British Raj ended, Britain no longer needed Palestine. Finally, Britain still had alternative locations such as Egypt , Libya , and Kenya to base its troops. The partition resolution intended administration of Palestine to be in the hands of five UN representatives and assumed free Jewish immigration into the Jewish area even before the creation of a Jewish state:.
The mandatory power shall use its best endeavours to ensure that an area situated in the territory of the Jewish state, including a seaport and hinterland adequate to provide facilities for a substantial immigration, shall be evacuated at the earliest possible date and in any event not later than 1 February Britain refused to comply with these conditions on the grounds that the decision was unacceptable to the Arabs. It neither allowed Jewish immigration outside the monthly quota, nor granted control to the UN representatives who became known as the "five lonely pilgrims".
A statement issued by the British Ambassador to the UN stated that the inmates on Cyprus would be released with the termination of the mandate. They were gradually reduced to foraging for food and drink, and prevented from carrying out their duties. Over the remaining period of British rule, British policy was to ensure that the Arabs did not resist Britain or blame it for partition.
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Convinced that partition was unworkable, the British refused to assist the UN in any way that might require British forces to remain on Palestinian soil to implement it or turn their army into a target for Arab forces. On the other side, "The Yishuv perceived the peril of an Arab invasion as threatening its very existence.
Having no real knowledge of the Arabs' true military capabilities, the Jews took Arab propaganda literally, preparing for the worst and reacting accordingly. As the British began to withdraw during the closing months of the mandate, civil war erupted in Palestine between the Jews and Arabs. During this period, as well as restricting Jewish immigration, Britain handed over strategic military and police positions to the Arabs as they abandoned them, and froze Jewish Agency assets in London banks.
Even so, they were still sometimes caught in the crossfire or deliberately attacked for their weapons. Instead, his main concern seems to have been to ensure that Egypt retained control of the parts of the Negev they were occupying, so that Britain had a land link between Egypt and Jordan. On 22 February , as part of the civil war, Arab militants detonated a truck laden with explosives in Ben Yehuda Street in Jerusalem, killing about 60 people. Two British deserters assisted in this attack; Eddie Brown, a police captain who claimed that his brother had been killed by the Irgun , and Peter Madison, an army corporal.
The first such attack, which took place on 29 February, hit the military coaches of a passenger train north of Rehovot , killing 28 British soldiers and wounding Another attack on 31 March killed 40 people and injured Although there were soldiers on board, all of the casualties were civilians. The Haganah had previously spared the railway bridge at Rosh HaNikra during their Night of the Bridges operation. Following the late announcement that the British would withdraw from Palestine months ahead of schedule, however, the bridge was destroyed by the 21st Battalion [75] under the Palmach [76] in late February [75] to hinder Lebanese arms shipments to Arab forces opposing the UN Partition Plan.
As repairs were prohibitively expensive, the tunnels were later completely sealed. This ended the only connection between the European and North African standard gauge railway networks. In April , the Security Council called upon all governments to prevent fighting personnel or arms from entering Palestine. Five and a half months of civil war in Palestine saw a decisive Jewish victory. Jewish forces, led by the Haganah, consolidated their hold on a strip of territory on the coastal plain of Palestine and the Jezreel and Jordan Valleys, and crushed the Palestinian Arab militas.
As all the League of Nations mandates were to be taken over by the new United Nations , Britain had declared that it would leave Palestine by 1 August , later setting the date for the termination of the mandate as 15 May; on 14 May the Zionist leadership announced the Israeli Declaration of Independence. Several hours later, at midnight on 15 May , the British Mandate of Palestine officially expired and the State of Israel came into being.
Hours after the end of the Mandate, contingents of the armies of four surrounding Arab states entered Palestine, setting off the Arab—Israeli War. As the war progressed, the Israeli forces gained an advantage due to a growing stream of arms and military equipment from Europe that had been clandestinely smuggled or were supplied by Czechoslovakia. In the following months, Israel began to expand the territory under its control. The British proposed that the entry of arms and men of military age into Palestine should be restricted. At the request of the United States, the ban was extended to the whole region.
A French amendment allowed immigration so long as soldiers were not recruited from immigrants. The British had by this time released almost all inmates of the Cyprus internment camps , but continued to hold about 11, detainees, mainly military-age males, in the camps. In October , Israel began a campaign to capture the Negev. In December , Israeli troops made a twenty-mile incursion into Egyptian territory. Under the terms of the Anglo-Egyptian treaty the Egyptians could appeal for British help in the event of an Israeli invasion, however the Egyptians were concerned to avoid any such eventuality.
During this period, the Royal Air Force began mounting almost daily reconnaissance missions over Israel and the Sinai, with RAF planes taking off from Egyptian airbases and sometimes flying alongside Egyptian warplanes. On 7 January , Israeli forces shot down five British fighter planes after a flight of RAF planes overflew an Israeli convoy in the Sinai and were mistaken for Egyptian aircraft.
Two pilots were killed and one was captured by Israeli troops and briefly detained in Israel. Britain denied this, claiming the resolution did not apply to Britain and that the troops were not new to the region as they had been transferred from Egypt. As the IDF drove into the Negev, the British government launched a diplomatic campaign to prevent Israel from capturing the entire area. Britain viewed the Negev as a strategic land bridge between Egypt and Transjordan that was vital to both British and Western interests in the Middle East, and were anxious to keep it from falling into Israeli hands.
The British believed that it would be in their and the West's strategic interest if they maintained de facto control of a land bridge from Egypt to Transjordan, and Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin tried to persuade the US government to support his position and force Israel to withdraw. Truman referring to the Negev as "a small area not worth differing over". Mounting international and domestic criticism forced an end to Britain's attempts to intervene in the war, and Bevin ordered British forces to stay clear of the Israelis in the Negev.
The British cabinet ultimately decided that action could be taken to defend Transjordan, but that under no circumstances would British troops enter Palestine. Minister of Health, Aneurin Bevan , protested at the decision to send arms to Transjordan, taken by the Defence Committee without cabinet approval. In January , the British cabinet voted to continue supporting the Arab states, but also voted to recognize Israel and release the last Jewish detainees on Cyprus.
Anglo-Arab relations were of vital importance to British strategic concerns both during the war and after, notably for their access to oil and to India via the Suez Canal.
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Transjordan was granted independence in and the Anglo-Jordanian Treaty of allowed Britain to station troops in Jordan and promised mutual assistance in the event of war. In the Name of Liberation , the successful Jewish struggle for independence in Palestine inspired numerous violent campaigns for independence in other countries of the world at the time, such as by the Malayan Communist Party in the Malayan Emergency and in Algeria.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Jewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine. Kielce Pogrom , Brichah , and Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp. The British army and Jewish insurgency in Palestine, Colombia University Press, New York, pp. Britain's Dirty Wars and the End of Empire , p. A Journal for the New Europe 25, no. Britain's Dirty Wars and the End of Empire. The British Way in Counter-Insurgency, — Oxford University Press, See also Bagon, Paul Niewyk and Francis R.
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Start the day at the Mount of Olives. Your attraction-packed day will start with a stunning viewpoint to get an appreciation for the whole of Jerusalem Old City and New , its architecture and beauty, as well as getting an understanding of the different parts of Jerusalem and the controversy surrounding them. Your next activity will be a walking tour of the Old City of Jerusalem.
See the exhibitions and relics from this painful period of history, and see how Israeli society has attempted to come to terms with these terrible events. On Saturdays and Jewish holidays, instead of Yad Vashem , you will visit Ein Karem, the neighborhood in the southwest part of Jerusalem. Ein Karem is also known as birthplace of John the Baptist. Get to know this unique and picturesque neighbourhood, stopping by Mary's spring and continue to the Church of Saint John the Baptist. Included Transportation to and from your hotel.
You will be accompanied at all times by a bilingual licensed tour guide who speaks English and a second language. All entrance fees are included. Meeting Point Pick up from the lobby of your hotel as follows: