1920s Following the arrival of the British, Arab inhabitants established
Muslim-Christian Associations in all of the major towns. In 1919 they joined to hold the first
Palestine Arab Congress in Jerusalem. It was aimed primarily at representative government and opposition to the
Balfour Declaration. Concurrently, the
Zionist Commission formed in March 1918 and actively promoted Zionist objectives in Palestine. On 19 April 1920,
elections took place for the
Assembly of Representatives of the
Palestinian Jewish community. In April 1920,
riots in Jerusalem caused the deaths of five Jews and four Arabs. In July 1920, a British civilian administration headed by a
High Commissioner replaced the military administration. The first High Commissioner,
Sir Herbert Samuel, a Zionist and a recent British cabinet minister, arrived in Palestine on 20 June 1920 to take up his appointment from 1 July. Samuel established his headquarters and
official residence in part of the
Augusta Victoria Hospital complex on
Mount Scopus on what was then the northeastern edge of Jerusalem, a building that had been constructed for the Germans
circa 1910. Damaged by an earthquake in 1927, this building served as the headquarters and official residence of the British High Commissioners until 1933. In May 1921, following a disturbance between rival Jewish left-wing protestors and then attacks by Arabs on Jews, almost 100 died in
rioting in Jaffa. High Commissioner Samuel tried to establish self-governing institutions in Palestine, as required by the mandate, but the Arab leadership refused to co-operate with any institution which included Jewish participation. When
Kamil al-Husayni, the
Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, died in March 1921, High Commissioner Samuel appointed his half-brother,
Mohammad Amin al-Husseini, to the position. Amin al-Husseini, a member of the
al-Husayni clan of Jerusalem, was an
Arab nationalist and Muslim leader. As Grand Mufti, as well as in the other influential positions that he held during this period, al-Husseini played a key role in violent opposition to
Zionism. In 1922, al-Husseini was elected President of the
Supreme Muslim Council which had been established by Samuel in December 1921. The Council controlled the
Waqf funds, worth annually tens of thousands of pounds, and the orphan funds, worth annually about £50,000, as compared to the £600,000 in the
Jewish Agency's annual budget. In addition, he controlled the
Islamic courts in Palestine. Among other functions, these courts had the power to appoint teachers and preachers. The 1922 Palestine
Order in Council established a Legislative Council, which was to consist of 23 members: 12 elected, 10 appointed, and the High Commissioner. Arabs protested against the distribution of the seats, arguing that as they constituted 88% of the population, having only 43% of the seats was unfair. At the
First World Congress of Jewish Women which was held in
Vienna, Austria, 1923, it was decided that: "It appears, therefore, to be the duty of all Jews to co-operate in the social-economic reconstruction of Palestine and to assist in the settlement of Jews in that country." In October 1923, Britain provided the League of Nations with a report on the administration of Palestine for the period 1920–1922, which covered the period before the mandate. In August 1929, there were
riots in which 250 people died.
1930s: Arab armed insurgency In 1930,
Sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam arrived in Palestine from Syria, then part of the French-ruled
Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon, and organised and established the
Black Hand, an
anti-Zionist and anti-British militant organisation. He recruited and arranged military training for peasants, and by 1935 he had enlisted between 200 and 800 men. They used bombs and firearms against Zionist settlers and vandalised settlers' orchards and British-built railway lines. In November 1935, two of his men engaged in a firefight with a
Palestine Police patrol hunting fruit thieves and a policeman was killed. Following the incident, British colonial police launched a search and surrounded al-Qassam in a cave near
Ya'bad. In the ensuing battle, al-Qassam was killed. The violence abated for about a year while the British sent the
Peel Commission to investigate. During the first stages of the Arab Revolt, due to rivalry between the clans of al-Husseini and
Nashashibi among the Palestinian Arabs, Raghib Nashashibi was forced to flee to Egypt after several assassination attempts ordered by Amin al-Husseini. After the Arab rejection of the Peel Commission recommendation, the revolt resumed in autumn 1937. Over the next 18 months, the British lost
Nablus and Hebron. British forces, supported by 6,000 armed Jewish auxiliary police, suppressed the widespread riots with overwhelming force. The British officer
Charles Orde Wingate (who supported a Zionist revival for religious reasons) organised
Special Night Squads of British soldiers and Jewish volunteers such as
Yigal Allon; these "scored significant successes against the Arab rebels in the lower Galilee and in the Jezreel valley" by conducting raids on Arab villages.
Irgun, a Jewish militia group, used violence also against Arab civilians as "retaliatory acts",
attacking marketplaces and buses. By the time the revolt concluded in March 1939, more than Arabs, 400 Jews, and 200 British had been killed and at least Arabs were wounded. In total, 10% of the adult Arab male population was killed, wounded, imprisoned, or exiled. From 1936 to 1945, while establishing collaborative security arrangements with the Jewish Agency, the British confiscated firearms from Arabs and 521 weapons from Jews. The attacks on the Jewish population by Arabs had three lasting effects: firstly, they led to the formation and development of Jewish underground militias, primarily the
Haganah, which were to prove decisive in 1948. Secondly, it became clear that the two communities could not be reconciled, and the idea of partition was born. Thirdly, the British responded to Arab opposition with the
White Paper of 1939, which severely restricted Jewish land purchase and immigration. However, with the advent of the
Second World War, even this reduced immigration quota was not reached. The White Paper policy itself radicalised segments of the Jewish population, who after the war would no longer cooperate with the British. The revolt had also a negative effect on Palestinian Arab leadership, social cohesion, and military capabilities, and it contributed to the outcome of the 1948 War because "when the Palestinians faced their most fateful challenge in 1947–49, they were still suffering from the British repression of 1936–39, and were in effect without a unified leadership. Indeed, it might be argued that they were virtually without any leadership at all."
Partition proposals In 1937, the
Peel Commission proposed a partition between a small Jewish state, whose Arab population would have to be transferred, and an Arab state to be attached to the
Emirate of Transjordan, this emirate also being part of the wider
Mandate for Palestine. The proposal was rejected outright by the Arabs. The two main Jewish leaders,
Chaim Weizmann and
David Ben-Gurion, had convinced the
Zionist Congress to equivocally approve the Peel recommendations as a basis for more negotiation. In
a letter to his son in October 1937, Ben-Gurion explained that partition would be a first step to "possession of the land as a whole". The same sentiment was recorded by Ben-Gurion on other occasions, such as at a meeting of the Jewish Agency executive in June 1938, as well as by Chaim Weizmann. Following the
London Conference in February and March 1939, the British Government published a
White Paper which proposed a limit to Jewish immigration from Europe, restrictions on Jewish land purchases, and a programme for creating an independent state to replace the Mandate within ten years. This was seen by the
Yishuv as betrayal of the mandatory terms, especially in light of the increasing persecution of Jews in Europe. In response, Zionists organised
Aliyah Bet, a programme of illegal immigration into Palestine.
Lehi, a small group of extremist Zionists, staged armed attacks on British authorities in Palestine. However, the
Jewish Agency, which represented the mainstream Zionist leadership and most of the Jewish population, still hoped to persuade Britain to allow resumed Jewish immigration and cooperated with Britain during the
Second World War.
Second World War Allied and Axis activity in 1942 On 10 June 1940, during the
Second World War, the
Kingdom of Italy declared war on the
British Empire and sided with
Nazi Germany. Within a month, the Italians
attacked Palestine from the air, bombing
Tel Aviv and
Haifa, inflicting multiple casualties. In 1942, there was a period of great concern for the
Yishuv, when the German forces of General
Erwin Rommel advanced east across
North Africa towards the
Suez Canal, raising a fear that they would conquer Palestine. This period was referred to as the "
200 days of dread". This event was the direct cause for the founding, with British support, of the
Palmach – a highly trained regular unit belonging to
Haganah (a paramilitary group composed mostly of reserves). The
Yishuv rallied around the Allied war effort despite anger over British restrictions on Jewish immigration in the
White Paper of 1939.
David Ben-Gurion, Chairman of the
Jewish Agency, declared that "We will fight the White Paper as if there is no war, and fight the war as if there is no White Paper." About 30,000 Jews from Mandatory Palestine served with the
British Armed Forces during the war, more than 700 of whom were killed in action. As in most of the Arab world, there was no unanimity amongst the Palestinian Arabs as to their position regarding the belligerents in the Second World War. A number of leaders and public figures saw an
Axis victory as the likely outcome and a way of securing Palestine back from the Zionists and the British. Even though Arabs were not highly regarded by
Nazi racial theory, the
Nazis encouraged Arab support as a counter to British hegemony. On the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration in 1943,
Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler and Foreign Minister
Joachim von Ribbentrop sent telegrams of support for the
Grand Mufti of Jerusalem,
Mohammad Amin al-Husseini, to read out for a radio broadcast to a rally of supporters in
Berlin. On the other hand, as many as 12,000 Palestinian Arabs, with the endorsement of many prominent figures such as the mayors of
Nablus and
Gaza and media such as "Radio Palestine" and the prominent
Jaffa-based
Falastin newspaper, volunteered to join and fight for the British, with many serving in units that also included Jews from Palestine. 120 Palestinian women also served as part of the
Auxiliary Territorial Service. However, this history has been less studied, as Israeli sources put more focus in studying the role played by Jewish soldiers. Meanwhile, Palestinian sources "were not eager to glorify the names of those who cooperated with Britain not so many years after the British put down the Arab Revolt of 1936–1939, and thereby indirectly helped the Jews establish a state."
Mobilisation headquarters under the
Union Flag and
Jewish flag On 3 July 1944, the British government consented to the establishment of a
Jewish Brigade within the
British Army, with hand-picked Jewish and also non-Jewish senior officers. On 20 September 1944, an official communiqué by the
War Office announced the formation of the Jewish Brigade Group of the British Army. The Jewish Brigade was shipped to
Italy, where it joined the
British Eighth Army under the
15th Army Group, and fought in the
Spring Offensive of the
Italian Campaign. The Jewish Brigade was then stationed in
Tarvisio, near the border triangle of Italy,
Yugoslavia, and Austria, where it played a key role in the
Berihah's efforts to help Jews escape Europe for Palestine, a role many of its members would continue after the brigade was disbanded. Among its projects was the education and care of the
Selvino children. Later, veterans of the Jewish Brigade were to play a major role in the foundation of the
Israel Defense Forces (IDF). From the Palestine Regiment, two platoons, one Jewish, under the command of
Brigadier Ernest Benjamin, and another Arab, were sent to join Allied forces on the
Italian Front, having taken part in the
final offensive there. Besides Jews and Arabs from Palestine, in total by mid-1944 the British had assembled a multiethnic force consisting of volunteer European Jewish refugees (from German-occupied countries),
Yemenite Jews and
Abyssinian Jews.
The Holocaust and immigration quotas , Mandatory Palestine, 1947 Starting in 1939, a clandestine immigration effort called
Aliya Bet was spearheaded by an organisation called
Mossad LeAliyah Bet. Tens of thousands of European Jews escaped the Nazis in boats and small ships headed for Palestine. The British
Royal Navy intercepted many of the vessels; others were unseaworthy and were wrecked; a
Haganah bomb sunk the , killing 267 people; two other ships were sunk by
Soviet submarines: the motor
schooner was
torpedoed and sunk in the
Black Sea by a Soviet submarine in February 1942 with the loss of nearly 800 lives. The last refugee boats to try to reach Palestine during the war were the
Bulbul, and
Morina in August 1944. A Soviet submarine sank the motor schooner
Mefküre by torpedo and shellfire and machine-gunned survivors in the water, killing between 300 and 400 refugees. Illegal immigration resumed after the end of the Second World War, especially by the Haganah, who carried mostly illegal Jewish immigrants in the period 1945-47. After the war, 250,000 Jewish refugees were stranded in displaced persons (DP) camps in Europe. Despite the pressure of world opinion, in particular the repeated requests of the
U.S. President,
Harry S. Truman, and the recommendations of the
Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry that 100,000 Jews be immediately granted entry to Palestine, the British maintained the ban on immigration.
Beginning of Zionist insurgency , 8 May 1945 The Jewish
Lehi (Fighters for the Freedom of Israel) and
Irgun (National Military Organisation) movements initiated
violent uprisings against the British Mandate in the 1940s. On 6 November 1944,
Eliyahu Hakim and
Eliyahu Bet Zuri (members of Lehi) assassinated
Lord Moyne in
Cairo. Moyne was the British Minister of State for the Middle East and the assassination is said by some to have turned British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill against the Zionist cause. After the assassination of Lord Moyne, the
Haganah kidnapped, interrogated, and turned over to the British many members of the Irgun ("
The Hunting Season"), and the Jewish Agency Executive decided on a series of measures against "terrorist organisations" in Palestine. Irgun ordered its members not to resist or retaliate with violence, so as to prevent a civil war.
After the Second World War: Insurgency and the Partition Plan The three main Jewish underground forces later united to form the
Jewish Resistance Movement and carry out several attacks and bombings against the British administration. In 1946, the Irgun blew up the
King David Hotel in Jerusalem, the southern wing of which was the headquarters of the British administration, killing 92 people. Following the bombing, the British Government began interning
illegal Jewish immigrants in Cyprus. On 12 November 1947, two weeks before the United Nations voted on partitioning British soldiers attacked a house in Ra'anana where a Lehi training course for young people was being held. Four trainees aged 16–18 and their 19-year-old instructor were murdered as a calculated retribution against Lehi during the attack known as
Murder of Youths in Ra'anana by British Soldiers. In 2001 over 5,000 documents that were declassified by the Israeli State Archives revealed deaths and killing of Jews at the hands of British soldiers, which were covered up by claiming self defense acts or accidents. This included the shooting of the 5 teenagers in Raanana. In 1948, the Lehi assassinated
Count Bernadotte, the UN mediator, in Jerusalem.
Yitzak Shamir, a future
Prime Minister of Israel, was one of the conspirators. The negative publicity resulting from the situation in Palestine caused the Mandate to become widely unpopular in Britain itself and caused the
United States Congress to delay granting the British vital loans for reconstruction. The British
Labour Party had promised before its election in 1945 to allow mass Jewish migration into Palestine but reneged on this promise once in office. Anti-British Jewish militancy increased, and the situation required the presence of over 100,000 British troops in the country. Following the
Acre Prison Break and the retaliatory
hanging of British sergeants by the Irgun, the British announced their desire to terminate the mandate and to withdraw by no later than the beginning of August 1948. These events were the decisive factors that forced Britain to announce their desire to terminate the Palestine Mandate and place the Question of Palestine before the
United Nations, the successor to the
League of Nations. The UN created
UNSCOP (the UN Special Committee on Palestine) on 15 May 1947, with representatives from 11 countries. UNSCOP conducted hearings and made a general survey of the situation in Palestine and issued its report on 31 August. Seven members (Canada,
Czechoslovakia, Guatemala, Netherlands, Peru, Sweden, and Uruguay) recommended the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states, with Jerusalem to be placed under
international administration. Three members (India, Iran, and
Yugoslavia) supported the creation of a single federal state containing both Jewish and Arab constituent states. Australia abstained. On 29 November 1947,
the UN General Assembly, voting 33 to 13, with 10 abstentions, adopted a resolution recommending the adoption and implementation of the
Plan of Partition with Economic Union as Resolution 181 (II), while making some adjustments to the boundaries between the two states proposed by it. The division was to take effect on the date of British withdrawal. The partition plan required that the proposed states grant full civil rights to all people within their borders, regardless of race, religion or gender. The UN General Assembly is only granted the power to make recommendations; therefore, UNGAR 181 was not legally binding. Both the US and the
Soviet Union supported the resolution. Haiti, Liberia, and the Philippines changed their votes at the last moment after concerted pressure from the US and from Zionist organisations. The five members of the
Arab League, who were voting members at the time, voted against the Plan. The Jewish Agency, which was the Jewish state-in-formation, accepted the plan, and nearly all the Jews in Palestine rejoiced at the news. The partition plan was rejected by the Palestinian Arab leadership and by most of the Arab population. Meeting in
Cairo on November and December 1947, the Arab League then adopted a series of resolutions endorsing a military solution to the conflict. Britain announced that it would accept the partition plan, but refused to enforce it, arguing it was not accepted by the Arabs. Britain also refused to share the administration of Palestine with the UN Palestine Commission during the transitional period. In September 1947, the British government announced that the Mandate for Palestine would end at midnight on 14 May 1948. Some Jewish organisations also opposed the proposal.
Irgun leader
Menachem Begin announced, "The partition of the Homeland is illegal. It will never be recognised. The signature by institutions and individuals of the partition agreement is invalid. It will not bind the Jewish people. Jerusalem was and will forever be our capital. Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And for ever."
Termination of the mandate in 1948 When the United Kingdom announced the independence of the
Emirate of Transjordan as the
Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan in 1946, the final Assembly of the League of Nations and the General Assembly both adopted resolutions welcoming the news. The Jewish Agency objected, claiming that Transjordan was an integral part of Palestine, and that according to Article 80 of the
UN Charter, the Jewish people had a secured interest in its territory. During the General Assembly deliberations on Palestine, there were suggestions that it would be desirable to incorporate part of Transjordan's territory into the proposed Jewish state. A few days before the adoption of
Resolution 181 (II) on 29 November 1947, US Secretary of State Marshall noted frequent references had been made by the Ad Hoc Committee regarding the desirability of the Jewish State having both the
Negev and an "outlet to the Red Sea and the Port of Aqaba". According to John Snetsinger, Chaim Weizmann visited President Truman on 19 November 1947 and said it was imperative that the Negev and Port of Aqaba be within the Jewish state. Truman telephoned the US delegation to the UN and told them he supported Weizmann's position. However, the
Trans-Jordan memorandum excluded territories of the Emirate of Transjordan from any Jewish settlement. Immediately after the UN resolution,
civil war broke out between the Arab and Jewish communities, and British authority began to break down. On 16 December 1947, the
Palestine Police Force withdrew from the
Tel Aviv area, home to more than half the Jewish population, and turned over responsibility for the maintenance of law and order to Jewish police. As the civil war raged on, British military forces gradually withdrew from Palestine, although they occasionally intervened in favour of either side. Many of these areas became war zones. The British maintained strong presences in
Jerusalem and
Haifa, even as Jerusalem came under siege by Arab forces and became the scene of fierce fighting, though the British occasionally intervened in the fighting, largely to secure their evacuation routes, including by proclaiming martial law and enforcing truces. The
Palestine Police Force was largely inoperative, and government services such as social welfare, water supplies, and postal services were withdrawn. In March 1948, all British judges in Palestine were sent back to Britain. In April 1948, the British withdrew from most of Haifa but retained an enclave in the port area to be used in the evacuation of British forces, and retained
RAF Ramat David, an airbase close to Haifa, to cover their retreat, leaving behind a volunteer police force to maintain order. The city was quickly captured by the
Haganah in the
Battle of Haifa. After the victory, British forces in Jerusalem announced that they had no intention of overseeing any local administration but also that they would not permit actions that would hamper the safe and orderly withdrawal of their forces; military courts would try anybody who interfered. By this time British authority in most of Palestine had broken down, with most of the country in the hands of Jews or Arabs, but the British air and sea blockade of Palestine remained in place. Although Arab volunteers were able to cross the borders between Palestine and the surrounding Arab states to join the fighting, the British did not allow the regular armies of the surrounding Arab states to cross into Palestine. The British had notified the UN of their intent to terminate the mandate not later than 1 August 1948. However, early in 1948, the United Kingdom announced its firm intention to end its mandate in Palestine on 15 May. In response, President
Harry S. Truman made a
statement on 25 March proposing UN trusteeship rather than partition, stating that "unfortunately, it has become clear that the partition plan cannot be carried out at this time by peaceful means... unless emergency action is taken, there will be no public authority in Palestine on that date capable of preserving law and order. Violence and bloodshed will descend upon the Holy Land. Large-scale fighting among the people of that country will be the inevitable result". The
British Parliament passed the necessary legislation to terminate the Mandate with the Palestine Bill, which received
Royal assent on 29 April 1948. wrote to
Harry S. Truman that the state had been proclaimed "within the frontiers approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations in its Resolution of November 29, 1947". By 14 May 1948, the only British forces remaining in Palestine were in the Haifa area and in Jerusalem. On that same day, the British garrison in Jerusalem withdrew, and the last High Commissioner,
General Sir Alan Cunningham, left the city for Haifa, where he was to leave the country by sea. The Jewish leadership, led by the future Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion,
declared the establishment of a Jewish State in
Eretz-Israel, to be known as the
State of Israel, on the afternoon of 14 May 1948 (5 Iyar 5708 in the
Hebrew calendar), to come into effect at the moment of termination of the Mandate at midnight. Also on the 14th, the Provisional Government of Israel asked the US Government for recognition, on the frontiers specified in the UN Plan for Partition. The United States immediately replied, recognizing "the provisional government as the de facto authority". At midnight on 14/15 May 1948, the Mandate for Palestine expired, and the State of Israel came into being. The Palestine Government formally ceased to exist, the status of British forces still in the process of withdrawal from Haifa changed to occupiers of foreign territory, the
Palestine Police Force formally stood down and was disbanded, with the remaining personnel evacuated alongside British military forces, the British blockade of Palestine was lifted, and all those who had been
Palestinian citizens ceased to be
British protected persons, with
Mandatory Palestine passports no longer giving British protection. The
1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight took place both before and after the end of the Mandate. Over the next few days, approximately 700 Lebanese, 1,876 Syrian, 4,000 Iraqi, and 2,800 Egyptian troops crossed over the borders into Palestine, starting the
1948 Arab–Israeli War. Around 4,500 Transjordanian troops, commanded partly by 38 British officers who had resigned their commissions in the British Army only weeks earlier, including overall commander, General
John Bagot Glubb, entered the
corpus separatum region encompassing Jerusalem and its environs (in response to the Haganah's
Operation Kilshon) and moved into areas designated as part of the Arab state by the UN partition plan. The war, which was to last until 1949, would see Israel expand to encompass about 78% of the territory of the former British Mandate, with Transjordan seizing and subsequently annexing the
West Bank and the
Kingdom of Egypt seizing the
Gaza Strip. With the end of the Mandate, the remaining British troops in Israel were concentrated in an enclave in the Haifa port area, through which they were being withdrawn, and at RAF Ramat David, which was maintained to cover the withdrawal. The British handed over RAF Ramat David to the Israelis on 26 May and on 30 June, the last British troops were evacuated from Haifa. The British flag was lowered from the administrative building of the Port of Haifa and the Israeli flag was raised in its place, and the Haifa port area was formally handed over to the Israeli authorities in a ceremony. ==Politics==