Jewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine

Between the World Wars Although both the 1917 Balfour Declaration and the terms of the League of Nations British Mandate of Palestine called for a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine, the British did not accept any linkage between Palestine and the situation of European Jews. After the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 many German Jews sought refuge abroad, and by the end of 1939 some 80,000 had been given refuge in Great Britain itself. In 1936–37, soon after the start of the Arab uprising in Palestine, Earl Peel led a commission to consider a solution. The Peel Commission proposed a partition of Palestine that involved the compulsory resettlement of some Arab and Jewish inhabitants. It was not acceptable either to the Arab or to the Jewish leaders, though David Ben-Gurion remarked in 1937, "The compulsory transfer of the Arabs from the valleys of the proposed Jewish state could give us something which we have never had, even when we stood on our own during the days of the First and Second Temples." The twentieth Zionist Congress resolved in August 1937 that: "the partition plan proposed by the Peel Commission is not to be accepted"; but it wished "to carry on negotiations in order to clarify the exact substance of the British government's proposal for the foundation of a Jewish state in Palestine". A further attempt was made in the Woodhead Commission, also known as the "Palestine Partition Commission", whose report was published in late 1938. A government statement (Cmnd 5843) followed on 11 November 1938. It concluded that: "His Majesty's Government, after careful study of the Partition Commission's report, have reached the conclusion that this further examination has shown that the political, administrative and financial difficulties involved in the proposal to create independent Arab and Jewish States inside Palestine are so great that this solution of the problem is impracticable." The brief St. James Conference followed in early 1939. Britain also attended the international Évian Conference in 1938 on the issue of providing for refugees from Germany. Palestine was not discussed as a refuge because it might worsen the ongoing Arab revolt; Zionists naturally hoped that Palestine would be the principal destination for all such refugees. British immigration restrictions and the 1939 White Paper In the 1920s, the British imposed restrictions on Jewish immigration to Palestine and the ability of Jews to buy land, claiming that these decisions were taken due to concerns over the economic absorptive capacity of the country. In the 1930s, British authorities set a quota for immigration certificates and authorised the Jewish Agency to hand them out at its discretion. Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, the British introduced the White Paper of 1939. The White Paper rejected the concept of partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states and announced that the country would be turned into an independent binational state with an Arab majority. It severely curtailed Jewish immigration, allowing for only 75,000 Jews to migrate to Palestine from 1940 to 1944, consisting of a yearly quota of 10,000 per year and a supplementary quota for 25,000 to cover refugee emergencies spread out over the same period. Afterward, further Jewish immigration would depend on the consent of the Arab majority. Sales of Arab land to Jews were to be restricted. In reaction to British restrictions, illegal immigration to Palestine began. Initially, Jews entered Palestine by land, mainly by slipping across the northern border, where they were aided by the border settlements. In the early 1930s, when crossing the northern border became more difficult, other routes were found. Thousands of Jews came to Palestine on student or tourist visas, and never returned to their countries of origin. Jewish women often entered into fictitious marriages with residents of Palestine to be granted entry for family reunification purposes. In 1934, the first seaborne attempt to bring Jews to Palestine happened when some 350 Jews of the HeHalutz movement in Poland who were unwilling to wait for certificates sailed to Palestine on the Vallos, a chartered ship. Two more ships carrying illegal immigrants arrived in 1937, and several more arrived in 1938 and 1939. These voyages were mainly organised by the Revisionist Zionist Organisation and the Irgun. Until 1938, the Jewish Agency opposed illegal immigration, fearing that it would impact the number of immigration certificates issued. Overall, between 1929 and 1940, a period of mass Jewish immigration known as the Fifth Aliyah occurred despite British restrictions. Nearly 250,000 Jews (of whom 20,000 later left) immigrated to Palestine, many of them illegally. During World War II (1939–1944) The Second World War erupted when Mandatory authorities of Palestine were at the final stages of subduing the armed Arab revolt of 1936–1939. All Jewish organisations, including the Zionists in Europe also played a major role in the Jewish resistance to the Nazis in Europe, automatically allied with the Allied forces, including the British. The Yishuv temporarily put aside its differences with the British regarding the White Paper, deciding that defeating the Nazis was a more urgent goal. The leader of Palestine's Jews, David Ben-Gurion, issued a call for Jews to "support the British as if there is no White Paper and oppose the White Paper as if there is no war". During the war, Palestinian Jews volunteered in large numbers to serve in the British Army, serving mainly in North Africa. Of the 470,000 Jews in Palestine at the time, some 30,000 served in the British Army during the war. There was a Jewish battalion attached to the British Army's 1st Battalion, Royal East Kent Regiment stationed in Palestine. With the decline of the Arab Revolt by September 1939, the tensions among Jews and Arabs eased as well. During the war, among the Palestinian Arabs, the Nashashibi clan supported the British, while another Arab Palestinian faction, led by exiled Amin al-Husseini, supported the Axis powers. Haj Amin al-Husseini became the most prominent Arab collaborator with the Axis powers. The Palestine Regiment was formed in 1942, combining three Jewish and one Arab battalions, reaching altogether 3,800 volunteers. It was involved in activities at the Mediterranean scene of the war, sustaining casualties during the North African Campaign. The Special Interrogation Group was also formed in 1942 as a commando unit composed of German-speaking Palestinian Jews. It performed commando and sabotage operations during the Western Desert Campaign. The Jewish underground group Irgun ceased all anti-British activities by September 1939, and supported the British. An Irgun unit was sent to assist British forces fighting in the Middle East. In 1941, Irgun's David Raziel was killed while fighting in the Kingdom of Iraq with the British against that country's pro-Axis regime. Irgun also provided the British with intelligence from Eastern Europe and North Africa and allowed members to enlist in the British Army. However, in August 1940, Irgun member Avraham Stern formed Lehi, a breakaway group which favoured armed struggle against the British to force them out of Palestine and immediately establish a Jewish state. Stern was unaware of the Nazis' intent to exterminate the Jews and believed that Hitler wanted to make Germany judenrein through emigration. Stern proposed an alliance with Nazi Germany, offering the Germans help in conquering the Middle East and driving out the British in exchange for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, which would then take in European Jewry. This proposal, which never received a reply, cost Lehi and Stern much support. Stern became a pariah among the Jews in Palestine, and was himself killed by British police in 1942. During the war, a special paratrooper unit in the British Army composed of Jewish men and women from Palestine was active. The unit's members were sent into occupied Europe, mainly by airdrop, to help organise and participate in local resistance activities on the ground. Some 250 men and women volunteered, of whom 110 underwent training and 37 were infiltrated. In December 1942, when the mass murder of European Jewry became known to the Allies, the British continued to refuse to change their policy of limited immigration, or to admit Jews from Nazi controlled Europe in numbers outside the quota imposed by the White Paper, and the Royal Navy prevented ships with Jewish refugees from reaching Palestine. Some ships carrying Jewish refugees were turned back towards Europe, although in one instance, about 2,000 Jews who were fleeing Europe by sea were detained in a camp in Mauritius and were given the option of emigrating to Palestine after the war. The British also stopped all attempts by Palestinian Jews to bribe the Nazis into freeing European Jews. At the time that the Holocaust became known to the Allies, there were 34,000 Jewish immigration certificates for Palestine remaining. In 1943, about half the remaining certificates were distributed, and by the end of the war, 3,000 certificates remained. In September 1944, the Jewish Brigade was formed, based on the Palestine Regiment core. The brigade consisted of nearly 5,000 volunteers, including three former Palestine Regiment battalions, the 200th Field Regiment, Royal Artillery and several supporting units. The brigade was dispatched to participate in the Italian campaign in late 1944 and later took part in the Spring 1945 offensive in Italy against the German forces. ==History==

British restrictions on Jewish immigration During the 1945 British election, Labour pledged that if they returned to power, they would revoke the White Paper of 1939, permit free Jewish immigration to Palestine and turn Palestine into a Jewish national home that would gradually evolve into an independent state. Labour Chancellor Hugh Dalton issued a statement calling for the population transfer of Arabs and even examining the possibility of further expanding the borders of a future Jewish state. However, the new Labour Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, decided to maintain heavy restrictions on Jewish immigration. Bevin favoured the White Paper's policy of turning Palestine into an Arab state with a Jewish minority that would have political and economic rights. He feared that the creation of a Jewish state would inflame Arab opinion and jeopardise Britain's position as the dominant power in the Middle East. Bevin also believed that most displaced Holocaust survivors should be resettled in Europe instead of Palestine. Due to the British immigration restrictions, the Jewish Agency Executive turned to illegal immigration. Over the next few years tens of thousands of Jews sailed towards Palestine in overcrowded vessels in a program known as Aliyah Bet, despite the almost certain knowledge that it would lead to incarceration in a British prison camp (most ships were intercepted). The overwhelming majority were European Jews, including many Holocaust survivors, although some North African Jews were also involved. In Europe former Jewish partisans led by Abba Kovner began to organise escape routes taking Jews from Eastern Europe down to the Mediterranean where the Jewish Agency organised ships to illegally carry them to Palestine. British officials in the occupied German zones tried to halt Jewish immigration by refusing to recognise the Jews as a national group and demanding that they return to their places of origin. The British government put diplomatic pressure on Poland, the source of a large number of the Jewish refugees, to clamp down on Jewish emigration, as Poland freely permitted Jews to leave without visas or exit permits, but their efforts proved futile. The Polish government supported the emigration since it allowed them to avoid the responsibility of having to deal with property claims from Polish Jews who were returning home, only to find their property now in the hands of others. In 1947, British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) launched Operation Embarrass, a clandestine operation to blow up empty ships in Italian ports that were preparing to take Jewish refugees to Palestine, by having operatives attach limpet mines to the hulls of vessels. From summer 1947 to early 1948, five such attacks were carried out, destroying one ship and damaging two others. Two other British mines were discovered before they detonated. A report stated that "only 1 out of some 30 ships carrying illegal immigrants reached their destination." In the early stages of illegal immigration, small coastal craft were used to bring in Jewish refugees, but large vessels were soon used. In total, some 60 ships were employed, including 10 ships acquired as war surplus from US boneyards. Among the crews were Jewish American and Canadian volunteers. In order to prevent Jewish illegal migrants reaching Palestine a naval blockade was established to stop boats carrying illegal migrants, and there was extensive intelligence gathering and diplomatic pressure on countries through which the migrants were passing or from whose ports the ships were coming. When an illegal immigrant ship was spotted, it would be approached by warships, and would often maneuver violently to avoid being boarded. British boarding parties consisting of Royal Marines and paratroopers would then be sent to take control of the ship. On 27 ships, they were met with some level of resistance, including 13 cases of violent resistance, during which boarding parties were opposed by passengers armed with weapons such as clubs, iron bars, axes, firebombs, scalding steam hoses, and pistols. Royal Navy ships would ram transports, and boarding parties forced their way onto the ships and engaged in close-quarters hand-to-hand fighting to gain control. In five instances, firearms were used. During these encounters, two Royal Navy warships were damaged in collisions with immigrant ships. Seven British soldiers were killed during battles to take control of immigrant ships – most of whom drowned after being pushed overboard by passengers. Six passengers were also killed. From 1945 to 1948, some 80,000 illegal immigrants attempted to enter Palestine. About 49 illegal immigrant ships were captured and 66,000 people were detained. Some 1,600 others drowned at sea. In 1945, the Atlit detainee camp was reopened. The camp had been built in the 1930s to hold illegal Jewish immigrants fleeing Europe, and during World War II it had been used to hold Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust, who were often held for an extended period of time before being released. As more and more illegals began arriving in Palestine, the camp was reopened. In October 1945, a raid by the Palmach freed 208 inmates. One week after the King David hotel bombing in July 1946, four ships carrying 6,000 illegal immigrants arrived in Haifa, completely overflowing the Atlit camp. The British government, which had known for some time that it would be unable to contain Jewish immigration, established internment camps on the island of Cyprus to detain all illegal immigrants. About 53,000 Jews, mostly Holocaust survivors, passed through these holding facilities. British officials in the liberated zones tried to halt Jewish immigration, and did not recognise the Jews as a national group, demanding that they return to their places of origin. Jewish concentration camp survivors (displaced persons or DPs) were forced to share accommodation with non-Jewish DPs some of whom were former Nazi collaborators, now seeking asylum. In some cases former Nazis were given positions of authority in the camps, which they used to abuse the Jewish survivors. Food supplies to Jewish concentration camp survivors in the British zone were cut to prevent them from assisting Jews fleeing Eastern Europe. In the British zone they were refused support on the grounds that they were not displaced by the war. Troops in the U.S. zone were also not helping survivors but in 1945, U.S. President Harry S. Truman sent a personal representative, Earl G. Harrison, to investigate the situation of the Jewish survivors in Europe. Harrison reported, [S]ubstantial unofficial and unauthorized movements of people must be expected, and these will require considerable force to prevent, for the patience of many of the persons involved is, and in my opinion with justification, nearing the breaking point. It cannot be overemphasized that many of these people are now desperate, that they have become accustomed under German rule to employ every possible means to reach their end, and that the fear of death does not restrain them. The Harrison report changed U.S. policy in the occupied zones, and U.S. policy increasingly focused on helping Jews escape Eastern Europe. Jews escaping post-war anti-Semitic attacks in Eastern Europe learned to avoid the British zone and generally moved through American zones. In April 1946, the Anglo-American Committee of Enquiry reported that given a chance, half a million Jews would immigrate to Palestine: In Poland, Hungary and Rumania, the chief desire is to get out. ... The vast majority of the Jewish displaced persons and migrants, however, believe that the only place which offers a prospect is Palestine." A survey of Jewish DPs found 96.8% would choose Palestine. The Anglo-American Committee recommended that 100,000 Jews be immediately admitted into Palestine. U.S. President Truman pressured the British to accede to this demand. Despite British government promises to abide by the committee's decision, the British decided to persist with restrictions on Jewish migration. Foreign Secretary Bevin remarked that the American pressure to admit 100,000 Jews into Palestine was because "they do not want too many of them in New York". Prime Minister Clement Attlee announced that 100,000 Jews would not be permitted into Palestine long as the "illegal armies" of Palestine (meaning the Jewish militias) were not disbanded. In October 1946, in fulfillment of the recommendation of the Anglo-American Committee, Britain decided to allow a further 96,000 Jews into Palestine at a rate of 1,500 a month. Half this monthly quota was allocated to Jews in the prisons on Cyprus, due to fears that if the number of Jewish prisoners in the Cyprus camps kept growing, it would eventually lead to an uprising there. On July 18, 1947, the Royal Navy intercepted the Exodus 1947 a ship laden with 4,515 refugees en route to Palestine. The passengers resisted violently, and the boarding ended with two passengers and one crewman dead. Bevin decided that rather than being sent to Cyprus, the immigrants on board the Exodus would be returned to the ship's port of origin in France. Bevin believed that sending illegal immigrants to Cyprus, where they then qualified for inclusion into legal immigration quotas to Palestine, only encouraged more illegal immigration. By forcing them to return to their port of origin, Bevin hoped to deter future illegal immigrants. However, the French government announced that it would not permit the disembarkation of passengers unless it was voluntary on their part. The passengers refused to disembark, spending weeks in difficult conditions. The ship was then taken to Germany, where the passengers were forcibly removed at Hamburg and returned to DP camps. The event became a major media event, influencing UN deliberations, damaging Britain's international image and prestige, and exacerbating the already poor relationship between Britain and the Jews. The insurgency begins 's declaration of revolt, February 1, 1944 There is a general agreement among historians that the Jewish underground in Palestine refrained from an opened struggle against Britain, as long as the joint enemy of Germany was still at large. This approach changed towards the beginning of 1944, with withdrawal of Axis forces from the Mediterranean and the advances of the Red Army in Eastern Front. With the general feeling that the Axis forces in Europe were nearing their defeat, the Irgun decided to shift its policy from cease-fire to an active campaign of violence, as long as it would not be hurting the war effort against Nazi Germany. In the autumn of 1943, the Irgun approached Lehi and proposed jointly carrying out an insurrection. The Irgun was now led by Menachem Begin, who had headed Betar in Poland before arriving in Palestine with the Polish forces in exile and going underground. Begin believed that the only way to save European Jewry was to compel the British to leave Palestine as fast as possible and open the country to unrestricted Jewish immigration. He devised a new strategy designed to pressure the British, proposing a series of spectacular underground operations that would humiliate the British and cause them to respond with repressive measures that would antagonise the Yishuv, alienate Britain's allies, and cause controversy among the British public. Begin believed that the insurgency would turn Palestine into a "glass house" with the world's attention focused on it, and that the British, faced with a choice between continued repression or withdrawal, would in the end choose to withdraw. So as not to harm the continuing war effort against Nazi Germany, Begin decided to hold off on attacking British military targets until Germany was defeated. On 1 February 1944, the Irgun declared a revolt against British rule, declaring that "there is no longer any armistice between the Jewish people and the British Administration in Eretz Israel which hands our brothers over to Hitler", and demanding the immediate transfer of power to a provisional Jewish government. On February 12, the Irgun bombed the immigration offices in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa. Two days later, two British constables were shot dead by Lehi members after stumbling on them pasting up posters and attempting to arrest them. On February 27, the Irgun bombed the income taxes offices in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa. On March 13, a Jewish police officer was killed by Lehi in Ramat Gan. Six days later, a Lehi member was shot and killed by police. With Lehi squads sent out to kill police in retribution, the British security forces remained in their stations. On March 23, Lehi members shot and killed two British constables and wounded a third in Jaffa. That same day, the Irgun attacked the police's Criminal Investigation Department (CID) stations in Jerusalem, Jaffa and Haifa. Six British police officers and two Irgun fighters were killed, and the CID stations in Haifa and Jaffa were successfully bombed. Three days later, the British reacted by imposing curfews on Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa, and ran identity parades. On April 1, another Jewish constable was killed and a British constable wounded in a Lehi shooting attack. On April 5, Lehi commander Mattityahu Shmulevitz was arrested, but managed to shoot and wound one of the arresting officers. The Hunting Season period In November 1944, the Haganah launched the Saison. Haganah men from the Palmach and SHAI abducted Irgun members to hand over the British. The Haganah and Jewish Agency also passed extensive intelligence on the Irgun to the British authorities, who were able to make numerous arrests and discover Irgun safehouses and arms caches. More than 1,000 Irgun members were handed over to the British by the Haganah during the Saison. The Haganah established secret prisons in kibbutzim where it held and interrogated Irgun men it had captured. The Haganah tortured Irgun men in its captivity to gain information. The Saison effectively suspended the Irgun's activities. However, the Jewish Agency was suspected by the British authorities of using the Saison for political reasons, often handing in information on people it found politically objectionable but who were unconnected with the Irgun. This caused difficulty for the police, which had to find the actual insurgents among those detained. While there was a strong desire within the Irgun to retaliate, Begin ordered a policy of restraint, insisting that the Jewish Agency would realise with time that the Saison was against the Yishuv's interests. As a result, the Irgun took no retaliatory actions and chose to wait it out. Its ability to act under coercion improved, and new members unknown to the Haganah were brought in. Over time, the enthusiasm within the Haganah for carrying out the Saison began to decline, especially due to the reports of torture and the necessity of acting as informants for the British. There were a growing number of defections from the Saison campaign. In March 1945, at a meeting of Haganah leaders in charge of the Saison at kibbutz Yagur, it was decided to stop the Saison. As the Saison wound down, the Irgun was able to resume attacks against the British in May, and successfully carried out widespread telegraph sabotage, blowing up hundreds of telegraph poles. However, attempts to bomb oil pipelines were foiled by the Haganah and an attempt to bomb government targets with clockwork mortars failed after they were discovered by the British, most having already been disabled by heavy rain. The Haganah ended the Saison in March 1945. However, the Irgun was still recovering from the devastating effects of the Saison, and could not yet mount major operations. As a result of the victory of the Labour Party, which was seen as being even more pro-Zionist than the Conservative Party, in the 1945 British general election which was held on July 5, the Irgun announced a grace period of a few weeks to allow for a satisfactory British initiative. Tel Aviv was subsequently under curfew until November 21. Palestine was relatively quiet until November 25, when the Palmach attacked British police stations at Hadera and near Herzliya which were used as watch points to detect illegal Jewish immigration, using automatic fire and explosives. Six British and eight Arab policemen were wounded. British troops and police subsequently carried out search operations on November 25 and November 26 against the Jewish settlements of Givat Haim, Hogla, Shefayim, and Rishpon, looking for insurgents and arms. They met violent resistance from Jewish civilians in the settlements as well as large numbers of Jews from outside who raced to confront the British, and clashes broke out which resulted in 8 Jews killed and 75 wounded, while the British reported 65 soldiers and 16 policemen injured. The Palmach proposed ambushing British forces returning from search operations, but Jewish Agency head David Ben-Gurion rejected the plan. Two days later, the Palmach again bombed the police coast guard station at Givat Olga, killing a British soldier, while a Palmach attack on the Royal Air Force radar station on Mount Carmel failed when the bomb left by a Palmach team was defused in time. In late January and early February, the Irgun conducted two successful arms raids against RAF facilities. On February 5, the police headquarters at Safed was attacked and on the following day, an attack on a King's African Rifles camp in Holon killed an African soldier and a British officer. African soldiers stationed in the camp subsequently rioted and killed two Jews and wounded four. The British were outraged by the attack. Major General James Cassels, told the acting mayor of Tel Aviv that he held the Jewish community responsible. The British imposed a collective punishment on the population of Tel Aviv, imposing a dawn to dusk curfew on the city roads and closing all cafes, bars, cinemas, and other places of entertainment and socialisation until May 12. The authorities had seriously considered more severe penalties such as demolishing all houses around the car park including those that had played no role in the assault and imposing a collective fine on the entire city but had decided against all other options due to them being politically undesirable or impractical. However, although Cunningham had decided on firm military action, he chose not to have the two Irgun fighters under sentences of death executed given the Irgun threat to kill the British officers it was holding hostage if the British carried out the executions. On July 3, he commuted the sentences of Yosef Simchon and Michael Ashbel to life imprisonment, and the Irgun released its remaining British hostages the following day. wait to be interrogated during Operation Shark The British responded to the bombing with Operation Shark, a cordon and search operation in which the entire city of Tel Aviv and the Jewish Quarter of Jaffa would be cordoned off and searched building by building and the entire Jewish population except for the elderly and children were to be screened. The British chose to search Tel Aviv due to faulty intelligence that the bombers had come from Tel Aviv, when in fact they had been based in Jerusalem. The operation was conducted from July 30 to August 2, during which British forces searched tens of thousands of buildings and screened most of the Jewish population. Tel Aviv was placed under curfew for 22 hours a day with residents only allowed to leave their homes for two hours every evening. A total of 787 arrests were made, and according to former Irgun high command member Shmuel Katz, the operation succeeded in arresting "Almost all of the leaders and staff of the Irgun and Lehi, and the Tel Aviv manpower of both organizations." Among the underground leaders arrested was Yitzhak Shamir, a member of the Lehi high command. He was subsequently interned in Africa. Irgun leader Menachem Begin escaped capture by hiding in a secret compartment that had been built into the wall of his home. In addition, the Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem were kept under curfew for 16 days. In the aftermath of the bombing, the head of the British forces in Palestine, General Sir Evelyn Barker, responded by ordering British personnel to boycott all: Jewish establishments, restaurants, shop, and private dwellings. No British soldier is to have social intercourse with any Jew. ... I appreciate that these measures will inflict some hardship on the troops, yet I am certain that if my reasons are fully explained to them they will understand their propriety and will be punishing the Jews in a way the race dislikes as much as any, by striking at their pockets and showing our contempt of them. Barker, whose forces participated in the capture of the Bergen Belsen concentration camp, made many antisemitic comments in his letters to Katy Antonius and was relieved of his post a few weeks after issuing the statement. A few months after his return to England, Barker was sent a letter bomb by the Irgun, but it was detected before it exploded. As a result of Operation Agatha and Operation Shark, the Jewish Agency decided to end the Jewish Resistance Movement, which was formally dissolved on August 23. From then on, the Haganah would concentrate mainly on illegal immigration and mount occasional Palmach raids on British targets associated with stopping illegal immigration, while the Irgun and Lehi would focus on continuous military operations against the British. In September, attacks picked up again, starting with two assassinations carried out by Lehi on September 9: British Army intelligence officer Desmond Doran was killed in a grenade attack on his home, and police sergeant T.G. Martin, who had been responsible for Yitzhak Shamir's arrest, was shot dead at a tennis court. In the early morning hours of September 10, a British soldier was killed when Jewish insurgents ambushed army vehicles with automatic fire near Petah Tikva. On September 20, a railway station in Haifa was bombed and a British soldier was shot dead in Tel Aviv two days later. On September 31, a British soldier was killed by automatic fire in an ambush while en route from Lydda to Netanya by motorcycle. On October 30, the Irgun raided the Jerusalem railway station. The British had advance knowledge of the plan and a police team opened fire on the raiders, wounding four of them and forcing them to retreat after depositing the explosives. Four of the attackers were later captured including two of the wounded ones. One of them was Meir Feinstein, who was tried and sentenced to death for his role in the action. The interior of station was subsequently badly damaged and a British constable killed when the bombs the raiding party left behind exploded during an attempt to remove them. The following day, Irgun operatives in Italy bombed the British Embassy in Rome, which seriously damaged the building. The Italian authorities subsequently arrested Irgun suspects and discovered an Irgun sabotage school in Rome. One of the Irgun members arrested was Israel Epstein, a childhood friend of Irgun commander Menachem Begin who worked in propaganda and liaison duties for the Irgun high command. He was shot dead while trying to escape custody. Lehi bombed the district police headquarters in Haifa on January 12, using a bomb-laden truck which was parked next to the building and abandoned before exploding. Two British and two Arab policemen were killed. During this time, the British continued to reinforce their garrison in Palestine and stringent restrictions on the movement of British personnel were imposed to lessen their vulnerability. Soldiers were instructed to only walk in groups of not less than four when off base and to avoid cafes. The British swiftly imposed curfews and conducted searches. On the following day, the authorities declared martial law in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in an area encompassing the cities and towns of Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan, Bnei Brak, Givatayim, and Petah Tikva, in the Sharon plain, and in four Jewish neighbourhoods of Jerusalem. In the Tel Aviv region, the operation was codenamed Operation Hippo while in Jerusalem it was codenamed Operation Elephant. Up to 300,000 Jews were affected. Jewish residents in areas under martial law were put under curfew for all but three hours of a day. Civil services were suspended and jurisdiction over civilian criminal offenses was transferred from civilian courts to military courts. Most telephone services were cut off, driving non-security forces vehicles was prohibited, and movement in and out of the affected areas required a permit. British soldiers conducted searches throughout the affected areas. Soldiers were granted policing authority and were told to shoot curfew violators on sight. Pedestrians and motorists were fired at by troops in Tel Aviv, and a Jewish official had his car riddled by bullets. In Jerusalem, British troops killed two Jewish civilians during the martial law period, including a four-year-old girl standing on the balcony of her home in Jerusalem. Martial law was imposed both to search for Irgun and Lehi members and to inflict economic losses on the Yishuv as a collective punishment over the failure of the Jewish Agency and the Jewish population to cooperate with the authorities in suppressing the insurgency. On March 14, an oil pipeline in Haifa and a section of the railway line near Be'er Ya'akov were blown up. Martial law was lifted on March 17 after 15 days. The authorities announced that 78 people had been arrested for suspected insurgent activity, of whom 15 were identified as Lehi members, 12 as Irgun members, and the rest "connected." The Yishuv suffered an estimated $10 million in economic losses as a result of martial law. Attacks had continued throughout the martial law period, and between March 1 and March 13, 14 British personnel and 15 civilians were killed in insurgent attacks. The attacks on security forces and oil pipeline sabotage continued after martial law was lifted, with an officer killed in an attack in Ramla on March 20 and a soldier killed in a mine attack on the Cairo-Haifa train at Rehovot. On April 16, four Irgun fighters who had been sentenced to death – Dov Gruner, Yehiel Dresner, Mordechai Alkahi, and Eliezer Kashani – were executed in Acre Prison. The following day, the authorities scheduled the executions of Irgun fighter Meir Feinstein and Lehi fighter Moshe Barazani, who had been sentenced to death and were awaiting execution in Jerusalem Central Prison, for April 21. The Irgun attempted to find British hostages to save their lives, but having anticipated this, the British confined almost all of their troops to barracks or within the security zones, and Irgun patrols fruitlessly wandered the streets in search of a vulnerable soldier. However, the Irgun did manage to smuggle a grenade to Feinstein and Barazani. Although they originally planned to kill their executioners with the grenade, after learning that a rabbi was to accompany them to the gallows, they committed suicide by detonating the grenade while embracing each other, with the grenade lodged between them, a few hours before their scheduled executions. The Irgun subsequently tried to kidnap Britons to hang as a reprisal, but consistently failed, and finally gave up after a group of Irgun members finally seized a British businessman from a bar but spared his life after learning he was Jewish. On April 25, a bomb-laden van that had been stolen from Palestine Post and Telegraph was used to bomb a Palestine Police facility at Sarona, killing four British constables. The following day, Lehi assassinated Albert Conquest, the Assistant Superintendent of Police, who was the head of the Haifa CID. In the final two weeks of July, over 100 attacks took place in which the security forces lost 13 dead and 77 wounded with only one Jewish insurgent killed. At the end of October renewed Haganah–Irgun clashes broke out during which the Haganah shot two Irgun men in Rishon LeZion, but the clashes died out. Five Lehi members including three female members were also killed in a raid on a Lehi safehouse in Raanana, which provoked reprisal killings of British soldiers, police, and civilians by Lehi. Through a well-organised 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.S. 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 favour of the loan, fearing accusations of disloyalty to the United States. U.S. President Harry S. 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. During the insurgency, the British government organised 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 realising 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. At the same time, attacks carried out on economic targets cost Britain almost £2 million in economic damage; meanwhile, Britain was paying about £40 million a year to keep its troops in Palestine, while at the same time the country was going through a deep economic crisis as a result of World War II, with widespread power cuts and strict rationing, and was heavily dependent on American economic aid. 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. Meanwhile, depending on perspective, a low-level guerrilla war, or campaigns of terrorism, continued through 1947 and 1948. Eventually, Jewish insurgency against the British was overshadowed by the Jewish-Arab fighting of the 1947–48 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine, which started following the UN vote in favour of the United Nations Partition Plan. In 1947, the United States chapter of the United Jewish Appeal raised $150 million in its annual appeal – at that time the largest sum of money ever raised by a charity dependent on private contributions. 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 1947 the issue was formally referred to the UN. By this time over 100,000 British soldiers were stationed in Palestine. Referral to the UN led to a period of uncertainty over Palestine's future. A United Nations committee, the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) was sent to investigate the problem. On August 31, 1947, UNSCOP recommended that Palestine be partitioned into Jewish and Arab states. On September 20, 1947, 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. 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. The British also refused to cooperate with the UN commission that was sent to monitor the transition; when the commission's six members arrived in Palestine in January 1948, British High Commissioner Alan Cunningham allotted them an unventilated Jerusalem basement from which to work out of. They were gradually reduced to foraging for food and drink and prevented from carrying out their duties. 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. In revenge, Lehi mined two trains. 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 35. Another attack on 31 March killed 40 people and injured 60. 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 1946 Night of the Bridges operation. Following the late-1947 announcement that the British would withdraw from Palestine months ahead of schedule, however, the bridge was destroyed by the 21st Battalion under the Palmach in late February 1948 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 1948, 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. Palestinian society collapsed. ==Aftermath: British policy during the 1948 War==

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 1948, later setting the date for the termination of the mandate as 15 May; on 14 May 1948 the Zionist leadership announced the Israeli Declaration of Independence. Several hours later, at midnight on 15 May 1948, 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 1948 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. Throughout the 1948 war, 40 British officers served with the Jordanian Army (then known as the Arab Legion), and the Arab Legion's commander was a British General, John Bagot Glubb. On 28 May 1948, the United Nations Security Council debated Palestine. 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 11,000 detainees, mainly military-age males, in the camps. Authorities in the British, as well as American occupation zones in Germany and Austria imposed restrictions on the emigration on males of military age to Israel during the war. In October 1948, Israel began a campaign to capture the Negev. In December 1948, 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 20 November 1948, the Israeli Air Force shot down a British reconnaissance plane over Israel, killing two airmen. On 7 January 1949, 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. The UK Defence Committee responded to this incident and a Jordanian request by sending two destroyers carrying men and arms to Transjordan. Israel complained to the UN that these troops were in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 50. 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. The British also managed to prevent shipments of aviation spirit and other essential fuels from reaching Israel in retaliation. 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. On 19 October 1948, Sir Alexander Cadogan, the British representative to the United Nations, pressed for sanctions against Israel. 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. In particular, Bevin hoped to restrict Israel's southern border to the Gaza–Jericho–Beersheba road. The British ambassador in Cairo, Sir Ronald Campbell, advocated military intervention against Israel to stop the IDF's drive into the Negev in a January 1949 cable to Bevin. However, the British diplomatic campaign failed to persuade the US government to take action against Israel, with US President Harry S. 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. On 17 January 1949 the Chief of Staff briefed the cabinet on events in the Middle East. Minister of Health, Aneurin Bevan, protested at the decision to send arms to Transjordan, taken by the Defence Committee without cabinet approval. He complained that British policy in Palestine was inconsistent with the spirit and tradition of Labour Party policy and was supported by the Deputy Prime Minister, Herbert Morrison and Chancellor of the Exchequer, Stafford Cripps. In January 1949, the British cabinet voted to continue supporting the Arab states, but also voted to recognise Israel and release the last Jewish detainees on Cyprus. The last detainees began leaving Cyprus in January, and shortly afterward, Britain formally recognised Israel. ==Casualties==

A table of casualties sustained from August 1945 to August 1947, as recorded by British authorities, is shown below. ==Timeline==

1939 • June 12 – A British explosives expert was killed trying to defuse an Irgun bomb near a Jerusalem post office. • August 26 – Two British police officers, Inspector Ronald Barker and Inspector Ralph Cairns, commander of the Jewish Department of the C.I.D., were killed by an Irgun mine in Jerusalem. 1944 • February 12 – British immigration offices in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa were attacked by Irgun. • February 14 – Two British constables were shot dead when they attempted to arrest Lehi fighters pasting up wall posters in Haifa. • November 6 – Lehi fighters Eliyahu Bet-Zuri and Eliyahu Hakim assassinated British politician Lord Moyne in Cairo. Moyne's driver was also killed. • November 1944 to February 1945 – the "Hunting Season": the Haganah actively cooperates with the Mandate authorities in the suppression of the Irgun 1945 • January 27 – A British judge was kidnapped by Irgun and released in exchange for Jewish detainees. • February/March – end of the so-called "Hunting Season", the Haganah cooperation with the authorities against the Irgun. • March 22 – Lehi members Eliyahu Bet-Zuri and Eliyahu Hakim were hanged in Cairo. • August 14 – Irgun fighters overpowered and disarmed two British sentries, and then blew up the Yibne Railway Bridge. • October – The Jewish Resistance Movement, a cooperation between the Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi is activated by the Jewish Agency until August 1946 • October 10 – Haganah fighters raid the Atlit detainee camp, which was being used by the British to hold thousands of illegal Jewish immigrants from Europe, freeing 208 inmates. The raid was planned by Yitzhak Rabin, commanded by Nahum Sarig, and executed by the Palmach. • November 1 – Night of the Trains – Haganah fighters sabotaged railroads used by the British, and sank three British guard boats. At the same time, an Irgun unit led by Eitan Livni raided a train station in Lod, destroying a number of buildings and three train engines. One Irgun fighter, two British soldiers, and four Arabs were killed. • December 27 – Irgun fighters raided and bombed British Intelligence Offices in Jerusalem, killing seven British policemen. Two Irgun fighters were also killed. Irgun also attacked a British Army camp in Northern Tel Aviv. In the exchange of fire, a British soldier and Irgun fighter were killed, and five Irgun fighters were injured. 1946 • January 19 – Jewish fighters destroyed a power station and a portion of the Central Jerusalem Prison with explosives. During the incident, two insurgents were killed and one wounded and captured and a British officer was killed in a firefight. • January 20 – Palmach attacked the Givat Olga Coast Guard Station. One person was killed and ten were injured during the raid. A Palmach attempt to sabotage the British radar station on Mount Carmel was thwarted. Documents seized by the British indicated that the attacks were retaliation for the seizure of a Jewish immigrant ship two days before. • February 22 – Haganah fighters attacked a police Tegart fort with a 200 lb bomb. • February 23 – Haganah fighters attacked British mobile police forces in Kfar Vitkin, Shfar'am and Sharona. In the firefight that followed, four Haganah members were killed. • February 26 – Irgun and Lehi fighters attacked three British airfields and destroyed dozens of aircraft. One Irgun fighter was killed. • March 6 – A military truck carrying 30 Irgun fighters disguised as British soldiers approached a British army camp at Sarafand, where the fighters infiltrated into the armoury and stole weaponry. An exchange fire began after the fighters were discovered. The remaining weapons and ammunition in the armoury were destroyed by a mine, and the truck then drove off at high speed. Four Irgun fighters were captured, two of them women. Two of the captured fighters were wounded. • April 25 – Lehi fighters attacked a Tel Aviv car park that was being used by the British Army's 6th Airborne Division, killing seven British soldiers and looting the arms racks they found. They then laid mines and retreated. Some British soldiers retaliated by damaging Jewish property. • June 16–17 – Night of the Bridges – Palmach carried out a sabotage operation, blowing up ten of the eleven bridges connecting British Mandatory Palestine to the neighbouring countries, while staging 50 diversion ambushes and operations against British forces throughout Palestine. Palmach lost 14 dead and 5 wounded in the operation. The British responded with raids on Kfar Giladi, Matsuba, and Bet HaArava, encountering only minor resistance. Three Jews were killed, 18 wounded, and 100 detained. • June 17 – Lehi attacked railroad workshops in Haifa. Eleven Lehi members were killed during the attack. • June 18 – Irgun fighters took six British officers hostage. They were later released after the death sentences passed on two Irgun fighters were commuted. • June 20 – British troops searching for the six officers abducted on June 18 killed two Jewish militants. • June 29 – Operation Agatha – British military and police units began a three-day operation, searching three cities and Jewish settlements throughout Palestine and imposing curfews, arresting 2,718 Jews and seizing numerous arms and munitions which were found unexpectedly. The Jewish Agency building was raided, and numerous documents were confiscated. During the operation, four Jews were killed and 80 injured. • July 22 – King David Hotel bombing – Irgun fighters bombed the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, which was home to the central offices of the British Mandatory authorities and the headquarters of British forces in Palestine and Transjordan. A total of 91 people were killed, including 28 British soldiers, policemen and civilians. Most of the dead were Arabs. Another 46 people were injured. Irgun suffered two casualties when British soldiers became suspicious and fired at a group of Irgun fighters as they fled from the scene, wounding two. One of them later died from his injuries. • July 29 – British police raided a bomb-making workshop in Tel Aviv. • July 30 – Operation Shark - Tel Aviv was placed under a 22-hour curfew for four days as 20,000 British soldiers conducted house-to-house searches for Jewish militants. The city was sealed off and troops were ordered to shoot curfew violators. British troops detained 500 people for further questioning and seized a large cache of weapons, extensive counterfeiting equipment, as well as $1,000,000 in counterfeit government bonds that was discovered in a raid on the city's largest synagogue. • August – The Haganah ceased its cooperation with the Irgun, and Lehi (the "Jewish Resistance Movement") • August 13 – A crowd of about 1,000 Jews attempted to break into the port area of Haifa as two Royal Navy ships departed for Cyprus with 1,300 illegal immigrants on board, and a ship with 600 more was escorted into the port. British soldiers fired on the crowd, killing three and wounding seven. • August 22 – Palyam frogmen attached a limpet mine to the side of the British cargo ship Empire Rival, which had been used to deport Jewish immigrants to Cyprus. A hole was blown in the ship's side. • August 26 – British troops searched two Jewish coastal villages for three Jews involved in the Empire Rival incident. During the operation, 85 persons, including the entire male population of one of the villages, were detained. • August 30 – British soldiers discovered arms and munitions dumps in Dorot and Ruhama. • September 8 – Jewish fighters sabotaged railroads in fifty places in Palestine. • September 9 – Two British officers were killed by an explosion at a public building in Tel Aviv. A British police sergeant, T.G. Martin, who had identified and arrested Lehi leader and future Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, was assassinated near his Haifa home. • September 10 – British forces imposed a curfew and searched for militants in Tel Aviv and Ramat Gan, arresting 101 people and wounding four. • September 15 – Jewish fighters attacked a police station on the coast near Tel Aviv, but were driven off by gunfire. • September 20 - Bombed Haifa Station • October 6 – A member of the Royal Air Force was shot and killed. • October 8 – Two British soldiers were killed when their truck detonated a mine outside Jerusalem. A leading Arab figure was wounded in another mine attack, and mines were also found near government house. • October 30 – Irgun launched an attack on the Jerusalem Railway Station, killing a police sapper and causing heavy damage. One of the attackers, Meir Feinstein, was captured. • October 31 – The British embassy in Rome was damaged by an Irgun bomb. • November 1–2 – Palmach sank three British naval police craft. • November 18 – British police in Tel Aviv attacked Jews on the streets and fired into houses in retaliation for the mine attack that occurred the previous day. Twenty Jews were injured. Meanwhile, a British engineer trying to remove mines planted near an RAF airfield was killed and four other men were injured when one of the mines exploded. • November 20 – Three people were injured when a bomb exploded in the Jerusalem tax office. • November 25 – The Jewish immigrant ship Knesset Israel was captured by four British destroyers. Efforts to force the Jewish refugees onto deportation ships were met with resistance. Two refugees were killed and 46 wounded. Haganah attacked the Givat Olga police station and the Sydna-Ali coastal patrol station, wounding six British and eight Arab policemen. • October 31 – The British embassy in Rome was bombed by the Irgun, wounding three. • December 2–5 – Six British soldiers and four other persons were killed in bomb and mine attacks. • December 28 – An Irgun prisoner who had been sentenced to 18 years in prison and 18 lashes was whipped. • December 29 – Night of the Beatings – Irgun fighters kidnapped and flogged six British soldiers. The British responded by ordering their soldiers back into army camps and setting up roadblocks. A car with five armed Irgun men carrying a whip was stopped. British soldiers opened fire, killing one Irgun fighter. The remaining four were arrested. 1947 • January 2 – A British soldier was killed when the Bren gun carrier he was riding was hit by a mine. The Irgun also launched a flamethrower attack against a military car park in Tiberias. • January 8 - Twelve Irgun members were arrested in Rishon LeZion. • January 5 – Eleven British soldiers were injured in a grenade attack on a train in Banha carrying British troops to Palestine from Egypt. • January 12 – A Lehi member drove a truck bomb into a police station in Haifa, killing two British and two Arab constables, and wounding 140. • January 26 – A retired British major, H. Collins, was abducted in Jerusalem, badly beaten, and chloroformed. A British judge was kidnapped the following day. Both men were released when British High Commissioner Alan Cunningham threatened martial law unless the two men were returned unharmed. Collins subsequently died from chloroform poisoning, as the chloroform had been improperly administered by his captors. • March 4 – Five British soldiers were injured when their truck was wrecked by a mine near Rishon LeZion, and four Arabs were injured when a Royal Air Force vehicle was blown up by a mine near Ramla. A British military office in Haifa was bombed, and a small-scale raid hit an army camp near Hadera. • March 9 – A British Army camp was attacked in Hadera. • March 11 – Two British soldiers were killed. • March 12 – Irgun attacked the Schneller Camp, which was being used as a barracks and office of the Royal Army Pay Corps. One British soldier was killed and eight were wounded. A British camp near Karkur was also raided, shots were fired at the Sarona camp, and a mine exploded near Rishon LeZion. • March 23 – One British soldier was killed when a train on the Cairo-Haifa line hit a mine in Rehovot. The British transport ship Empire Rival was damaged by a time-bomb while en route from Haifa to Port Said. • April 7 – A British patrol killed Jewish militant Moshe Cohen. • April 8 – A British constable was killed in retaliation for Cohen's death. A Jewish boy was also killed by British troops. • April 13 – The Jewish immigrant ship Theodor Herzl was captured by the British. Three Jewish refugees were killed and 27 injured during the takeover. • April 14 – The Royal Navy captured the Jewish immigrant ship Guardian. Two Jews were killed and 14 wounded during the takeover. • April 17 – The British Army leave centre in Netanya was attacked by three Jewish fighters who shot a sentry dead, tossed three bombs and then escaped. • April 19 – Four Irgun fighters (Dov Gruner, Yehiel Dresner, Mordechai Alkahi and Eliezer Kashani) were hanged by British authorities. Irgun retaliated with three attacks; a British soldier was killed during a raid on a field dressing station near Netanya, a civilian bystander was killed during an attack on a British armoured car in Tel Aviv, and shots were fired at British troops in Haifa. • April 21 – Irgun member Meir Feinstein and Lehi member Moshe Barzani killed themselves in prison with grenades smuggled to them in hollowed-out oranges, hours before they were to be hanged. • April 22 – A British troop train arriving from Cairo was bombed outside Rehovot, killing five soldiers and three civilians, and wounding 39. In a separate incident, two British soldiers were killed in Jerusalem. Five Irgun fighters and eight escapees were later captured. • May 6 – A British counter-terrorism unit led by Roy Farran abducted 17-year-old Lehi member Alexander Rubowitz, later torturing and killing him. • July 25 – A British soldier was killed and three others were injured when their jeep hit a mine near Netanya. Jewish fighters also blew up railway track near Gaza and damaged a railway bridge near Binyamina. • July 26 – Two British soldiers were killed by a booby trap. • July 27 – Seven British soldiers were wounded in an ambush and mine explosions. • July 29–31 – The Sergeants affair – British authorities hanged Irgun fighters Avshalom Haviv, Yaakov Weiss and Meir Nakar. In retaliation, Irgun hanged British intelligence corps sergeants Mervyn Paice and Clifford Martin, who had previously been abducted and held as hostages, afterwards re-hanging their bodies from trees in a eucalyptus grove near Netanya. A mine laid underneath exploded as one of the bodies was being cut down, injuring a British officer. In a separate incident, two British soldiers were killed and three wounded by a land mine near Hadera planted by Irgun fighters. British soldiers and policemen reacted by rampaging in Tel Aviv, breaking windows, overturning cars, stealing a taxi and assaulting civilians. Groups of young Jews then began stoning British foot patrols, causing them to be withdrawn from the city. Upon learning of the stonings, members of mobile police units drove to Tel Aviv in six armored cars, where they smashed windows, raided two cafes and detonated a grenade in the second one, and fired into two crowded buses. Five Jews were killed and fifteen wounded. • August 1 – An anti-British riot broke out during the funeral procession of the five Jews killed the day before, and 33 Jews were injured. In Jerusalem, an attack by Jewish fighters on a British security zone in Rehavia was repulsed. One attacker was killed and two captured. • August 5 – Three British police officers were killed by a bomb at the Jerusalem Department of Labor building. • August 9 – Irgun bombed a British troop train north of Lydda, killing the Jewish engineer. • August 15 - 2 Arabs (including 13-year-old boy) killed in Jaffa, 1 Jew killed in Kfar Saba, 1 Arab killed in [Ramat Gan]. • August 15 - Orange Grove attack by Haganah: 11 Arabs, including 4 children (3 girls and a 3-year-old boy), their parents and adult sibling were killed in an orange grove outside Tel Aviv. The Haganah claimed responsibility, four workers were killed by machine gun fire and the family of seven when the house they were sleeping in was dynamited. • September 3 – A postal bomb sent by either Irgun or Lehi exploded in the post office sorting room of the British War Office in London, injuring two. • September 21 – A British messenger was killed. • September 26 – Irgun fighters robbed a bank, killing four British policemen. • September 27 – A Jewish illegal immigrant was killed by the British. • September 29 – 10 killed (4 British policemen, 4 Arab policemen and an Arab couple) and 53 injured in Haifa police headquarters bombing by Irgun. One ton of explosives in a barrel was used for the bombing and Irgun said it was done on the first day of Sukkot to avoid Jewish casualties. • November 14 – Four Britons were killed in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. • November 17 – 2 Britons (a soldier and a constable) killed and 28 others wounded in bombing/shooting at Jerusalem cafe. • December 10 – A British soldier was killed and another wounded in Haifa. • December 12 – Jewish underground bombing attacks on buses in Haifa and Ramla killed 2 British soldiers, 20 Arabs and 5 Jews. Thirteen of the Arab deaths occurred during a Jewish attack on the village of Tira near Haifa. One Arab was wounded in another Jewish attack on the village of Shefat. A British Airways bus was attacked and burned near Lydda by Arabs, four people (including one Czech official) were killed. • December 13 - Irgun bombings: 3 Arabs killed and 22 wounded (3 critically) by bombs thrown from taxi at Jerusalem's Damascus Gate, the casualties included children. A bomb thrown from a car into a Jaffa cafe killed 6 Arab adults (including an 11-year old) and injured 40 others (three were under 12). 24 armed Jewish men dressed as soldiers attacked the village of Yehudiya near Petah Tikva shooting guns and blowing up houses, 7 Arabs were killed (two women and two children, 3 and 4 years old among them) and 7 others seriously wounded (two women and girl of 4 among them). • December 14 - 14 Jews were killed and 9 injured along with 2 British soldiers when troops from the Trans-Jordan Army fired on a bus convoy near Beth Nabala. The Jordanian troops were said to be responding to a grenade attack from the convoy. An 18-month-old Arab toddler was killed and a man wounded by a grenade thrown at an Arab bus in Jerusalem. A Jewish policeman was killed near Beersheba • December 16 - 2 Jews and one Arab killed near Beersheba. Three Arabs killed near Gaza (reportedly by Arab assailants). • December 18 - Haganah attack on [Al-Khisas]: 10 Arabs including five young children were killed when two cars of gunmen drove through the village firing guns and blew up two houses. The raid was ordered by Haganah as a reprisal attack for the killing of two Jewish settlement policemen. • December 24 - 4 Arabs and 2 Jews killed, 26 wounded in shootings on streets and buses in Haifa. • December 25 – Lehi members machine-gunned two British soldiers in a Tel Aviv cafe. • December 29 – Two British constables and 11 Arabs were killed and 32 Arabs wounded when Irgun members threw a bomb from a taxi at Jerusalem's Damascus Gate. 1948 • February 12 – A British soldier was killed by a sniper in Haifa. • February 19 – Two British soldiers were killed. • March 3 – A British soldier was killed by a Jewish sniper. • April 20 – Jewish snipers attacked British soldiers and policemen throughout Haifa, wounding two policemen and a soldier. British forces returned fire and killed five snipers. • April 28 - British troops intervened to stop Operation Hametz, leading to a small battle with the Irgun. The intervention succeeded in preventing a Jewish takeover of Jaffa, albeit it failed to expel the Irgun from Menashiya due to stiff resistance. To put pressure on Ben-Gurion to rein in the Irgun, British planes flew over Tel Aviv and also bombed Haganah positions in Bat Yam. Eventually the British issued an ultimatum to Ben-Gurion, threatening to bomb Tel Aviv if he didn't stop the Irgun offensive. The next day, an agreement was reached in which Haganah fighters would replace the Irgun in Menashiya, and the Haganah pledged not to attack Jaffa until the end of the Mandate. British troops were allowed to reoccupy the police fort in Menashiya, but the town remained in Jewish hands. • May 3 – A Lehi book bomb posted to the parental home of British Major Roy Farran was opened by his brother Rex, killing him. ==Effects==

Effect upon mutual British–Arab interests 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. Britain governed or protected Oman, Sudan, Kuwait, the Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Yemen, had treaties of alliance with Iraq (the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty (1930) and the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty (1948)) and Egypt (Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936). Transjordan was granted independence in 1946 and the Anglo-Jordanian Treaty of 1948 allowed Britain to station troops in Jordan and promised mutual assistance in the event of war. Effects upon independence movements worldwide According to the BBC documentary The Age of Terror: In the Name of Liberation, the successful Jewish struggle for independence in Palestine helped inspire 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 the FLN in the Algeria War. EOKA also used Irgun tactics in the Cyprus Emergency. Political scientist John Bowyer Bell, who studied both the Irgun and the Irish Republican Army, noted that many IRA men whom he interviewed in the 1960s had studied Menachem Begin's memoir The Revolt, and used it as a manual for guerrilla warfare. Nelson Mandela studied the book and used it as a guide in planning the ANC's guerrilla campaign against the apartheid government of South Africa. The Palestine Liberation Organization also drew inspiration from the Irgun's success. In 2001, invading US forces in Afghanistan found a copy of The Revolt and other books on the Jewish insurgency in the library of an Al-Qaeda training camp. ==See also==