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120-583: The neighborhood was established in 1949 to absorb demobilized soldiers after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War . In 1954, Tel Aviv municipality donated a plot of land on Golan Street in Ramat HaHayal, dubbed "Shikun Shanghai", to members of the Jewish community from Shanghai, China, who left during the final stages of the Chinese Civil War . Until 2010, it was widely assumed that the neighborhood had been named after

240-604: A Jewish state, the Haganah began a period of co-operation with the other two underground organisations. They jointly formed the Jewish Resistance Movement . The Haganah refrained from direct confrontation with British forces, and concentrated its efforts on attacking British immigration control, while Irgun and Lehi attacked military and police targets. The Resistance Movement dissolved amidst recriminations in July 1946, following

360-603: 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

480-464: 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

600-582: A few " Davidka " mortars, which had been indigenously designed and produced. They were inaccurate but had a loud explosion that demoralised the enemy. Much of the munitions used by the Israelis came from the Ayalon Institute , a clandestine bullet factory beneath kibbutz Ayalon , which produced about 2.5 million bullets for Sten guns. The munitions produced by the Ayalon Institute were said to have been

720-559: A highly organised, national force, since the Arab riots of 1920 – 21 , and throughout the riots of 1929 , Great Uprising of 1936–39 , and World War II. It had a mobile force, the HISH , which had 2,000 full-time fighters (men and women) and 10,000 reservists (all aged between 18 and 25) and an elite unit, the Palmach composed of 2,100 fighters and 1,000 reservists. The reservists trained three or four days

840-593: A month and went back to civilian life the rest of the time. These mobile forces could rely on a garrison force, the HIM ( Heil Mishmar , lit. Guard Corps), composed of people aged over 25. The Yishuv's total strength was around 35,000 with 15,000 to 18,000 fighters and a garrison force of roughly 20,000. There were also several thousand men and women who had served in the British Army in World War II who did not serve in any of

960-676: 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

1080-667: 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

1200-536: A potential powerful fifth column , by belligerency and expulsion". According to research by Shay Hazkani, Ben-Gurion and segments of the religious Zionist leadership drew parallels between the war and the biblical wars of extermination, and states this was not a fringe position. IDF indoctrination pamphlets were distributed to recruits instructing them that God “demands a revenge of extermination without mercy to whoever tries to hurt us for no reason.”. Plan Dalet , or Plan D, ( Hebrew : תוכנית ד' , Tokhnit dalet )

1320-427: 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

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1440-475: 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

1560-428: 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

1680-675: 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

1800-513: A training course for 170 men to wage an anti-Irgun campaign which would come to be known as the Saison , or "Hunting Season", on October 20. Meanwhile, the British continued to make arrests, with 118 Irgun suspects detained in the previous two months. On October 21, the British deported 251 Irgun and Lehi suspects in custody to internment camps in Africa , a practice which was to continue up to 1947. Although

1920-604: A variety of distinct sectors around the different coastal towns. They consolidated their presence in Galilee and Samaria . Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni came from Egypt with several hundred men of the Army of the Holy War . Having recruited a few thousand volunteers, al-Husayni organised the blockade of the 100,000 Jewish residents of Jerusalem. To counter this, the Yishuv authorities tried to supply

2040-533: A violent Arab reaction, the Irgun devised an operation designed to force the British to back down. The Irgun publicly threatened a violent reaction if on September 27, the Yom Kippur holiday, the police attempted to stop the blowing of the shofar. The Irgun in fact had no intention of shooting in the midst of a large Jewish crowd at the Western Wall, but planned a series of attacks on four police Tegart fortresses . If

2160-1030: Is located on HaBarzel Street. In February 1997, archaeological excavations carried out at Ramat HaHayal found two wall foundations with abutting floor fragments, a pit, and ceramic and glass shards from the 8th–9th centuries BCE. A burial cave of the intermediate Bronze Age was cut into soft Kurkar stone, and several intact vessels were discovered belonging to the known types from the Yarkon River area. 32°6′54.93″N 34°50′11.43″E  /  32.1152583°N 34.8365083°E  / 32.1152583; 34.8365083 1948 Arab%E2%80%93Israeli War [REDACTED]   Israel Before 26 May 1948 : [REDACTED] Yishuv Paramilitary groups : After 26 May 1948 : [REDACTED]   Arab League : Irregulars : [REDACTED] Arab Liberation Army Central and Jerusalem front Northern front International Massacres Biological warfare The 1948 Arab–Israeli War , also known as

2280-571: The 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine , while the Jewish opposition developed into the 1944–1947 Jewish insurgency in Palestine . The civil war began the day after the adoption of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine on 29 November 1947 – which planned to divide the territory into an Arab state, a Jewish state, and the Special International Regime encompassing the cities of Jerusalem and Bethlehem . At

2400-488: 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

2520-648: The First Arab–Israeli War , followed the civil war in Mandatory Palestine as the second and final stage of the 1948 Palestine war . The civil war became a war of separate states with the Israeli Declaration of Independence on 14 May 1948, the end of the British Mandate for Palestine at midnight, and the entry of a military coalition of Arab states into the territory of Mandatory Palestine

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2640-694: 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

2760-546: The Jewish Brigade and its name was written in Hebrew רמת החי"ל ‎ ( lit. Jewish Brigade Heights), including in official municipal signs. The mistake was corrected by the municipality in 2010. Many Israeli high-tech companies, among them Nisko, RAD Data Communications , BMC Software , Comverse Technology and Radwin are located in Ramat HaHayal. IBM maintains a research and development facility there. The offices of

2880-792: The Kfar Etzion massacre on 13 May by the Arab Legion led to predictions that the battle for Jerusalem would be merciless. On 14 May 1948, David Ben-Gurion declared the establishment of the State of Israel and the 1948 Palestine war entered its second phase with the intervention of the Arab state armies and the beginning of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. By September 1947, the Haganah had "10,489 rifles, 702 light machine-guns, 2,666 submachine guns, 186 medium machine-guns, 672 two-inch mortars and 92 three-inch (76 mm) mortars". In 1946, Ben-Gurion decided that

3000-526: The King David Hotel bombing . The Irgun and Lehi started acting independently, while the main underground militia, Haganah, continued acting mainly in supporting Jewish immigration. The Haganah again briefly worked to suppress Irgun and Lehi operations, due to the presence of a United Nations investigative committee in Palestine. After the UN Partition Plan resolution was passed on 29 November 1947,

3120-602: The Negev , the east coast as far as Gaza City , and a wide strip along the Tel Aviv – Jerusalem road. Israel also took control of West Jerusalem , which was meant to be part of an international zone for Jerusalem and its environs. Transjordan took control of East Jerusalem and what became known as the West Bank , annexing it the following year . The territory known today as the Gaza Strip

3240-605: The Spring 1945 offensive in Italy against the German forces . 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

3360-504: The United States , Yishuv agents purchased three Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombers, one of which bombed Cairo in July 1948, some Curtiss C-46 Commando transport planes, and dozens of half-tracks, which were repainted and defined as "agricultural equipment". In Western Europe, Haganah agents amassed fifty 65mm French mountain guns, twelve 120mm mortars, ten H-35 light tanks, and a large number of half-tracks. By mid-May or thereabouts

3480-654: 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

3600-592: The civil war between Palestinian Jews and Arabs eclipsed the previous tensions of both with the British. However, British and Zionist forces continued to clash throughout the period of the civil war up to the termination of the British Mandate for Palestine and the Israeli Declaration of Independence on 14 May 1948. Within the United Kingdom, there were deep divisions over the war in Palestine. Dozens of British soldiers, Jewish militants, and civilians died during

3720-563: 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

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3840-605: 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,

3960-472: 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,

4080-595: The Arab Liberation Army was roundly defeated at Mishmar HaEmek in its first large-scale operation, coinciding with the loss of their Druze allies through defection. With the implementation of Plan Dalet, the Haganah, Palmach and Irgun forces began conquering mixed zones. The Palestinian Arab society was shaken as Tiberias , Haifa , Safed , Beisan , Jaffa and Acre were all captured and more than 250,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled . The British had essentially withdrawn their troops. This pushed

4200-658: The Arab areas and attacked Israeli forces and several Jewish settlements. The 10 months of fighting took place mostly on the territory of the British Mandate and in the Sinai Peninsula and southern Lebanon , interrupted by several truce periods. By the end of the war the State of Israel controlled all of the area that the UN had proposed for a Jewish state, as well as almost 60% of the area proposed for an Arab state, including Jaffa , Lydda and Ramle area, Upper Galilee , some parts of

4320-439: The Arab world. In Palestine, violence erupted almost immediately, feeding into a spiral of reprisals and counter-reprisals. The British refrained from intervening as tensions boiled over into a low-level conflict that quickly escalated into a full-scale civil war . From January onwards, operations became increasingly militarised, with the intervention of a number of Arab Liberation Army regiments inside Palestine, each active in

4440-404: 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,

4560-527: 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

4680-617: 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

4800-475: 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

4920-414: 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

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5040-547: 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

5160-417: The British would withdraw in the face of the Irgun threat, the attacks would seem unconnected to the threats of violence at the Western Wall, and if they defied the Irgun and attempted to stop the blowing of the shofar, the attacks on the fortresses would be the Irgun's response. On September 27, the authorities allowed the shofar to be blown at the Western Wall. This represented a major psychological victory for

5280-514: 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

5400-574: 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

5520-450: 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

5640-465: The Irgun, which had successfully coerced a major concession from the British authorities which damaged their credibility. On the same night, the Irgun attacked the fortresses. The attacks on the fortresses at Haifa, Beit Dagon, and Qalqilya failed after collapsing into firefights with the security forces. One Irgun fighter was wounded in the attack in Haifa and another four in the raid in Qalqilya. The raid on

5760-522: The Israeli television broadcasting company Keshet are in Ramat HaHayal. In 2002, a monument dedicated to the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg was erected at the intersection of Raoul Wallenberg and HaBarzel streets in Ramat HaHayal. Assuta Medical Center , Israel's largest private medical provider, moved from central Tel Aviv to a new compound in Ramat HaHayal. The upscale facility, with 16 operating rooms,

5880-576: The Jewish Agency publicly protested, it continued to plan the Saison. On November 6, 1944, Lehi assassinated Lord Moyne , the British Minister of State in the Middle East, in front of his home in Cairo . His British Army chauffeur was also killed in the incident. The two Lehi gunmen responsible were subsequently arrested, tried, and executed by the Egyptian authorities. The Jewish authorities sharply condemned

6000-408: The Jewish population. The success of the operation was assisted by the death of al-Husayni in combat. During this time, fighters from Irgun and Lehi massacred a substantial number of Palestinians at Deir Yassin . The attack was widely publicized and had a deep impact on the morale of the Palestinian population and contributed to generate the exodus of the Arab population . At the same time,

6120-520: The Jewish settlements in the highly isolated Negev and north of Galilee was even more critical. While the Jewish population had received strict orders requiring them to hold their ground everywhere at all costs, the Arab population was more affected by the general conditions of insecurity to which the country was exposed. Up to 100,000 Arabs, from the urban upper and middle classes in Haifa, Jaffa and Jerusalem, or Jewish-dominated areas, evacuated abroad or to Arab centres eastwards. This situation caused

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6240-400: The Jews. His conclusions were that they had no chance of victory and that an invasion of the Arab regular armies was mandatory. The political committee nevertheless rejected these conclusions and decided to support an armed opposition to the Partition Plan excluding the participation of their regular armed forces. In April with the Palestinian defeat, the refugees coming from Palestine and

6360-458: 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

6480-576: 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

6600-441: The Palestinians. According to Walid Khalidi and Ilan Pappé , its purpose was to conquer as much of Palestine and to expel as many Palestinians as possible, though according to Benny Morris there was no such intent. In his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine , Pappé asserts that Plan Dalet was a "blueprint for ethnic cleansing" with the aim of reducing both rural and urban areas of Palestine. According to Yoav Gelber ,

6720-450: 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

6840-642: 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,

6960-565: The United States to withdraw its support for the Partition Plan, encouraging the Arab League to believe that the Palestinian Arabs, reinforced by the Arab Liberation Army, could put an end to the plan. However, the British decided on 7 February 1948 to support the annexation of the Arab part of Palestine by Transjordan. Although doubt took hold among Yishuv supporters, their apparent defeats were due more to their wait-and-see policy than to weakness. David Ben-Gurion reorganised Haganah and made conscription obligatory. Every Jewish man and woman in

7080-658: The Yishuv had purchased from Czechoslovakia 25 Avia S-199 fighters (an inferior version of the Messerschmitt Bf 109 ), 200 heavy machine guns, 5,021 light machine guns, 24,500 rifles, and 52 million rounds of ammunition, enough to equip all units, but short of heavy arms. The airborne arms smuggling missions from Czechoslovakia were codenamed Operation Balak . The airborne smuggling missions were carried out by mostly American aviators – Jews and non-Jews – led by ex-U.S. Air Transport Command flight engineer Al Schwimmer . Schwimmer's operation also included recruiting and training fighter pilots such as Lou Lenart , commander of

7200-406: The Yishuv would probably have to defend itself against both the Palestinian Arabs and neighbouring Arab states and accordingly began a "massive, covert arms acquisition campaign in the West", and acquired many more during the first few months of hostilities. The Yishuv managed clandestinely to amass arms and military equipment abroad for transfer to Palestine once the British blockade was lifted. In

7320-467: The Yishuv's military power" and if it came to battle, the Palestinians expected to lose. When the first violent incidents broke out in Jerusalem on the 29 November, the Arab Higher Committee , well aware of their lack of armaments, had called for a three-day strike: the most militant Palestinian group in the city, consisting of 44 fighters, was furnished with 12 rifles, some handguns and a few kilograms of explosives. The effective number of Arab combatants

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7440-472: 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

7560-457: The Yishuv. On April 2, 1944, the Jewish Agency approved a program of opposition under which efforts would be made to stop "extortion and terror", anti-dissident propaganda would be increased, and attempts would be made to isolate the Irgun and Lehi. In practice, propaganda was increased and assistance was offered to Jews whose contributions had been extorted, but the Jewish Agency failed to take serious measures. However, it did share intelligence with

7680-464: The Zionist underground and the British mandatory authorities rose from 1938 and intensified with the publication of the White Paper of 1939 . The Paper outlined new government policies to place further restrictions on Jewish immigration and land purchases, and declared the intention of giving independence to Palestine, with an Arab majority, within ten years. Though World War II brought relative calm, tensions again escalated into an armed struggle towards

7800-414: 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

7920-412: The aim of expanding the Jewish state beyond the UN partition borders appeared: first to incorporate clusters of isolated Jewish settlements and later to add more territories to the state and give it defensible borders. A third and further aim that emerged among the political and military leaders after four or five months was to "reduce the size of Israel's prospective large and hostile Arab minority, seen as

8040-421: The already poor relationship between Britain and the Jews. 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

8160-463: The assassination of Baron Moyne by Lehi in 1944, the Haganah actively opposed the Irgun and Lehi, in a period of inter-Jewish fighting known as the Hunting Season , effectively halting the insurrection. However, in autumn 1945, following the end of World War II in both Europe (April–May 1945) and Asia (September 1945), when it became clear that the British would not permit significant Jewish immigration and had no intention of immediately establishing

8280-406: The assassination. Jewish Agency and Lehi leaders met in secret before the Saison began. While the exact contents of the meeting were disputed by both sides, it is known that Lehi suspended its activities for six months, and the Saison was not extended to Lehi. In two secret Haganah-Irgun meetings, the Irgun refused Haganah demands to suspend activities against the British and Begin was unconvinced by

8400-399: The authorities throughout the war. Both were small, dissident militias of the right-wing Revisionist movement. They attacked police and government targets in response to British immigration restrictions. The armed conflict escalated during the final phase of World War II, when the Irgun declared a revolt in February 1944, ending the hiatus in operations it had begun in 1940. Starting from

8520-441: The authorities. On April 6, police acting on intelligence provided by the Jewish Agency surrounded a Lehi safehouse in Yavne'el and raked it with machine gun fire, mortally wounding one Lehi member while the remaining two shot themselves rather than surrender. Haganah intelligence had operated against the Irgun and Lehi since February but had so far failed to stop their activities. On May 17, the Irgun raided and successfully occupied

8640-469: 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

8760-562: The campaigns of insurgency. The conflict led to heightened antisemitism in the United Kingdom . In August 1947, after the hanging of two abducted British sergeants , there was widespread anti-Jewish rioting across the United Kingdom. The conflict caused tensions in the United Kingdom–United States relations . Although both the 1917 Balfour Declaration and the terms of the League of Nations British Mandate of Palestine called for

8880-414: 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

9000-499: The car were wounded, MacMichael escaped serious injury. The authorities subsequently imposed a collective fine of £500 on the nearby Jewish settlement of Givat Shaul over the assassination attempt. On August 23, the Irgun mounted arms raids on the CID barracks at Jaffa, Abu Kabir, and Neve Sha'anan, seizing fourteen rifles. The British Army mounted its first cordon and search operation in Palestine on September 5 in Petah Tikva , which

9120-474: The central broadcasting station in Ramallah , but the plan to transmit an Irgun broadcast from the station failed after the radioman could not work the equipment. The British responded to the attacks by instituting searches and snap roadblocks, which became routine in Palestine. Between April 1 and May 6, the security forces arrested 81 suspects, including Aryeh Ben-Eliezer , a member of the Irgun high command, who

9240-436: The city with convoys of up to 100 armoured vehicles, but the operation became more and more impractical as the number of casualties in the relief convoys surged. By March, Al-Hussayni's tactic had paid off. Almost all of Haganah 's armoured vehicles had been destroyed, the blockade was in full operation, and hundreds of Haganah members who had tried to bring supplies into the city were killed. The situation for those who dwelt in

9360-695: The country had to receive military training. Thanks to funds raised by Golda Meir from sympathisers in the United States, and Stalin's decision to support the Zionist cause, the Jewish representatives of Palestine were able to sign very important armament contracts in the East. Other Haganah agents recovered stockpiles from the Second World War, which helped improve the army's equipment and logistics. Operation Balak allowed arms and other equipment to be transported for

9480-522: 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

9600-610: 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

9720-589: 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

9840-620: 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

9960-501: 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

10080-462: The end of March, 21,000 had been conscripted. On 30 March, the call-up was extended to men and single women aged between 26 and 35. Five days later, a General Mobilization order was issued for all men under 40. By March 1948, the Yishuv had a numerical superiority, with 35,780 mobilised and deployed fighters for the Haganah , 3,000 men under Lehi and Irgun , and a few thousand armed settlers. Irgun

10200-472: The end of a series of offensives that began April 1948, in which Zionist forces had conquered cities and territories in Mandatory Palestine in preparation for the establishment of a Jewish state, Zionist leaders announced the Israeli Declaration of Independence on 14 May 1948. The following morning, after the termination of the British Mandate, Egypt, Transjordan, Syria , and expeditionary forces from Iraq entered Palestine. The invading forces took control of

10320-533: 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

10440-522: The end of the war, when it became clear that the Axis powers were close to defeat. The Haganah , the largest of the Jewish underground militias , which was under the control of the officially recognised Jewish leadership of Palestine, remained cooperative with the British. But in 1944 the Irgun , an offshoot of the Haganah, launched a rebellion against British rule, thus joining Lehi , which had been active against

10560-461: The establishment of a Jewish state alongside an Arab one. The Arab League before partition affirmed the right to the independence of Palestine, while blocking the creation of a Palestinian government. Towards the end of 1947, the League established a military committee commanded by the retired Iraqi general Isma'il Safwat whose mission was to analyse the chance of victory of the Palestinians against

10680-527: 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

10800-509: The first Israeli air assault against the Arabs. Several Americans, including Schwimmer, were later prosecuted by the U.S. government for violating the Neutrality Act of 1939 . The Yishuv also had "a relatively advanced arms producing capacity", that between October 1947 and July 1948 "produced 3 million 9 mm bullets, 150,000 Mills grenades , 16,000 submachine guns ( Sten Guns) and 210 three-inch (76 mm) mortars", along with

10920-489: The first time by the end of March. Ben-Gurion invested Yigael Yadin with the responsibility to come up with a plan of offence whose timing was related to the foreseeable evacuation of British forces. This strategy, called Plan Dalet , was readied by March and implemented towards the end of April. A separate plan, Operation Nachshon , was devised to lift the siege of Jerusalem . 1500 men from Haganah's Givati brigade and Palmach 's Harel brigade conducted sorties to free up

11040-516: The following morning. The war formally ended with the 1949 Armistice Agreements which established the Green Line . Since the 1917 Balfour Declaration and the 1920 creation of the British Mandate of Palestine , and in the context of Zionism and the mass migration of European Jews to Palestine , there had been tension and conflict between Arabs, Jews, and the British. British policies dissatisfied both Arabs and Jews. Arab opposition developed into

11160-458: The fortress at Katra was successful. The Irgun attackers broke into the station and killed two British soldiers and two police constables, then made off with the arms and ammunition. Two days later, Assistant Superintendent Tom Wilkin of the Palestine Police was assassinated by Lehi. In October 1944, the Jewish Agency decided to take action to suppress the insurrection, and the Haganah opened

11280-499: 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

11400-551: 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

11520-483: The leaders of the neighbouring Arab states to intervene, but they were not fully prepared, and could not assemble sufficient forces to turn the tide. The majority of Palestinian Arab hopes lay with the Arab Legion of Transjordan's monarch, King Abdullah I, but he had no intention of creating a Palestinian Arab-run state, since he hoped to annex as much of the territory of the British Mandate for Palestine as he could. He

11640-410: 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

11760-516: 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. 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

11880-404: The only supply that was not in shortage during the war. Locally produced explosives were also plentiful. After Israel's independence, these clandestine arms manufacturing operations were moved above ground. All of the Haganah's weapons-manufacturing was centralised and later became Israel Military Industries . In November 1947, the Haganah was an underground paramilitary force that had existed as

12000-436: The plan specified that in case of resistance, the population of conquered villages was to be expelled outside the borders of the Jewish state. If no resistance was met, the residents could stay put, under military rule. According to Morris, Plan D called for occupying the areas within the UN sponsored Jewish state, several concentrations of Jewish population outside those areas (West Jerusalem and Western Galilee), and areas along

12120-413: 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

12240-612: The pressure of their public opinion, the Arab leaders decided to invade Palestine. The Arab League gave reasons for its invasion in Palestine in the cablegram : British diplomat Alec Kirkbride wrote in his 1976 memoirs about a conversation with the Arab League's Secretary-General Azzam Pasha a week before the armies marched: "...when I asked him for his estimate of the size of the Jewish forces, [he] waved his hands and said: 'It does not matter how many there are. We will sweep them into

12360-401: 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. In

12480-412: The roads where the invading Arab armies were expected to attack. The Yishuv perceived the peril of an Arab invasion as threatening its very existence. Having no real knowledge of the Arabs' true military capabilities, the Jews took Arab propaganda literally, preparing for the worst and reacting accordingly. The Arab League had unanimously rejected the UN partition plan and were officially opposed to

12600-585: The route to the city between 5 and 20 April. Both sides acted offensively in defiance of the Partition Plan, which foresaw Jerusalem as a corpus separatum , under neither Jewish nor Arab jurisdiction. The Arabs did not accept the Plan, while the Jews were determined to oppose the internationalisation of the city, and secure it as part of the Jewish state. The operation was successful, and enough foodstuffs to last two months were trucked into Jerusalem for distribution to

12720-597: The sea.'" Jewish insurgency in Palestine Zionist victory [REDACTED] United Kingdom [REDACTED] Jewish National Council Haganah: 21,000 troops A successful paramilitary campaign, sometimes referred to as the Palestine Emergency , was carried out by Zionist underground groups against British rule in Mandatory Palestine from 1944 to 1948. The tensions between

12840-953: 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,

12960-595: The three years following the war, including 260,000 from the surrounding Arab states . On 29 November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution recommending the adoption and implementation of a plan to partition the British Mandate of Palestine into two states, one Arab and one Jewish, and the City of Jerusalem. The General Assembly resolution on Partition was greeted with overwhelming joy in Jewish communities and widespread outrage in

13080-540: The underground militias but would provide valuable military experience during the war. Walid Khalidi says the Yishuv had the additional forces of the Jewish Settlement Police, numbering some 12,000, the Gadna Youth Battalions, and the armed settlers. Few of the units had been trained by December 1947. On 5 December 1947, conscription was instituted for all men and women aged between 17 and 25 and by

13200-455: The war. Yishuv 's aims evolved during the war. Mobilisation for a total war was organised. Initially, the aim was "simple and modest": to survive the assaults of the Palestinian Arabs and the Arab states. "The Zionist leaders deeply, genuinely, feared a Middle Eastern reenactment of the Holocaust , which had just ended; the Arabs' public rhetoric reinforced these fears". As the war progressed,

13320-595: Was occupied by Egypt . Expulsions of Palestinians , which had begun during the civil war, continued during the Arab-Israeli war. Hundreds of Palestinians were killed in multiple massacres , such as occurred in the expulsions from Lydda and Ramle . These events are known today as the Nakba ( Arabic for "the catastrophe") and were the beginning of the Palestinian refugee problem . A similar number of Jews moved to Israel during

13440-499: Was a plan worked out by the Haganah, a Jewish paramilitary group and the forerunner of the Israel Defense Forces, in autumn 1947 to spring 1948, which was sent to Haganah units in early March 1948. The intent of Plan Dalet is subject to much controversy, with historians on the one extreme asserting that it was entirely defensive, and historians on the other extreme asserting that the plan aimed at maximum conquest and expulsion of

13560-520: Was arrested on April 17. In spite of this, the underground organisations continued their operations. On July 14, the Irgun bombed the Land Registry Office in Jerusalem, killing two Arab constables, and the following day an explosives truck was seized and a British constable killed in another Irgun attack. On August 8, 1944, Lehi ambushed the car of British High Commissioner Harold MacMichael in an attempt to assassinate him. Although two others in

13680-705: 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,

13800-547: Was eventually absorbed into the Jewish Defence Army. The activities of Irgun was monitored by MI5 , which found that Irgun was "involved or implicated in numerous acts of terrorism" during the end years of the British mandate in Palestine such as the attacks on trains and the kidnapping of British servicemen. According to Benny Morris , by the end of 1947, the Palestinians already "had a healthy and demoralising respect for

13920-529: 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

14040-405: 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 rebellion caused growing alarm within the Jewish Agency, which saw the revolt as a challenge to its own authority as the legitimate democratic leadership of the Yishuv, and as a gamble with the future of

14160-569: Was known as an insurgent hotbed. The British arrested 46 people in the operation but failed to find Menachem Begin, who was hiding in Petah Tikva under an assumed name, after failing to search the area where he was hiding. Begin subsequently moved to Tel Aviv. In response to a British ban on the blowing of the Shofar at the Western Wall that had been imposed in 1930 for public security reasons to avoid

14280-436: Was listed as growing to 12,000 by some historians while others calculate an eventual total Arab strength of approximately 23,500 troops, and with this being more of less or roughly equal to that of the Yishuv. However, as Israel mobilised most of its most able citizens during the war while the Arab troops were only a small percentage of its far greater population, the strength of the Yishuv grew steadily and dramatically during

14400-404: Was playing a double game, being just as much in contact with the Jewish authorities as with the Arab League. In preparation for the offensive, Haganah successfully launched Operations Yiftah and Ben-'Ami to secure the Jewish settlements of Galilee , and Operation Kilshon , which created a united front around Jerusalem. The inconclusive meeting between Golda Meir and Abdullah I, followed by

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