British Mandate of Palestine

The British Mandate of Palestine was a swathe of territory in the Middle East, formerly belonging to the Ottoman Empire, which the League of Nations entrusted to the United Kingdom to administer in the aftermath of World War I as a Mandate Territory.

The Holocaust

As in most of the Arab world, there was no unanimity amongst the Palestinian Arabs as to their position regarding the combatants in WWII. Many signed up for the British army, but others saw an Axis victory as their best hope of wresting Palestine back from the Zionists and the British. Some of the leadership went further, especially the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al-Husseini (who had by then escaped to Iraq), who on November 25, 1941, formally declared jihad against the Allied Powers and spent much time thereafter in what was then Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia, recruiting Bosnia's Muslims and Kosovo's ethnic Albanians into Nazi SS-run volunteer units. About 20,000 Bosnian Muslim served in the 13th Armed SS Mountain Division "Handzhar" and several thousand in the 23rd Armed SS Mountain Division "Kama". http://www.serbianna.com/columns/savich/006.shtml. In post-war testimony, Husseini was named as a friend of Adolf Eichmann and an architect of the "Final Solution" by Otto Wisliceny. Husseini was imprisoned after the war and was to have been tried as a war criminal at Nuremburg, but he escaped with the help of French collaborators.

Related Topics:
WWII - Axis - Grand Mufti of Jerusalem - Haj Amin Al-Husseini - November 25 - 1941 - Jihad - Yugoslavia - Bosnia - Muslims - Kosovo - Albanians - SS

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Even though Arabs were only marginally higher than Jews in Nazi racial theory, the Nazis naturally encouraged Arab support as much as possible as a counter to British hegemony throughout the Arab world.

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Arabs who opposed the persecution of the Jews by the hands of the Nazis included Habib Bourguiba in Tunisia, and Egyptian intellectuals such as Tawfiq al-Hakim and Abbas Mahmoud al-Arkad. (Source: Yad Vashem). The mandate recruited soldiers in Palestine. About 6,000 Palestinian Arabs joined the British forces, and about 26,000 Jews joined, a very significant disparity given the larger Arab population.

Related Topics:
Habib Bourguiba - Tunisia - Egypt - Tawfiq al-Hakim - Abbas Mahmoud al-Arkad - Yad Vashem

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The Holocaust—the killing of approximately six million European Jews by the Nazis—had a major effect on the situation in Palestine. During the war, the British forbade entry into Palestine of European Jews escaping Nazi persecution, placing them in detention camps or deporting them to other places such as Mauritius. Avraham Stern, the leader of the Jewish Lehi terrorist gang and other Zionists tried without success to convince the Nazis that immigration to Palestine could be a "solution" for their "Jewish problem". Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann visited Palestine briefly in 1939 and concluded, possibly from conversations with Haj Amin El-Husseini, that it would not serve Nazi policy to allow Jewish immigration to Palestine.

Related Topics:
The Holocaust - Nazis - Mauritius - Lehi

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The Zionists organized an illegal immigration effort, conducted by "Hamossad Le'aliyah Bet" that rescued tens of thousands of European Jews from the Nazis by shipping them to Palestine in rickety boats. Many of these boats were intercepted and some were sunk with great loss of life. The efforts began in 1939. The last immigrant boat to try to enter Palestine before the end of the war was the Struma, torpedoed in the Black Sea by a Soviet submarine in February 1942 as part of Soviet - British collaboration. The boat sank with the loss of nearly 800 lives. Illegal immigration resumed after WW II.

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Members of the Jewish Lehi underground, Eliyahu Hakim and Eliyahu Bet Zuri assassinated Lord Moyne in Cairo on 6 November 1944. Moyne was the British Minister of State for the Middle East, responsible for implementing the ban on Jewish immigration to Palestine. The assassination is said to have turned Winston Churchill against the Zionist cause. Fighting Jewish terrorists on one hand and the Germans in North Africa on the other did not endear the British to the Jews in Palestine at this critical stage of the war.

Related Topics:
Lord Moyne - 6 November - 1944

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The British considered it more important to get Arab backing, because of their important interests in Egypt and other Arab lands, and especially to guarantee the friendship of oil-rich Saudi Arabia, and therefore continued the ban on immigration.

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During the war, the moderate Haganah underground helped the British to ferret out Irgun and Lehi members whom they felt were hurting the war effort against the Nazis.

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Following the war, 250,000 Jewish refugees were stranded in displaced persons (DP) camps in Europe. Despite the pressure of world opinion, in particular the repeated requests of US President Harry S. Truman, and the recommendations of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, the British refused to lift the ban on immigration and admit 100,000 displaced persons to Palestine. The Jewish underground forces then united and carried out several attacks against the British. In 1946, the Irgun blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, the headquarters of the British administration, killing 92 people.

Related Topics:
Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry - King David Hotel

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Seeing that the situation was quickly spiraling out of hand, the British announced their desire to terminate their mandate and to withdraw by May 1948.

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