page_title: Mandatory Palestine
section_title: Allied and Axis activity
hierarchical_section_title: Mandatory Palestine / History / World War II / Allied and Axis activity
caption_attribution_description: 060 1942 - Tom Beazley's mates (l to r) George Dobner, Norm Grainger &amp; Reg Shephard at Tel-Aviv, Pales English: Tom's Australian Army mates in Tel Aviv עברית: חיילים אוסטרלים, חבריו של הצלם, בתל אביב, Original Image Name:תל אביב 1940, Notes:התמונות צולמו על ידי Dvr Thomas Beazley בזמן שרותו בגדוד האוסטרלי במלחמת העולם השניה ונתרמו באדיבות חתנו Jeff Crisdale, נוסח הקרדיט: Dvr Thomas Beazley Pikiwiki Israel
context_page_description: Mandatory Palestine was a geopolitical entity established between 1920 and 1948 in the region of Palestine under the terms of the Mandate for Palestine.
  During the First World War, an Arab uprising and the British Empire's Egyptian Expeditionary Force under General Edmund Allenby drove the Turks out of the Levant during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign. The United Kingdom had agreed in the McMahon–Hussein Correspondence that it would honour Arab independence if they revolted against the Ottomans, but the two sides had different interpretations of this agreement, and in the end, the UK and France divided up the area under the Sykes–Picot Agreement—an act of betrayal in the eyes of the Arabs. Further complicating the issue was the Balfour Declaration of 1917, promising British support for a Jewish "national home" in Palestine. At the war's end the British and French set up a joint "Occupied Enemy Territory Administration" in what had been Ottoman Syria. The British achieved legitimacy for their continued control by obtaining a mandate from the League of Nations in June 1922.
context_section_description: On 10 June 1940, Italy declared war on the British Commonwealth and sided with Germany. Within a month, the Italians attacked Palestine from the air, bombing Tel Aviv and Haifa, inflicting multiple casualties.
  In 1942, there was a period of great concern for the Yishuv, when the forces of German General Erwin Rommel advanced east across North Africa towards the Suez Canal and there was fear that they would conquer Palestine. This period was referred to as the "200 days of dread." This event was the direct cause for the founding, with British support, of the Palmach – a highly trained regular unit belonging to Haganah (a paramilitary group which was mostly made up of reserve troops).
  As in most of the Arab world, there was no unanimity amongst the Palestinian Arabs as to their position regarding the belligerents in World War II. A number of leaders and public figures saw an Axis victory as the likely outcome and a way of securing Palestine back from the Zionists and the British. Even though Arabs were not highly regarded by Nazi racial theory, the Nazis encouraged Arab support as a counter to British hegemony. On the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration in 1943, SS-Reichsfuehrer Heinrich Himmler and Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop sent telegrams of support for the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammad Amin al-Husseini to read out for a radio broadcast to a rally of supporters in Berlin.
caption: Australian soldiers in Tel Aviv in 1942
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