page_title: Jewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine
section_title: Breakup of the Jewish Resistance Movement
hierarchical_section_title: Jewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine / History / Breakup of the Jewish Resistance Movement
caption_attribution_description: English: Zionist leaders arrested in Operation Agatha in Latrun Zionist leaders in Latrun, following the "Operation Agatha". Left to right: David Remez, Moshe Sharett, Yitzhak Gruenbaum, Dov Yosef, Mr. Shenkarsky, David Hacohen, Mr. Halperin (Isser Harel).
context_page_description: The Jewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine, known in the United Kingdom as the Palestine Emergency, was a paramilitary campaign carried out by Zionist underground groups against British rule in Mandatory Palestine. The tensions between 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, the tensions again escalated into an armed struggle towards 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 the Irgun and Lehi, two small, dissident militias of the right-wing Revisionist movement, launched a rebellion against British rule in 1944.
context_section_description: By June 1946, the British were increasingly certain that the Haganah, acting under Jewish Agency orders, was involved in insurgent activities despite the protestations of innocence by Jewish Agency leaders. Following the Night of the Bridges, High Commissioner Alan Cunningham decided to move against the Jewish Agency and Haganah. As a result, the British planned a massive military and police operation called Operation Agatha, under which Jewish institutions and settlements would be raided and mass arrests carried out against Jewish leaders and Haganah members. The objective of the operation was to find documentary evidence of Jewish Agency complicity in insurgent attacks and of an alliance between the Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi, to break the military power of the Haganah, and to prevent a unilateral declaration of a Jewish state. The operation began on June 29 and continued until July 1. It was known as the Black Sabbath in the Yishuv. Curfews were imposed throughout Palestine as British troops and police raided the Jewish Agency headquarters in Jerusalem, its offices in Tel Aviv, and other Zionist institutions, confiscating nine tons of documents. The British searched 27 Jewish settlements and discovered fifteen arms caches, including one of the Haganah's three central arsenals at kibbutz Yagur, which was a major blow to the Haganah's efforts to prepare militarily for independence. British search parties encountered fierce resistance by the residents of many of the settlements searched, and four Jews were killed while resisting British searches. The British arrested 2,718 Jews, including four members of the Jewish Agency Executive, seven Haganah officers, and nearly half of the Palmach's fighters. They were detained indefinitely without trial. A warning by Haganah intelligence enabled most Haganah commanders to escape capture, and most of the Haganah's arms caches remained undiscovered.
  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.
  The documents seized from the Jewish Agency were stored at the King David Hotel. It had been requisitioned by the British for use as a military and government headquarters, although part of it continued to function as a hotel. In order to destroy incriminating documents regarding Jewish Agency and Haganah involvement in the campaign as well as the identities of Haganah members, the Haganah began jointly planning an attack on the King David Hotel with the Irgun. Although the Haganah repeatedly requested that the operation be delayed due to political considerations, the Irgun decided to press ahead and on July 22, carried out the King David Hotel bombing. Irgun fighters successfully infiltrated the hotel and planted bombs before fleeing under fire. One Irgun fighter was killed and another wounded when the attackers were fired on while retreating. An Irgun telephone warning to evacuate the hotel was not taken seriously, and the hotel had not been evacuated when the bombs exploded. The bombing destroyed much of the southern wing of the hotel, which housed the government secretariat and military headquarters. A total of 91 people were killed: 41 Palestinian Arabs, 28 British nationals including 13 British soldiers, 17 Palestinian Jews, 2 Armenians, 1 Russian, 1 Greek, and 1 Egyptian. Most of the dead were staff of the hotel or Secretariat.
  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 c
caption: Zionist leaders arrested during Operation Agatha, in a detention camp in Latrun
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