page_title: Jewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine
section_title: Peaking of the insurgency
hierarchical_section_title: Jewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine / History / Peaking of the insurgency
caption_attribution_description: Irgun men disguised as British soldiers
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: In the early morning hours of March 31, Lehi carried out the most devastating attack on the oil industry of the campaign. Two bombs were detonated in the Haifa oil refinery, causing the facility to burst into flames. The oil tanks burned uncontrollably for nearly three weeks, with the fires only coming under control on April 18. The underground organisations continued their campaign. Two British constables were shot in Jerusalem on April 8, one of whom died. A series of Irgun attacks took place in Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Netanya. Faced with continued attacks, the British reacted with collective punishment and the death penalty in order to reassert authority. On April 14, the authorities evicted 110 Jews from their homes in the Haifa neighborhood of Hadar HaCarmel as collective punishment for a mine attack on a British jeep on a nearby road ten days prior. 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.
  The Irgun and Lehi continued to carry out normal military operations during this period. On April 18, a British soldier was killed in an attack on a medical facility, and a Red Cross depot was bombed with numerous soldiers injured two days later. On April 21, attacks on military cars took place at three locations and two jeeps were mined. On April 22, the Cairo-Haifa train was mined near Rehovot and sprayed with gunfire after the derailment. Five British soldiers and three civilians were killed. Another soldier was killed in an attack in Jerusalem. 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 three British constables. The following day, Lehi assassinated Albert Conquest, the Assistant Superintendent of Police, who was the head of the Haifa CID.
  On May 4, 1947, the Irgun carried out the Acre Prison break. An Irgun convoy in the guise of a British military convoy entered Acre and Irgun fighters disguised as British soldiers blew a hole in the wall of Acre Prison with explosive charges, while the 41 Irgun and Lehi members who had been designated as escapees rushed forward and blasted through the inner gates with explosive charges that had been smuggled to them. As they escaped, they lit a fire and tossed grenades to cause further confusion inside the prison. The prisoners escaped through the hole and boarded trucks, which then fled Acre along the designated escape route. Meanwhile, Irgun blocking squads mined all the roads into Acre except the designated escape route and an Irgun squad launched a mortar attack on a British Army camp before withdrawing to delay any response. Five British soldiers were injured in a mine explosion. However, one of the blocking squads failed to withdraw in time and was captured. The first escape truck ran into a British roadblock and all of the escapees were killed or recapture
caption: Irgun men in British Army uniforms, preparing to stage the Acre Prison break
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