At the end of the Second World War, the Zionists were more militant than
ever. Zionist leaders such as Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion
expected an “open gate” immigration policy after the Holocaust and in light
of the Jewish support for the British and Allied war effort. This expectation
was belied by the British Labour Party’s shift from a pro- to an anti-Zionist
stance. The Zionists’ disappointment was aggravated by the plight of Jewish
displaced persons (DPs), 100,000 of whom the British denied entry into
Palestine. The growing sense of urgency, prompted by the clear intent of the
British government not to allow these Jews into Palestine, led militant
Zionists such as Jabotinsky in a more radical, proactive direction.
As before the war, these British policies aimed at maintaining close ties
with Arab leaders, but for different reasons. Britain was largely bankrupt at
the end of the war and needed to secure its oil reserves. From a geopolitical
standpoint, France was eliminated from Middle Eastern politics by 1947, and
the Soviet Union was rapidly moving in to fill the void left by France; Britain
needed alliances to stay the growing Soviet presence in the region. No longer
able to maintain a dominant military establishment in the Middle East,
Britain supported Arab nationalist aspirations to eliminate anti-British
feeling; to this end, it entered into joint military maneuvers and defense
agreements with Arab leaders.
In response, the Jewish Agency launched an illegal immigration move-
ment called Aliyah Bet. This movement was supported by the French and
Italians as a way of getting back at the British. In turn, the British blockaded
Palestine from 1945 to 1948. All but five immigrant ships were intercepted,
and the immigrants interned in detention camps on Cyprus. From 1945 to
1948, only 18,000 Jews per year entered Palestine.
These British actions elicited staunch criticism as the British were por-
trayed as cold-hearted villains. It is true that the British detention centers
were a world removed from the Nazi camps. Jews there were properly housed
and fed, and received more than adequate medical treatment. Yet the image
of Jews recently liberated from the Nazi camps now interned behind the
barbed-wire detention camps made headline news, as did the the image of the
Chapter 10