Zionist leaders in Palestine reacted angrily to Britain’s stance, which they saw as
more backtracking on the Balfour Declaration. Beginning in November 1945, leaders
of the Haganah, the semi-official Jewish army in Palestine, joined with LEHI and the
Irgun, another paramilitary Zionist group, in planning and carrying out armed attacks
against British interests. In June 1946, Haganah units blew up ten bridges, and on
July 22 the Irgun, commanded by future Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin,
bombed a wing of the famed King David Hotel in Jerusalem, where several British
government offices were located. Ninety-one people died in the attack, most of them
civilian British workers but also several Arabs and Jews.
By this time, Zionist leaders had turned their attention to the United States, hop-
ing that pressure from Washington would force the British to be more accommodat-
ing to their concerns. In November 1942, a Zionist conference at the Biltmore Hotel
in New York City had adopted a platform calling for unlimited Jewish immigration
to Palestine and the establishment there of a Jewish-led “commonwealth,” a term
intended to soften the implications of statehood.
In April 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt died in office. For a variety of rea-
sons, Harry S. Truman, Roosevelt’s successor, was more committed to the Zionist cause
than Roosevelt had been. The plight of millions of displaced Europeans, many of them
Jews, deeply moved Truman. His first major action on the Palestine question was to
ARABS AND ISRAELIS 57Port
SaidSuezGazaTel AvivHaifaJerusalem DistrictEGYPT
JORDAN
LEBANON
SYRIA
EGYPT
CYPRUS
Dead SeaSea of GalileeGulf of
SuezSuez
CanalMediterranean SeaGulf of Aqaba100 KM100 Miles
00Jewish State
Arab StateUnited Nations Partition Plan of Palestine, 1947.