The Final Months of the British Mandate in Palestine: The End of an Era

When the Palestine mandate under the UN was assigned to the British after WWI, the Empire opened it gates to unlimited Jewish migration, as was promised in the Balfour Declaration of 1917. In the following decade from Dawning Street №10 stayed true to this policy, but after Hitler started posing trouble in Europe, and the Arabs of Palestine opposed further Zionist settlement, London chose the path of least resistance and began the infamous policy of appeasement not only as far as Hitler was concerned, but towards the Arabs as well. The British however were not fully inclined to either of the sides in the Palestine question, so this alienated both the local Jews and the Arabs as well. Both were hostile to each other and to the British administration. At the end of WWII, the problem was still present, but the ability of the exhausted empire to deal with it was long gone. So, Britain decided to give up and leave Palestine. This paper deals with the last months of the mandate – from the final days of November 1947 to May 1948 and the events that were set in motion during this brief period.