{"id":25661,"date":"2023-06-06T09:45:28","date_gmt":"2023-06-06T07:45:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/?p=231644"},"modified":"2023-06-06T17:11:41","modified_gmt":"2023-06-06T15:11:41","slug":"how-britain-stirred-the-cauldron-of-conflict-in-palestine","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/rss_feed\/how-britain-stirred-the-cauldron-of-conflict-in-palestine\/","title":{"rendered":"How Britain stirred the cauldron of conflict in Palestine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Having ousted the Ottomans from Palestine in 1917, Britain administered a territory that was already a tinderbox of tensions between Arabs and Jews. Matthew Hughes explores the bloody end of the Palestine Mandate and the emergence of the State of Israel <\/p>

By jonathanwilkes\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Tuesday, 06 June 2023 at 12:00 am<\/p>

\n\n

Early in the morning of 31 July 1947, two unusual shapes were spotted swinging from eucalyptus trees near Netanya. Recognising them as human bodies, the authorities in this coastal town in northern Palestine soon found notes pinned to the corpses identifying them as Clifford Martin and Mervyn Paice.<\/p>\n

These British Army Intelligence Corps sergeants had been kidnapped by insurgents of Irgun Zvai Leumi (National Military Organisation), a nationalist Jewish paramilitary unit. The Irgun had held them in a sealed, soundproof bunker, hoping to use them as bargaining chips to save the lives of three Jews sentenced to hang by the British for their part in a mass prison break \u2013 a crime punishable by the death penalty. For 17 days, Martin and Paice were held in a tiny, airless cell; then, after the three Jews were executed, the British men were also hanged \u2013 executed, the notes stated, for \u201ccriminal anti-Hebrew\u201d activities.<\/p>\n

When a British captain cut down Martin\u2019s body, it fell onto an explosive booby-trap \u2013 blowing apart that corpse, damaging Paice\u2019s and injuring the officer. The incident enraged the media in Britain, where the Daily Express<\/em> ran photographs of the hanged men alongside the headline: \u201cHanged Britons: Picture that Will Shock the World.\u201d There were antisemitic riots across the UK, and British soldiers attacked Jews in Tel Aviv.<\/p>\n

This was just one of many violent incidents during British rule of Palestine, which ended in 1948. Gaining a broader picture of that turbulent period, especially the context and legacy of the British Palestine Mandate, is crucial to interpreting the forces that shaped the modern State of Israel \u2013 which marked the 75th anniversary of its foundation in the spring of 2023 \u2013 and to understanding the roots of the Palestinian situation today.<\/p>\n

When did the British take control of Palestine?<\/h2>\n

Why were Jewish Irgun fighters in Palestine killing British soldiers who, a few years earlier, had fought the Nazis? To answer this question, we need to rewind to 1917, when British-led troops advanced from Egypt, defeated Ottoman forces \u2013 who were fighting on the side of the Central Powers \u2013 and occupied Palestine, part of the Ottoman empire<\/a>\u2019s territory in the Middle East.<\/p>\n