Haganah
Haganah was a Jewish self-defence organisation set up by the Jewish Agency to protect Jewish settlers from Palestinian attacks and to organise illegal immigration: it ultimately became the Israeli army.
Under Ottoman rule, from the 1870s, armed “Watchmen” protected the agricultural settlements. The members were Arabic-speaking Jews, skilled horsemen familiar with Arab and Bedouin culture who won the respect of their Palestinian neighbours through vigorously defending their communities when these came under attack.
With the immigration of Jews from Russia during the second Aliyah (1904-1914), Haganah became more political and tended towards socialism. As the number of Jewish settlements increased, so did Palestinian attacks. and therefore the need for Haganah’s protection increased. During the Palestinian uprisings of 1929 and 1936-9, Haganah saved many Jewish communities from being massacred. Their policy was generally one of restraint towrds the Palestinians, i.e. Palestinian villages were not attacked, but Jewish settlements defended, except under the leadership of the British officer Captain Orde Wingate, who led Haganah men in raids on Palestinian centres of the 1936-9 uprising.
During the war, about 30,000 Palestinian Jews fought in the British Army against the Germans, many of them members of Haganah, often undertaking dangerous commando-type operations behind enemy lines.
IRGUN / STERN GANG
This group broke away from Haganah during the Palestinian uprising of 1936-9. The leaders (Abraham Stern and David Raziel, later Menachim Begin) disagreed with Haganah’s policy of restraint towards the Palestinians and embarked on a more militant course of action. They smuggled in illegal immigrants, raided British baracks to get hold of arms (but always gave warnings before bombing buildings so as to avoid casualities). Then Stern broke away forming a terrorist group that set out to assassinate as many members of the British forces as possible. They murdered Lord Moyne in Cairo in 1944. After that, Haganah cooperated with the British against the Stern group..
British
government policy in the 1930s
The British mandate administration did not recognise Haganah, being wary of having an underground guerilla army in the country, but during the 1930s tolerated it, given the growing resistance of the Palestinians to the establishment of a Jewish homeland and their own inability to protect Jewish settlements. However, relations with Haganah remained ambivalent. During the Palestinian uprising of 1936-9 there was unofficial co-operation between the British armed forces and Haganah, the British sometimes arming the groups, although possession of weapons was officially illegal. At that time, the Palestinians were severely punished if found with arms. 20,000 troops from Britain were needed to suppress the Palestinian uprising, a guerilla war in which the Palestinians were badly armed but knew the countryside and had the support of their people. It culminated in a general strike that lasted six months. There were about 7,000 Palestinians casualties.
British
government policy in the 1940s
Once the Second World War began, the British clamped down on Haganah and began undertaking weapon searches in the Jewish kibuzim and imprisoning anybody found harbouring weapons. At this time, the British government needed the Arabs as allies and was concerned that they might join forces with Hitler’s armies if Britain’s support for the Jews in Palestine were to continue undiminished. The British government had proposed partition of Palestine, which was unacceptable to the Arabs, who turned to the Arab League and the Axis powers for help. To prevent this, the British government took firm steps to restrict Jewish immigration and land acquisition; ships carrying illegal immigrants were prevented from landing and the immigrants either interned or sent back to where they had come from. As during and immediately after the war, the Jews needed a place of refuge more desperately than at any time in their history, the appeasement policy of the British government fuelled Jewish terrorism.
The British disillusioned both sides: Palestinians and Jews alike felt betrayed and abandoned.