Major-General Duncan Cumming, the British Chief Civil Affairs Officer, noted that Arab nationalism had been provoked by reports about Council of Foreign Ministers proposals "to hand the country back to Italian tutelage or to some other country with suspected Colonial designs," and that "It would seem that reports of the situation in Palestine and of anti-Jewish disturbances in Egypt finally touched off the pent-up excitement in the direction of the virtually defenceless Jews rather than against Italians.

"[2] Official British reports highlight background factors responsible for the general tension at the time, such as economic hardship and the uncertain political future of Tripolitania.

The neighbouring British province was expect to become the independent Cyrenaica Emirate, whilst contemporary post-war proposals for Tripolitania included a return to Italian rule and a trusteeship under the Soviet Union.

State Department observer John E. Utter "believed that blame for the initial troubles lay with both sides—Jews primed for provocative behavior by Zionist propaganda and Arabs stirred by anti-Jewish riots in Cairo.

Despite this repression, that was partially opposed by governor Italo Balbo, in 1941 some 25% of the population of Tripoli was still Jewish and 44 synagogues were maintained in the city.

[9] But in February 1942, German troops fighting the Allies in North Africa occupied the Jewish quarter of Benghazi, plundering shops and deporting more than 2,000 Jews across the desert.

Arab nationalists were incorporating effective propaganda efforts and on November 2, 1945, an anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, a widespread wave of anti-Jewish rioting hit the cities in Aleppo (Syria), Cairo (Egypt) and the most severe, in Tripoli (Libya).

[13] As in the Iraqi case, the Tripoli massacre inaugurated a train of events that would demoralize and in a relatively short time dissolve the Libyan Jewish community.