Yishuv victory[1] Yishuv Military engagements Massacres and civilian attacks 1948 Arab–Israeli War Southern front Central and Jerusalem front Northern front International Massacres Biological warfare Operation Hametz (Hebrew: מבצע חמץ, Mivtza Hametz; 25–30 April 1948) was an operation to conquer towns around Jaffa conducted by Zionist forces as part of Plan Dalet shortly before the termination of the British Mandate for Palestine, in the civil war phase of the 1948 Palestine war.

On the morning of 25 April 1948 the Irgun (a Jewish paramilitary group) launched a full-scale attack on Jaffa from Tel Aviv.

Paglin had masterminded the bombing of the British military headquarters in Jerusalem's King David Hotel, when 91 people were killed, including 15 Jews.

Within hours of the start of the assault on Jaffa, William Fuller, the British district commissioner for Lydda, asked Israel Rokach, the mayor of Tel Aviv, to call off the attack.

Throughout the following two days, Fuller continued asking Rokach to have the attack called off, warning that the British Army would intervene.

On 28 April, the British, through Rokach, issued an ultimatum, demanding that Irgun forces cease fire and immediately withdraw from Menashiya, threatening to bomb Tel Aviv, and warning that they would "save Jaffa for the Arabs at all costs, especially in light of the fact that the Jews had conquered Haifa".

[1] Following the battle, the British then sent an ultimatum to David Ben-Gurion, threatening to bomb Tel Aviv if he did not rein in the Irgun.

As a response, the Irgun threatened to use its mortars to shell the American–German Colony in Jaffa, and declared that it was up to the British whether their departure from Palestine - already in its finishing stage - would be peaceful or bloody.

[7] On 29 April, British commanders met with Ben-Gurion's son Amos and Jaffa mayor Yousef Haikal.

David Ben-Gurion recorded in his diary that when he visited Salama on the evening of 30 April all he found was 'only one old blind woman.'