The Paper outlined new government policies to place further restrictions on Jewish immigration and land purchases, and declared the intention of giving independence to Palestine, with an Arab majority, within ten years.

[12] It concluded that: "His Majesty's Government, after careful study of the Partition Commission's report, have reached the conclusion that this further examination has shown that the political, administrative and financial difficulties involved in the proposal to create independent Arab and Jewish States inside Palestine are so great that this solution of the problem is impracticable."

In the 1920s, the British imposed restrictions on Jewish immigration to Palestine and the ability of Jews to buy land, claiming that these decisions were taken due to concerns over the economic absorptive capacity of the country.

However, in August 1940, Irgun member Avraham Stern formed Lehi, a breakaway group which favoured armed struggle against the British to force them out of Palestine and immediately establish a Jewish state.

Stern proposed an alliance with Nazi Germany, offering the Germans help in conquering the Middle East and driving out the British in exchange for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, which would then take in European Jewry.

In December 1942, when the mass murder of European Jewry became known to the Allies, the British continued to refuse to change their policy of limited immigration, or to admit Jews from Nazi controlled Europe in numbers outside the quota imposed by the White Paper, and the Royal Navy prevented ships with Jewish refugees from reaching Palestine.

[20][21] Labour Chancellor Hugh Dalton issued a statement calling for the population transfer of Arabs and even examining the possibility of further expanding the borders of a future Jewish state.

Over the next few years tens of thousands of Jews sailed towards Palestine in overcrowded vessels in a program known as Aliyah Bet, despite the almost certain knowledge that it would lead to incarceration in a British prison camp (most ships were intercepted).

Harrison reported, [S]ubstantial unofficial and unauthorized movements of people must be expected, and these will require considerable force to prevent, for the patience of many of the persons involved is, and in my opinion with justification, nearing the breaking point.

With the general feeling that the Axis forces in Europe were nearing their defeat, the Irgun decided to shift its policy from cease-fire to an active campaign of violence, as long as it would not be hurting the war effort against Nazi Germany.

At the end of October 1945, the Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi joined together as the Jewish Resistance Movement, under which they worked under a unified command structure consisting of members of all three organisations and coordinated their activities.

[47] Palestine was relatively quiet until November 25, when the Palmach attacked British police stations at Hadera and near Herzliya which were used as watch points to detect illegal Jewish immigration, using automatic fire and explosives.

On January 19, the Irgun launched coordinated attacks in Jerusalem, bombing an electrical substation to black out the area as assault teams descended on the police headquarters and central prison located in the Russian Compound and the Palestine Broadcasting Service studios.

The authorities had seriously considered more severe penalties such as demolishing all houses around the car park including those that had played no role in the assault and imposing a collective fine on the entire city but had decided against all other options due to them being politically undesirable or impractical.

Curfews were imposed throughout Palestine as British troops and police raided the Jewish Agency headquarters in Jerusalem, its offices in Tel Aviv, and other Zionist institutions, confiscating nine tons of documents.

Although the Haganah repeatedly requested that the operation be delayed due to political considerations, the Irgun decided to press ahead and on July 22, carried out the King David Hotel bombing.

[56]Barker, whose forces participated in the capture of the Bergen Belsen concentration camp, made many antisemitic comments in his letters to Katy Antonius[57] and was relieved of his post a few weeks after issuing the statement.

A British soldier was seized in a cafe in Rishon LeZion and flogged in the street, and two sergeants were abducted from a hotel in Tel Aviv, tied to a tree in a public park, and lashed eighteen times.

The Haifa Municipal Assessments Office was destroyed on March 5, and two days later, Irgun assault teams simultaneously attacked three targets in Tel Aviv, including army headquarters at Citrus House.

On March 12, the Irgun carried out a pre-dawn assault on the Royal Army Pay Corps camp at the Schneller Orphanage in Jerusalem, which was located in an area under martial law, within a British security zone.

On April 14, the authorities evicted 110 Jews from their homes in the Haifa neighbourhood of Hadar HaCarmel as collective punishment for a mine attack on a British jeep on a nearby road ten days prior.

There was a certainty that they would be tried and convicted of capital offenses and while two of them, Amnon Michaelov and Nachman Zitterbaum, were legally minors and thus too young to hang, the three others, Avshalom Haviv, Meir Nakar, and Yaakov Weiss, were not.

This propaganda, coupled with statements and actions by British officials and members of the security forces interpreted as anti-Semitic, gained the insurgents international credibility and served to further tarnish Britain's image.

Eventually, Jewish insurgency against the British was overshadowed by the Jewish-Arab fighting of the 1947–48 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine, which started following the UN vote in favour of the United Nations Partition Plan.

The mandatory power shall use its best endeavours to ensure that an area situated in the territory of the Jewish state, including a seaport and hinterland adequate to provide facilities for a substantial immigration, shall be evacuated at the earliest possible date and in any event not later than 1 February 1948.

Following the late-1947 announcement that the British would withdraw from Palestine months ahead of schedule, however, the bridge was destroyed by the 21st Battalion[90] under the Palmach[91] in late February 1948[90] to hinder Lebanese arms shipments to Arab forces opposing the UN Partition Plan.

Jewish forces, led by the Haganah, consolidated their hold on a strip of territory on the coastal plain of Palestine and the Jezreel and Jordan Valleys, and crushed the Palestinian Arab militas.

Britain viewed the Negev as a strategic land bridge between Egypt and Transjordan that was vital to both British and Western interests in the Middle East, and were anxious to keep it from falling into Israeli hands.

The British believed that it would be in their and the West's strategic interest if they maintained de facto control of a land bridge from Egypt to Transjordan, and Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin tried to persuade the US government to support his position and force Israel to withdraw.

However, the British diplomatic campaign failed to persuade the US government to take action against Israel, with US President Harry S. Truman referring to the Negev as "a small area not worth differing over".