The 'Haifa Turning Point': The British Administration and the Civil War in Palestine, December 1947-May 1948

Abstract

On 14 May 1948, the mandate which had been awarded to Britain by the League of Nations to govern Palestine expired. The run-up to the end of British rule was marked by long months of a Palestinian civil war between Jews and Arabs, which significantly affected the manner in which Britain concluded its mission in Palestine. The war, which lasted from December 1947 until May 1948, was inevitably influenced by the fact that British rule, including the civil administration, the police, and the army, continued to exist formally until the middle of May. The prevailing argument in the research literature on this period is whether British policy during the civil war was a defined intention, and whether it was also implemented by the Administration in Palestine until the very day of the evacuation. Some have claimed that the British blatantly supported the Arabs, though others believe that they backed the Jews. A number of studies maintain that the British sought to bring about a situation of chaos, which would show up the irrelevance of the United Nations' partition plan. Be that as it may, all agree that Britain exercised a crucial impact, which was deliberate and conscious, on the events.' The research, primarily Israeli and British, on Britain's place in the Palestine war has come a long way, to the point where the question of whether the British supported the Jews or the Arabs is no longer addressed. Avi Shlaim is right when he says that during the war the British pursued a policy in Palestine that was neither anti-Zionist nor anti-Arab, but proBritish. British research (contrary to Israeli or Arab studies) also touches on the helplessness of Britain in the face of the war, although as a marginal issue, a kind of calculated risk, which was under control, that Britain assumed at the time. If a sense of helplessness manifested itself, Roger Louis, the prominent historian of the end of the British mandate of Palestine, mentions it as no more than a local weakness. Shlaim explains that it was an