How Britain stirred the cauldron of conflict in Palestine

Having ousted the Ottomans from Palestine in 1917, Britain administered a territory that was already a tinderbox of tensions between Arabs and Jews. Matthew Hughes explores the bloody end of the Palestine Mandate and the emergence of the State of Israel

- Matthew Hughes

Early in the morning of 31 July 1947, two unusual shapes were spotted swinging from eucalyptus trees near Netanya. Recognising them as human bodies, the authorities in this coastal town in northern Palestine soon found notes pinned to the corpses identifying them as Clifford Martin and Mervyn Paice.

These British Army Intelligence Corps sergeants had been kidnapped by insurgents of Irgun Zvai Leumi (National Military Organisation), a nationalist Jewish paramilitary unit. The Irgun had held them in a sealed, soundproof bunker, hoping to use them as bargaining chips to save the lives of three Jews sentenced to hang by the British for their part in a mass prison break – a crime punishable by the death penalty. For 17 days, Martin and Paice were held in a tiny, airless cell; then, after the three Jews were executed, the British men were also hanged – executed, the notes stated, for “criminal anti-Hebrew” activities.

When a British captain cut down Martin’s body, it fell onto an explosive booby-trap – blowing apart that corpse, damaging Paice’s and injuring the officer. The incident enraged the media in Britain, where the Daily Express ran photographs of the hanged men alongside the headline: “Hanged Britons: Picture that Will Shock the World.” There were antisemitic riots across the UK, and British soldiers attacked Jews in Tel Aviv.

This was just one of many violent incidents during British rule of Palestine, which ended in 1948. Gaining a broader picture of that turbulent period, especially the context and legacy of the British Palestine Mandate, is crucial to interpreting the forces that shaped the modern State of Israel – which marks the 75th anniversary of its foundation this spring – and to understanding the roots of the Palestinian situation today.