Terror in Zion

Just before midnight, the dread Hagana struck.* In ultramodern Tel Aviv, hallowed Jerusalem, bustling Haifa and old Jaffa the outlawed Jewish terrorists attacked British police stations, exploded bombs, fought running gun battles. When the violence waned, six British policemen lay dead, a dozen injured.

Palestine's peaceable Jewish majority promptly condemned the outrages, talked of vigilante drives against the outlaws. Palestine's British High Commissioner promptly took action: for Tel Aviv and the Jewish quarters of Jerusalem, Haifa and Jaffa, a twelve-hour daily curfew beginning at 5 p.m.; for sabotage and terror, the death penalty. Palestine, home of half a million Jews and a million Arabs, already one of the world's most thoroughly policed lands, now felt more heavily than ever the tread of law & order.

Jews and Arabs both knew that the Zionist outlaws were hitting at Britain's pro-Arab policy. The British knew it, too, but their first concern was to hold their place in the oil-rich, strategically important Arab world of the Middle East. Tensely all factions awaited a crucial decision: whether the British, Mr. Roosevelt's implied promise notwithstanding (TIME, March 20), would soon stop Jewish immigration to Palestine, as provided in the famed White Paper of 1939.

*Hagana is Hebrew for "Defense," the title assumed by illegally armed Zionist extremists who believe in "direct action" to further a Jewish homeland.

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