AHC: Britain defeats Zionist guerrillas internally and the partition plan internationally

Beacuse the actual reason for the mandate of palestine was to create a jewish homeland, and as the didnt belive that a multi-etnic state is a viable option the decided to go for the partition plan.
The British govorment *wanted* to partition the mandate, and they wanted to get out as soon as fucking possible.
Also ,after July 1945??!? When all the world started to understand the magnitued of the disaster that fell on the jews of europe? When nobody else was willing to take the refugees? The creation of Israel was a sure thing by this point.
 
The problem is, if not partition, then what? A peaceful, unified state was a pipe dream.

Keep in mind that the partition plan was legally non binding and no serious action was taken to enforce it. War broke out after it was announced.

The British might be able to defeat the guerrillas, but they essentially had no strategy, while the guerrillas did and applied it brilliantly, and getting cooperation from the Jewish public is going to be almost impossible unless the British government adopts a more Zionist stance and allows lots of Jewish immigration, in which case the insurgency would be suspended regardless.
 
The Zionist guerillas differed in their objectives and tactics. It was relatively widely known that the Haganah, for example, had less desire for an immediate confrontation than the Irgun or Lehi, with the British, and that they were moving people and resources into position for the inevitable post-partition conflict during most of 1946-1947. They did little clandestine action and much of it was non-violent.

The British for their part wanted out almost as soon as possible and had wanted out for a while before the end of the war anyways. The partition plan was probably inevitable.
 
The Zionist guerillas differed in their objectives and tactics. It was relatively widely known that the Haganah, for example, had less desire for an immediate confrontation than the Irgun or Lehi, with the British, and that they were moving people and resources into position for the inevitable post-partition conflict during most of 1946-1947. They did little clandestine action and much of it was non-violent.

From 1945 to 1947, they were following roughly the same strategy for most of the time. The Haganah, under the aegis of the official Jewish leadership, would smuggle in illegal immigrants and occasionally attack British targets associated with stopping illegal immigration, while the Irgun and Lehi would go all-out in attacking the British. There was a period of time when they cooperated and coordinated under the an argreement, and called themselves the Jewish Resistance Movement, but that ended after the British launched a massive search operation and confiscated many of it's arms. There were periods of time when the Haganah cooperated with the British, but the Yishuv's leadership was content to let the "dissidents" gradually wear the British down.

The Irgun and Lehi both fought to wear down the British, but the Irgun's strategy in particular was brilliant. It pioneered the tactic of appealing to a global audience with headline-grabbing raids that kept Palestine a focus of world attention, and carried out operations that humiliated the British through daring raids against military and police targets which showed their inability to stop the violence. In particular, their retaliatory abductions and whippings of British soldiers after Irgun fighters had been flogged, the raid on Acre Prison that freed many convicted guerrillas, and the taking of hostages to force the British to commute the death sentences on captured Irgun fighters, which culminated in the Irgun hanging two British soldiers from trees after the British hanged three Irgun fighters, showed the utter impotence of the authorities and humiliated them, and also made the British public tire of the whole thing.

The British for their part wanted out almost as soon as possible and had wanted out for a while before the end of the war anyways. The partition plan was probably inevitable.

The British wanted out, but they wanted to preserve some semblance of a presence in Palestine, which they viewed as a major strategic area for the upcoming Cold War. It was home to major military bases and was a major oil terminal. Egypt and Jordan were already client states, and they wanted to retain a military presence. They also did not want to risk angering the Arab world, as well as the huge Muslim population in India, then a part of the Empire, and they needed it to guard their lines to contact to India. The loss of India gave the British one less reason to remain in Palestine. It was was the guerrilla campaign that forced the British to station large forces in Palestine at considerable cost, at a time when the country was in dire financial straits, that played a huge part in them leaving when they did.
 
The Britain of 1945 was in no mood for more war. This did not change by 1948. Yes, there were differences among the Jewish militias, but they shared similar objectives, and Jewish civic and political life in the region was better organized than that of the local Arabs, whose internal divisions were arguably larger.
 

raharris1973

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Beacuse the actual reason for the mandate of palestine was to create a jewish homeland, and as the didnt belive that a multi-etnic state is a viable option the decided to go for the partition plan.

The British govorment *wanted* to partition the mandate, and they wanted to get out as soon as fucking possible.

Britain voted against partition in the UN and said it was a bad idea. Even though they wanted to be done with it themselves. Maybe they wanted to foist enforcement of multi-ethnic state on to the US, but the US (outside of some State Department circles) was not interested, at least not if it came to actually committing resources.

When nobody else was willing to take the refugees?

Did nobody else take Jewish refugees. Did the US, UK, Canada, Australia not make major exceptions to immigration quota laws on behalf of Jewish refugees or Displaced Persons after 1945 and the liberation of the camps?

I ask, because some critical accounts of Israeli history say the Zionist post-WWII bullied Jewish refugees into "choosing" Palestine over emigrating to the US or other countries, implying this other choice was available to all of them.

They can't.

What about the British organizing a handover of all their mandate infrastructure, and the mandate's local police forces, to people loyal to Transjordanian King Abdullah, and the chain of command of the Arab Legion. When Britain departs Palestine, it could leave all its administrative and military posts and mandate controlled real estate to this police force, and members of the Arab Legion seconded to it or on leave from it.

Granted, if you expand the Arab Legion too much or too fast you risk diluting its loyalty and relative competence, but there might have been a way to gradually extend it add a speed that new members could be vetted and brought into the Hashemite patronage network and build it up to a force that can hold on to all the positions the British ultimately hand over to them. The Arab Legion in OTL was strong enough to besiege and take the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, despite relieving it being a big priority for the Israelis and many relief attempts.
 
The British wanted out, but they wanted to preserve some semblance of a presence in Palestine, which they viewed as a major strategic area for the upcoming Cold War

So let's do a thread hijack, and the Foreign Office sees that things are dicey in Egypt, TransJordan isn't strategic, so decides to embrace partition, with the goal for an Israel that will be Pro-British for the next hundred years.
With that in mind, promote the Exodus, allowing easy immigration, with the PR for 'Humanitarian Purposes' and train a paramilitary force for 'Interior Patrols' to promote free transport of goods and people between towns, while helpfully shipping surplus WWII AFVs and aircraft to yards to await scrapping, sometime in the future, with a wink and a nod.
 
What about the British organizing a handover of all their mandate infrastructure, and the mandate's local police forces, to people loyal to Transjordanian King Abdullah, and the chain of command of the Arab Legion. When Britain departs Palestine, it could leave all its administrative and military posts and mandate controlled real estate to this police force, and members of the Arab Legion seconded to it or on leave from it.
In other words, you would have Britain abandon thirty years of policy to place the governance of mandatory Palestine in the hands of the less well organized, but larger population group. I don't know that they could do this under the terms of the mandate for one. Two, there is other precedent from the same era for Britain leaving a colony under the political and/or economic domination of a minority population: Sri Lanka, or, arguably Malaya. Third, for a whole host of reasons, there were very real hostilities between Jews and Arabs in the mandate. It's an unmitigated PR disaster for Britain if Ashkenazim migrate in droves to Palestine to seek escapee from pogroms in Europe only to potentially face a new one in their new land.
Granted, if you expand the Arab Legion too much or too fast you risk diluting its loyalty and relative competence, but there might have been a way to gradually extend it add a speed that new members could be vetted and brought into the Hashemite patronage network and build it up to a force that can hold on to all the positions the British ultimately hand over to them. The Arab Legion in OTL was strong enough to besiege and take the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, despite relieving it being a big priority for the Israelis and many relief attempts.
Not with a late POD, which you seem here to want.
 

raharris1973

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The 1939 White Paper was an effective disavowal of the idea of "mandate is primarily to create a Jewish National Home". And that came on top of rejecting various partition plans.
 
The 1939 White Paper was an effective disavowal of the idea of "mandate is primarily to create a Jewish National Home". And that came on top of rejecting various partition plans.
But Jewish immigration nonetheless increased, and Zionists organizations strengthened their institutional and military advantages in the mandate throughout the war despite a haphazard effort to possibly back off. Wasn't the Peel Commission right around then anyway?
 
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