Military Resistance in Late Mandatory Palestine: The Activities of the Jewish and Arab Military Organizations as Reflected in the Reports of High Commissioner General Sir Alan Cunningham

Military Resistance in Late Mandatory Palestine presents telegrams sent to London by High Commissioner General Sir Alan Cunningham about the activities of the Jewish and Arab military organizations in Palestine from early 1947 to mid-May 1948. The telegrams contained detailed daily reports on the situation in Palestine, with an emphasis on terrorist activities carried out by both Jews and Arabs, against the British and against each other. A significant portion of these documents was destroyed by the British after they had left Palestine, but was recovered especially for this edition. In order to verify the contents of these reports, ascertain their accuracy, and evaluate the quality of the British intelligence in the last days of the Palestine mandate, a comparison was made between these reports and various Jewish and Arab sources. The contents of memoirs written by Hagana, IZL and LHI members, and by participants in the Arab organizations, were compared with that of the British documents, and the findings are brought in the notes following the documents, in order to provide a fuller and more accurate account of the events. Prof. Eliezer Tauber is a world expert on the emergence of the Arab nationalist movements, the formation of the modern Arab states, and the early phases of the Arab–Israeli conflict. He has published many books and numerous journal articles about these topics.