Lehi, a splinter group primarily opposed to British occupation and involvement in the region and holding strong nationalist sentiments. They later also courted the Soviets and adopted more Soviet ideologies.
I won’t do the WHOLE big thing because there is ALOT of history and it gets complicated and contentious.
To be short and inaccurate- promises had been made in WW1 and that meant the British were in “mandatory Palestine” trying to create a single territory of Jews and Arabs.
That didn’t work out so well and a lot happened. More or less most Arabs and most Jews didn’t like the British involvement.
Each group accused the British of favoritism to the other and there is a lot of other detail but basically both groups claimed the area as theirs by rights and the British were telling both that they couldn’t have what they wanted while using force and doing other things to try and force sharing the area.
So now we have the Nazis and WW2. At first the Nazis were trying to deport people they identified as Jewish- a key problem for this deportation as well as for Jewish settlers looking to create the nation of Israel was that under the British administration, Jewish immigration was capped. The White Paper had capped the influx of Jewish settlers to 75,000 over FIVE years. To put that in context, no less than 4 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust alone over the period of 3-4 years in Europe, with most totals saying around 6-7 million.
These caps were primarily meant to limit the shock and potential conflict from a rapid influx of settlers to the region. The British had blockaded mandatory Palestine by sea and while Jewish groups and others worked to smuggle Jews from Europe to safety, the Royal Navy was tasked to intercept these smuggled immigrants and return them.
Most “allied” countries and of course Axis countries either had their own firm caps on accepting Jewish refugees or simply refused to do so. So the situation there was that it was a known fact that in Europe Hews were in danger and being killed, they had limited options to leave the most dangerous areas for safer nations, and the institution of Mandatory Palestine was part of a promise to provide a Jewish homeland- but the Jewish people at large couldn’t even legally flee to their homeland because it posed political and administrative inconvenience to the British. So it can be broadly said that on the whole both Arab and Jewish groups in the region at the time were anti British- at least in the sense they wanted the Britts out of the area and to quit their meddling.
When WW2 kicked off, Lehi, an organization with a complex history and presence in Israel, but by accounts of the time a terrorist splinter group, did attempt to seek a sort of truce with the Nazis. Their logic was two fold- that the Nazis held a similar goal in creating a strongly national homeland for their people, and that the Nazi war with Britain would remove the British from Israeli affairs.
Lehi would continue their anti British actions including assassinations of high officials- moves that are often attributed to provoking anti Zionist sentiment and actions in British government. Other groups sought a more conciliatory approach to the war and thought, much as many in India did, that aiding the British might gain the good will to leverage for freedom.
No group is a monolith and at least 12,000 Arabs of various groups stood openly in combat against the Nazis, at times fighting side by side with Jewish allies, but on sum total the Arab leadership of the region supported or allied with the Nazis. While Arabs were not in high regard in Nazi ideology, they also had a higher status than Jews, whom the Nazis sought to exterminate. Nazi victory and military power was largely seen as a path to removing the British and other foreign influence from the region and as a way to gain territory, wealth, and power. Many Arab leaders of the time simply saw the Nazis as the side most likely to win and thus concluded regardless of the details after the fact the overall results would likely be better for their people to side with the Nazis if their victory was inevitable either way.
So WW2 largely ended and attention turned to the looming conflict with the Soviets. The nation of Israel was formally founded after a lot of complicated global events led the British to give up their plans for an integrated “one nation” in mandatory Palestine and pursue a “partitioned” plan. The British didn’t support the partition plan of a speedster Jewish and Arab state- a plan pushed hard by the U.S. and by key figures in Jewish leadership but largely and almost completely rejected by Arab leaders. Other events had led to a severe weakening in Arab leadership as well, and so when the British finally announced their withdrawal from the region and its administration the plan was not “complete” and the only forces to enforce order in the area became those forces on hand to those living in the region. The rest is a story of wars and skirmishes lasting to the modern day in which both sides have grievances and claims against the other and gold they are the rightful inhabitants.
To be short and inaccurate- promises had been made in WW1 and that meant the British were in “mandatory Palestine” trying to create a single territory of Jews and Arabs.
That didn’t work out so well and a lot happened. More or less most Arabs and most Jews didn’t like the British involvement.
Each group accused the British of favoritism to the other and there is a lot of other detail but basically both groups claimed the area as theirs by rights and the British were telling both that they couldn’t have what they wanted while using force and doing other things to try and force sharing the area.
These caps were primarily meant to limit the shock and potential conflict from a rapid influx of settlers to the region. The British had blockaded mandatory Palestine by sea and while Jewish groups and others worked to smuggle Jews from Europe to safety, the Royal Navy was tasked to intercept these smuggled immigrants and return them.
Lehi would continue their anti British actions including assassinations of high officials- moves that are often attributed to provoking anti Zionist sentiment and actions in British government. Other groups sought a more conciliatory approach to the war and thought, much as many in India did, that aiding the British might gain the good will to leverage for freedom.