The Kingdom Left Under the Ruins of a Hotel: The King David Hotel Attack (1946)
With the inclusion of the Palestinian region under British Mandate rule, there were strong reactions from both the Jewish and Arab communities, and the British Government issued a statement in June 1922 in an attempt to soften these reactions.
Following the First World War, the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement was signed to divide Ottoman territories, with Britain planning to divide the Middle East into separate zones.
As the Palestinian region was home to many religions, it was planned to be governed under international administration, but changes were made to the plan and, at the end of the war, a British Mandate was established in the Palestinian region. The Balfour Declaration, published on 2 November 1917, promising the Jewish people a ‘national home,’ caused political and social crises in the Palestinian region.
The inclusion of the Palestinian region under British mandate rule sparked intense reactions from both the Jewish and Arab communities, prompting the British Government to issue a statement in June 1922 to soften the emerging reactions. (1) In the relevant sections of the statement, the British government stated that the Balfour Declaration it had issued had been misinterpreted. It stated that the published declaration did not aim to establish an independent Jewish state within Palestine and that the concerns of the Arab people were unfounded. It clarified that no policy targeting the language or religion of the Arab people was being pursued, that the entire territory of Palestine would not be transformed into a Jewish homeland, and that only a Jewish homeland would be established on these lands. Referring to Article IV of the Palestine Mandate, it stated that the powers granted to the Zionist Commission included measures directed at the Jewish people and that it had no direct say in the administration of the region. (2) These statements marked the beginning of a period of violence that lasted until the establishment of Israel, triggered by the British publication of a single declaration.
With the rise of anti-Semitic actions in Europe in 1933 and the Nazis' rise to power in Germany, Jewish immigration to the Palestinian region increased. The British reneged on their promises to the Arabs and subsequently opened the region to Jewish immigration with the Balfour Declaration. This led the Arabs to launch a resistance movement and establish various organisations aimed at stopping the immigration, especially after the waves of immigration intensified in 1933. Arab organisations active in this context began targeting both the Jews immigrating to the region and the British government, which had failed to honour its promises. The Arab-Jewish conflicts that continued from 1920 to 1933 were mostly local in nature, but after 1933, and especially thanks to the policies implemented by Nazi Germany, the Pan-Arabism movement began to gain strength in the region. The Jews also established their own organisations in response to the Arab organisations.
The Haganah, established in 1920, was an organisation formed to defend the Yishuv, or Palestinian Jews, and was managed by the political organs of the Yishuv. (3) However, it quickly proved that it was not a defence organisation but an armed terrorist organisation through its actions and attacks. In the early 1930s, due to the passive stance of the Haganah and the increase in Arab uprisings, those who broke away from the Haganah organisation established the Irgun Zeva'i Leumi (Irgun) organisation in 1931. Irgun waged a radical struggle against the British presence and directly challenged the British administration with its logo, which symbolically featured a rifle on the map of the Palestine Mandate.
Irgun's most notorious action was the attack on the King David Hotel. The King David Hotel was a famous hotel of unique beauty in the 1940s. Architecturally reflecting the Sami tradition, it was a structure frequently preferred by the elite of the time. During the height of the Arab revolt, the hotel was turned into a military base for the British government, and its south wing was closed by the British government. Although the hotel continued to host guests, it had been completely transformed into a British military base, with the exception of the north and central wings. Meanwhile, according to Begin, some documents directly linked to the resistance movement against the British by the Haganah and the Jewish Agency had fallen into British hands as a result of operations against the Jews, and these documents were being kept at the King David Hotel. (4)
On 22 July 1946, at 7:00 a.m., Irgun militants gathered and began waiting for their assigned tasks. The target was the King David Hotel. The group that would carry out the attack took seven milk cans, each containing 50 kilograms of explosive charges, for a total of 350 kilograms of explosives, and set out to place them inside the hotel. After the vehicle stopped at the hotel's basement storage room, the militants entered the hotel from there and placed the cans one by one next to the supporting columns. (5) Thirty minutes later, a loud explosion occurred at the hotel, and the southern wing of the hotel collapsed instantly along with seven floors.
Before the explosion, the hotel was searched and information was provided that a bomb attack would be carried out at the hotel. This information was also conveyed to the French Consulate and the Palestine Post newspaper. The information provided to the French Consulate included instructions to open the windows to avoid damage from the explosion. In order to prevent the loss of Jewish lives in the hotel, it was learned that during the search of the hotel, a hotel employee said, ‘We do not take orders from Jews,’ according to Menachem Begin. (6)
Lieutenant General Dudley Sheridan Skelton, who survived the explosion, heard the warning given to the officers in the bar, but unlike the other officers, he did not believe that it was a bluff by Jewish terrorists and left the hotel, thus surviving the explosion. (7)
The terrorist attack was strongly criticised by the Jewish Agency and the British press. On 23 July, the Haganah's press organ, Kol Israel, condemned the attack and made harsh criticisms. According to Menachem Begin, who met with Haganah leader Yisrael Galili on 23 July: ‘What does this mean? Don't you know the cause of the heavy loss and who is responsible? Why are you condemning us? We had agreed on the plans. Our men followed the orders exactly and warnings were given. Why aren't you telling the truth?’
The King David Hotel attack, which went down in history as the most comprehensive and severe attack by the Irgun organisation against the British, left 92 people dead. After the King David attack, Zionism began to take radical decisions and terrorise its actions. Attacks were carried out on clubs and police stations where British officers were present, while Britain responded with increasingly harsh measures each time. The terrorists who were captured were executed by the British, but the retaliatory attacks continued. With the King David Hotel attack, Britain, which had lost its legitimacy in Palestine, finally applied to the UN General Assembly on 2 April 1947, requesting that the issue be discussed at its next regular annual session. (8)
Indeed, Britain acknowledged that it could no longer maintain the Mandate over Palestine, which it had assumed in 1920, in the face of increasing political and social pressures. The serious economic devastation that followed World War II, combined with the financial and military burden of the war, and the increasingly violent actions of Zionist underground organisations operating in Palestine during the same period, had seriously weakened Britain's authority in the region. In particular, the 1946 attack on the King David Hotel, which targeted the heart of the British Mandate administration, was one of the turning points in the armed resistance of these organisations against Britain. Although British authorities responded with executions of Irgun militants and harsh military measures, it soon became clear that the situation had reached a point where it was no longer controllable for the British, given the ongoing sabotage, police station raids, and bombings.
As a result of all these developments, the British government officially acknowledged that it had lost its ability to produce a solution to the Palestinian issue and referred the matter to the United Nations General Assembly in 1947. It thus chose to leave responsibility to the international community and finally withdrew from Palestine on 14 May 1948, officially ending the mandate.
Footnotes
(1) Churchill, W. (1922, June 3). British Policy in Palestine: The Churchill White Paper. The Avalon Project, Yale Law School.
(2) Churchill, W. (1922, June 3). British Policy in Palestine: The Churchill White Paper. The Avalon Project, Yale Law School.
(3) Fahir Armaoğlu, The Palestinian Question and the Arab-Israeli Wars (1948-1988), November 2023, Istanbul
(4) Hoffman, B. (2020). Bombing the King David Hotel: Terror, tactics and truths, p. 5.
(5) Lapidot, Y. (1992). THE ATTACK ON THE KING DAVID HOTEL.
(6) Menachem Begin, The Revolt, p. 285
(7) Lord Greville Janner, Address In Reply To Her Majesty's Most Gracious Speech, (22 May 1979).
(8) Yearbook of the United Nations, 1946-1947, pp. 276-277.
