Roy Farran - Palestine

Palestine

When Farran arrived in Palestine, the British authorities were in the midst of attempting to suppress Jewish resistance organizations operating in the Mandate. The largest and most effective of these organizations was known as the Irgun, which controlled between 5,000 and 6,000 guerrillas proficient in sabotage and street fighting, as well as an intelligence section staffed by a number of ex-Special Operations Executive and Secret Intelligence Service operatives that the British Joint Intelligence Committee labelled 'excellent'. Although the Irgun and other Jewish resisters were outnumbered by a ratio of 20:1 by British security forces, British attempts to suppress them were hampered by an inadequate intelligence organization which was understaffed and over-stretched, with many of its small number of personnel consisting of 'enterprising amateurs' seconded from other units. Open rebellion by Jewish resistance groups began when the war came to an end, and by early 1947 Palestine had experienced a large number of guerrilla attacks against British targets. Debates raged in London over what the best course of action was to combat the attacks. On 2 March 1947, martial law was declared throughout Tel Aviv and the Jewish sector of Jerusalem, with the intended aim of differentiating the guerrillas from the civilian population and ending the attacks. However, this had the opposite effect, and the number of attacks actually doubled.