British Mandate: A Survey of Palestine: Volume I - Page 69. Historical Summary: Period IX: November, 1943. The agitation for a Jewish State and unrestricted immigration

CHAPTER II.

together with incidents of girls being abused in public for being in company with Allied soldiers, led to an affray on 4th September between United States soldiers and Jewish civilians in which twenty-eight civilians were injured.

(4) In December 1943, following Revisionist criticism that the design of the badge of the Palestine Regiment (an olive branch with the word "Palestine" in the three official languages) was not distinctively Jewish, a number of Jewish soldiers of the Regiment refused to wear the badge and were court-martialled.

Compared with those for 1942 recruiting figures in respect both of Arabs and Jews remained at a low level throughout the year.

1st November, 1943.

Twenty members of the Stern group escaped from the Latrun detention camp by means of a tunnel. A month later the illegal broadcasts made their reappearance from a station styling itself "The Fighting People's Station".

10th November, 1943.

It bad been calculated in September, 1943, that, of the provision for 75,000 immigrants made in the White Paper of May, 1939, some 44,000 had entered Palestine. The assumption that the balance of 31,000 would have reached Palestine before the expiry of the period of five years fixed by the White Paper, but for the exigencies of the war, was considered justified. His Majesty's Government therefore announced that they had reached the conclusion that it would be inequitable to close the doors of Palestine to 31,000 Jews on account of the time factor, and that they would do their utmost to facilitate their arrival, subject to the criterion of economic absorptive capacity. The quota of 75,000 was filled by December, 1945.

16th November, 1943.

A search for Polish deserters was carried out by the military and police forces at Ramal Hakovesh. The men and women of the settlement, supported by Jewish settlers from the surrounding area, resisted the operation, and the police were compelled to fire one round from a revolver; one Jew was fatally wounded. The incident was seriously misrepresented in the Jewish section of the press, and the action of the police and military forces vilified in a campaign of incitement which provoked serious incidents in Tel Aviv, including the setting on fire of the District Office by a riotous mob.

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