The explosion on Ben Yehuda Street (1948)

The beginning of 1948 in Palestine was characterized by high tension between the British, Jews and Arabs. Terrorist acts, pogroms, retaliation, and even full-scale hostilities were an everyday occurrence.

Benny Morris , one of the new Israeli historians , writes that "the Arabs realized the devastating effect produced by the Jewish bombs planted in the right places in Jerusalem, Jaffa and Haifa ." From January to March, Arab groups launched a series of terrorist attacks against Jewish targets. It was difficult for Arab militants to infiltrate Jewish quarters, as they were fenced off from the Arabian barbed wire and were guarded by checkpoints served by British soldiers and members of the Haganah. Perhaps that is why these attacks were carried out either by groups consisting entirely of deserters from the British army, or by groups with their participation.

On February 1, 1948, a truck with explosives was blown up near the Palestine Post newspaper office, next to which was the hotel where the Palmach soldiers were stationed. As a result of the attack, one person died and 20 were injured. Two deserters from the British army and one Arab took part in the action. All three managed to escape. The two Englishmen were Edie Brown and Peter Madison, who later also took part in the bombing on Ben Yehud Street , an Arabian participant named Khalil Janho ^[1] .

At 6.15 a.m. on February 22, 1948, a convoy of three trucks escorted by a police armored car drove up to a Jewish checkpoint in the Jerusalem area of ​​Romem. People in British military uniform, who were in cars, did not allow the personnel of the checkpoint to check the cargo and proceeded inland ^[2] . On the corner of Ben Yehuda and Ben Hillel streets, near the Atlantic and Amdurski hotels, where Palmach’s soldiers were stationed, they stopped cars, got into an armored car and drove off. Before that, they shot a guard suspecting them ^[1] .

At 6:30 in the morning a powerful explosion thundered; the explosion destroyed four buildings, the people who were in them died or were buried under ruins. Despite the efforts of the Jewish community of Jerusalem to rescue the victims, according to various sources, from 46 ^[3] to 58 people ^[4] died; up to 130 people were injured. Palmach soldiers stationed in ruined hotels were on a mission and were not injured ^[1] .

When it became known about the possible participation of British soldiers in the terrorist attack, EZEL issued a statement according to which any British soldier or police officer who was in the places of residence of Jews who patrolled the armed groups of EZEL would be fired upon ^[5] . By 12 o’clock in the afternoon, the British administration lost 12 people and withdrew all its forces from the Jewish areas of Jerusalem ^[3] .

The Army of the Holy War , Abd al-Qadir al-Husseini, claimed responsibility for the attack, but the Palestinian High Committee disavowed this statement, denying the involvement of Arab nationalists in the bombing ^[4] .

In the early days, the Jewish side’s allegations of the involvement of British soldiers in the attack were regarded as baseless ^[6] , but later it turned out that among the perpetrators of the attack were two deserters from the British armed forces, captain Eddie Brown and Corporal Peter Madison, who also organized an explosion at the editorial office Palestine Post . " Eddie Brown, captain of the British police, claimed that his brother had been killed by EZEL militants ^[7] ; Brown and Madison were also promised a thousand pounds on behalf of the Jerusalem Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini ^[4] . According to other sources, all six perpetrators of the attack were British deserters ^[1] . The explosive device, which was based on three tons of TNT , was prepared by an Arab specialist, Fawzi al-Qutoub ^[8] , who also collected bombs for a terrorist attack from the editorial office of the Palestine Post and a later attack near the building of the Jewish Agency ( March 13 of the same year), which claimed the lives of eleven people ^[7] . Kutub learned to make bombs in Nazi Germany ^[9] , he is also responsible for the destruction of at least two Jerusalem synagogues: the largest - Tifferet Israel and the Hurva synagogue from dozens of synagogues that were later destroyed by the Arab Legion in the Old City ^[10] . The trucks that exploded on Ben Yehuda Street were loaded with explosives and drove out of the Arab village of Imvas near Latrun ^[1] .

On February 29 , a week after the explosion on Ben Yehuda Street, as a result of an explosion of a bomb planted by ETSEL militants, in the Rehovot area the military personnel of the British troops went off the rails, traveling from Cairo to Haifa . 28 people (of whom 27 were soldiers) died ^{[1] [11]} .

Historian A. Bregman quotes Ben Gurion , who visited the site of the explosion:

Such a destruction ... I could not find out the streets. But I could not forget that our thugs and murderers ^[12] opened the way for this. ^[13]