What happened in Palestine during World War II?
The Jewish Agency rejected the heavily pro-Arab 1939 White Paper emphatically, branding it as a total repudiation of Balfour and Mandate obligations. In September 1939, at the outset of World War II, Ben-Gurion, then chairman of the Jewish Agency, declared: “We shall fight the war against Hitler as if there were no White Paper, and we shall fight the White Paper as if there were no war.” Ben-Gurion’s statement of 1939 set the tone for Jewish Agency policy and operations during World War II. In May 1940, however, when Winston Churchill, a longtime Zionist sympathizer, became prime minister, it appeared that the 1939 White Paper might be rescinded. A brief period of close British-Jewish military cooperation ensued, and there was talk (which never came to fruition) of establishing a Jewish division within the British Army. The British trained Jewish commando units, the first elements of the famous Palmach–the strategic reserve of the Haganah–and they also gave Jewish volunteers intensiv
