Page 485 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo I

485
aCta
The Jewish detention camps in Cyprus during
the Palestine crisis

CHRISTOS IACOVOu

The purpose of this paper is to deal with the British government’s overall policy of tran-
shipping illegal immigrants during the period between the end of the Second World War in
1945 and the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948 and it examines, in particular,
the fate of those who were transhipped to the Cyprus detention camps.
At the end of the WWII when the Labour Party came to power in Britain hope sprang
within the Zionist movement that the new government would rescind the policy embodied
in the White paper of 1939 and allow free immigration into Palestine - a promise made by
the Labour platform on the eve of the previous elections. To the Zionist movement’s great
disappointment it became clear that the Labour government had no intention of fulfilling this
promise and so the campaign over Palestine’s political future began. The Jewish community
in Palestine (Yishuv in Hebrew) decided to concentrate its efforts on the immigration front.
Their main weapon in its efforts on the immigration which was intended to exert pressure
on the British government and, and by sheer force, break down the gates of Palatine to allow
free Jewish immigration. Those who would have to bear the main burden in this effort were
the thousands of refugees - survivors - who had resolved to leave Europe after the terrible
events of the Holocaust and make their way to Palestine to join a Jewish settlement in its
struggle for a Jewish State.
The British government, which was aware of this fact, looked for ways to restrict the
number of illegal immigrants and to prevent them flooding the country. One of the main
ways they could do this was by then transhipping the immigrants to Cyprus and detaining
them there in camps especially erected for this purpose. Between August 1946 and May 1948
nearly 52,000 illegal immigrants were transhipped to Cyprus in this manner.
The Cyprus detention camps existed from August 13, 1946, when they were opened and
the first immigrants were brought there until February 10, 1949, when they were closed and
the last detainees left for the state of Israel. By then the State had existed for nine months and
its gates had throughout that period been wide open to free immigration. However, this paper
concludes with the first truce in the Arab-Israeli War in June 1948 - a date which opened a
new era. Why were the Cyprus detention camps not closed with the end of the British Man-
date, for it was due to the Mandate’s immigration laws that the camps were originally estab-
lished? However, the continued implementation of these laws is a political issue which lies
beyond the bounds of the British war on illegal immigration and for this reason it is beyond
the scope of this paper.

the british decisiOn tO transhiP jewish iMMigrants tO cyPrus
With the renewal of illegal immigration in August 1945 the first voices among the Chiefs
of Staff and commanders of the British Army were raised in opposition to such activity
for fear that the whole issue would undermine security throughout the Middle East. Thus,