On the evening of May 14 1948, the People’s Council of the Jewish Community in Tel Aviv did not wait for the midnight expiry of Britain’s League of Nations mandate in Palestine. The mandate had given Britain administration of the territories of Palestine and Transjordan after the end of the first world war.
Asserting its “natural and historic right” to a homeland and recognition by the United Nations, the council declared the establishment of Israel.
As you’d expect, the declaration of Israel’s statehood made huge headlines around the world. As a researcher of newspaper history, I’ve spent time in the archives of most of the UK’s mass circulation papers of the era. Unfortunately much of this material is behind paywalls, but I’ve been able to see how UK newspapers covered the event at the time.
