ABSTRACT
The Second World War brought about fundamental changes in Palestine and in the Middle East as a whole. The Zionist leadership in the country found itself facing both the limits of its own power and a tragic dilemma, the likes of which had rarely been encountered before in the annals of Zionism. It is only in retrospect that we can determine that the Arab threat of renewed violence and murder did indeed remain just a threat. At the time it was not at all clear that this would be the case. The shadow of the ‘events’ (as the Arab Revolt was called) and the danger of their resurgence through attacks on isolated Jewish settlements or in the mixed-population cities, caused grave concern in the Yishuv, as well as in the Jewish Agency and the Hagannah, particularly in light of the advance eastwards of the Axis armies. At that time, Reuven Zaslany and the people of SHAI, particularly Ezra Danin, continued their joint efforts with the British security forces to find the leaders of the gangs and to put them behind bars.
