O'CONNOR, R.N. (Major-General, Seventh Division). Proclamation warning to inhabitants of the city of Jerusalem without the walls. Jerusalem: 19 October 1938. [Sold with:] SCOTT, Robert (Acting Chief Secretary). Proclamation by the Officer Administering the Government. Jerusalem: 15 November 1945.

Rare ephemeral handbills containing British military orders for the civilian population of Palestine.

Two handbills (both approx. 330 x 210 mm.), text in Arabic, English and Hebrew, one with British royal coat-of-arms top-centre. (Creasefolds, browning and staining, the later one with two punch holes affecting two words of Arabic text.)

BRITISH REACTION TO ARMED REBELLION AGAINST MANDATORY RULE. The earlier 1938 proclamation states that the public are to remain indoors during a curfew while army and police operations continue within the walls of Jerusalem's Old City. These would have been against Arab terrorists during the Arab Rebellion.

The 1945 proclamation is more comprehensive, outlawing possession or carrying of arms and explosives, incitement to violence, and armed resistance. The penalty for possession of arms is stated as being life imprisonment, while that for carrying is the death sentence. The situation the British faced in 1945 was so grave, that Robert Scott was assigned three bodyguards (one policeman, and two bedouin). In a letter to his mother after the end of the Second World War, Scott states: 'It is a very astringent thought that reversion to peacetime conditions means in Palestine a return of the pre-war conditions of gangsterism but this time it is the Jews and they are much more efficient' (quoted in Hoffman, p. 220).

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