Notrim

During the Arab revolt, the British Mandate authorities needed local manpower specifically to help with defending the borders of Mandatory Palestine from guerrilla infiltrators coming from French-ruled Syria and Lebanon, and to protect the Iraq Petroleum pipeline crossing northern Palestine to the port of Haifa. Once equipped and trained, the Notrim units helped protect Jewish lives and property.Katz (1988), p. 3. The Hebrew term was used collectively for members of any of three Jewish organisations authorised by the British: the largest was the highly mobile Jewish Settlement Police, followed by the ghafirs or Supernumerary Police, a lightly armed Jewish "militia-police", and by guides for the British army patrols. Members were recruited almost entirely from the Jewish underground militia, the Haganah. The ghafir (also spelled ghaffir) concept was not new; first set up as locally organised village guards in brigand-infested Egypt of the 19th century, they were adopted into a new national police under Lord Kitchener, provided with weapons, trained and paid by the government to whom they answered, while also remaining under the command of the local community leadership.Brown (1990)

As notrim thousands of young men had their first experience of military training, which Moshe Shertok and Eliyahu Golomb cited as one of the fruits of the Haganah's policy of havlagah (restraint).Shapira (1999), p. [https://books.google.com/books?id=h4K06WBjCrAC&pg=PA250 250].

File:Ghaffir.jpeg

On 6 August 1940 Anthony Eden, the British War Secretary, informed Parliament that the Cabinet had decided to recruit Arab and Jewish units as battalions of the Royal East Kent Regiment (the "Buffs").Penkower (2002), pp. 112-113.{{clarify|reason=1. What was the official connection, if any (other than some/many/most of the same people joining both) between the 1930s Notrim and the WWII Buffs? // 2. Are all the Jewish troops dealt with in this section part of the "Buffs"? What was the official nomenclature of the Jewish units? // 3. Notrim were police, not military. This seems to refer to military.|date=April 2021}} At a luncheon with Chaim Weizmann on 3 September, Winston Churchill approved the large-scale recruitment of Jewish forces in Palestine and the training of their officers.{{dubious|Police or military?|date=April 2021}} A further 10,000 men (no more than 3,000 from Palestine) were to be recruited to Jewish units in the British Army for training in the United Kingdom.{{dubious|Police or military?|date=April 2021}}

Faced with Field Marshal Rommel's advance in Egypt, the British government decided on 15 April 1941 that the 10,000 Jews dispersed in the single defense companies of the Buffs should be prepared for war service at the battalion level and that another 10,000 should also be mobilised along with 6,000 Supernumerary Police and 40,000 to 50,000 home guard. The plans were approved by Field Marshal John Dill.{{dubious|Military? Connection to notrim police?|date=April 2021}}

The Special Operations Executive in Cairo approved a Haganah proposal for guerilla activities in northern Palestine led by the Palmach, as part of which Yitzhak Sadeh devised "Plan North" for an armed enclave in the Carmel range from which the Yishuv could defend the region and attack Nazi communications and supply lines, if necessary.{{dubious|1. Those were military commandos, NOT police. 2. Newer studies tend to mention it as a mere fantasy plan, not a key British plan as it's being presented here.|date=April 2021}} British intelligence also trained a small radio network under Moshe Dayan to act as spy cells in the event of a German invasion.{{dubious|Connection to notrim police?|date=April 2021}}

File:Notrim in Saris H ih 044.JPG police station, 1939. Courtesy of the National Library of Israel.]]

The end of the Second World War in Europe marked a sharp political change in Mandate Palestine.

After World War II, the Notrim became the core of the Israeli Military Police.{{clarify|reason= Meaning what, that "notrim" as such were kept until 1948, i.e.: Jewish Settlement Police, ghafirs/Supernumerary Police, and Jewish army guides/scouts? All three, or just some? What about various WWII "Buffs" or whatever they ended up being called? A bit vague, as 1948-1939=a full decade. Katz is not accessible online.|date=April 2021}}

• Jewish Supernumerary Police
• Mobile Guards

{{Reflist}}

• {{cite journal |last= Brown |first= Nathan |title= Brigands and State Building: The Invention of Banditry in Modern Egypt |pages= 258–281 |journal= Comparative Studies in Society and History |publisher= Cambridge University Press |volume= 32 |number=2 |date= April 1990 |doi= 10.1017/S0010417500016480 |jstor= 178915 |s2cid= 145501821 |url-access= registration |url= https://www.jstor.org/stable/178915 |access-date= 15 April 2021}}
• {{cite book |last= Horowitz |first= Dan |title= Before the State: Communal Politics in Palestine Under the Mandate |page= 38 |editor=Baruch Kimmerling |work= The Israeli State and Society: Boundaries and Frontiers |publisher= SUNY Press |series= SUNY series in Israeli Studies |year= 1989 |isbn= 978-0-88706-850-8 |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=BphaWb-aug0C&pg=PA38 |access-date= 15 April 2021}}
• {{cite book |last= Katz |first= Samuel |title= Israeli Elite Units Since 1948 |page= 3 |publisher= Osprey Publishing |year= 1988 |isbn= 978-0-85045-837-4 |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=Pw-hvgEACAAJ |access-date= 15 April 2021 |volume= Text not accessible online}}
• {{cite web |last= Katzberg |first= Allan A. |title= Foundations Of Excellence: Moshe Dayan And Israel's Military Tradition (1880 To 1950) |year= 1988 |url= https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/1988/KAA.htm |access-date= 15 April 2021}}
• {{cite book |last= Penkower |first= Monty Noam |title= Decision on Palestine Deferred: America, Britain and Wartime Diplomacy, 1939-1945 |pages= 112–113 |publisher= Routledge |location= London |year= 2002 |series= Israeli History, Politics, and Society |isbn= 0-7146-5268-7 |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=7ue4xQEACAAJ |access-date= 15 April 2021 |volume= Text not accessible online}}
• {{cite book |last= Shapira |first= Anita |author-link= Anita Shapira |title= Land and Power: The Zionist Resort to Force, 1881-1948 |page= 250 |publisher= Stanford University Press (revised reprint of Oxford UP edition) |volume= |year= 1999 |orig-year= 1992 |isbn= 978-0-8047-3776-0 |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=h4K06WBjCrAC&pg=PA250 |access-date= 15 April 2021}}

{{Mandatory Palestine topics}}

Category:Law enforcement in Mandatory Palestine

Category:Haganah units

Category:1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine

Category:Law enforcement in Israel

Category:Jewish organizations in Mandatory Palestine

Category:Anthony Eden