British announce the end of the Palestinian Mandate. Meanwhile, 53,500 illegal Jewish immigrants are held in British run internment camps in Cyprus.
Britain announces it will end the Palestinian mandate and leave Palestine. There are no plans about what will happen next. A joint Jewish-Arab conference in London in September 1946 ended in deadlock.
The Palestinian position had not changed since the revolt. The Jewish Agency refused to participate with its staff in detention camps. Tens of thousands of would-be illegal immigrants were held in British camps in Cyprus and Palestine.
The Cyprus internment camps were camps maintained in Cyprus by the British government for the internment of Jews who had immigrated or attempted to immigrate to Mandatory Palestine in violation of British policy. There were a total of 12 camps, which operated from August 1946 to January 1949, and in total held 53,510 Jews.
From November 1946 to the time of the Israeli Declaration of Independence in May 1948, Cyprus detainees were allowed into Palestine at a rate of 750 people per month. During 1947-48, special quotas were given to pregnant women, nursing mothers, and the elderly. Released Cyprus detainees amounted to 67% of all immigrants to Palestine during that period. Following Israeli independence, the British began deporting detainees to Israel at a rate of 1,500 per month. They amounted to 40% of all immigration to Israel during the war months of May–September 1948. The British kept about 11,000 detainees, mainly men of military age, imprisoned throughout most of the war. On January 24, 1949, the British began sending these detainees to Israel, with the last of them departing for Israel on February 11, 1949