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Tel Aviv Curfew to Be Lifted Today; 1,100 Arrested Including 35 “important” Suspects

August 2, 1946
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The 22-hour curfew, which has turned Tel Aviv into a dead city, paralyzed all commerce and industry and halted publication of all Hebrew newspapers in Palestine, will be lifted at three P.M. tomorrow, it was announced officially tonight.

At the same time it was announced that 1,100 Jews have been arrested since Tuesday, including 34 men and one woman who were classified as “extremely important” members of the Irgun Zvai Leumi and the Stern Group.

Among the 35 was Israel Yestenitsky, alleged to be a leader of the Stern Group, and a man named Moshe Mizrachi, who was allegedly recognized by one of the British officers kidnapped last month as one of his guards.

Earlier, it was reported that an arms cache, described as the largest yet uncovered, was found today. The arms dump was discovered in the basement of a boys school which had been used by British troops as a battalion headquarters since the occupation of the city began.

The arms, which were found in bricked-up rooms and false walls, are said to include hundreds of rifles and pistols and thousands of rounds of small arms ammunition, as well as mortars, mortar shells, and rifle grenades.

From Jerusalem it was reported that a sub-machine gun and ammunition was found at Givath Shaul, a residential suburb west of that city, while 23 rifles were unearthed in a manhole at the kalandia airfield near the settlement of Atarot, north of Jerusalem.

The communique announcing the arrest of the more than 600 Jews said that many of them were believed to be identified with dangerous terrorists wanted by the police for complicity in acts of murder and sabotage. It is understood that one of the chief aims of the raiders is apprehension of Menachem Begin, so-called commander-in-chief of the Irgun, upon whose head was recently placed a price of $8,000.

The British today revealed that the Jew who was wounded last night was shot when paratroopers fired a volley at “demonstrators” during the two hours that the curfew was lifted.

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