Cyprus internment camps

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, which was 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.Tucker, Spencer C.: The Encyclopedia of the Arab-Israeli Conflict: A Political, Social, and Military History (2008), p. 280 Britain informed the UN that it would no longer administer the Mandate for Palestine on February 14, 1947. This prompted the UN General Assembly to recommend partition of Palestine into independent Jewish and Arab states on November 29. Some 28,000 Jews were still interned in the camps when the Mandate was dissolved, partition was enacted, and the independent State of Israel was established at midnight local time on May 14, 1948. About 11,000 internees remained in the camps as of August 1948, with the British releasing and transporting them to Haifa at the rate of 1,500 a month. Israel began the final evacuation of the camps in December 1948, with the last 10,200 internees (mainly men of military age) being evacuated to Israel during January and February 1949. In the White Paper of 1939, the British government decided that future Jewish immigration to Palestine would be limited to 75,000 over the next five years, with further immigration subject to Arab consent. At the end of World War II, there were still 10,938 immigration certificates remaining but the five years had expired. The British government agreed to continue issuing 1,500 certificates per month, but the influx of Jews, especially from the displaced person camps in Europe, well exceeded that number. It was decided in August 1946 to hold many of the illegal immigrants on Cyprus. Previous places of detention had included Atlit detainee camp in Palestine, and a camp in the Mauritius. A few thousand refugees, mostly Greeks but also a "considerable number" of Jews from the Balkans, had reached Cyprus during the war years.