Editing King David Hotel bombing (section)

==Background==
{{See also|List of Irgun attacks|List of Irgun members}}

===Motivation===
[[Image:Latrun detention camp.jpg|thumb|[[Zionist]] leaders arrested in [[Operation Agatha]]. Left to right: [[David Remez]], [[Moshe Sharett]], [[Yitzhak Gruenbaum]], [[Dov Yosef]], [[Shenkarsky]], [[David Hacohen]], [[Halperin]].]]

The Irgun committed the attack in response to [[Operation Agatha]], known in Israel as "Black Saturday".<ref name="special">[http://www.jposttravel.com/jerusalem_tours/Jerusalem_bt.html Jerusalem – British Beneath the surface] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090424075840/http://www.jposttravel.com/jerusalem_tours/Jerusalem_bt.html |date=24 April 2009 }}. ''[[The Jerusalem Post]]''. Retrieved 26 April 2009.</ref> British troops had searched the [[Jewish Agency for Israel|Jewish Agency]] on 29 June and confiscated large quantities of documents directly implicating the [[Haganah]] in the [[Jewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine|Jewish insurgency]] against Britain. The intelligence information was taken to the King David Hotel,<ref name="vir">[https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/King_David.html The Bombing of the King David Hotel]. [[Jewish Virtual Library]]. Retrieved 26 April 2009.</ref> where it was initially kept in the offices of the Secretariat in the southern wing. The Irgun was determined to destroy that wing of the hotel in order to destroy the incriminating documents.

===Hotel layout===
In plan form, the six-story hotel, which was opened in 1932 as the first modern luxury hotel in Jerusalem,<ref name="silver84" /> had an I-shape, with a long central axis connecting wings to the north and south. Julian's Way, a main road, ran parallel and close to the west side of the hotel. An unsurfaced lane, where the [[Consulate General of France in Jerusalem|French Consulate]] was situated and from where access to the service entrance of the hotel was gained, ran from there past the north end of the hotel. Gardens and an olive grove, which had been designated as a park, surrounded the other sides.<ref name="tclarke81" />

===Government and military usage===
In 1946, the Secretariat occupied most of the southern wing of the hotel, with the military headquarters occupying the top floor of the south wing and the top, second and third floors of the middle of the hotel.<ref name="times23Jul46">''[[The Times]]'', London, 23 July 1946.</ref> The military telephone exchange was situated in the basement.<ref name="tclarke81" /><ref name="bethell" /> An annex housed the military police and a branch of the [[Criminal Investigation Department (Mandatory Palestine)|Criminal Investigation Department]] of the [[Palestine Police]].<ref name="silver84" />

Rooms had first been requisitioned in the hotel in late 1938, on what was supposed to be a temporary basis. Plans had already been made to erect a permanent building for the Secretariat and Army GHQ, but these were cancelled after the [[World War II|Second World War]] broke out, at which point more than two-thirds of the hotel's rooms were being used for government and army purposes.<ref name="tclarke81" />

In March 1946, British [[Labour Party (UK)|Labour Party]] [[Member of Parliament (United Kingdom)|Member of Parliament]] (MP) [[Richard Crossman]] described activity at the hotel: "Private detectives, Zionist agents, Arab sheiks, special correspondents, and the rest, all sitting around about discreetly overhearing each other."<ref name="idiot" /> Security analyst [[Bruce Hoffman]] has written that the hotel "housed the nerve centre of British rule in Palestine".<ref name="bruce">{{Cite book|last=Hoffman|first=Bruce|title=Inside Terrorism|year=1999|publisher=[[Columbia University Press]]|pages = 48–52}}</ref>

===Previous attacks===
[[Amichai Paglin]], chief of operations of the Irgun, developed a remote-controlled mortar with a range of four miles that was nicknamed the V3 by British military engineers. In 1945, after attacks using the mortar had been executed against several police stations, six V3s were buried in the olive grove park south of the King David Hotel. Three were aimed at the government printing press and three at the hotel itself.<ref name="tclarke81" /> The intention was to fire them on the [[George VI of the United Kingdom|king's]] birthday, but the Haganah learned about the plan and warned the British through [[Teddy Kollek]] of the Jewish Agency. Army [[sapper]]s then located and removed the buried V3s. On another occasion, members of an unknown group threw grenades at the hotel but missed.<ref name="tclarke81" />