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( Arab League and the Arab-Israeli conflict)
By the end of World War II, the Palestinian Arabs were left leaderless. The mufti of Jerusalem Hajj Amin al-Husayni had been in exile since 1937 and spent the war years in Nazi-occupied Europe, actively collaborating with German National Socialist leadership. As the war ended, he managed to escape to Egypt and stayed there until his death in 1974. His brother Jamal al-Husayni was interned in Southern Rhodesia during the war. In November 1945, the Arab League reestablished the Arab Higher Committee as a supreme executive body of Palestinian Arabs in the territory of the British Mandate of Palestine, but it fell apart due to infighting. In June 1946, the Arab League imposed upon the Palestinians the Arab Higher Executive, renamed into "Arab Higher Committee" in 1947, with Amin al-Husayni as its chairman and Jamal al-Husayni as vice-chairman. Since 1945 King Abdullah of Jordan had been negotiating in secret with the Jewish Agency on plans for partition of Palestine between the Jews and Transjordan. At a clandestine meeting on 17 November 1947 between Golda Meir and Abdullah she confirmed that Transjordan's takeover of the Arab part of Palestine would be viewed favourably. At a second meeting on 10 May 1948 Abdullah declined to confirm his commitment to the existing agreement, but left Meir with the impression that he would make peace with a Jewish state after the impending war[1] (Note Golda Meir was Ambassador to the Soviet Union during this time and any deals or negotiations would be effectively meaningless) On December 2, 1945, the Arab League Council declared a formal boycott to any Jewish owned business operating in Mandatory Palestine "Jewish products and manufactured goods shall be considered undesirable to the Arab countries." All Arab "institutions, organizations, merchants, commission agents and individuals" were called upon "to refuse to deal in, distribute, or consume Zionist products or manufactured goods."[2]
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