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wing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, in what Eventually Forced the British Administration Out of
was then British-ruled Palestine. Palestine.” Daily Telegraph, April 18, 1998, 20.
Zionists clashed many times with the British during
the mid-20th century. The Balfour Declaration of 1916
promised the Jewish people a national home in KKK. See KU KLUX KLAN.
Palestine. However, the 1936 Arab Revolt led Britain
to retreat from this commitment, and in 1939, the
British enacted the “White Paper,” which limited
Jewish immigrants to 75,000 over the next five years. KLA. See KOSOVO LIBERATION ARMY.
During World War II, the Irgun suspended attacks
against the British in Palestine, concentrating instead
on fighting the Germans; many Irgun supporters joined
KLINGHOFFER, LEON. See ACHILLE
the British Army. However, a more extreme splinter
group called Lehi, or the Stern Gang, continued attack- LAURO HIJACKING.
ing the British in Palestine.
Most of the British administration in Palestine was
based in the seven-story luxury hotel. The Irgun strike KORESH, DAVID. See WACO.
force set out disguised as hotel workers in the morn-
ing of July 22, riding in a van loaded with seven milk
churns filled with explosives and detonators. They
entered the hotel, brought the churns in through the KOSOVO LIBERATION ARMY
hotel’s side gate, and placed them next to supporting
pillars in the hotel restaurant. The timers on the bombs
were set for 30 minutes. Terrorist group Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA)
Irgun leader Menachem Begin, who became emerged in 1996 and instigated a war between
Israel’s prime minister in 1977, has publicly stated Kosovo and Serbia in the hope of winning Kosovo’s
that the Irgun placed three phone calls to various par- independence.
ties before the blast, issuing a warning to minimize Kosovo, which borders on Albania, is a province of
casualties. The British have long denied that they were Serbia, which itself is a part of the former Yugoslavia.
warned before the explosion. If the calls were made, Kosovo was once the center of Serbian culture and
they were ignored, for the staff of the government society, but over the past several hundred years, its
secretariat and military command remained in their population has changed: Today, more than 90 percent
rooms. Ninety-one people were killed in the blast: 41 of its people are of Albanian ethnicity, most of them
Arabs, 28 Britons, 17 Jews, and five others. In the face Muslim. Serbs still consider Kosovo an integral part
of this and other attacks, Britain soon turned over the of their country.
administration of Palestine. The last British high In Communist Yugoslavia, which united several
commissioner, Gen. Sir Alan Cunningham, sailed Balkan provinces including Serbia, Kosovo was con-
from Haifa in May 1948. sidered to be a part of Serbia but was administered
In a controversial move in 1995, the Jerusalem autonomously. In 1989, during the death throes of the
Municipality chose to name a street “Gal Boulevard,” Communist government, Slobodan Milosovic was
after Joshua “Gal” Goldschmidt, one of the planners elected president of Serbia on a nationalist platform.
of the King David Hotel attack. One of his first actions was to strip Kosovo of its inde-
pendence, replacing Albanian officials with Serbian
See also IRGUN ZVAI LEUMI; STERN GANG
ones and closing Albanian-language schools. The
reaction of the Kosovo Albanians was to boycott all
Further Reading Serbian institutions in a form of peaceful protest,
Begin, Menachem. The Revolt. New York: Nash, 1977. setting up their own shadow government. These tac-
La Guardia, Anton. “The Violent Birth of a Jewish State: As tics did not gain the hoped-for attention and support
Israel Prepares to Celebrate Its 50th Anniversary, Anton of the international community, however. After the
La Guardia Recalls the Bloodshed and Hostility That 1995 Dayton Peace Accords (which resolved a separate