Retaliation took the form of a disarmament campaign of Jewish troops, a large number of whom they themselves had armed and recruited, first in the war against the Palestinian rebellion in 1937, and then against the Axis powers in 1939. Disarmament was very partial, but arrests were relatively numerous, enough for the Zionist leaders to realise they needed to pursue a more adaptive policy as long as the British were still responsible for law and order in the land.
