A great many Zionists also rejected the partition plan, according to the Israeli historian Avi Shlaim, “as it fell short of the full-blown Zionist aspiration for a state comprising the whole of Palestine and Jerusalem”—what was being referred to as Eretz Yisrael, or “biblical Israel.” Menachem Begin—at the time the head of an underground paramilitary organization called the Irgun, later to become prime minister and Nobel Peace Prize winner—summed up the sentiments of many Jewish nationalists when he proclaimed, “The partition of Palestine is illegal. It will never be recognized. Jerusalem was
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