The UN General Assembly resolution of 29 November 1947, which endorsed the partition of Palestine into two states, triggered haphazard Arab attacks against Jewish traffic. The first roadside ambushes occurred near Kfar Syrkin the following day, when two buses were attacked and seven Jewish passengers were shot dead. The same day, snipers in Jaffa began firing at passers-by in Tel Aviv. The AHC, which flatly rejected the resolution and any thought of partition, declared a three-day general strike, beginning on 1 December, thus releasing the urban masses for action. On 2 December a mob, unobstructed by British forces, stormed the (Jewish) new commercial centre in Jerusalem, looting, burning shops and attacking Jews. Snipers exchanged fire in Haifa and attacks were launched on the neighbourhoods of Tel Aviv that adjoined Jaffa and its suburbs. Parts of Palestine were gripped by chaos; the escalation towards full-scale civil war had begun. As in 1936, NCs were set up in the Arab towns to direct the struggle and life in each locality, and bands of irregulars re-emerged in the hill country. The AHC reasserted itself as the leader of the national struggle.

Strategically speaking, the period December 1947 – March 1948 was marked by Arab initiatives and attacks and Jewish defensiveness, increasingly punctuated by Jewish reprisals. Arab gunmen attacked Jewish cars and trucks, from late December increasingly organised in British- and Haganah-protected convoys, urban neigbourhoods and rural settlements and cultivators. The attackers never pretended to single out combatants; every Jew was a legitimate target.