200 days of dread

The 200 days of dread (Hebrew: מאתיים ימי חרדה) was a period of 200 days in the history of the Yishuv, from the spring of 1942 to November 3, 1942, when the German Afrika Korps under the command of General Erwin Rommel was heading east toward the Suez Canal and Palestine.

The question of whether the Yishuv would need to defend itself against a possible German invasion rose twice during the Second World War. The first major threat was a German invasion from the north, from the pro-Nazi Vichy regime in control of Syria and Lebanon. This danger ended after Operation Exporter, the allied invasion of these countries on June 8, 1941 and their liberation from Vichy control.

Later, in 1942, a more serious threat emerged as the Afrika Korps, under the command of Erwin Rommel, threatened to overrun British possessions in the Middle East. The threat of a German invasion of Palestine caused significant anxiety in the Jewish Yishuv, lasting two hundred days until November 1942 and the Allied victory in the Second Battle of El Alamein.