The Yishuv looked to the end of March with foreboding: Its back was to the wall in almost every sense. Politically, the United States appeared to be withdrawing from its earlier commitment to partition, and was pressing for ‘trusteeship’ – an extension of foreign rule – after 15 May. Militarily, the Palestinian campaign along the roads, interdicting Jewish convoys, was slowly strangling West Jerusalem and threatening the existence of clusters of outlying settlements. The Galilee Panhandle settlements could be reached only via the Jordan Valley road and the Nahariya–Upper Galilee road; both were dominated by Arab villages. Nahariya and the kibbutzim of Western Galilee were themselves cut off from Jewish Haifa by Acre and a string of Arab villages. Haifa itself could not be reached from Tel Aviv via the main coast road as a chain of Arab villages dominated its northern stretch. The veteran Mapam kibbutz, Mishmar Ha‘emek, which sat astride the main potential route of advance from the ‘Triangle’ to Haifa, was itself surrounded by Arab villages. To the south, in the Hebron Hills, the four kibbutzim of the Etzion Bloc were under siege, and the 20-odd settlements of the Negev were intermittently blockaded, with their vital water pipeline continuously sabotaged. Three large Jewish convoys, the Yehiam Convoy, the Nabi Daniel Convoy and the Khulda Convoy, were ambushed and destroyed during the last week of March, with the loss of more than 100 Haganah troops and the bulk of the Haganah's armoured truck fleet.