Land Without a People - Documentary (198X?)

Edward Said: Philistine is the westernmost of the provinces of Syria. In its greatest length, from Rafah to the boundary of Al-Lajun, it would take a rider 2 days to travel over, and a like time to cross the province in its breadth from Jaffa, Jaffa, to Riha, or Jericho. Al-Jibal and Ash-Sharakh being 2 separate provinces, That lie contiguous one to the other are included in Philistine and belong to its government. Philistine is watered by the rains and the dew. Its trees and its plowed lands do not need artificial irrigation, and it is only in Nablus that you find the running waters applied to this purpose. Philistine is the most fertile of the Syrian provinces. Its capital and largest town is Ar-Ramlah, but the holy city of Jerusalem comes very near this last in size. In the province of Philistine, despite its small extent, there are about 20 mosques with pulpits for the Friday prayer. Now, this passage was written by al-Maqtusi, a 10th century Arab geographer, and his description of Philistine, Palestine, establishes an identity for the territory which was known to the Arabs and Muslims of the time and has persisted in the same identity to the present day, and it's known by Palestinians and indeed all Arabs as occupying precise borders of the territory we call Palestine and that al-Maqtasi calls Filastin.

Speaker 2: I'll never forget what I saw at the Palestinian refugee camps. Men, women, and children, their bodies stacked up in piles.

Speaker 3: Clouds of white tear gas drifted over the area. Many of the worshippers moved quickly out of the mosque.

Yitzhak Rabin: We have to be more surgical in our actions.

Speaker 3: Some of them are waving homemade flags of Palestine, a flag which is outlawed in Israel.

Speaker 5: The Palestinian revolution continues.

Speaker 6: Jordan River, Dead Sea, Jericho, Nablus.

Speaker 3: ناظرة جافة ميدترينسي هيبرون زاكريا بيت لحم جرسليم فلسطين All Palestine. Palestine is the name used since Greek and Roman times to describe the land at the eastern end of the Mediterranean between the sea and the Jordan River.

Speaker 7: For thousands of years, Palestine has been the crossroads of the Middle East on the great trading routes that link the Orient with the Mediterranean, Africa with Asia.

Speaker 3: Palestine has been fought over countless times, and many civilizations have left their traces on a land steeped in history. Jericho is one of the oldest settled communities known to mankind. The ancient Jewish Kingdom of David once flourished here, until destroyed by the Assyrians. The Phoenicians were superseded by the Romans, whose province of Palestina was made up of many major cities. The Arabs captured Palestine from the Byzantines in the 7th century, and the Abbasid dynasty succeeded the Umayyads. The Crusaders conquered the area at the end of the 11th century, and for 200 years a Latin kingdom ruled over part of the land until falling to the Mamluk sultans from Egypt. In the 16th century, the whole region was absorbed by the Ottomans into the Turkish Empire, ruled from Constantinople. All these peoples and cultures have come and gone over the centuries, and all have left behind something marking their presence.

Speaker 7: The Palestinians see themselves as heirs and successors to this rich tradition.

Speaker 3: I'm a Muslim.

Speaker 8: Palestine is something special, something unique about it, inhabited by the Philistines, who gave their name to the country, the ancient Jews, the Aramaic people. You have a variety of Semitics, Aramaic, Hamitics, Blacks. I think what— when we discuss the When we talk about the Palestinian people today, we are talking essentially about the Palestinian Arabs. The Palestinian Arabs means Palestinian Arabs who are Muslims, Palestinian Arabs who are Christians, Palestinian Arabs who are Jews. That is in the sense that they are indigenous to the land.

Speaker 3: Palestine's special place in history and in the imagination Derives from its role as cradle for 3 great religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Speaker 7: Jerusalem, holy city to all 3 religions, was the site of Solomon's Temple, whose ancient walls are sacred to Jews today. For Christians, Palestine is the Holy Land. For centuries, its shrines have attracted pilgrims from around the Christian world. In der Stunde unseres Todes.

Speaker 8: Amen.

Speaker 2: Thank you, Christ, for Mary, our mother.

Speaker 7: For Muslims, Jerusalem is their 3rd holiest city, and the Dome of the Rock marks the spot where the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven.

Speaker 2: Assalamu alaikum.

Edward Said: Palestine is obviously not just another piece of land. It's, it's the center for Judaism and Christianity and has a lot to do with Islam. And it's the site of extraordinarily important occurrences for Western religion and civilization, so that by the Middle Ages, for example, Jerusalem was considered the center of the earth. And it was the land of miracles. No other place is so saturated with religious and then subsequently cultural and then beyond that romantic or if you like even sentimental notions. So I think it's the one place outside of the European metropolis where everyone has wanted to go, and not only just go, but also claim it for, for some cause, some sect, some idea. It was just a place where you had to be because it was the one place that in a certain sense validated your history as a European power.

Speaker 7: In the last 200 years, the European obsession with the land of Palestine has developed into a cult of Orientalism Writers, travelers, photographers, and painters have constructed an image of the romantic, exotic land of the Orient reflecting their own fantasies and desires, inhabited by mysterious people who've almost stopped in time.

Speaker 2: Hallelujah.

Speaker 7: Modern figures blend into biblical scenes. This perception of the Orient was a distortion of reality, but it helped to sustain and endorse Western colonial domination over the area. The Oriental cult justified the power of the West over the Orient.

Edward Said: For Christians and Jews, the land of Palestine is just drenched in— almost every rock, every place has a biblical meaning. And people who have read the Bible, whether Jewish or Christian, go to Palestine in order to see there restored or some way— in some way commemorated the events of the Bible. I remember my father telling me as a boy when he was growing up in the early years of the 20th century in Jerusalem, One of the things he would do, and he found it perfectly natural to do that, was to sell crowns of thorns to visiting German and British tourists who came there looking— on the Mount of Olives, looking for bits of Palestine to take home with them.

Speaker 7: The tourists who flock to Israel today are the latest in the line of pilgrims and visitors Lean back, lean back, lean back.

Speaker 2: A pound coin.

Speaker 7: Unless the banks here can change. Hidden behind these myths and expectations lies the history of the indigenous people of the area.

Speaker 9: The Palestinians.

Speaker 7: For generations, the Palestinians have been primarily a settled people, living in villages and farming the land. The main activity was the citrus industry, and the principal trade was the export of oranges through Palestine's major port, Jaffa. The majority of Palestinians were Muslims. There was an important Christian minority, and there'd always been small communities of Orthodox Jews.

Speaker 8: Well, I think Palestine is unique in the Arab world in the sense that the Muslims were very familiar with the Christians, and the Christians were familiar with the Muslims. The Muslims were familiar with the Jews, and the Jews were familiar with the Muslims and the Christians. As I grew up in the land, I knew something about Easter. I knew something about Christmas. It's not mine, but I used to see the festival in the Christian section of the city. On Saturday, I knew that the Jews must not do something about the light, and they used to hire us, in fact, to go and turn off the candle or turn off the light. They would pay us, you know, 5 pennies or whatever it is. We knew something about kosher food. We knew, we knew all of that. There was a tremendous amount of interchange of not only information, but real knowledge and respect.

Speaker 10: After the fast of Yom Kippur, the Arabs used to come to our home and bring us the pitas, the food. After their holidays, we used to go and visit them. Arabs and Jews lived in such a way that there were no differences. As a matter of fact, We didn't ask whether this one is an Arab or a Jew. We spoke Arabic at home. My mother language was Arabic. And the way we were dressed, the way we, we felt, our tradition was exactly the same.

Speaker 3: There were important urban centers.

Speaker 7: Here people were engaged in commerce and industry. The cities were proud and vibrant. And it was here that there was the greatest exchange of ideas with the West. Schools, colleges, religious societies helped encourage the development of a middle class with a conscious sense of a Palestinian identity. Political influence was still concentrated in the hands of a few traditional families. By the early 20th century, there were the first stirrings against Turkish rule Amid a general awakening of Arab nationalism. At this time, there was no separate Ottoman province of Palestine. The area was subdivided into several districts, all administered from Beirut and Damascus. The total population of Palestine amounted to about half a million Palestinian Arabs living in some 800 villages and in a score of cities and towns. Then in the 1880s, the first Zionist settlers began to arrive from Europe, inspired by an entirely new type of movement. As a political movement, Zionism was born at a time of intense European nationalist rivalry. Founded by a group of Jewish intellectuals, the Zionist movement looked to the acquisition of land in Palestine as the first stage in the creation of a Jewish state. as a refuge from centuries of persecution. Wealthy European Jews like the Rothschilds financed the building of early Zionist settlements in Palestine. Zionists began to settle on the land that was special to them. The seeds of the conflict over the land of Palestine in modern times were sown.

Edward Said: I think that the Zionists Success in Palestine was premised on the notion that there was no one in Palestine, or if there was, they weren't worth bothering about. And certainly the case that the Zionists made to the West was essentially, as Israel Zangwill put it, that it was a people without land going to a land without people. And that slogan caught it very neatly. So that the Palestinians who were obviously there and were in fact seen I mean, they couldn't have not been seen, and they were even seen in some of the films and pictures of the time, and even descriptions of the time were almost always treated not as a people, capital A, capital P, but as inconsequential nomads, as miscellaneous peasants, as people without any important identity or attachment to the land. They were, as one of the early Zionist settlers in the '20s put it, they were like the rocks of Judea. That could be removed. They were an obstacle, but they could just be put aside, and they had pretty much the consciousness of rocks. In other words, not very much.

Speaker 8: Clearly, the missionaries would have told the Zionists at the time that there are a people in Palestine, and therefore the Zionists came up with the answer, yes, there are a people in Palestine, but they are backward, they are nomads, they are Bedouins, and therefore the act of Jewish settlement in Palestine would in fact be beneficial to these people. So they are not out to hurt the people, they are actually— were out to benefit them, much in the same way that European imperialist powers were selling their idea of civilizing the Afro-Asian, which justified the whole idea of colonial control of the Afro-Asian world. So in that sense, the Zionists shared with the Europeans an attitude of superiority based on a very deep sense of racism.

Speaker 7: The First World War transformed the situation in Palestine. The British and French fought the Ottoman Turks, who were allies of Germany. In 1917, to divert attention from the stalemate on the Western Front, the British invaded Palestine. The Arabs had been offered independence from the Turks if they supported the Allied war effort. Many Arabs rose in revolt.

Speaker 2: We are the Arabs.

Speaker 3: Slowly at first, then more rapidly, the Allies advanced from Egypt through Gaza into Palestine.

Speaker 7: The land that had seen countless armies come and go now witnessed the advance of a modern 20th century army.

Speaker 11: I'm a member of the British Army.

Speaker 7: In December 1917, the British captured Jerusalem. General Allenby made a triumphant entry into the city, the first Christian conqueror since the Crusades.

Speaker 8: Hail to the King!

Speaker 7: But the British had made other promises, too. In November 1917, Foreign Secretary Balfour announced British government support for the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people. This promise became known as the Balfour Declaration. The Balfour Declaration contained 2 promises. contained an important but apparently contradictory proviso, that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.

Speaker 8: The Balfour Declaration that promised, or committed, the British government to facilitate the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine Irrespective of the second provision of it that the indigenous population's civil and religious rights will be protected, that silly phrase that the British used without identifying the indigenous population in terms of their national identity and culture, clearly was understood by the Palestinians and by the Arabs in general exactly as it turned out to be. That is, it is a promise on the part of the British government, in fact, to facilitate the establishment of a Jewish state.

Speaker 7: In early 1918, the British military authorities allowed a Zionist commission to visit Palestine, led by Chaim Weizmann, who had helped negotiate the Balfour Declaration. The commission began to plan for the building of a Jewish homeland. The Palestinian Arabs, already suspicious about the designs of the Zionists, protested. To them, Zionism seemed to be bound up with British rule. At the end of the war, the Arabs turned to the British and the French. Sherif Faisal, the leader of the Arab Revolt, whose armies had helped the Allies to defeat the Turks, went to meet the British generals in Damascus. The Arab peoples now looked to the Allies to act on the promises they had made in the war and to fulfill their side of the bargain. They hoped at last to achieve the independence that had been denied them by the Turks. But the Arab hopes were frustrated by a secret agreement reached during the course of the war known as the Sykes-Picot Agreement. The British and the French had decided to carve up the whole region into their own spheres of influence. After the war, under the guise of League of Nations mandates, the French had the areas that became known as Lebanon and Syria. The British had the areas called Palestine, Transjordan, and Iraq. Faisal left the meeting in Damascus disappointed. None of his demands had been met by the Allies. The Arab Revolt had been in vain. The Arabs were left in no doubt as to who was now in charge of the region. The terms of the Mandate given to the British by the League of Nations were intended to encourage self-government, and elsewhere this happened. But in Palestine, the Balfour Declaration was enshrined in the terms of the Mandate, committing Britain to securing the establishment of the Jewish national homeland in Palestine. The arrival of the first High Commissioner, Sir Herbert Samuel, was marked by protests amongst the Arabs. To the Palestinians, the mandate not only denied them the right to independence, but also legitimized the claims of another people to their land.

Speaker 8: And when the mandate was imposed on Palestine— we call it a mandate, I mean, that's another euphemism, you know, for colonial control. I mean, the British imposed their colonial control in the wake of its— the actual military occupation of Palestine. And regardless of the promises they have made to the Arabs, let's forget about that. In the pursuit of the Sykes-Picot Agreement and all the agreements they have made with European powers, they obviously intended to divide the Arab world, to control it, distribute it between it and France, and to establish in Palestine the Jewish national homeland.

Speaker 7: The history of the Palestinians was now bound up with British imperial policy. Their future was set on a course they neither wanted nor were consulted upon. The consequences were to be increasingly bitter. The Palestinians were traditionally a farming people, living and working in villages scattered throughout Palestine. For the peasant farmer, there existed a strong bond with the land. The source of a family's livelihood and its wealth, built up through generations of cultivating the soil. Abu Mohammed is typical of many. He used to farm the fertile lands of a village called Safuri, in a lush plain just outside Nazareth, in the north of Palestine.

Abu Mohammed: من خمسمائة سنة سبع فرعيك المقبرة هاي تبعنا. الاطراك حكمة اربعمية وخمسين سنة واحنا نوجنين في الاطراك سيدي وابوي وابوي وابوي مع الاطراك ولنا الارض اللي هي بنملكها لا روحناش ولا جينا وانا هون Centuries of working the soil gave to the Palestinian peasant farmer a strong sense of belonging to the land.

Speaker 7: But this bond was not based on the same formal concept of land ownership as in the West.

Speaker 13: The property of land in the past was, as it was called, al-masha'a, the That's collective ownership of the land. Everyone, everyone who worked the land owned it. He doesn't own it, but as long as he works it, it is his.

Speaker 7: The Ottomans began a process of land registration which gave formal titles to the land, but in many villages the land was simply classed as common land. Under the British administration, This land passed to the state and could be bought on the open market. Other tracts of land were registered, often by absentee landlords acquiring vast estates in Syria and Palestine in return for services to the Ottomans. This land too could be sold quite legally, and there began a massive transfer of tens of thousands of acres From Palestinian farmers to Zionist settlers. To the Jews from the crowded ghettos of Europe, Palestine represented a liberation. Here Jews could buy land and build their society through their own labours, and this was seen as a form of national redemption. Young Jews from Europe began to arrive in Palestine by the thousands. Each new settlement was seen as bringing the Zionist dream of building a Jewish homeland nearer. But for the Palestinians, each new settler threatened a future in which they would have no place on their own land.

Speaker 8: Well, to establish a Jewish national homeland, you needed 2 things. You needed people and you needed land. These were the 2 important spokes, as it were. The people obviously were the immigrants, colonial settlers, who appeared in fact to the Palestinians as colonial settlers, much in the same way that British settlers in what used to be called Rhodesia or in South Africa. We viewed the Jewish settlements because it is composed of European people who spoke European languages. They are not indigenous Jews, and they came in the wake of the British administration that is committed to transform this. So we knew as Palestinians that the 2 things that are taking place, the increase in the Jewish population of Palestine An increase that's coming from Europe. And second, they needed the land, okay? And the major land areas that were bought in fact by the colonization societies, by the Karen Kayemet, were bought from Lebanese or Syrian absentee landlords who had nothing to do with the land. But the tillers of the land, and that was a major issue, were evicted from those lands. So there had developed an understanding by the Palestinians That with each Jewish migration, there is an expulsion of the Arabs and there is an acquisition of land.

Speaker 7: The threat to the Palestinians was that land once acquired by the Zionists was declared inalienable from the Jewish people. It could never revert to the Arabs who had worked the land for generations.

Speaker 8: And we could not help but feel, in fact, that the growth of this alternative society That literally had nothing to do with the Palestinian Arab society, that stood in antagonism to this, to Palestinian Arab society. We could see that at a certain point in time, that society is going to overwhelm us.

Speaker 7: To finance the building of the Jewish state, hundreds of thousands of dollars had to be raised abroad. The call of Zion had to be loud and uncompromising.

Speaker 3: They are coming now to a land which accepts them as its own, and not merely as strangers to be tolerated. Tomorrow they will march to their work, to build roads, to drill wells, and bring the hidden water to restore to Palestine's soil its long-neglected fruitfulness. The Tel Aviv beach is the greatest place of recreation in Palestine.

Speaker 13: This was a shock to the Palestinians, who began to be aware Of the plans, the real plans of the Zionists who are coming to Palestine. They began to see that the Zionists are coming, coming to take the land and to push the Palestinians out of it, and so they decided to resist.

Speaker 7: Violence became endemic. There were major riots against Jewish communities in 1929, in 1933, and in 1934. Leaving hundreds dead. The Jews accused the British of failing to preserve law and order.

Speaker 14: We had those uprisings in Palestine from time to time. Every year we, we had an uprising, and it lasted sometimes for months. And we always heard about those heroes and the fighters that were fighting the British Army and then the Zionists. All this created in us this feeling of nationalism.

Speaker 7: The 1930s saw a dramatic increase in the number of Zionist immigrants to Palestine. From 4,000 in 1931, to over 60,000 in 1935, many fleeing from the rise of Hitler in Germany. The Palestinians feared being swamped by these new settlers. A sense of panic and desperation spread amongst them. The leader of the Palestinian national movement was Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, a religious dignitary. The Mufti took a hawkish line, arguing that compromise with Britain or the Zionists was impossible, and only armed resistance could save the day. His political rivals, the Nashashibi family, looked for forms of accommodation with both the British and the Zionists, but the time for compromise was running out. In April 1936, the Arab Higher Committee called for a general strike. The response was widespread, and the strike lasted a full 6 months, paralysing much of the commercial life of Palestine. The general strike was followed by a major uprising which lasted from 1936 to 1939. Convoys were ambushed, government officials were murdered, outlying Jewish settlements were attacked. Fighters roamed the hills calling up local villagers as volunteers. Oil pipelines and railways were frequent targets for sabotage. The intention was to make Palestine ungovernable, and so this uprising was directed against British rule.

Speaker 9: We carried arms against the British and not against the Jews because we regarded the British—

Speaker 3: that Britain was our main enemy, because the British occupied our land, and we were asking for our freedom.

Speaker 5: Terrorism is turning into open revolt in Palestine, and British troops and police are up against a tough proposition. With every Arab a nationalist, any apparently peaceful citizen may be carrying a bomb. And to catch a murderer in an Oriental city is like looking for a rabbit in a well-organised warren. Added to which, the Arabs have a perfect lookout system in their minarets. As the muezzin calls the faithful to prayer, by altering a few syllables undecipherable to Europeans, they can give warning of the approach of police and direct their friends below to safety.

Speaker 7: The British authorities responded with a huge clampdown on the Arab population. Massive roundups of suspects took place.

Abu Mohammed: ليش مع الستة وثلاثين كانوا ييجوا طوق البلد ونزلوهن ويعتقلوا فيهن شهرين ثلاثة خمسين سنة أنا أعتقلون السنة وروحت عذارنا عبستاننا مجبوش واحد غريب أخذه ليش كان المقاومة هاي عشان إيش مقاومة بدناش نطلع من بلادنا. أرضنا إلنا.

Speaker 15: Very frequently, the military would stage an operation around selected villages in areas where intelligence reports had come in that leaders of the Arab local Arab gangs were operating. And although I was a CID detective sergeant at the time, I detailed on one occasion to go to accompany the Black Watch. To— I incurred them with a list of our known suspects, and because I was an Arabic speaker, to interrogate them. We didn't have much success that day, but when the Black Watch searched the local church, they found a young man dressed up in girls' clothing in the belfry and brought him up for interrogation. I'm afraid some of the jocks got hold of him to hurt him most, just to see if he was a girl.

Speaker 16: A village is being blown up in Palestine. This is one instance of energetic measures being undertaken to stamp out terrorism. From the village of Miya, shots were fired at British troops. The villagers declined to surrender the culprits or the rifles, so it was a case of reprisals. The lorries of mechanized infantry are parked in the valley during the punitive action. Armored cars patrol the roads while artillery is brought into operation as a warning to Arabs lurking in the adjacent hills.

Speaker 17: يعتقلوا يعني بكل غرامات يدفعون غرامات غرامة يفرضوا على القرية غرامة مبلغ اللي ما تقدرش تقوم فيه ومن الجملة بلدنا اللي هي البلوة يصار حدها اللغم وطلع بالجيش والنفايتين مزعين يطلعوا على القرية فرضوا عليها مقتل قتل والناس. وفرضوا عليها يا أول مرة فرضوا عليها تقريبا مبالغ مغذوج قاموا دفعوا لهن جانب لما وجد مصاري مصاري كانوا مفيش مصاري ومن يجيب لي ظل خمسين خمسين ليرة من الها قاموا اعتقلوا خمسين شاب وأنا منهن وجابون على كم في الرامي كم بالنجاش ويشغلون أشغال شاقة وقتلوا وعلى أنا من اللي اعتقلون على ليرة وعادونا شهر شهر ونص وإحنا ما إحنا نعرفين حدنا وين وهنا ما يعرف الناس وين راحوا فينا.

Speaker 7: The policy of applying collective punishments to villages suspected of harboring rebels had been used in Ireland. On the call from a bugle, the inhabitants had to leave their houses with their perishable goods, and their homes were then blown up in front of them.

Speaker 15: When it was known that a particular community had committed an atrocity of some sort, that there could be a collective fine put on the village. And where it was known that a known gang leader had property, they would blow up his house. That was not confined just to Palestine. I think we did it in Iraq, usually by bombing, and we did it in the Northwest Frontier of India. And when I went out to Nigeria, there was still an old standing order that you could Burn down an African village if there'd been trouble on. So it was not a problem confined just— a tactic confined just to Palestine.

Speaker 7: During the uprising, 7,500 Palestinians were detained, 5,000 were killed in action, and 112 were executed. The leadership went into exile. The Palestinian uprising represented a major revolt against British colonial rule.

Speaker 8: Effectively, the Palestinian community militarily was defeated, politically it was defeated, in the sense that the leadership itself was put in concentration camps, in exile, expelled from Palestine. So the Palestinian people were politically, if we can use the term, decapitated. After all, there is a certain asymmetry in the achievements and the status of the Jewish community of Palestine as a European community coming from Germany, from Britain, from France, clearly countries that are technologically— that were technologically much more advanced, that had a much more effective base of social organization than the Palestinians who were controlled by the Turks before, mostly rural, a high rate of illiteracy. So if we look at the— it was a contest Between— not only between the Palestinian people and the Jewish community, which was much more advanced, but also a contest with the colonial power that was the most powerful power in the world at that time.

Speaker 7: A Royal Commission led by Lord Peel investigated the causes of the disturbances. It concluded that the Palestinian problem was fundamentally a conflict of right with right. The Peel Commission proposed partition. The creation of separate Arab and Jewish states, with Jerusalem still administered by Britain. The Palestinians were shocked that a government commission now called for the creation of a sovereign Jewish state. In September 1939, Europe was again engulfed in war. Once more, events in Palestine were to be overtaken By what happened elsewhere. For strategic reasons, the British decided to placate the Arabs and to severely restrict Jewish immigration into Palestine. The Jewish community responded with outrage. The British seemed to be reneging on the promises of the Balfour Declaration. The Zionists encouraged a policy of illegal immigration, and the first ships beached on the shores of Palestine on the eve of war. In occupied Europe, the Germans rounded up millions of Jews along with enemies of Nazism. Then turning to what they called the Final Solution of the Jewish Problem, the Nazis began a process of extermination, of genocide. In the death camps, a total of 6 million Jews were systematically gassed and burned. When the facts of the Holocaust emerged, the world shuddered at the tragedy of the Jewish people. For many, the moral case for a Jewish state was now unanswerable.

Edward Said: I think the greatest problem, both for the Palestinian and for the Israeli and Jew in, in the world, whether Israeli or not, is somehow to make causal sense of the relationship on the one hand between what happened to the Palestinians— dispossession, exile, occupation, the shattering of Palestinian society— to connect that to the Holocaust. And Palestinians say, we played no role whatever in the Holocaust. Why are we asked somehow To uniquely to pay the price of the sacrifice of our land, indeed of our identity and patrimony, as restitution for this. And the Jew is asked also to confront the connection, which is, as the victims of the Holocaust, we are the people who have inflicted upon another people— I won't say another Holocaust, It would be wrong to say that, but we've inflicted upon another people a truly appalling fate, and we here are no longer the victims. We are the people who have taken the role of the oppressor, and that's a very different— very difficult, rather, equation for both Palestinians and Jews to deal with.

Speaker 7: In the years after the war, the British continued to impose restrictions on the immigration of Jews from Europe. To the Zionists and their powerful sympathisers in America, this policy seemed inhuman, barbaric in the light of what had happened to the Jews, widely discrediting Britain's position in Palestine. Illegal immigrants were rounded up and sent back to Cyprus, some even back to Germany. Now it was the Zionists who took the offensive against British policy. Zionist underground groups launched a campaign of violence to oust the British from Palestine. In July 1946, 91 people were killed when the King David Hotel was blown up.

Speaker 14: There were frequent attacks upon the British in Palestine, against the army, against civilians, against— when King David was blown up, all the employers and the— were blown up. In that hotel. We were shocked, of course, something new for us, these— this kind of warfare. We felt it was treacherous, treacherous. And we couldn't explain it because we knew that the British had helped the Jews in all ways. They gave them—

Speaker 2: Aid.

Speaker 14: Much of the land in Palestine, they handed it over to the new settlers. They helped them in many ways, in many ways, and we knew that. So we couldn't explain how the Jews were now attacking the British.

Speaker 6: Britain leads in an 11th-hour drive to settle a dangerous problem. Mr. Attlee and Foreign Minister Bevin open the Palestine—

Speaker 7: Britain was keen to carry America along with it. But a pro-Zionist stance by President Truman put Britain's relationship with America, so crucial to postwar reconstruction, under great strain. For Bevin, Palestine became an obsession.

Speaker 11: You must remember that Bevin had been a trade unionist all his life, and he regarded— well, when he first came into office anyhow, he thought of international disputes as having the same character as industrial disputes. In other words, they must be solved by some sort of compromise. There was no other way. Now that's a false analogy, of course.

Speaker 18: All decent people must have been horrified by the murder by Jewish terrorists of, of the 2 British sergeants, Mervyn Pace and Clifford Martin. Their funeral took place at the Ramleh Cemetery with full military honors. The 2 sergeants kidnapped as hostages were hanged as a reprisal, the sort of cruelty once commonly indulged in by the Nazis. Until the appalling situation in Palestine is cleared up, unspeakable outrages may well continue. At that—

Speaker 11: it was at that stage that the government decided to put the question before the United Nations. In the first place, we made a request to the United Nations for advice on what to do next. But in the course of the proceedings in the United Nations, the government came to the conclusion that whatever the United Nations— whatever conclusions the United Nations came to, we would in any circumstances withdraw.

Speaker 3: I have been instructed by His Majesty's government To announce with all solemnity that they have consequently decided that in the absence of a settlement, they must plan for an early withdrawal of British forces and of the British administration from Palestine.

Speaker 11: And after that, the British position was that we would We would not allow ourselves to be used for the implementation of any policy that was not acceptable to both the Arabs and the Jews, which meant virtually that we were, we were not prepared to continue to take any responsibility in Palestine after the United Nations had reached whatever decision it was going to reach.

Speaker 7: On the 29th of November, 1947, After months of debate, the United Nations voted on the future of Palestine. The vote followed days of intensive lobbying by the Americans and Zionists. The recommendation was that Palestine should be partitioned. The Zionists welcomed the creation of a Jewish state. The Palestinians were aghast. The result remained uncertain until the final voting.

Speaker 3: You all know how To vote.

Osvaldo Aranha: Those who are in favor will say yes. Those who are against will say no. And the abstainers, always they, they know what to say. We will start it now.

Speaker 6: Afghanistan?

Edward Said: No.

Yitzhak Rabin: No.

Osvaldo Aranha: Argentina?

Speaker 8: Argentina?

Osvaldo Aranha: Abstention? Australia?

Speaker 6: Yes?

Speaker 8: Clearly the Palestinian people do not have the right to self-determination because the Palestinian people had expressed themselves against the establishment of 2 states in Palestine at that time. They wanted the independence and sovereignty of Palestine with its people, Palestinian Arabs and Palestinian Jews at the time. There was no Israel.

Speaker 6: Ethiopia?

Speaker 3: Abstain?

Speaker 20: France?

Speaker 3: Yes?

Speaker 7: The Zionists in the public gallery had expected the French to abstain.

Osvaldo Aranha: That you will not have any interference on the voting on the debate. I am confident on the way you will behave in a so serious decision taken by this assembly. Because I am decided not to allow anybody to interfere in our decisions.

Speaker 8: Well, I think the partition resolution that was adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in the first place, it was adopted by a General Assembly that was dominated by the same colonial powers, the same colonial powers that had endorsed the Balfour Declaration. You know, the representation of the Third World and the colonized was minimal at that time in the United Nations, and the powers, the Afro-Asian, the few Afro-Asian powers, about 5 or 6, that were members of the UN in fact voted against.

Speaker 3: South Africa?

Speaker 5: Yes.

Abu Mohammed: Soviet Union?

Osvaldo Aranha: Yes.

Speaker 6: United Kingdom? Abstain.

Osvaldo Aranha: United States?

Speaker 5: Yes.

Speaker 3: Uruguay?

Speaker 2: Yes.

Peretz Kidron: Venezuela.

Speaker 15: Yes.

Osvaldo Aranha: The resolution of the Duck Committee for Palestine was adopted by 33 votes, 13 against, 10 abstentions.

Edward Said: I think for most Palestinians, certainly of my generation, and perhaps even the generation that comes after mine, 1947, '48 is still the pivotal year in our national existence. It is, after all, the year when, in a concerted way, the West, let's say the outside world, made its first massive intervention in our affairs with the partition resolution in November of 1947. It's the before and the after year, if you like.

Speaker 7: The British were leaving Palestine, and the Zionists now had international backing for the creation of a Jewish state. For the Palestinians, the nightmare that had begun half a century earlier looked like becoming a reality.

Speaker 5: Mr. President and gentlemen, empires rise and fall.

Speaker 3: History tells us of the empires of the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Greeks and the Romans, the Arabs, the Persians and the Spaniards. Today most of the talk is about the Americans and the Russians. On November 29th, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly voted on a resolution calling for the partition of Palestine into 2 separate Arab and Jewish states.

Osvaldo Aranha: The resolution of the Duck Committee for Palestine was adopted by 33 votes, 13 against, 10 abstentions.

Speaker 3: We, from a nationalist point of view, we did not accept the partition plan because it gave the Israelis, Jews at that time, more than 55% of the land, total land, total land of Palestine. Under the UN partition plan, the Jewish state was granted more than half the area of Palestine. The Jews numbered a third of the population and owned less than one-tenth of the land. The Arabs would be given the rest. Jerusalem would become an international city under the UN. Both Jewish and Arab states would be linked by an economic union.

Speaker 8: I mean, I was 18 at the time. And as a student in the last year of the secondary school, we discussed the issue, what's going to be the outcome of this violent action. And I think in our wildest imagination, we could not have foreseen any possible chance for the Palestinians to lose in that confrontation. We could not foresee the possibility of the establishment of an Israel at the expense The Palestinians were unprepared for a war with the Jews.

Speaker 3: Palestinian society was still underdeveloped, and the majority of its people clung to their old way of life. They looked to the Arab states for support.

Speaker 6: Abdullah of Transjordan, Farouk of Egypt, and Ibn Saud of Arabia unite the Arab world against the Jewish state.

Speaker 3: The Arab regimes, each backing rival sections in the Palestinian leadership, were reluctant to get involved in the Palestine dispute. King Abdullah of Transjordan continued to enjoy British support while Britain prepared to quit Palestine. He coveted the Arab half of partitioned Palestine and held secret talks with both the Zionists and with British Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin to realize his ambition.

Speaker 11: Bevin always thought that if partition was— if it was necessary, he was anti-partitionist basically, but if it became essential to accept partition, the Arab part of Palestine should be united with Transjordan, that it should become part of the state of Jordan. I think he thought, and I think he was right, that what remained in Arab hands after the United Nations partition was put into effect was not capable of being self-supporting, wasn't viable.

Speaker 3: And together, linked with the other great Arabic peoples and ourselves, preserve what is valuable to them and to us.

Speaker 11: Bevin did give King Abdullah to understand that The entry of the Arab Legion into Palestine would be acceptable to us, provided they didn't cross the partition line laid down by the United Nations.

Speaker 3: The Zionists had a functioning government, the Jewish Agency, and an underground army of 30,000 soldiers known as the Haganah. The Jewish Agency, led by David Ben-Gurion, was divided over partition. Most were in favor, but Ben-Gurion wanted a larger Jewish state. Recent research has revealed the form their discussions took. Should the Zionists prepare for all-out war, or could they and the Palestinians reach a compromise based on partition?

Speaker 9: The Haganah thought that there can be arrangement with the Palestinians and with the Arab states. On the basis of the United Nations resolution. And from what— from the documents I have seen from the talks which took place between the 2 sides, between Palestinian Arabs on national level and with Arab states, I'm sure they were right. There was such An alternative, that Palestinians and the Arab states will accept partition.

Speaker 3: The likelihood of an all-out Arab-Jewish conflict would depend on what happened in the areas of Palestine where Arabs and Jews lived and worked side by side. In the first days after the UN partition vote, riots and attacks by Arabs on Jews and by Jews on Arabs did occur. But the majority in both communities held back from war. Convinced their terror campaign had forced the British to quit Palestine, the extremist Jewish organizations, the Irgun, or Izzet, and the smaller Stern Gang, wanted the whole of Palestine for a Jewish state and rejected partition. They started attacking Arabs living in mixed Arab and Jewish cities.

Speaker 9: The idea was to pull the Arabs into the war. They knew about local arrangements with the Haganah and the Jewish Agency between cities like Jaffa and Haifa and between villages like the villages around these kibbutz and villages like Deir Yassin. They all has a network of local alliances, and they thought the most important thing is to break those alliances.

Speaker 3: Haifa was Palestine's premier port and largest city, with a population of over 100,000 Jews and Arabs. Here, organizations representing Jewish and Arab workers Made common cause to stop the spread of violence. Then at the end of December 1947, the Irgun struck.

Speaker 15: Well, at the oil refineries, there were a mixed group of employees, Jews doing largely technical jobs and Arabs doing, doing labouring work. And each day there were a number of Arab would-be workers used to assemble on the grass verge outside the main gate to the refineries. On the morning of the 31st of December, 1947, a lorry containing some Jews passed these workers and lobbed a couple of hand grenades amongst the people waiting for employment. Some were killed and others injured. Word then got around amongst the other Arabs employed within the refineries that the Jews had killed and wounded Arabs, so they then took immediate action and started killing off all the Jews they could get hold of. And in the event, some 47 Jews were killed. I believe that the action by these Jews who were throwing grenades amongst these Arabs waiting for employment was provocative, and it was intended to induce a counterattack to justify the Jews staging a further attack to drive the Arabs out of the area altogether.

Speaker 6: The definition of legal and illegal forces becomes daily more obscure. Haganah, the force first legally raised for the defense of Jewish settlements, appears to function hand in glove with Irgun Swayleumi, the outlawed terrorist army. Full-scale training is underway in a score of camps throughout the country.

Speaker 2: I'm a member of the Irgun.

Speaker 3: Ben-Gurion wanted to mobilize the Jews for war with the Arabs. After the Haifa oil refinery massacre, he rejected requests to suppress the Irgun. Ben-Gurion's views represented a minority within the Jewish Agency, so he now established secret contacts with Menachem Begin, the Irgun leader. Their joint strategy was to wage war on the Palestinians.

Speaker 6: I'm a Palestinian.

Speaker 9: Most of the Palestinians didn't want to take— to take sides, but Ben-Gurion was not satisfied with it. He thought the most important thing is to hit hard at the Palestinians now, and he thought his friends and colleagues in the Jewish Agency and in the Haganah doesn't understand. What's really important now?

Speaker 3: By March 1948, although the British were still supposedly in charge, violence had spread to all parts of Palestine. It was becoming a cruel and bloody conflict. At first, Palestinian fighters were victorious. Their attacks on Jewish road convoys succeeded in isolating outlying Jewish settlements and placed Jewish West Jerusalem under siege. Among the Arab guerrilla chiefs, Abdul Khader el-Husseini, nephew of the Mufti of Jerusalem, who was the Palestinians' exiled leader, proved himself an effective and inspiring military commander. Faced with this crisis, the Zionist leadership rallied behind Ben-Gurion. In early April 1948, he ordered a Haganah offensive Codenamed Plan Dalet, to defeat the Arab guerrilla armies. An elite force, the Harel Brigade, was mobilized.

Yitzhak Rabin: When I assumed command, middle April '48, of the Harel Brigade, we started with military operations to make sure that the road between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem will not be endangered by the big villages or towns that were along the road, wherefrom came all the attackers on the convoys. This was our first goal.

Speaker 3: The Arab village of Castel, perched high above the main Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road, became the scene of an epic struggle between Palestinian and Jewish warriors. The Harel Brigade ordered its soldiers to destroy the village bases of Abdul Khader's guerrilla army.

Yitzhak Rabin: Well, it was not pleasant. The system was to attack the village, to give warning to the civilians, to destroy the village, and by that to make sure that there will be no human resources to be called up on emergency, as the Arab called it, a Fajr, which is some sort of calling up for 24, 48 hours. Everyone brought his rifle, his bit of pita, and some cheese that supplied him for about 24 to 48 hours. And you were in the army? And we knew that after 48 hours, part of those who participated, the mobilized nokhlus, would have to return because of logistical reasons to his own village. By the elimination of the villages along and adjacent to the road, we were sure that there would be no attacks.

Speaker 3: Palestinian villages fled. They also lost Abdul Qader, whose body they brought down from Castel, which had just been retaken by his fighters. Thousands of his followers crowded Jerusalem to mourn his death. Before he died, Abdul Qader wrote, this land of brave men is our ancestors' land. On this land, the Jews have no claim. How can I sleep when the enemy is upon it? During Abdul Khader's funeral, the Haganah seized Castel and held it for good. 3 miles from Castel, outside Jerusalem, there existed a prosperous Arab village at peace with its Jewish neighbours called Deir Yassin. Early on April 9th, 1948, 120 men and women from the Irgun and Stern Gang attacked Deir Yassin.

Speaker 22: اطلاق النار عند الساعة اربعة صباحا يعني بلش يعني كان الخطة المتفق عليها اليهود مع بعضهم البعض ان الهجوم يكون يعني مثل بعد اربعة من جميع الجهات بلشت الرماب تعرف بشكل عنيف يعني من الساعة اربعة للساعة تقريبا سبعة صباحا قنابل يعني يعني بالدقيقة كانت طيالية عشرين كंबلة كंबلة مدافعة مدفعية مورطر يعني هذا لحد ما طلع ان الشمس الصباح يعني والضرب عنيب جدا يعني ضرب رش شهادة وبالناس تعرف فيها هذي الشهادة يعني وبعدين في البيوت اللي احتلوها بلشوا بتعرفي ضرب في داخل البيوت يعني وش عرضوها الناس مثل ما تقولي هاللي الناس تشرد ليه فلت من اليهود يشردوا من حد ما خشوا داري وكتلوا خشوا على علم حالها يعني مغبروها بحالها ضربوها كنابل وقتلوها كلها عيلة بحالها دار مخلو ولا واحد منهم يلبطوا آه قتلوها طب احنا نسمع الصوت اللي يتكتلوا لما يصيحوا نسمع سياحهم آه نسمع سياحهم يعني مثل ما تقول احنا اللي هان يسمع اللي في الدور هذا اللي هكذا آه لما يطخهم ويكتلوهم معلوم بدنا نسمع سياحهم واللي ينكتلوا في الطريق احنا نشوفهم من كابليننا يعني نشوفهم يعني عمي راح يعني مثل ما تكون راح يصلي يعني صدفوه لحقوه البيت جوه كده وتخرجوه بوصل البيت يعني والدتي يعني كانت في البيت لحالها وابني يعني من غرفة لغرفة لحقوه بالغرفة وتخرجوه كده الوهيب ابني والوقت صغير هذا العمل سنة ونص سنة وشهر يعني Between 80 to 120 villagers were slaughtered at Deir Yassin.

Speaker 3: The exact figure remains in dispute. Menachem Begin, the Irgun commander, congratulated his forces on what he called a splendid act of conquest. Although shocked and embarrassed, the Jewish Agency still held back from crushing the Irgun. News of the massacre quickly spread from Jerusalem, creating fear throughout the entire Palestinian community. Now nobody felt safe.

Speaker 23: Until the point of Deir Yassin, they described us as sheep. They shouted, we're going to slaughter the— slaughter the Jewish sheep. And you can't go on with the same shouts because sheep Sheep don't slaughter their— And so they had to change it and to describe us as wild beasts. It actually frightened the enemies. They believed their own lies and they were shocked in such a state that they were not able To think clearly about the, the real military situation. So they started to flee.

Speaker 8: The Palestinians concluded that the Zionists were really after our blood. That the Zionists will not differentiate between a peaceful person and a violent person. That what the Zionists want is the land without the people.

Speaker 6: A few yards from Jaffa's town hall, a Pathé cameraman took these exclusive pictures of the latest bomb outrage. A heavy explosion had rocked the all-Arab city as the headquarters of the Arab National Committee was blown sky-high.

Speaker 3: Following the UN petition vote, skirmishing broke out between Arab Jaffa and neighboring Jewish Tel Aviv. The British, busy winding up their administration in Palestine, stood aside. The Zionists enjoyed many advantages.

Speaker 10: In Jaffa, I was in charge of the intelligence net. To note, we had an excellent net then. The most important one was the one of the prostitutes of the Arabs of Jaffa. They knew everything. Because British soldiers used to come there and visit, and they got information, and that's how we knew exactly when the British are leaving, and we were first to enter.

Speaker 8: I think it became gradually more clear that the Zionists were extremely powerful, that the British were not about to defend the Palestinians, and that the Palestinians must rely on their own resources, which were minimal.

Speaker 3: At the end of April, The Arab states, shocked by the sudden collapse of Palestinian resistance, pressured the British to intervene. The British reoccupied Jaffa, too late to prevent a massive exodus by its demoralized, terrified population.

Speaker 10: When we entered Jaffa, I remember in one, the coffee was there. They didn't— they just left everything immediately. And that's how it happened. They were so much frightened. Because of their Arab leaders telling them who the Jews are, what monsters they are on one side, and the shelling of the Etzel on the other hand, the Haganah propaganda saying, look, if you are not going to be in a peaceful situation with us, so it's better that you leave.

Speaker 8: At a certain point it became clear, because the city became deserted, that it was simply an act of foolishness on our part.

Speaker 5: To stay.

Speaker 8: As young men, clearly we were candidates for liquidation if the Israelis came in or if the Zionist forces came in. And there was a Belgian ship, that's my memory, and one of the sailors, a young man, looked at us. I mean, the ship was full of people from Jaffa. Some of us are young adults. And he said, why don't you stay and fight? I've never forgotten his phrase. And I literally had no good answer for him. But we took that ship and we went to Beirut, and we thought, well, in 2 weeks' time, 3 weeks' time, maybe a month's time, we'll get back to Jaffa, because that is not the end of the battle, we thought.

Speaker 3: On May 13th, 1948, 24 hours before the expiry of the British mandate in Palestine, Zionist forces entered Arab Jaffa in triumph.

Speaker 10: Jaffa was a city which no Jew was— dared to enter. It was very dangerous. So here you are, I'm a Jew coming to Jaffa like a conqueror. It was a good feeling. On the other hand, I felt the human point of view, how tens of thousands of people are leaving their homes, going to nowhere.

Speaker 20: Right.

Speaker 3: Throughout Palestine, the Zionists smashed the poorly organized and ill-equipped Palestinian forces. Fearing a repeat of the Deir Yassin massacre, Palestinians in their tens of thousands fled their homes. Many were driven out at gunpoint.

Speaker 8: It dawned on everybody, literally, and I speak in personal terms, that the situation was hopeless. And therefore, the only thing to do is to leave. Now, if you lose Haifa, you lose Jaffa, you lose the surrounding countryside, you literally have lost the battle for the Palestinian Arab state. You have lost the battle for Palestinian independence.

Speaker 6: At Haifa, the last British troops leave Palestine, and very few of them can have been sorrier. As the tanks and soldiers went aboard the transports, the thought that a difficult and thankless job had been well done must have mattered much less than the prospect of going home. The Union Jack was hauled down and the doors closed for good on the British Mandate. Tel Aviv, key Jewish city, is all rejoicing as the elected head of the provisional government The head of the provisional government, David Ben-Gurion, arrives to read the proclamation of a new nation, the State of Israel.

Speaker 3: War with the Arab states, for which Ben-Gurion had mobilized the entire Zionist movement, now began. Armies from 5 Arab states and armed volunteers from all over the Arab world marched into Palestine. Isolated Jewish settlements and the Jewish Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem were captured. Amid the carnage, 7,000 Jews now became refugees. By this time, more than 300,000 Palestinians had been uprooted from their homes.

Speaker 8: The first time I think that I literally understood that we are not going back to Jaffa and nobody is going back to their homes in Israeli-occupied Palestine was probably in the summer of '48, that is July, August. That's the first when we began to read underground leaflets issued by nationalist groups attacking the Arab states and saying that the Arab states are in fact collaborating with the Zionists in the establishment of the State of Israel and frustrating the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state. Then we knew.

Speaker 3: King Abdullah of Transjordan now moved in to lay hands on the Old City of Jerusalem. The Palestinian national community was being destroyed. The prospect for Palestinian independence was rapidly fading away. The UN now sent a mediation mission to Palestine.

Speaker 24: I had just got into my office one morning in the I was having my first cup of coffee when a friend called me from division headquarters, saying that overnight they got dispatch orders for me to report immediately to headquarters Marine Corps for further assignment on temporary duty to the State Department to go to Palestine and be in the UN mission there. And that's all I knew. So I went home and told my wife, guess what? And she says, you're going somewhere? And I said, Palestine. And she says, oh my God, that's where the Bible was.

Speaker 3: Count Bernadotte, head of the Swedish Red Cross, was charged by the United Nations to bring peace to Palestine. He got the Arabs and the Israelis to agree to a 28-day truce that began on June 11th, 1948. To assist him, Bernadotte assembled a team of soldiers from Scandinavia, Belgium, France, and the United States These men would be independent and important witnesses to events in Palestine. But once in the field, the UN observers found themselves powerless to stop the fighting.

Speaker 24: Theodore Roosevelt said, speak softly and carry a big stick. Well, the UN was speaking loudly but had no stick. Really, all we were doing was scorekeeping. Because neither side had anything to fear from the UN, that it was, you know, toothless. They could shoot up Jerusalem or each other all they wanted, and we could report it, we could plead with them, and we could report them back to the Security Council and nothing happened. And here I was, I was the operations officer of a peacekeeping mission, and all I'd ever done is fight wars, you know. I didn't know anything about about peace missions.

Speaker 3: The UN was also unable to prevent the Israelis using the ceasefires to reorganize and re-equip. On July 7th, the fighting resumed. The Israelis now went over to the offensive, advancing into territory assigned by the UN to the Arab State of Petition Palestine. They seized the twin towns of Lydda and Ramla, from the Jordanian Arab Legion. More than 50,000 Palestinians who had refused to flee their homes suddenly came under Israeli occupation.

Yitzhak Rabin: In Lida, after we captured, there was an attempt by the Arab Legion again to penetrate Lida, and in the struggle there, Most of the population pushed out.

Speaker 20: They came, the Jewish soldiers, with microphones and loudspeakers. That was early in the morning, and ordered that all the young men, able-bodied men, be gathered into mosques and into churches, and they said that they would be back You know, in a few hours.

Speaker 3: Many of these men never returned. The Israelis were alarmed by the number of Palestinians in Dida. In the uproar created by the Arab Legion raid, they shot the men detained inside one of the mosques. More than 80 were killed.

Yitzhak Rabin: Wherever there was fighting in which there was a threat by the civilians, Because up to May 15th, there was not clear line, clear-cut line between front and rear, civilians and military. And in July, we felt the same. And therefore, even though we did not initiate at the very beginning the story of the population, Arab population of Lida, When the Arab Legion succeeded to penetrate again to Lida and we saw the uprising of the population, we had to carry out actions that practically brought about the evacuation of most of the population, not all, by the way.

Speaker 20: I just would follow the sound, you know, the sound of the tumult of those thousands of people, move along with them. I think what was most memorable about this perhaps is the— one is the thirst. We were very thirsty. Two is the heat. And three, the terror. The Israelis would— kept shooting, sometimes wantonly and sometimes perhaps in earnest. They were shooting at us? We would hear big explosions behind us. Planes would go over, you know, fly low, and just to keep us moving, I think, and to keep us terrified and moving. I would hear people not moving, not walking, but lying on the ground. They couldn't— in other words, they couldn't move anymore. Sometimes I would hear the sound of the The voice of a baby, of a woman with a baby, sometimes of old people lying down unable to move. And this would touch me much, and sometimes it would frighten me that I would perhaps have the same fate. Indeed, it wasn't long before I had to sit down and Take rest, to take some rest, but then also I would be afraid that I wouldn't be able to get up.

Speaker 3: Hundreds perished in the 3-day march from Lida to the Arab Legion lines. For years, this episode was hidden from the outside world. In 1979, Yitzhak Rabin described the Lida-Ramla expulsions in his autobiography. Israeli censors removed this section from his book.

Yitzhak Rabin: Every book which is written by any Israeli former general or politician, and he publishes something that he got from his official role, in addition to the military censorship, he has to pass it to a committee of members of the cabinet. And it was not the military censorship that cut this part that you refer to, I assume. It was made by political observation, and they had their own reasons.

Speaker 3: Israeli writer Peretz Kidron translated Rabin's Hebrew manuscript into English.

Peretz Kidron: In the book, Rabin describes how the 2 towns were occupied. The fighting continued beyond the towns. And he is the commander. He and Yigal Allon, who was the area commander, were perplexed about this whole situation. They had tens of thousands of Arab civilians behind their lines, and they didn't know what to do. Ben-Gurion came to visit their frontline headquarters. Quarters, and they put the question to him. And strangely enough, Ben-Gurion simply ignored the question. And they asked him repeatedly. Again and again, Ben-Gurion ignored the question. And it was only finally when they walked outside, presumably to someplace where Ben-Gurion was absolutely certain that he couldn't be overheard, and the question was put to him again by Yigal Allon, Ben-Gurion And then made this gesture, which very clearly implied, throw them out, drive them out.

Speaker 3: The Israeli High Command now faced a difficult choice. Ben-Gurion wanted to drive all Palestinians from territory seized by the Israeli army without wanting to make it public policy. The decision to prevent Palestinians from returning once they had fled was easier to make. Ben-Gurion and his commanders could justify this for reasons of military security. Sometimes the Israelis allowed the Palestinians to stay. In Nazareth, which fell to the Israelis in the same week as Lydda Ramla, senior clergymen and town leaders persuaded Israeli officers not to drive their people out. Confrontation with the Christian churches with congregations in Nazareth was too great a risk for the fledgling Israeli state, anxious to win international approval. But in places out of the limelight, like Safuri, a Palestinian village three miles from Nazareth, the Israeli army applied its usual policy of eviction.

Abu Mohammed: صار كانت في قيادة هون من العرب. اجو قعدوا يضربوا في النوياها القياد انهزمت واحنا ظلينا في البلد ورافعين اعلام بيضة تنظل بعد ما رعفوا هذلاك طوقوا البلد وقالوا اذا واحد بيبقى فيها بنطخه يا ابن نفسه وهاللي وجدوه ظل بعد المسافة اللي عطوه نياها طخوه والباقي أطلعوه العاجز حملوه بالسيارات ويرموه على القرى بعدين أجوا مسكوه وهدوها إياه جابوا الغام وجابوا أشياء وصاروا هدوا في البلد.

Speaker 3: On occasions, fanatical hatred among Israeli soldiers towards the Arabs. Led to massacres. On October the 29th, approximately 570 men, women, and children were killed when soldiers from the Israeli Eighth Brigade attacked the village of Dewaima in southern Palestine.

Abu Mohammed: اللي حصل في الجامعة يومها رأساً راحوا دخلوا الجامعة وذبحوا الاختريد اللي فيه كلية تمكتلوهم.

Speaker 3: ورموهم في مصول الشيد هذا اللي حصل وفي الشوارع لما دخلوا ما كانش في عندهم لا شفقة ولا رحمة يعني بدوا الطخل اللي في الشوارع اللي شوفوه يقتلوه واللي في الدور قتلوه الاختياري العجزي والعجاز الحريم لكبار هذا اللي حصل From the very beginning, the Israeli government tried to obscure its responsibility for the Palestinian exodus.

Speaker 25: As early as August of 1948, while the expulsions were still taking place, The Israeli foreign minister was writing a letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations in which the myth was already evolving. He was telling the Secretary-General of the UN that Palestinians had left on orders from local commanders and from the Arab Higher Committee. Of course, later on, Zionist propagandists elaborated on this and developed the entire myth. That the Palestinians had not been expelled, indeed they had not fled, but it was part of a Palestinian conspiracy on orders from the Arab higher command telling their people to leave their homes, thus exonerating the Zionists from all guilt.

Speaker 3: For nearly 40 years, Zionist myths about the Palestinian catastrophe have been accepted in the West as truth. But recently, historians researching among Israeli state papers and in the archives of the UN have concluded that the vast majority of Palestinians did not leave voluntarily. There were no Arab radio broadcasts telling them to leave. They left either through fear of massacre or as a direct result of killings and forcible eviction. Israel bears historical responsibility not only for driving the Palestinians out, But also for preventing their return. In August 1948, Count Bernadotte tried to persuade the Israelis to allow some of the now half-million homeless Palestinians to return. This request, along with his proposals for a territorial solution of the Palestine dispute, was rejected by Moshe Sharett, Israel's foreign minister. Bernadotte now started to receive death threats. On September 17th, 1948, while visiting Jerusalem, Bernadotte was ambushed by the Stern Gang. Along with a senior French UN official, he was shot dead in his car. Bernadotte's plans died with him. The initiative now lay with the Israelis. With nearly 70,000 regular troops, they faced Arab opponents lacking their numbers, fighting skills, and determination. Ben-Gurion could now exercise his government's authority without challenge. He had already suppressed the Irgun. Bernadotte's death now allowed him to move against the Stern Gang. He was now the undisputed political master of Israel, the principal architect of the new Jewish state. The final phase of the fighting could now begin.

Yitzhak Rabin: We felt, uh, at the political level, at the military level, that the key to end the war would be the defeat of Egypt. Egypt was the most powerful Arab country. And no doubt, once Egypt would be either politically and no doubt militarily out of the war, it would advance ending the war of independence.

Speaker 24: From our point of view in the UN, it was a decisive turning point for Dr. Bunch, who had been trying all the time to negotiate some end to that fighting and get them to sit down and write an armistice and stop the war.

Speaker 16: Arriving by air, the Egyptian delegation came to Rhodes for armistice talks with The meeting was being held at the Hotel des Roses under the auspices of UNO. The question of the Negev, the Jewish occupation of which was an accomplished fact, was an important discussion point. Our picture shows the Israeli delegates in conference at the beginning of the talks. Here are the United Nations representatives under the presidency of Dr. Bunche, the acting mediator.

Speaker 3: On February 22nd, 1949, After weeks of negotiations, the Israelis and the Egyptians signed an armistice. In the next 5 months, the other Arab states, except Iraq, signed similar agreements with the Israelis. The UN mapmakers drew up the armistice lines separating the Israeli and Arab armies. The original UN partition plan gave the Zionists just over half the area of Palestine. But by the conclusion of hostilities in July 1949, the Israelis now possessed 3 quarters of the land. Most of the remainder of Arab Palestine had been annexed by Jordan to become the area known as the West Bank. Jerusalem was split between Israel and Jordan. A narrow piece of Palestinian territory remained in Egyptian hands. This became known as the Gaza Strip. Palestine had disappeared. Israelis closed off their state from the rest of the land. As well as deterring Arab attackers, the barbed wire could also stop Palestinian refugees infiltrating back to their homes. 150,000 Palestinians were left inside the frontiers of the new Jewish state. A full peace treaty between Israel and the Arab states was never signed. Israel remained at war with her Arab neighbors.

Yitzhak Rabin: The results of the War of Independence created a state of the Jewish nation. About 15% of the total population non-Jewish, 85% Jewish. And, and in a way, it facilitated To Israel to focus on its main purpose, bringing in Jewish immigrants, building our society, our nation, our economy, all the infrastructure of any normal nation.

Speaker 18: The scene is near Jericho, one of the camps for Arab refugees. The story is one of destitution, for these people, as the result of the war in Palestine, have either fled or been expelled from their homes and their livelihood.

Speaker 3: A total of 3/4 of a million Palestinians had been exiled. Kept apart from the rest of Arab society by governments which had reluctantly offered them refuge, these exiles were left to brood on their fate, dependent upon relief agencies for their survival.

Speaker 26: Most of the refugees had the hope to return very shortly in their home. Therefore, in the beginning, they were not so in favor of establishing something very definite. They want to remain in a very provisory state. But nevertheless, the Red Cross did its best to establish camps well organized with Big tents with medical support, later on with schools, which all was the life, the new life of a village or a small city. These camps were not very far from the Israeli border. Certain refugees could see their village on the other side, and they were still thinking, we will return, we want to return. In their heart, they all had the wish to return, and they couldn't imagine that they would live in such a situation of refugee for for years.

Speaker 2: جينا من سلواني جينا هانت كأن في في خيمة في خيام وما فيش ما ترحل لي مثل ما تقولي يعني اللي واحد يقعد لا في دار ولا في بيت ولا في شغلة. اخيا جابونا الوكالة اخيا وسكننا في اخيا بعدين احنا عيلة يعني الخيامات كانت اشتسعنا سلنا ندكتوب اطرينا من هذا الطروب ونبني سوينا بيتين هيك اللي يتعن احنا العيلة وكعادنا فيهم ومهذا كيوم وهذا يوم واحنا هنساكنين يعني كيف قشت يعني وشوفنا نساوي راتبنا عنا شوية من الوكالة يساعدونا وشوية هالاختيار يروح يطقتك ويجيب لهم شغلة عاملة هو لو يبكى وتللي مظهر الساعة الأولاد يعني فيش فيهم واحد اللي يجيب مشان يأكل يجيب يأكل هو لحاله كلهم صغار أولاد مدارس الساعة أصغر واحد بكى أخذني ابن سنة وشهرين شعوري كانت منحارة شو شعوري كيف اللي بدأ يشير ملكة ودارة وأراضي ورزقة وفي جهان يقعد في أرض صحراء مغصبا عنا شعورك بدأ تنهار يا الواحد.

Speaker 3: Having lost the struggle for the land, the Palestinians were now written out of its history.

Peretz Kidron: There's an underlying thread of reluctance within the Zionist movement and in Israel. To come to terms with the existence of the Palestinian people. This goes back right to the very beginning of the Zionist movement when someone coined the slogan, a land without a people for a people without a land, the Jews being a people without a land and Palestine presumably being a land without a people, which was a very neat symmetry except for the fact that there was a people in the land of Palestine. and the Palestinian people. And therefore the existence of the Palestinians rather spoiled this symmetry, and that existence had in some way to be denied or played down or overlooked.

Edward Said: Within, I would say, half a dozen years after the establishment of the state in 1948, a whole constellation of, to my mind, ideological predictions gained currency in Western political and intellectual discourse, so much so that 40 years after the fact today, in 1988, with the revelation to the West of what in fact happened in 1948 and the history of the early years of the state, all of that has not been begun to even dislodge this. It's remained a kind of canonical myth, or set of myths, or constellation of myths in Western society that is— that has extracted from the Palestinians a massive price, and we're still paying that price.

Speaker 3: The struggle for the land of Palestine still continues. Israel is the only state in the world which refuses to set a limit on its frontiers. Palestinians today remain convinced that Israel will not rest until it has driven all of them from their land.

Abu Mohammed: أنا جيت عليه بيبور في أرضي، قلت له شو بدك تزرحون؟ قال لي أنت مالك تطلع من هون. قلت له أنا بدي أنصحك، أنا صاحب الأرض هاي وبعرف شو كانت تطلع. قال لي بدأ زرع زتون، قلت له هاي مش أرض زتون. هاي الزتون اللي فيها عنا كان بفي يجزي قال انت مالك روح اسا بجيب لك البوليس وبضحاك قلت له يا رجل انا ما بدي اغشك انا بدي انصحك بدي اعطيك عبرة انا صاحب الارض من ميتين سنة وعارفها اشوفيه انت اولى مني فيها انا بديش اقولك روح وبقدر لو بدي اضرره بخلع الزتون وبرمي بره لكن نصحته اسا لما صار الزيت والزتون خلي يا عمي انا متأسف انا متأسف صحيح هاي شفتوا السحار فينا هن وخلونا شو نظرق وعايشين معاهن مدة احنا ما ضررنا هنش وبنحب نعيش معاهن شايف وبدنا السلام معاهن اما اعطيني حقي اعطيني ارضي اللي الي