All language subtitles for BBC.The.Birth.of.Israel.2008.DVBC.XviD.MP3.MVGroup.eng

60 years ago, Israel fought
and won a war for its independence.

For Palestinians,
defeat was a catastrophe.

The two sides have been
fighting ever since.

What happened 60 years ago still
shapes lives in Israel and the
occupied Palestinian territories.

If they want peace, they'll need
to overcome the legacy of l948.

Gaza - home to
1.4 million Palestinians,

most of whom are refugees from
the land that became Israel.

The current battleground
in this long war lies in
and around the Gaza Strip.

Israel uses air strikes
and ground incursions.

Palestinians rocket
Israeli border towns.

Both sides blame each other.

Two miles to the north of Gaza,
this is kibbutz Yad Mordechai.

Some of the thousands of rockets
fired into Israel have landed here.

History is never far away.

This kibbutz - or communal farm -
was founded in the 1930s by Jews
from Poland. They were Zionists,

who wanted to return to the biblical
home of the Jews to make a state.

We build a society
with our own hands.

By new forms of life,
not only by high-technology.

The kibbutz,
and the development towns.

Those are forms of life
that without it,

you cannot understand what Israel is.

We developed the best
agriculture maybe on earth.

The Zionists had neighbours -
Palestinian Arab farmers, who'd been
working the land for centuries.

The relationship between the two
was normal, and reasonably friendly.

It was after 1930, with
the massive land purchases,

with the massive immigration,

that the Palestinians became aware
that their existence was at stake.

In 1943, the kibbutz took
the name of Mordechai Anielewicz,

the Jew who led the uprising in
the Warsaw Ghetto against the Nazis.

They swore Jews would
never be defenceless again.

There was no life
in a camp like Auschwitz.

So then I decided, should I survive,
I'd become a Zionist activist.

And by miracles, I did survive.

Yad Mordechai has its
own Holocaust museum.

They've also preserved
the field where they fought
the Egyptians during the 1948 war.

MACHINE GUN RATTLES

What happened here was
a critical moment in the fight
to create a Jewish state.

60 years on,
Israelis have a lot to celebrate.

It's been an extraordinary
feat of nation-building.

But for Palestinians, every year,
this anniversary reminds them

of what they call their catastrophe.

For them, the last 60 years has
been about dispossession and exile.

During Israel's independence war,
around 700,000 Palestinians
became refugees.

They left everything.

They left everything intact
at their homes, everything.

Some families even left their money,
their jewels at home...

..and ran. Thinking that...

the storm will calm down and in two
or three months, they will come back.

But Israel stopped them returning.

Many of Yad Mordechai's
old Palestinian neighbours
are still close by -

refugees in the Gaza Strip.

They call it the world's
biggest prison.

Here is a war, which had led

to the uprooting of a villager
from his village.

You know how attached a
villager is to his olive tree,

to his little home, to his house,

to his mode of life, to his...

It's something unimaginable. I mean,

the Palestinian people are
one of the oldest people

in their habitation of Palestine.

The Palestinians have to
do some soul-searching too.

Why did it become a catastrophe?

They could have accept most of
the land, a state of their own.

THEY refused, not us.

In 1947.

We cannot apologise
for their mistake.

In 1897, the Zionist movement in
Europe met and declared

that it wanted to found a state
for Jews in Palestine.

Two years later, the Arab Mayor
of Jerusalem

begged them to leave
Palestine alone, and warned

there'd be an Arab
uprising if they didn't.

After the meeting in 1897,
two rabbis were sent to Palestine
to see what the country was like.

They reported back,
"The bride is beautiful,
but she is married to another man."

Some of the early Zionists warned
that confrontation with the Arabs
was going to be unavoidable.

Others persuaded themselves that
Arabs would be glad to see them,

because they were bringing with them
European expertise.

The majority of Palestinian Arabs
lived traditional lives

in around 800 largely
self-sufficient villages.

Politics was local, and tribal.

Life was hard.

These days in the refugee
camps, it is idealised,
a lost dream of a homeland.

"Village life was great.

We worked the land and sold the crops
in Ramallah, Hebron and Jaffa.

We had olives, watermelons,
cantaloupes, wheat and sesame.

All these things.

The people were happy and content.

Britain controlled Palestine
between 1917 and 1948.

In November 1917, as British
troops were fighting
their way up to Jerusalem,

seizing Palestine from the Turks,

the Foreign Secretary in London
wrote a letter that became known
as the Balfour Declaration.

The Balfour Declaration said
the British would "view with favour
the establishment in Palestine

"of a national home for the Jewish
people, and use their best
endeavours to make it happen."

It also said it was clearly
understood that "nothing
shall be done

"which may prejudice the civil
and religious rights of existing
non-Jewish communities in Palestine,

"or the rights and political status
enjoyed by Jews
in any other country."

Now, there's a whole series of
incompatible promises in that,

and the British never
found a way to keep them.

As a result, they were regarded
as betrayers - by both sides.

For the Zionists,
it was a big step forward.

But, said the writer
Arthur Koestler, it was
an impossible idea -

one nation promising another
the land of a third.

It did a great deal to create
the conflict that continues today.

Small communities of religious
Jews had remained in
Palestine since Roman times.

The new Jewish immigrants
were different.

Many were socialists and atheists,
who wanted to escape persecution,
and to create a new society.

A dream to change
the Jewish nature from a nation

of merchants and bankers to
a nation of farmers and fighters.

In 1929, there was a serious
clash here at the Western Wall,

the holiest place in the world,
for Jewish prayer.

More than 100,000 Jews had arrived
in Palestine in the 1920s,

and some had good relations
with their Arab neighbours.

But as immigration continued,
and as Arab land was sold

for Jewish settlement,
then tensions rose.

The trouble here spread
across Palestine.

Religious Jews were
massacred in Hebron.

Hundreds died on both sides,
and after that, nobody could have

any illusions - the two communities
were on a collision course.

Events in Europe brought
the collision closer.

After 1933, Hitler turned
the power of the German state
against the Jews.

Heil! Heil!

Heil! Heil!

I came after...

a year under Hitler, in Vienna,

which was a very, very bad year
for me as a child.

And, er...

I asked my parents to go away
as fast...as fast as possible,

and told them, "I don't
want to remain in the...hell."

Jewish refugees regained a future.

Palestinians felt
theirs disappearing.

They were getting angry because
they saw that their country

was becoming really threatened.

The Jewish immigration was
threatening to overwhelm them,

in their country.

At the Independence Mosque in Haifa,
Palestinians were ready to fight.

One of the most popular
preachers here was a man called
Izzedine al-Qassam.

He became a guerrilla chief,
leading attacks on the British
and on the Jews.

The British killed him,
in a gunfight near Jenin in 1935.

His death was one of the sparks
for a full-scale Arab revolt.

It took the British three years
to put it down

This is Qassam's grave.

Thousands came to his funeral.

These days, the armed wing of Hamas,
responsible for many suicide
attacks, is named after him,

and so are the rockets that
Palestinians fire out of Gaza.

The British crushed the uprising
so ruthlessly that Arab society
in Palestine fractured.

It exhausted the stamina
of the Palestinian people,

three years of deprivation,
of imprisonment,

of exile of the entire
Palestinian leadership.

With the result that when
the real issue of our existence came,

Palestine was...had no
leadership whatsoever.

Attacks on Jews also increased
their determination to fight.

I saw suddenly Jews
running out of Jaffa

to Tel Aviv. And I heard later on

that the Arabs
attacked the Jews in Jaffa,

er...killing, murdering,
about nine and more than 50 injured.

And they became refugees.

I couldn't understand it.

Because I couldn't understand
Jews refugees in their...in
their own homeland.

The biggest Jewish militia
was called the Haganah -
Hebrew for "the Defence".

From the l930s, it was expanded
into an underground army.

It was directed from this
building in Jerusalem, the
headquarters of the Jewish Agency.

Its leader and later Israel's first
Prime Minister was David Ben-Gurion.

The Haganah was one of a number
of building blocks of a state,

which the Jewish Agency established

as it worked tirelessly to make
itself into a government-in-waiting.

Just look at this place, designed
and built in the '20s and '30s,

in what for the time
was an ultra-modern style.

It shows the ambition there was
here, to create a Jewish state.

They had a very, very clear
objective, and from this building,

David Ben-Gurion designed and drove
the strategy to get them there.

The Palestinian Arabs never had
anything like the Jewish Agency,

and they never had a
leader like Ben-Gurion.

A man that, from
the morning to the evening,

thought about the Jewish people
and the state, nothing private.

A man of tremendous courage,

honesty, historic obligation,

thinking that the Jewish tradition
calls for the preference

of the moral call
above all other consideration.

With war coming, Britain wanted to
strengthen its position in the
Middle East against Nazi Germany.

The British reckoned the Jews
would fight against Hitler, but
Arabs would need to be persuaded.

So in May 1939, a British
Government White Paper restricted

Jewish immigration to Palestine
to 75,000 over the next five years.

After that, Palestinian Arabs
would have to acquiesce
in any more Jewish immigration.

Ben-Gurion's response was that
Palestine's Jews would fight
the White Paper, and fight Hitler.

32,000 of them joined
the British Army.

Later,
they used the training to fight
both the Arabs...and the British.

After 1945, knowledge
and guilt about the Holocaust,

and the question of what
to do for the survivors,

transformed the case for
a Jewish state in Palestine.

We were not brought to
Auschwitz to survive, we were
brought to die there.

Either immediately on arrival
in the gas chambers,

or they worked us to death
in the heavy industry.

But should I survive, I decided
I'd become a Zionist,

because I did understand

that the only solution
for the Jewish people

would be an independent state,
a state like all the others,

with all the rights, and all
the duties, with the government,

a member in the
Concert of the Nations.

A state that could protect
its citizens, a state that
could speak for its citizens.

American pressure was decisive,
as the Holocaust created a new moral
argument for the Jewish state.

It is my attitude that the American
Government couldn't stand idly by

while the victims of Hitler's madness
were not allowed to build new lives.

Truman pressed for
the immediate admission
of 100,000 Holocaust survivors.

The closest some came were
British internment camps in Cyprus.

Ernest Bevin, Britain's Foreign
Secretary, stuck to the quota.

He believed mass Jewish
immigration would start
a civil war in Palestine,

and ruin Britain's
relations with Arab states.

Armed Jewish groups stepped up
their attacks on the British.

'This is the voice of Fighting Zion,
this is the voice of Fighting
Zion, the underground radio.

'Today, our soldiers, in defence of
their country, attacked the enemy's
police headquarters in Jerusalem.

'This is voice of Fighting Zion,
broadcasting for
the freedom of Israel.'

Two future Israeli Prime Ministers
were both wanted men.

Yitzhak Shamir was a
leader of the Stern Gang.

Their speciality was assassination.

Menachem Begin commanded the Irgun.

Its methods included
kidnapping and bombing.

In July 1946, the Irgun blew up
the British military headquarters

at the King David Hotel
in Jerusalem, killing 91 people.

They called us terrorists.

Not only they, also Begin
also called us terrorists.

Now, a terrorist is a question
of definition, of course.

For one, the act is terrorism, for
the other, they are freedom fighters.

The British continued
to intercept ships full of
Jewish immigrants from Europe.

'After being intercepted by
the Navy, the illegal immigrant ship

'Exodus 1947 entered Haifa
harbour under escort.'

We were stopped on the high sea
and then brought to Haifa.

It was a catastrophe, of course. We
were in Palestine, we couldn't stay.

How important was immigration
at that point for the Zionists?

Very important,

because we were already aware that
there would be a solution.

And we wanted as many
as possible Jews in order to get

a bigger piece of this territory,
so we wanted the Jews in Palestine.

Why should the Palestinians,
who had not heard of it,

pay the price of the Holocaust?
Why? Why?

Why displace the Palestinian
people to pay a price for a crime
which they had not committed?

As Jewish attacks continued, the
pressure for a solution increased.

The British Empire
was forced to turn for help.

Here in London, at the Foreign
Office, they'd had enough.

They turned the problem
over to the United Nations.

The UN voted at the end of November
1947 to partition Palestine
into two states -

one Jewish and one Arab.

The Jews got the best of it - more
than half the country, even though
they owned around 10% of the land,

and there were twice as many Arabs.

The Palestinian Arab leadership
rejected the plans straightaway.

This was not going to be
settled by diplomacy.

In Palestine, the Jews celebrated.
Since the 1930s at least,

David Ben-Gurion had believed
that getting a state
was the first priority,

but he knew they were going
to have to fight for it.

At that time, the Jewish
population accepted it,

and the night of 29th November,
we all danced in the streets.

And we were still dancing
when the first news came

that some of the...

That some people were killed
on the roads.

We were... We were shocked
by the thing.

To see that the country
was going to be vivisected.

There had been violence between Jews
and Arabs before the partition plan,

but it escalated fast
after the vote.

Within a week,
there was a civil war.

The British, counting the days
until they could leave,
were stuck in the middle.

The Jewish underground army was
rapidly coming into the open.

They had clandestine arms factories,

but they were still
short of weapons.

Their biggest advantage over
the Palestinians

was a leadership that had spent
years preparing for this moment.

We were better organised,
because Ben-Gurion,

with a very far-sighted look,

he knew that we are going
to come to a conflict.

And the Haganah - that was
the underground forces of Israel -

were organising in such a way

that they would become an army
eventually.

The main Palestinian leader,
Haj Amin al-Husseini,

the Mufti of Jerusalem,
lived in exile in Egypt.

During the Second World War, he was
in Berlin supporting the Nazis.

The Mufti controlled the biggest
Palestinian militia.

Other Arab leaders saw him
as a rival, not as an ally.

He appointed his cousin,
Abdel Khader al-Husseini,

to lead his militia,
which was called the Holy War Army.

In the minds of people, he was a
hero, and he deserved to be a hero.

He was... He was
a top level fighter -

courageous, brave,
and sincere, loyal...

Husseini led a few thousand
guerrilla fighters.

With the help of men
from local Arab villages,

they cut the main Jewish supply
route from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem -
the city they all wanted.

This was the biggest prize of
all - Jerusalem, a city holy to
Christians, Jews and Muslims,

and which had a central part in
the dreams of both sides in the war.

When the fighting started,
neither could imagine a future

that didn't include being
in charge of this place.

In the partition plan,
Jerusalem was supposed to be
under international control.

Neither Arabs nor Jews wanted that.

So once again in its bloody history,
the Holy City was at war.

Jerusalem was under siege,
and the Jewish community in
Jerusalem was completely cut off.

There was not enough water,
not enough food,

not enough ammunition,
not enough soldiers in Jerusalem.

And we used to have convoys
going from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem,

carrying wheat and water and food
and ammunition and so forth.

From February l948, the attacks
on the convoys from Tel Aviv
to Jerusalem intensified.

Arabs controlled the hills
overlooking the route.

The Haganah constructed
improvised armoured cars -

known as sandwiches -
to protect themselves.

We fought our way to Jerusalem,
fighting vehicle after vehicle,

and the convoys were almost
suicidal operation.

The situation was such that...

we didn't want to fall
alive in the hands of...

So, when you drove...

a normal car,
with people inside, whatever,

we used to have high explosives
inside the truck...

..that if worst come to worst,
and you see that there is no hope,

we prefer to die
than to fall alive in their hands.

This was a war without
prisoners of war.

In March 1948, the Jews
went on the offensive.

Ben-Gurion and his generals
adopted Plan D.

Its objectives are still
the subject of great controversy.

Some historians say that Plan D
was a blueprint for the ethnic
cleansing of Arabs from Palestine.

Others say it was simply a military
plan, for seizing strategic ground,

and that there was no political
scheme to drive the Arabs
out of a future Jewish state.

The priority was opening
the road to Jerusalem.

As the Arab militias didn't
coordinate with each other,

the Jewish forces were able
to pick villages off one by one.

If the residents hadn't already
left, they were often expelled.

Central to the plan
was the capture of Qastel,
the site of an ancient fortress.

At the beginning of April 1948
it changed hands several times

in fierce fighting, until the
Haganah drove the Palestinians out.

They stormed the hill,

and the...reinforcement came down
while they were firing.

The commander said,
"The commander will cover,

"and the soldiers...should retreat."

So in a way, the commanders
covered the retreat.

And we lost a lot
of people at that time...

..Qastel cost a lot of blood.

In the days before the battle,
al-Husseini had visited Syria
to get arms and ammunition.

When Abdel Khader al-Husseini got
to Damascus, the Syrian President
refused to help him.

Husseini stormed out, yelling
that they were "all traitors",

and that history would record
that THEY lost Palestine.

That was 5th April, 1948.

Abdel Khader al-Husseini,
the strongest war leader
the Palestinians produced,

came back to Qastel
to continue the fight.

A few days later, he was killed.

On the 9th of April,
a group of fighters from
the Irgun and the Stern Gang -

the two Jewish
ultra-nationalist groups that
the British regarded as terrorists -

were moving towards a village
nearby called Deir Yassin.

The Haganah gave them fire support.

Recent research suggests
the attack killed around
120 Palestinian civilians.

"In every house they entered,

they killed the people inside.

The Jabar family, for example,
was killed.

Eight of them.

They were killed in the morning.

There were still sleeping.

They shot them and left.

This is from a report
written by Itzak Levi,

who was commander of the Haganah
intelligence service in Jerusalem,

dated 12th April 1948, which is
three days after it happened.

"The conquest of the village was
carried out with great brutality.

"Whole families - women,
old people, children - were killed
and piles of corpses accumulated.

"Some of the prisoners taken to
places of detention, including
women and children,

"were brutally murdered
by their guards.

"Among the prisoners
was a young mother and baby.

"The guards killed the baby in front
of his mother and after she fainted,
also murdered her."

Palestinians had been
fleeing their homes for safer
places since December, l947.

But after Deir Yassin,
a mass exodus began.

Menachem Begin, the Irgun's
leader, said the massacre was a lie,

propagated by his political rivals
and by Jew-haters around the world.

But Begin said the "legend
of terror" was worth
half a dozen battalions,

because Arabs were seized
with panic when they heard
the Irgun was coming.

Palestinian radio made the atrocity
sound even worse than it was,
to stiffen Arab resistance.

The reports made the civilians
even more terrified.

"May God curse
the reporters who came to us.

They were servants
of Jewish imperialism.

They published stories about
their crimes, the massacre,

how they violated our women.

This helped the Jews, not us!

It scared us,
and made us worry about our honour.

King Abdullah of Transjordan and
other Arab leaders came under strong
domestic pressure to intervene.

Ben-Gurion sent Abdullah an apology.

Four days after Deir Yassin,
there was another massacre.

A column of Jewish doctors and
nurses was attacked by Palestinians
at Mount Scopus in Jerusalem.

Their vehicles were set on fire
and many were burnt to death.

78 people were killed.

Jaffa, just south of Tel Aviv,

was in the Arab state
in the partition plan.

What happened here helps explain
why so many Palestinians fled.

In April 1948, Arab sniping
out of Jaffa was answered by
heavy shelling from the Irgun.

The Jews attacked Jaffa.

And by bombarding Jaffa, they, er...

..they made the conditions
for the Arabs to leave,

because the Arabs were afraid
that they would be killed.

So, it wasn't voluntarily,
but it was a result of the battle.

But the flight was triggered
by more than force.

We let them know, in different ways,

not in pamphlets, not over the radio,
not officially,

we let them understand
that it's better if they leave,

because the Jews are terrible.

And, "Don't stay here
when the Jews come here."

So this was psychological warfare?

In a small scale.

The people flee,

because of this massacre
that happened in Deir Yassin.

They were afraid that the same
thing will happen here in Jaffa.

Palestinian society was collapsing.

Some Israelis claim
that Palestinians were leaving

on the orders of Arab leaders
to wait for victory.

Jewish leaders had discussed moving
Arabs out of Palestine for years,

but deny that was anything
to do with their departure.

Does Israel bear
any responsibility for the exodus
of the Palestinians in 1948?

No.

Some historians say that Plan D
was a blueprint for the ethnic
cleansing of Palestine, of Arabs.

Is that true? No.

You know, as they say,
I was present at the creation.

I don't mind what historians
write or think.

I watched with my own eyes.

Ben-Gurion did not want
the Arabs to leave the country.

When we spoke to President Peres of
Jerusalem, he said that Israel bears

no responsibility whatsoever
for the exodus of Palestinians.

No responsibility whatsoever?!

Then what caused
the exodus to happen?

It was the Israeli massacre

of villagers, of people
whom they encountered.

I can count to you
the scores of massacres,

which happened
all over the country.

Do you think that anybody
would leave his home

unless he was...really threatened?

That's what Peres said to us.
I am surprised that
President Peres has said so.

The 14th of May, 1948.

The last day of the British mandate.

Britain's legacy to Palestine
was a legal system,

red pillar boxes, chaos and war.

The same day, David Ben-Gurion
announced that the State of Israel

would come into existence
at midnight.

Within hours,
the country was under attack.

We heard the explosions,
and I said to my wife, I said,

"The game's on.
They're bombing Tel-Aviv."

Their main targets were
the Reading power station,

the Tel Aviv airfield,
the central bus station,

and they were really bombing
Tel Aviv with impunity, because
there was nothing to stop them.

That day, five Arab states invaded.

The Egyptians advanced
from the south,

towards the main
Jewish centre of Tel Aviv.

The Lebanese barely
crossed the northern border,

with the Syrians attacking at
either end of the Sea of Galilee.

Further south came the Iraqis,
while in the centre,

Transjordan's Arab Legion advanced

towards the West Bank and Jerusalem.

The invading force
was between 25-30,000,

against around 35,000 Israelis.

Although the invasion
was under the nominal command

of King Abdullah of Transjordan,
each country made its own plans.

Abdullah had been having secret
but inconclusive negotiations

with Jewish leaders about
carving up Palestine between them.

He also wanted to add Lebanon
and Syria to his kingdom,

to make an Arab superstate.

No wonder other Arab leaders
didn't trust him.

They didn't trust
each other, either.

They'd all have liked
a piece of Palestine for themselves.

And destroying the Jewish state
at birth would have made them
into national heroes.

But they knew their capacity
to do it was limited.

Some of the Arab states went to war

just to satisfy the ambitions
of their common classes.

Some of the Arab states wanted

to prevent King Abdullah
from controlling

more areas from the Arab states.

Some of the states, er...

were forcing themselves
to go to war,

otherwise the Arab people
will call them traitors.

Most of the invading troops
were like Egypt's - well-armed,
but badly trained and led.

Egypt's King Farouk
sent his men to war against
the advice of his government.

Transjordan's Arab Legion
was commanded by British officers.

It was the most effective
Arab fighting force,
but small - 8,000 men.

It only fought for land allocated
to the Arabs by the partition plan,
and in Jerusalem.

"The Jordanians
considered Jerusalem and Palestine

as the diamond of the Middle East,

because of the spiritual
and religious significance
we have as Muslims and Arabs.

So we considered the capture
of Jerusalem as our incentive
as Jordanian fighters,

and we fought hard to defend it.

For the first month after
the invasion, it was touch and go
for the Israelis.

The old city of Jerusalem was under
attack by the Jordanian army,

so we were stretched all over the
place, and there were very few units,

who were free to fight
everywhere else.

And the situation
at that time I think

was the most critical
during the war of independence.

Kibbutz Ramat Rachel near Bethlehem.

Here, the Israelis fought
to stop the Egyptians

linking up with the Arab Legion
to encircle Jerusalem.

The building behind me
was the dining hall
here at Kibbutz Ramat Rachel.

It was the strongest building
in the place, on the highest point,

and it was there that the Israelis
set up their headquarters
and decided to make their stand.

You know, it's been
60 years since I was here last.

60 years, that's a long time.
It sure is.

There's the wall.

And all those pocket marks
from the bombardment.

From the shelling.

You were up here when you
were wounded. What happened?

The truth is,
I don't know what happened.

A shell exploded in my face

and I got covered with shrapnel
all over my body.

I couldn't see.
I thought I was blind.

The Israelis held on
to Ramat Rachel,

but the Arab Legion kept up
the pressure on
Jewish-controlled Jerusalem

by cutting
the supply route from Tel Aviv.

To reopen it,
the Israelis tried - and failed -

repeatedly to take Latroun,
a strongpoint on the Jerusalem road.

The first time they thought it was
defended by Palestinian irregulars.

Instead, they faced well-dug-in
professionals from the Arab Legion.

We were encountered by tremendous
fire of machine-guns and mortars,
and so forth.

The heat was absolutely
about 40, 42 degrees,

and in the shadow.

We didn't have enough water,
of course,

and people were hit all the time.

I myself was wounded, first time,
in the morning.

I got a bullet in my shoulder,

and then, about 10 o'clock,
I got another shrapnel, in my chest.

And the situation was hopeless,
as far as we are concerned.

In Jerusalem's walled Old City,

the Jewish Quarter fell
to the Arab Legion.

Over 1,000 Jewish civilians
lost their homes.

Almost 23,000 Palestinians left
districts of the city captured
by Jewish forces during the war.

The Legion kept the
Jewish-controlled west of the city
under siege,

but never risked
trying to capture it.

I think that people fired...

'For the Israelis, the breakthrough
was finding a cross-country route,

'to ferry supplies and pump water,
that bypassed the Arab
Legion's positions.'

We assembled 13 Jeeps.

One of them belonged to Ben-Gurion.

We loaded them with about more than
half a ton per Jeep

medical supplies,
ammunition, weapons.

We knew exactly
what the situation in Jerusalem is.

How important was it for the Jewish
forces to hang on in Jerusalem?

It's unbelievable
how people felt about Jerusalem.

They knew that...that without
Jerusalem, there is no Jewish state.

On the southern front,
the Egyptian army advanced north
towards Tel Aviv,

avoiding smaller Israeli
settlements.

But Kibbutz Yad Mordechai
was too big to ignore.

On 24th May, Egyptian armour
and infantry attacked.

Here, in front of me,
I have no bullets and I have
no rifles to reach them.

I need a mortar,
or I need something...

And I was very, very angry
that I can't shoot...

there in front of me.

And I can't do nothing,

because, er, the distance,

it's too wide. I have no rifle,
I have no munition.

And no aims to defence myself,
or to attack them.

Outnumbered and out of ammunition,

the Israeli forces had to retreat.

But they had bought time
to establish a defence line
further north,

where the Egyptians were stopped
before they could reach Tel Aviv.

After nearly a month's fighting,

the United Nations secured
a four-week ceasefire.

During the truce, both sides
re-armed, but Israel had the edge,

with big deliveries from
Czechoslovakia of modern weapons,
including heavy guns and aircraft.

Although hugely outnumbered
by Arabs in the Middle East,

Israel was always able
to mobilise more soldiers.

It was now better equipped,
organised and motivated.

As far as you were concerned,
it was a life-or-death struggle.
Absolutely.

This was Israel's most frightful war.

It was a case of to be or not to be.

When the ceasefire ended
after a month,

the Israelis were ready for what
one of their top generals called

a series of sharp, short,
decisive and victorious engagements.

The priority was relieving the
pressure on Tel Aviv-Jerusalem axis.

Lydd and Ramleh, two adjoining
Arab towns close to Tel Aviv,

were the targets.

What happened here was one of
the most controversial episodes
of the entire war.

The Israelis scored
a major strategic victory.

They secured Tel Aviv,
and the centre of their new country.

In the process, tens of thousands of
Palestinian Arabs lost their homes,

and hundreds of them
lost their lives.

The Haganah killed
dozens of Palestinians
who were sheltering in a mosque.

Some of them just left their houses
and found this place as a refuge,

most of the families, and
they thought that this is the way,

they are very safe in this place.

The Haganah army,
when they got inside the city,

after fears of fighting between
the Palestinians and the Haganah,

they just came inside this mosque,

and they just killed all of
the people inside here.

Women, children, old people,

all of them were shot.
It was a big massacre.

Some of the residents
were forced to bury the bodies.

'The army took us to the mosque,
to take the dead to the cemetery.

'We entered one room.
there were 60 or 70 bodies inside.

'Later, they covered them
with clothes and poured petrol,
and set them on fire.

'There was a woman
dressed in peasant clothes.

'Next to her were two little girls.

'We carried them,
and put them over there.

'They were the only ones
who had a proper burial.'

There's a controversy over
whether Ben-Gurion authorised the
expulsions from Lydd and Ramleh.

The Israeli commander who signed
the order believed that he had.

More than 50,000 Palestinians
were forced out.

It's not a secret any more.

It was called Shualei Shimshon,
"the wolf of Samson".

With Jeeps, with machine-guns,
it's not a secret any more.

Many things we did we regret until
today. We...we regret until today.

And I think that, er...

Well, but in war,
you make mistakes. You...

Anyhow, there was no clear order
from Ben-Gurion

how to deal with the inhabitants
in an occupied village.

But could Israel have functioned
with a big town like Ramleh...

full of Arabs...?

Ramleh? All Arabs...

Could you have built a state if you
had that many Arabs living
right in the centre of the country?

No.

Many refugees died on the
long walk to the Arab lines.

The offensive ended
with another UN truce.

In ten days of fighting,
the Israeli general Yigal Allon

estimated that 20% of the effective
Arab fighting force had been lost,

and the war of independence won,
though not ended.

In the remaining months of the war,
there were more Israeli offensives,

more Palestinians were forced out,
and there were more ceasefires.

Of the invaders, only the Arab
Legion, in Jerusalem and the
West Bank, could claim any success.

The others were humiliated.

When the second war came, it was not
in favour of the Arabs.

It was totally in favour of the Jews.

Because their...

The Jews were able to make victory
in the south,

and against
the Syrians and Lebanese.

We were left alone in the West Bank,
defending ourselves.

By the time Israel seized
the last corner of the
Negev Desert in March l949,

armistice talks had
already started.

Yad Mordechai was recaptured,
and became a symbol
of Israeli resistance.

From November 1947 to January 1949,

around 6,000 Israelis - 1% of
the population - had been killed.

What do you think would
have happened if you hadn't won?

Well, the Arabs really gave the
answer to that question, Jeremy.

When someone said to them,
"But what will happen to the Jews

"once you over-run them?"

He says, "There won't be any Jews.

"They will have been
drowned in the sea."

And I have no doubt that it
really would have been a holocaust.

One estimate is that
around 15,000 Arab soldiers
and civilians were killed.

Defeat made the Arab world
even more unstable.

There was no balance

between the forces of Israel
and the forces of the Arabs,

because in wars,

you don't only depend on the number
of soldiers, or the number of tanks,

you have also to have
political force,

and you have to have unity
among those who are going to war.

Unity did not exist among
the Arab states.

Since l948, the Israelis
have built a modern state,

the region's superpower,
a homeland for the Jews.

Palestinians believe that it has
all come on the back of their loss,

and that troubles some Israelis,
too.

"I have no doubt that
the Arabs' deportation

also helped the state of Israel.

The truth should be said.

It helped us because hundreds
of thousands fled,

and new immigrants settled into
their villages and towns.

It's difficult to say,
but this DID happen.

We didn't ask for it,
but it happened nonetheless.

On the other hand,
the situation of an ongoing war,

day after day, for 60 years,

big wars with names,
small wars with no names.

The 1948 war is yet to end.

For all Israel's strength,
its civilians still
get killed by Palestinians.

And with their civilians dying, too,

Palestinians believe that
what they called the Nakba -

the catastrophe of 1948-
has never ended.

The current peace process,
sponsored by President Bush,

will fail, like all the others,

if it cannot solve problems that
are hard-wired to l948.

Partition is still on the agenda.

They need to fix a border between
Israel and a Palestinian state.

Jerusalem is still
claimed by both sides.

And Palestinian refugees
await a future.

Until 1948, that was a bare hill
on the edge of Bethlehem.

Now it's Deheishe refugee camp.

The original tents were
replaced by permanent structures
a long time ago,

but there is no sense of permanence
in the minds of
the people who live there,

because, for 60 years,
they have effectively been in limbo.

The future of
the Palestinian refugees

is still one of the Middle East's
great unsolved,
politically toxic issues.

When the Palestinian camps were
new, 60 years ago,

Israel was absorbing
hundreds of thousands of Jewish
refugees and migrants.

Now almost all Israelis believe
a mass influx of Palestinian
refugees would destroy their state.

'A UN resolution on their return
has never been implemented.

'Some Palestinian refugees, still
dreaming of everything they lost,
will not hear of compromise.'

'We said it more than once.

'Even if they give us Heaven,
we will not give up on our country.

'If they give us enough gold
to fill this room, we will
decline everything. Impossible!

'I will die, and die a heretic,

'if you take �1 million in gold
for an inch of Palestine,

'you die as a heretic.

'Not a Muslim, not a Christian,
not a Jew.

'A heretic. And you go to Hell.'

And even though most Palestinians
DO accept that they
will live alongside Israel,

memory and history
stand on every street corner.

My father has built here. My father,
he was denied to live,

and he was dispossessed
to live in this beautiful house.

It's been now
60 years for most of the people.

There are weaknesses.
You want to advance,

and I would want very much
to compete and advance as much as
the Israelis have advanced,

but I am a Palestinian.
My...my...my land has been robbed
by the Israelis.

We want them to have
a state of their own.

Fair, independent, frank.

And they want it, too.

There is no division
in our destinies.

Our problem, from our side, is they
are divisioned within themselves,
and their weakness.

Others believe the main problem is
that Israel is still expansionist,

breaking international law by
settling Jews on occupied land that
Palestinians say is theirs.

They don't want to give up territory.

They want to
squeeze the Palestinians.

They want to take
as much territory as they can

and give the Palestinians as little
as they can,

which would not be conducive
to a solution,

a self-sustaining
Palestinian state.

60 years ago, Arab propagandists
boasted they would push
the Jews into the Mediterranean.

Plenty of Israelis suspect
that's still something
Palestinians would like to do.

Had they accepted the 1947...

their part,
half of Palestine, the mandate,

we would have two countries
since then, and no conflict.

But what they wanted
is the whole country.

They wanted to drive us into the sea,
to kill the Jews.

This is why they
don't have anything today.

I will continue to resist,
in an un-violent resistance,

until we can co-exist,
until we can convince the Israelis

that we want our freedom,
but this does not mean

that we want to destroy
the state of Israel.

The long war of 1948
has consumed two peoples with
two separate stories to tell.

They'll have to find
a way to live with its legacy

if they ever want peace.

One day we shall have to
shake hands and sit together.

We can't continue fighting for ever.

You can't continue
killing and killing and killing.

There must be an end to it.

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