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00:0060 years ago, Israel fought and won a war for its independence.
00:13For Palestinians, defeat was a catastrophe.
00:17The two sides have been fighting ever since.
00:30What happened 60 years ago still shapes lives in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.
00:55If they want peace, they'll need to overcome the legacy of 1948.
01:06Gaza, home to 1.4 million Palestinians, most of whom are refugees from the land that became Israel.
01:16The current battleground in this long war lies in and around the Gaza Strip.
01:21Israel uses airstrikes and ground incursions.
01:25Palestinians rocket Israeli border towns.
01:28Both sides blame each other.
01:41Two miles to the north of Gaza, this is Kibbutz Yad Mordechai.
01:46Some of the thousands of rockets fired into Israel have landed here.
01:55History is never far away.
01:57This kibbutz, or communal farm, was founded in the 1930s by Jews from Poland.
02:02They were Zionists who wanted to return to the biblical home of the Jews to make a state.
02:09We built a society with our own hands, by new forms of life, not only by high technology,
02:16the kibbutzim and the development towns.
02:20Those are forms of life that without it you cannot understand what Israel is.
02:25We developed the best agriculture maybe on earth.
02:30The Zionists had neighbors, Palestinian Arab farmers who'd been working the land for centuries.
02:36The relationship between the two was normal and reasonably friendly.
02:42It was after 1930, with the massive land purchases, with the massive immigration,
02:50that the Palestinians became aware that their existence was at stake.
02:56In 1943, the kibbutz took the name of Mordechai Anielewicz,
03:00the Jew who led the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto against the Nazis.
03:14They swore Jews would never be defenceless again.
03:21There was no life in a camp like Auschwitz.
03:25So then I decided, should I survive, I become a Zionist activist.
03:30And by miracles I did survive.
03:35Yad Mordechai has its own Holocaust museum.
03:42They've also preserved the field where they fought the Egyptians during the 1948 war.
03:55What happened here was a critical moment in the fight to create a Jewish state.
04:00Sixty years on, Israelis have a lot to celebrate.
04:03It's been an extraordinary feat of nation building.
04:07But for Palestinians, every year this anniversary reminds them of what they call their catastrophe.
04:14For them, the last 60 years has been about dispossession and exile.
04:20During Israel's independence war, around 700,000 Palestinians became refugees.
04:28They left everything intact at their homes, everything.
04:33Some families even left their money, their jewels at home.
04:41And then thinking that the storm will calm down and in two or three months we'll come back.
04:52But Israel stopped them returning.
04:54Many of Yad Mordechai's old Palestinian neighbours are still close by, refugees in the Gaza Strip.
05:01They call it the world's biggest prison.
05:05Here is a war which had led to the uprooting of a villager from his village.
05:12You know how attached a villager is to his olive tree, to his little home, to his house, to his mode of life.
05:21It's something unimaginable.
05:24I mean, the Palestinian people are one of the oldest people in their habitation of Palestine.
05:31The Palestinians have to do some soul-searching too.
05:34Why did it become a catastrophe?
05:36They could have accepted most of the land as state of their own.
05:42They refused, not us, in 1947.
05:48We cannot apologise for their mistake.
05:53In 1897, the Zionist movement in Europe met and declared that it wanted to free Israel.
05:59Two years later, the Arab mayor of Jerusalem begged them to leave Palestine alone
06:04and warned there'd be an Arab uprising if they didn't.
06:10After the meeting in 1897, two rabbis were sent to Palestine to see what the country was like.
06:16They reported back, the bride is beautiful, but she's married to another man.
06:21Some of the early Zionists were not happy with this.
06:25But she's married to another man.
06:27Some of the early Zionists warned that confrontation with the Arabs was going to be unavoidable.
06:34Others persuaded themselves that Arabs would be glad to see them
06:38because they were bringing with them European expertise.
06:43The majority of Palestinian Arabs lived traditional lives
06:47in around 800 largely self-sufficient villages.
06:51Politics was local and tribal.
06:58Life was hard.
07:00These days, in the refugee camps, it's idealised, a lost dream of a homeland.
07:07Village life was great.
07:09We worked the land and sold the crops in Ramla, Lyd, Hebron and Jaffa.
07:15We had olives, watermelons, cantaloupes, wheat and sesame.
07:21All these things.
07:24The people were happy and content.
07:28They were happy and content.
07:32Britain controlled Palestine between 1917 and 1948.
07:40In November 1917, as British troops were fighting their way up to Jerusalem,
07:45seizing Palestine from the Turks,
07:48the Foreign Secretary in London wrote a letter that became known as the Balfour Declaration.
07:55The Balfour Declaration said the British would view with favour
07:59the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people
08:03and use their best endeavours to make it happen.
08:06And it also said, it was clearly understood that nothing shall be done
08:10which may prejudice the Jewish people.
08:13The Balfour Declaration said that the British would view with favour
08:17the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people
08:20and use their best endeavours to make it happen.
08:23Nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights
08:26of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine
08:30or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
08:34Now, there's a whole series of incompatible promises in that
08:39and the British never found a way to keep them.
08:41As a result, they were regarded as betrayers by both sides.
08:48For the Zionists, it was a big step forward.
08:51But, said the writer Arthur Koestler, it was an impossible idea.
08:55One nation promising another the land of a third.
09:00It did a great deal to create the conflict that continues today.
09:08Small communities of religious Jews had remained in Palestine since Roman times.
09:14The new Jewish immigrants were different.
09:16Many were socialists and atheists who wanted to escape persecution
09:20and to create a new society.
09:25A dream to change the Jewish nature from a nation of merchants and bankers
09:31to a nation of farmers and fighters.
09:47In 1929, there was a serious clash here at the Western Wall,
09:51the holiest place in the world for Jewish prayer.
09:55More than 100,000 Jews had arrived in Palestine in the 1920s
09:59and some had good relations with their Arab neighbours.
10:02But as immigration continued and as Arab land was sold for Jewish settlement,
10:07then tensions rose.
10:09The trouble here spread across Palestine.
10:12Religious Jews were massacred in Hebron.
10:15Hundreds died on both sides.
10:17And after that, nobody could have any illusions.
10:21The two communities were on a collision course.
10:35Events in Europe brought the collision closer.
10:38After 1933, Hitler turned the power of the German state against the Jews.
10:46Heil!
10:47I came after a year under Hitler in Vienna,
10:55which was a very, very bad year for me as a child.
11:00And I asked my parents to go away as fast as possible
11:08and told them I don't want to remain in hell.
11:12Jewish refugees regained a future.
11:15Palestinians felt theirs disappearing.
11:18They were getting angry because they saw that their country was becoming really threatened.
11:25The Jewish immigration was threatening to overwhelm them in their country.
11:38At the Independence Mosque in Haifa,
11:40Palestinians were ready to fight.
11:48One of the most popular preachers here was a man called Izzadin al-Qassam.
11:53He became a guerrilla chief, leading attacks on the British and on the Jews.
11:57The British killed him in a gunfight near Jenin in 1935.
12:02His death was one of the sparks for a full-scale Arab revolt.
12:07It took the British three years to put it down.
12:15This is Qassam's grave. Thousands came to his funeral.
12:21These days, the armed wing of Hamas, responsible for many suicide attacks, is named after him.
12:26And so are the rockets that Palestinians fire out of Gaza.
12:31The British crushed the uprising so ruthlessly that Arab society in Palestine fractured.
12:38It exhausted the stamina of the Palestinian people.
12:42Three years of deprivation, of imprisonment, of exile of the entire Palestinian leadership.
12:50With the result that when the real issue of our existence came,
12:55Palestine had no leadership whatsoever.
13:00Attacks on Jews also increased their determination to fight.
13:05I saw suddenly Jews running out of Jaffa to Tel Aviv.
13:11And I heard later on that the Arabs attacked the Jews in Jaffa,
13:16killing and murdering about nine and more than 50 injured.
13:22Nine and more than 50 injured.
13:25And they became refugees.
13:28I couldn't understand it.
13:31Because I couldn't understand Jews, refugees, in their own homeland.
13:39The biggest Jewish militia was called the Haganah, Hebrew for the defence.
13:44From the 1930s, it was expanded into an underground army.
13:53It was directed from this building in Jerusalem, the headquarters of the Jewish Agency.
13:58Its leader and later Israel's first Prime Minister was David Ben-Gurion.
14:03The Haganah was one of a number of building blocks of a state which the Jewish Agency established
14:09as it worked tirelessly to make itself into a government in waiting.
14:17Just look at this place, designed and built in the 20s and 30s
14:21in what for the time was an ultra-modern style.
14:24It shows the ambition there was here to create a Jewish state.
14:29They had a very, very clear objective.
14:32And from this building, David Ben-Gurion designed and drove the strategy to get them there.
14:39The Palestinian Arabs never had anything like the Jewish Agency
14:43and they never had a leader like Ben-Gurion.
14:47A man that, from the morning to the evening,
14:50thought about the Jewish people and the state, nothing private.
14:56A man of tremendous courage, honesty, a stoic obligation,
15:04thinking that the Jewish tradition calls for the preference of the moral call
15:09upon all other consideration.
15:13With war coming, Britain wanted to strengthen its position in the Middle East against Nazi Germany.
15:19The British reckoned the Jews would fight against Hitler,
15:22but Arabs would need to be persuaded.
15:27So in May 1939, a British government white paper restricted Jewish immigration to Palestine
15:33to 75,000 over the next five years.
15:37After that, Palestinian Arabs would have to acquiesce in any more Jewish immigration.
15:46Ben-Gurion's response was that Palestine's Jews would fight the white paper and fight Hitler.
15:5332,000 of them joined the British army.
15:56Later, they used the training to fight both the Arabs and the British.
16:08After 1945, knowledge and guilt about the Holocaust
16:13and the question of what to do for the survivors
16:16transformed the case for a Jewish state in Palestine.
16:23We were not brought to Auschwitz to survive, we were brought to die there.
16:27Either immediately on arrival in the gas chambers
16:30or they worked us to death in the heavy industry.
16:38But should I survive or decide that I become a Zionist?
16:41Because I did understand that the only solution for the Jewish people
16:45would be an independent state, a state like all the others,
16:49with all the rights and all the duties with the government,
16:53a member in the concert of the nations,
16:56a state that could protect its citizens, a state that could speak for its citizens.
17:03American pressure was decisive
17:05as the Holocaust created a new moral argument for the Jewish state.
17:11It is my attitude that the American government couldn't stand idly by
17:16while the victims of Hitler's madness were not allowed to build new lives.
17:23Truman pressed for the immediate admission of 100,000 Holocaust survivors.
17:28The closest some came were British internment camps in Cyprus.
17:33Ernest Bevin, Britain's foreign secretary, stuck to the quota.
17:37He believed mass Jewish immigration would start a civil war in Palestine
17:41and ruin Britain's relations with Arab states.
17:49Armed Jewish groups stepped up their attacks on the British.
17:54This is the voice of Fighting Zion.
17:56This is the voice of Fighting Zion.
17:58The underground radio of the Ergunz 5 A.O.M.I.
18:01Today our soldiers, in defence of their country,
18:03attack the enemy's police headquarters in Jerusalem.
18:06This is the voice of Fighting Zion, broadcasting for the freedom of Eretz Israel.
18:14Two future Israeli prime ministers were both wanted men.
18:18Yitzhak Shamir was the leader of the Stern gang.
18:21His specialty was assassination.
18:26Manach and Begin commanded the Ergun.
18:28Its methods included kidnapping and bombing.
18:34In July 1946, the Ergun blew up the British military headquarters
18:38at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, killing 91 people.
18:44They called us terrorists.
18:47Not only they, also Begin also called us terrorists.
18:51Now, a terrorist is a question of definition, of course.
18:55For one, the act is terrorism.
18:58For the other, they are freedom fighters.
19:04The British continued to intercept ships full of Jewish immigrants from Europe.
19:13After being intercepted by the navy,
19:15the illegal immigrant ship Exodus 1947 entered Haifa harbour under escort.
19:20We were stopped on the high sea and then brought to Haifa.
19:26It was a catastrophe, of course.
19:28We were in Palestine, we couldn't stay.
19:31How important was immigration at that point for the Zionists?
19:35Very important because we were already aware that there would be a solution
19:39and we wanted as many as possible Jews
19:42in order to get a bigger piece of this territory.
19:45So we wanted the Jews in Palestine.
19:48Why should the Palestinians, who had not heard of it,
19:52pay the price of the Holocaust? Why?
19:56Why? Why displace the Palestinian people
20:00to pay a price for a crime which they had not committed?
20:05As Jewish attacks continued, the pressure for a solution increased.
20:09The British Empire was forced to turn for help.
20:15Here in London, at the Foreign Office, they'd had enough.
20:18They turned the problem over to the United Nations.
20:21The UN voted at the end of November 1947 to partition Palestine into two states,
20:27one Jewish and one Arab.
20:29The Jews got the best of it.
20:31More than half the country, even though they owned around 10% of the land,
20:36and there were twice as many Arabs.
20:38The Palestinian Arab leadership rejected the plan straight away.
20:42This was not going to be settled by diplomacy.
20:48In Palestine, the Jews celebrated.
20:51Since the 1930s at least, David Ben-Gurion had believed
20:55that getting a state was the first priority.
20:58But he knew they were going to have to fight for it.
21:03At that time, the Jewish population accepted it.
21:07And at the night of 29th November, we all danced in the streets.
21:13And we were still dancing when the first news came
21:17that some people were killed on the roads.
21:22We were shocked by the thing,
21:26to see that the country was going to be rejected.
21:30There had been violence between Jews and Arabs before the partition plan,
21:34but it escalated fast after the vote.
21:37Within a week, there was a civil war.
21:39The British, counting the days until they could leave,
21:42were stuck in the middle.
21:49The Jewish underground army was rapidly coming out into the open.
21:53They had clandestine arms factories,
21:56but they were still short of weapons.
21:58Their biggest advantage over the Palestinians was the leadership
22:02that had spent years preparing for this moment.
22:06We were better organised,
22:09because Ben-Gurion, with a very far-sighted look,
22:14he knew that we were going to come to a conflict.
22:18And the Haganah, that was the underground forces of Israel,
22:22were organising in such a way that they would become an army eventually.
22:29The main Palestinian leader, Haj Amin al-Husseini,
22:32the Mufti of Jerusalem, lived in exile in Egypt.
22:38During the Second World War, he was in Berlin, supporting the Nazis.
22:44The Mufti controlled the biggest Palestinian militia.
22:47Other Arab leaders saw him as a threat.
22:50Other Arab leaders saw him as a rival, not as an ally.
22:56He appointed his cousin, Abdel Kader al-Husseini,
22:59to lead his militia, which was called the Holy War Army.
23:04In the minds of people, he was a hero, and he deserved to be a hero.
23:10He was a top-level fighter, courageous, brave, and sincere, loyal.
23:19Husseini led a few thousand guerrilla fighters.
23:22With the help of men from local Arab villages,
23:25they cut the main Jewish supply route from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem,
23:29the city they all wanted.
23:33This was the biggest prize of all, Jerusalem,
23:36a city holy to Christians, Jews and Muslims,
23:40and which had a central part in the dreams of both sides in the war.
23:45When the fighting started, neither could imagine a future
23:49that didn't include being in charge of this place.
23:59In the partition plan, Jerusalem was supposed to be under international control.
24:05Neither Arabs nor Jews wanted that.
24:08So, once again, in its bloody history, the holy city was at war.
24:16Jerusalem was under siege,
24:18and the Jewish community in Jerusalem was completely cut off.
24:22There was not enough water, not enough food, not enough ammunition,
24:25not enough soldiers in Jerusalem.
24:28And we used to have convoys going from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem,
24:33carrying wheat and water and food and ammunition and so forth.
24:39From February 1948,
24:41attacks on the convoys from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem intensified.
24:45Arabs controlled the hills overlooking the route.
24:50The Haganah constructed improvised armoured cars,
24:53known as sandwiches, to protect themselves.
24:57We fought our way to Jerusalem, fighting vehicle after vehicle,
25:01and convoys were almost suicidal operation.
25:12The situation was such that we didn't want to fall a knife in the hands of...
25:20So, when you drove an armoured car with people, inside, whatever,
25:28we used to have high explosives inside the truck,
25:33that if worse to come to worse.
25:36And you see that there is no hope.
25:38We preferred to die than to fall alive in their hands.
25:43This was a war without prisoners of war.
25:47In March 1948, the Jews went on the offensive.
25:52Ben-Gurion and his generals adopted Plan D.
25:56Its objectives are still the subject of great controversy.
26:02Some historians say that Plan D was a blueprint
26:05for the ethnic cleansing of Arabs from Palestine.
26:09Others say it was simply a military plan for seizing strategic ground,
26:13and that there was no political scheme
26:16to drive the Arabs out of a future Jewish state.
26:20The priority was opening the road to Jerusalem.
26:24As the Arab militias didn't coordinate with each other,
26:27the Jewish forces were able to pick villages off one by one.
26:31The houses were usually blown up.
26:34If the residents hadn't already left, they were often expelled.
26:44Central to the plan was the capture of Kastel,
26:47the site of an ancient fortress.
26:51At the beginning of April 1948,
26:53it changed hands several times in fierce fighting,
26:56until the Haganah drove the plan into effect.
26:59Until the Haganah drove the Palestinians out.
27:04They stormed the hill and the reinforcements came down.
27:10While they were firing, the commander said,
27:13the commander will cover and the soldiers should retreat.
27:21So, in a way, the commanders covered their retreat.
27:24And we lost a lot of people at that time.
27:28Kastel cost a lot of blood.
27:34In the days before the battle,
27:36al-Husseini had visited Syria to get arms and ammunition.
27:41When al-Husseini got to Damascus,
27:44the Syrian president refused to help him.
27:47Husseini stormed out, yelling that they were all traitors
27:52and that history would record that they lost Palestine.
27:56That was the 5th of April 1948.
27:59Abdel Kader al-Husseini, the strongest war leader the Palestinians produced,
28:03came back to Kastel to continue the fight.
28:06A few days later, he was killed.
28:12On the 9th of April, a group of fighters from the Irgun and the Stern gang,
28:17the two Jewish ultra-nationalist groups that the British regarded as terrorists,
28:22were moving towards a village nearby called Deir Yassin.
28:28The Haganah gave them fire support.
28:31Recent research suggests the attack killed around 120 Palestinian civilians.
28:40In every house they entered, they killed the people inside.
28:45The Jaber family, for example, was killed.
28:49Eight of them.
28:51They were killed in the morning.
28:53They were still sleeping.
28:55They shot them and left.
29:15This is from a report written by Itzhak Levy,
29:21who was commander of the Haganah Intelligence Service in Jerusalem,
29:25dated 12th of April 1948, which is three days after it happened.
29:31The conquest of the village was carried out with great brutality.
29:35Whole families, women, old people, children were killed
29:38and piles of corpses accumulated.
29:40Some of the prisoners taken to places of detention, including women and children,
29:44were brutally murdered by their guards.
29:47Among the prisoners was a young mother and baby.
29:50The guards killed the baby in front of its mother
29:52and, after she fainted, also murdered her.
30:01Palestinians had been fleeing their homes for safer places since December 1947.
30:08But after Deir Yassin, a mass exodus began.
30:16Menachem Begin, the Ergun's leader, said the massacre was a lie,
30:20propagated by his political rivals and by Jew haters around the world.
30:25But Begin said the legend of terror was worth half a dozen battalions
30:29because Arabs were seized with panic when they heard the Ergun was coming.
30:38Palestinian radio made the atrocity sound even worse than it was
30:42to stiffen Arab resistance.
30:45The reports made the civilians even more terrified.
30:55May God curse the reporters who came to us.
30:59They were servants of Jewish imperialism.
31:02They published stories about their crimes, the massacre,
31:05how they violated our women.
31:08This helped the Jews, not us.
31:11It scared us and made us worry about our honour.
31:21King Abdullah of Transjordan and other Arab leaders
31:24came under strong domestic pressure to intervene.
31:27Ben Gurion sent Abdullah an apology.
31:36Four days after Deir Yassin there was another massacre.
31:40A column of Jewish doctors and nurses was attacked by Palestinians
31:44at Mount Scopus in Jerusalem.
31:51Their vehicles were set on fire and many were burnt to death.
31:5678 people were killed.
32:06Jaffa, just south of Tel Aviv, was in the Arab state in the partition plan.
32:12What happened here helps explain why so many Palestinians fled.
32:18In April 1948, Arab sniping out of Jaffa
32:21was answered by heavy shelling from the Ergun.
32:27The Jews attacked Jaffa and by bombarding Jaffa
32:32they made the conditions for the Arabs to leave
32:36because the Arabs were afraid that they would be killed.
32:40So it wasn't voluntarily, but it was a result of the battle.
32:46But the flight was triggered by more than force.
32:51We let them know in different ways,
32:54not because we wanted to kill them,
32:57we let them know in different ways,
33:00not in pamphlets, not over the radio, not officially,
33:03we let them understand that it's better if they leave
33:06because the Jews are terrible
33:09and don't stay here when the Jews come in.
33:13So this was psychological warfare?
33:15In a small scale.
33:19The people fled because of this massacre that happened in Deir Yassin.
33:26They were afraid that the same thing would happen here in Jaffa.
33:33Palestinian society was collapsing.
33:36Some Israelis claim that the Palestinians were leaving
33:39on the orders of Arab leaders to wait for victory.
33:44Jewish leaders had discussed moving Arabs out of Palestine for years
33:48but denied that was anything to do with their departure.
33:56Does Israel bear any responsibility
33:59for the exodus of Palestinians in 1948?
34:02No.
34:03There are some historians who say that Plan D was a blueprint
34:07for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, of Arabs.
34:11Is that true?
34:12No.
34:14You know, as I say, I was president of the creation.
34:18I don't mind what historians are writing.
34:22I watched with their own eyes.
34:25Ben-Gurion did not want the Arabs to leave the country.
34:29When we spoke to President Peres of Jerusalem,
34:31he said that Israel bears no responsibility whatsoever
34:34for the exodus of Palestinians.
34:37No responsibility whatsoever.
34:40Then what caused the exodus to happen?
34:43It was the Israeli massacre of villagers,
34:47of people whom they encountered.
34:50I count to you the scores of massacres which happened all over the country.
34:55Do you think that anybody would leave his home
34:57unless he was really threatened?
35:04That's what Peres said to us.
35:05I'm surprised that President Peres has said so.
35:10The 14th of May, 1948, the last day of the British mandate.
35:15Britain's legacy to Palestine was a legal system,
35:18red pillar boxes, chaos and war.
35:29The same day, David Ben-Gurion announced
35:31that the State of Israel would come into existence at midnight.
35:41Within hours, the country was under attack.
35:44We heard the explosions and I said to my wife,
35:46I said, the game's on, they're bombing Tel Aviv.
35:49Their main targets were the Reading power station,
35:53the Tel Aviv airfield, the central bus station,
35:58and they were really bombing Tel Aviv with impunity
36:01because there was nothing to stop them.
36:05That day, five Arab states invaded.
36:12The Egyptians advanced from the south
36:14towards the main Jewish center of Tel Aviv.
36:17The Lebanese barely crossed the northern border,
36:20with the Syrians attacking at either end of the Sea of Galilee.
36:24Further south came the Iraqis, while in the center,
36:27Transjordan's Arab Legion advanced
36:29towards the West Bank and Jerusalem.
36:32The invading force was between 25,000 to 30,000,
36:36against around 35,000 Israelis.
36:41Although the invasion was under the nominal command
36:44of King Abdullah of Transjordan, each country made its own plans.
36:50Abdullah had been having secret but inconclusive negotiations
36:54with Jewish leaders about carving up Palestine between them.
36:58He also wanted to add Lebanon and Syria to his kingdom
37:02to make an Arab super-state.
37:04No wonder other Arab leaders didn't trust him.
37:08They didn't trust each other either.
37:10They'd all have liked a piece of Palestine for themselves,
37:13and destroying the Jewish state at birth
37:16would have made them international heroes.
37:19But they knew their capacity to do it was limited.
37:24Some of the Arab states went to war
37:27just to satisfy the ambitions of their common classes.
37:34Some of the Arab states wanted to prevent King Abdullah
37:39from controlling more areas from the Arab states.
37:47Some of the states were forcing themselves to go to war,
37:55otherwise the Arab people would call them traitors.
38:00Most of the invading troops were like Egypt's,
38:03well-armed but badly trained and led.
38:06Egypt's King Farouk sent his men to war
38:09against the advice of his government.
38:13Transjordan's Arab Legion was commanded by British officers.
38:17It was the most effective Arab fighting force,
38:20but small, 8,000 men.
38:22It only fought for land allocated to the Arabs
38:25by the partition plan and in Jerusalem.
38:32The Jordanians considered Jerusalem and Palestine
38:36as the diamond of the Middle East
38:39because of the spiritual and religious significance
38:42we have as Muslims and Arabs.
38:45So we considered the capture of Jerusalem
38:48as our incentive as Jordanian fighters,
38:51and we fought hard to defend it.
38:56For the first month after the invasion,
38:59it was touch and go for the Israelis.
39:02The old city of Jerusalem was under attack by the Jordanian army,
39:06so we were stretched all over the place
39:09and very, very few units were free to fight everywhere else.
39:13And the situation at that time, I think,
39:16was the most critical during the War of Independence.
39:21Kibbutz Ramat Rahel, near Bethlehem.
39:24Here, the Israelis fought to stop the Egyptians linking up
39:28with the Arab Legion to encircle Jerusalem.
39:33The building behind me was the dining hall
39:36here at Kibbutz Ramat Rahel.
39:38It was the strongest building in the place on the left
39:41and the largest building on the right.
39:44It was the largest building in the world.
39:47Kibbutz Ramat Rahel.
39:49It was the strongest building in the place on the highest point,
39:52and it was there that the Israelis set up their headquarters
39:55and decided to make their stand.
40:01You know, it's been 60 years since I was here last.
40:0660 years, that's a long time.
40:09There's the wall...
40:13..and all those pocket marks from the bombardment,
40:18from the shelling.
40:21You were up here when you were wounded. What happened?
40:24The truth is, I don't know what happened.
40:26A shell exploded in my face
40:28and I got covered with shrapnel all over my body.
40:31I couldn't see. I thought I was blind.
40:35The Israelis held on to Ramat Rahel,
40:38but the Arab Legion kept up the pressure on Jewish-controlled Jerusalem
40:42by cutting the supply route from Tel Aviv.
40:52To reopen it, the Israelis tried and failed repeatedly to take Latrun,
40:57a strong point on the Jerusalem Road.
41:00The first time, they thought it was defended by Palestinian irregulars.
41:04Instead, they faced well-dug-in professionals
41:07from the Arab Legion.
41:10We were encountered by a tremendous fire of machine guns and mortars and so forth.
41:14The heat was absolutely about 40, 42 degrees in the shadow.
41:22We didn't have enough water, of course,
41:24and people were hit all the time.
41:27Now, I myself, I was wounded the first time in the morning.
41:30I got a bullet in my shoulder
41:32and then about 10 o'clock I got another shrapnel in my chest.
41:36And the situation was hopeless, as far as we are concerned.
41:42In Jerusalem's walled Old City,
41:45the Jewish Quarter fell to the Arab Legion.
41:48Over 1,000 Jewish civilians lost their homes.
41:52Almost 23,000 Palestinians left districts of the city
41:55captured by Jewish forces during the war.
42:00The Legion kept the Jewish-controlled west of the city under siege,
42:04but never risked trying to capture it.
42:07I think that people fired.
42:09For the Israelis, the breakthrough was finding a cross-country route
42:13to ferry supplies and pump water
42:15that bypassed the Arab Legion's positions.
42:19We assembled 13 jeeps.
42:21One of them belonged to Ben Gurion.
42:25We loaded them with about more than half a tompel jeep,
42:28medical supplies and munition weapons.
42:31We knew exactly what the situation in Jerusalem is.
42:35How important was it for the Jewish forces to hang on in Jerusalem?
42:39It's unbelievable how people felt about Jerusalem.
42:43They knew that without Jerusalem there is no Jewish state.
42:51On the southern front, the Egyptian army advanced north towards Tel Aviv,
42:55avoiding smaller Israeli settlements.
43:02But Kibbutz Yad Morachai was too big to ignore.
43:06On the 24th of May, Egyptian armour and infantry attacked.
43:12Here in front of me, I have no bullets and I have no rifles to reach them.
43:18I need a mortar, I need something.
43:22And I was very, very angry that I can't shoot.
43:27They are in front of me and I can't do nothing because the distance is too wide.
43:35I have no rifle, I have no munition and no aims to defend myself or to attack them.
43:46Outnumbered and out of ammunition, the Israeli forces had to retreat.
43:50But they had bought time to establish a defence line further north,
43:54where the Egyptians were stopped before they could reach Tel Aviv.
44:01After nearly a month's fighting, the United Nations secured a four-week ceasefire.
44:09During the truce, both sides rearmed, but Israel had the edge,
44:13with big deliveries from Czechoslovakia of modern weapons, including heavy guns and aircraft.
44:21Although hugely outnumbered by Arabs in the Middle East,
44:25Israel was always able to mobilise more soldiers.
44:29It was now better equipped, organised and motivated.
44:34As far as you were concerned, it was a life or death struggle.
44:37Absolutely. This was Israel's most fateful war.
44:41It was a case of to be or not to be.
44:43When the ceasefire ended after a month,
44:47the Israelis were ready for what one of their top generals called
44:50a series of sharp, short, decisive and victorious engagements.
44:57The priority was relieving the pressure on the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem axis.
45:01Lyd and Ramleh, two adjoining Arab towns close to Tel Aviv, were the targets.
45:07What happened here was one of the most controversial episodes of the entire war.
45:12The Israelis scored a major strategic victory.
45:16They secured Tel Aviv and the centre of their new country.
45:20In the process, tens of thousands of Palestinian Arabs lost their homes
45:25and hundreds of them lost their lives.
45:43The Haganah killed dozens of Palestinians who were sheltering in a mosque.
45:53Some of them just left their houses and found this place as a refugee,
45:57most of the families.
45:59And they thought that this is the way, they are very safe in this place.
46:02The Haganah army, when they got inside the city,
46:06after fierce fighting between the Palestinians and the Haganah,
46:12they just came inside this mosque and they just killed all of the people inside here.
46:18Women, children, old people, all of them were shot.
46:23It was a big massacre.
46:32Some of the residents were forced to bury the bodies.
46:37The army took us to the mosque, to take the dead to the cemetery.
46:43We entered one room, there were 60 or 70 bodies inside.
46:49Later they covered them with clothes and poured petrol and set them on fire.
46:57There was a woman, dressed in peasant clothes,
47:02next to her were two little girls.
47:06We carried them and put them over there.
47:10They were the only ones who had a proper burial.
47:17There's a controversy over whether Ben Gurion authorised the expulsions from Lyd and Ramleh.
47:23The Israeli commander who signed the order, Baleed,
47:27More than 50,000 Palestinians were forced out.
47:33It's not a secret anymore.
47:36It was called Shoalei Shimshon, the Wolves of Samson.
47:41With jeeps, with machine guns, it's not a secret anymore.
47:47Many things we did, we regretted.
47:52But in war, you make mistakes.
47:57Anyhow, there was no other clear order from Ben Gurion
48:02how to deal with the inhabitants in an occupied village.
48:07But could Israel have functioned with a big town like Lyd and Ramleh?
48:13I don't know.
48:16Could you have built a state if you had that many Arabs
48:20living right in the centre of the country?
48:22No.
48:25Many refugees died on the long walk to the Arab lines.
48:29The offensive ended with another UN truce.
48:35The war was over.
48:37The war was over.
48:39The war was over.
48:41The war ended with another UN truce.
48:48In ten days of fighting, the Israeli general, Egal Alon,
48:52estimated that 20% of the effective Arab fighting force had been lost,
48:57and the War of Independence won, though not ended.
49:02In the remaining months of the war, there were more Israeli offensives,
49:06more Palestinians were forced out, and there were more ceasefires.
49:11Of the invaders, only the Arab Legion in Jerusalem and the West Bank
49:16could claim any success.
49:18The others were humiliated.
49:21When the second war came, it was not in favour of the Arabs.
49:27It was totally in favour of the Jews,
49:32because there the Jews were able to make victory in Nahab, in the south,
49:39and against the Syrians and Lebanese,
49:42we were left alone in the West Bank, defending ourselves.
49:48By the time Israel seized the last corner of the Negev desert in March 1949,
49:54armistice talks had already started.
49:58Yad Mordechai was recaptured and became a symbol of Israeli resistance.
50:04From November 1947 to January 1949,
50:08around 6,000 Israelis, 1% of the population, had been killed.
50:15What do you think would have happened if you hadn't won?
50:19Well, the Arabs really gave the answer to that question, Jeremy.
50:23When someone said to them,
50:25but what will happen to the Jews once you overrun them?
50:28He says, there won't be any Jews.
50:30There won't be any Jews. They will have been drowned in the sea.
50:36And I have no doubt that it really would have been a holocaust.
50:40One estimate is that around 15,000 Arab soldiers and civilians were killed.
50:46Defeat made the Arab world even more unstable.
50:50There was no balance between the forces of Israel and the forces of the Arabs,
50:56because in wars you don't only depend on the number of soldiers or the number of tanks.
51:04You have also to have political force
51:08and you have to have unity among those who are going to war.
51:14Unity did not exist among the Arab states.
51:20Since 1948, the Israelis have built a modern state, the region's superpower,
51:25a homeland for the Jews.
51:30Palestinians believe it's all come on the back of their loss,
51:34and that troubles some Israelis too.
51:39I have no doubt that the Arabs' deportation also helped the state of Israel.
51:44The truth should be said, it helped us because hundreds of thousands fled
51:49and new immigrants settled into their villages and towns.
51:53It's difficult to say, but this did happen.
51:56We didn't ask for it, but it happened nonetheless.
52:01On the other hand, the situation of an ongoing war, day after day, for 60 years,
52:09big wars with names, small wars with no names, the 1948 war, is yet to end.
52:23For all Israel's strength, its civilians still get killed by Palestinians.
52:35And with their civilians dying too, Palestinians believe that what they call the Nakba,
52:41the catastrophe of 1948, has never ended.
52:45The current peace process, sponsored by President Bush, will fail like all the others
52:49if it cannot solve problems that are hard-wired to 1948.
52:56Partition is still on the agenda.
52:58They need to fix a border between Israel and a Palestinian state.
53:04Jerusalem is still claimed by both sides.
53:07And Palestinian refugees await a future.
53:12Until 1948, that was a bare hill on the edge of Bethlehem.
53:16Now it's the Hesha refugee camp.
53:18The original tents were replaced by permanent structures a long time ago,
53:23but there's no sense of permanence in the minds of the people who live there
53:28because there's no sense of permanence.
53:31A long time ago, but there's no sense of permanence in the minds of the people who live there
53:36because for 60 years they have effectively been in limbo.
53:41The future of the Palestinian refugees is still one of the Middle East's
53:46great unsolved politically toxic issues.
53:55When the Palestinian camps were new 60 years ago,
53:58Israel was absorbing hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees and migrants.
54:04Now almost all Israelis believe a mass influx of Palestinian refugees would destroy their state.
54:12A UN resolution on their return has never been implemented.
54:19Some Palestinian refugees, still dreaming of everything they lost, will not hear of compromise.
54:28This is something we used to do a lot, not just once.
54:31If they give us heaven.
54:34We said it more than once.
54:36Even if they give us heaven, we will not give up on our country.
54:40If they give us enough gold to fill this room, we will decline everything.
54:45Impossible. I will die and die a heretic.
54:48If you take a million pounds in gold for an inch of Palestine, you die as a heretic.
54:53Not a Muslim, not a Christian, not a Jew, a heretic.
54:58And you go to hell.
55:05And even though most Palestinians do accept that they will live alongside Israel,
55:10memory and history stand on every street corner.
55:16My father has built here.
55:18I feel my father, he was denied to live in and he was dispossessed to live in this beautiful house.
55:24It's been now 60 years for most of the people.
55:27There are weaknesses.
55:30You want to advance and I would want very much to compete and advance as much as the Israelis have advanced.
55:36But I'm a Palestinian.
55:38My land has been robbed by the Israelis.
55:42We want them to have a state of their own.
55:46Fair, independent, friendly.
55:51And they want it too.
55:53There is no division in our destinies.
55:59Our problem from our side is their division within themselves and their weakness.
56:08Others believe the main problem is that Israel is still expansionist,
56:12breaking international law by settling Jews on occupied land that Palestinians say is theirs.
56:21They don't want to give up territory.
56:24They want to squeeze the Palestinians.
56:27They want to take as much territory as they can
56:31and give the Palestinians as little as they can,
56:35which would not be conducive to a solution, a self-sustaining Palestinian state.
56:4560 years ago, Arab propagandists boasted they would push the Jews into the Mediterranean.
56:51Plenty of Israelis suspect that's still something Palestinians would like to do.
56:57Had they accepted in 1947 their part, half of Palestine, the mandate,
57:04we would have two countries since then and no conflict.
57:08But what they wanted is the whole country.
57:11They wanted to drive us into the sea to kill the Jews.
57:15This is why they don't have anything today.
57:18I will continue to resist in a non-violent resistance
57:23until we can coexist, until we can convince the Israelis that we want our freedom,
57:29but this does not mean that we want to destroy the state of Israel.
57:36The long war of 1948 has consumed two peoples with two separate stories to tell.
57:43They'll have to find a way to live with its legacy if they ever want peace.
57:50One day we shall have to shake hands and sit together.
57:54We can't continue fighting forever.
58:01We can't continue killing and killing and killing.
58:05There must be an end to it.
58:20Next on BBC Two, playing for Snooker's greatest prize,
58:24Ronnie O'Sullivan leads Ali Carter 6-2 in the World Championship final.
58:28And medieval myth-busting on BBC Four,
58:31Terry Jones takes issue with the romantic idea of the knight in shining armour.