Tangled Roots (2019–2020): Season 1, Episode 5 - Tangled Roots - full transcript
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Northern Ireland, Vietnam,
Korea, Falkland Islands,
Bangladesh,
the Iran-Iraq War
the Greco-Turkish War,
the First and Second World Wars...
These are just some of the conflicts
that broke out and ended
while the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
goes on and on.
What is it about our conflict
that won't enable it to end?
Is what happened between us
so unforgivable and unsolvable?
We deserve full rights!
Let's go back to this story again,
but we'll try to tell it
not like it's told in an argument,
but like it's told in... a lesson.
Let's call it a refresher lesson.
Let's call it a Homeland Lesson.
HOMELAND LESSON
These difficult questions on
the inability to forgive or find a solution
refer mostly to the war
we are about to address,
the war that broke out following
the UN's Partition Resolution,
the war during which the Jews
will establish a state for themselves
and the Palestinians won't.
Right on the day after November 29th
a kind of civil war breaks out in Palestine,
but these civilians
do not have a state yet,
and the war is not
exactly a war yet.
There's the big demonstration in Manila
where some shops are set on fire.
I think two Jews
were killed too.
There's the attack on a bus
at Sirkin Junction,
a Jewish bus was attacked
by a squad of Abu-Kishk
and four or five people killed.
For the Palestinians,
it's like the continuation of the Arab Revolt.
Everything was spontaneous, random,
and occurred in different areas
without a plan, without a strategy,
without a leadership.
Haj Amin al-Husseini,
who is still in exile in Cairo,
relays orders to Palestine.
"The goal of the present operations
is to disturb
"and only disturb the Jews.
"Under no circumstances should
we engage in actions of a serious magnitude.
Haj Amin al-Husseini, 1948
Haj Amin hadn't been
in Palestine since 1937,
a whole decade.
He doesn't really know
what's going on in Palestine.
Husseini most likely
didn't want a heavy campaign
because he feared the British
would respond with a firm hand.
His strategy was to create
chaos in Palestine,
which would make
the international community
change their minds
about the Partition Plan.
The Haganah forces
also restrain themselves
as long as the British
are in Palestine,
but the British are busy
evacuating their troops
and don't intervene too much.
Not only that,
the event that will escalate the violence
and set the brutality bar
occurs in late December
in a factory
still controlled by the British,
the oil refineries in Haifa Bay.
Irgun operatives
throw a grenade and shoot
at workers who are about
to enter the refineries.
The news of what happened outside
reach the workers inside.
And the Arab workers kill the Jews
who work with them.
The result of this action -
a larger number of people killed.
39 Jewish workers
and dozens wounded.
The next day the Haganah strikes back
with a raid on Balad al-Sheikh,
just outside of Haifa,
the burial place
of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam
and where many
of the refinery workers live.
One of the raiders recounts:
"Our order was to enter the homes,
"tell the women and children
to stand to one side
"and shoot the men. Simple."
Fighter in the Palmach's 1st Battalion
In the raid in Balad al-Sheikh,
they kill too.
In explosions you can't distinguish
between fighters or workers,
workers who had
or hadn't worked that day.
Women, children...
And many people are killed.
As soon as the dam is opened
the violence causes
more and more violence.
The violence at the refinery and
the retaliation strike in Balad al-Sheikh
cause the beginning
of the Arab exodus from Haifa.
With the escalation,
with the surging violence
the fear factor surges too.
The exodus begins with
the financial, intellectual elite.
They must have fled expecting
to return once the battles are over.
And this was the beginning of the creation
of the Palestinian refugee problem.
The fighting escalates
not only in Haifa.
Palestine goes back to
the days of chaos of the Arab Revolt,
but this time the Jewish side
doesn't respond with restraint.
Within no time, there's an escalation.
In January, February,
there's an attack on Kfar Etzion.
The Haganah blows up
the Semiramis Hotel
in January, in Jerusalem.
The Irgun and Lehi blow up
the Saraya Building in Jaffa
also in early January.
The surging violence
lures back to Palestine
the two prominent military leaders
of the Arab Revolt.
Fawzi Qawuqji returns to Palestine
as head of a volunteer army
and Abd al-Qader al-Husseini
returns to represent
his uncle Haj Amin on the ground.
Abd al-Qader fully understands that
this campaign is different than the Arab Revolt
and more comprehensive.
"It's us or them,
either we come out of the war victorious
or we all die."
Abd al-Qader al-Husseini
December 1947
Their attitude was all or nothing.
There is no state that gives up
its land, its homeland.
Not half of its homeland
nor a quarter of its homeland.
Abd al-Qader al-Husseini forms
al-Jihad al-Muqaddas,
a Palestinian organization
of a few thousand men
primarily in the Jerusalem area.
The Palestinians' strategy:
We won't attack the settlements,
we'll attack
Jewish transportation to them.
It's a fight on the roads,
the convoys, and the Arabs succeeded.
The Hulda convoy, the Yehiam convoy,
the convoy to Kfar Etzion.
It creates a certain level of chaos.
Abd al-Qader's
most outstanding achievement
is an ambush on a convoy
that tries to reach besieged Etzion Bloc.
35 members of the convoy are killed.
Poet and Palmach member Haim Gouri
write about them in the famous lines:
Behold, our bodies are laid out
in a long, long line.
"Our faces have been altered.
Death looks from our eyes."
Haim Gouri, 1948
It's hard today
to describe the great tragedy
that befell the Jewish community
due to the Lamed-Haye.
It was an elite unit,
equivalent to today's
Special Forces recon unit times two.
Abd al-Qader realized
that a siege on Jerusalem
could give him victory
over the entire land,
because if Jerusalem falls,
the State of Israel will not be established.
The Jewish community concurs with
Abd al-Qader's evaluation of the situation.
Ben-Gurion says:
"If Jerusalem falls,
all the rest doesn't matter
Ben-Gurion
March 1948
The defeat of the convoys
truly harms Jewish morale
because it was considered, at least by
the public, as the beginning of devastation.
Ben-Gurion orders
not to wait for the British to leave
and to switch
to the offensive immediately.
The Haganah commanders hesitate
due to a lack of weapons.
Golda Meir raises 50 million dollars
from American Jews
and Czechoslovakia sells
used weapons to the Haganah
from WWII.
The Irgun and Lehi join forces
with the Haganah
and the real balance of power
starts to become clear.
Out of all the 1.3 million Arabs
who were living in Palestine at the time,
there were 5,000 fighters.
Half were with the Holy Jihad
and half were with Qawuqji
in the Arab Liberation Army.
The Jewish community, half in size,
650,000
had 24,000 in March,
five times more, half of the population...
That's a ratio of one in ten
in recruitment.
The Palestinians are a few thousand men
who have one kind of rifle or another,
they're not hierarchically organized
and they are volunteers.
Whereas the Jewish community
prepared the war
on an intelligence level.
They had "village files"
for all the Arab villages,
which came in handy
during the war itself.
It was like a coil
that had not yet been used.
The Jewish military power
had not yet been manifested.
The Palestinians worriedly follow
the Jewish coil preparing for action
and try to narrow the gap
in the arms race.
Abd al-Qader al-Husseini
traveled to Damascus in March 1948
to beg the Arab League leaders
to supply him with the arms and money
they had promised.
They nearly kicked him out.
They said: Don't be ridiculous,
you can't do anything.
Then suddenly, while he was
in Damascus asking for help
he hears that the Jews
captured the Qastel.
Indeed, while Abd al-Qader
is begging
the Arab League in Damascus
the Haganah sets out on
the war's first operation,
Operation Nachshon,
to open the road to Jerusalem.
On April 2nd after a bitter battle,
they capture
the village situated near the road,
Al-Qastel.
Usually they went out on retaliatory actions
and came home.
They had never captured an Arab village
and remained in it.
We can't protect our settlements
as long as the roads to them
are blocked by Arab villages.
So if a convoy can't
go up to Jerusalem,
because there's Lifta and Deir Yassin
and Saris along the way,
we won't escort convoys
and get shot at from the mountains,
we'll capture the ranges
and the villages on them.
Meanwhile in Damascus
the heads of the Arab League refuse
Abd al-Qader's request for help.
He says to them:
"You are criminals.
You are traitors.
"History will judge you
for abandoning Palestine.
"I will capture Al-Qastel
"and die, I and all my fighters."
Abd al-Qader al-Husseini
April 1948
He returned discouraged and upset
and announced to his men:
We're getting back Al-Qastel,
first thing.
He got there at night,
gathered a few hundred of his men,
and accidentally walked
straight into a Haganah position.
One of the soldiers who sees them
approaching says: Marhaba, ya jamaa.
Abd al-Qader says:
Hello, boys.
Only then the position's commander
realizes something's wrong
and unleashes a burst of gunfire
from his Sten.
Khalil al-Sakakini who, as we mentioned,
had been documenting the conflict in his diary
since World War I writes:
"If there is one person who deserves the epithet:
'The entire country walked behind his casket,'
"it is Abd al-Qader."
His funeral in Jerusalem is huge.
He is the admired figure
of the great leader who dies.
It's a terrible blow.
As if the admired leader's death
is not enough,
during the funeral
rumors from Deir Yassin
start spreading in the crowd.
The Irgun and Lehi
capture Deir Yassin
where they carry out a massacre.
There's a big argument
about what kind of massacre, etc...
They didn't make all the villagers
or most of the villagers stand
against a wall and then shot them,
that's not what happened,
and that's the acceptable definition
of a massacre.
What did happen there
was that during the fighting in the village
entire families were killed.
Families fled from their homes
when they heard gunfire,
they were killed on the streets,
some were taken captive
and were then murdered,
there were several atrocities
that occurred there
during the conquest
and right after the conquest
which together
are called "war crimes."
110 villagers are killed,
85 of them are women and children.
Hundreds of Arabs from Deir Yassin
flee their village
and arrive in Jerusalem in the middle
of Abd al-Qader's funeral.
They tell about the atrocities
that were committed in Deir Yassin,
but they're not the only ones
talking about the atrocities,
the Jews also talk about
the atrocities a great deal.
The Irgun and Lehi
loaded people on trucks
and drove them through
the streets of Jerusalem.
A victory parade through Jerusalem.
Masses of people
gather in Mahaneh Yehuda
and cheer and throw tomatoes
at the trucks with
the Deir Yassin captives.
The Jewish leadership strongly
condemns the events in Deir Yassin
but also fully understands
their tremendous
psychological impact.
Deir Yassin is truly
a turning point in the war.
The whole country was talking about
Deir Yassin, Deir Yassin, Deir Yassin,
as if: They're going
to do a Deir Yassin to us too.
Yigal Allon calls it
a "whispering campaign,"
psychological warfare. They say:
The Jews are about to attack you,
you'd better leave.
If up till then
the Palestinians thought
they were strong enough
to stand against the Jews,
these two events
were very traumatic
for the Palestinians.
The death of the admired leader
on one hand
and the Irgun and Lehi's attack
on Deir Yassin.
The sense of a turning point
in the war is reinforced
by Qawuqji's failed attempt
to capture Kibbutz Mishmar Haemek.
The Palestinians retaliate
later in April
when they attack a convoy
to the university
and Hadassah Hospital
on Mount Scopus
and kill 77 of its people.
The number of casualties on the Jewish side
will continue to rise at a staggering pace.
Some of them are killed just days,
sometimes even hours
after getting of immigrant ships.
The convoys continue to be an
easy target for the Palestinians,
and in besieged Jerusalem
there is a stringent rationing of food
and even water.
In the rest of the country
the Haganah forces are more successful
in taking control of the roads
and of mixed cities.
Tiberias is captured, and its Arab residents
leave under the auspices of the British.
The next Palestinian domino tile
is Haifa.
At the end of 1947
in Haifa
there are 70,000 Jews
and 70,000 Arabs.
The Jews control Haifa topographically
because the Jewish neighborhoods
are up on top,
but nevertheless
there are Arab groups
who open gunfire on Jews.
The Jews of Haifa suffered from
Arab sniper fire and bombs for months.
While the Arab neighborhoods
were being captured
the Haganah used
the mortars they had,
which the Arab side didn't have,
and fired them into the city.
They started firing from up on top,
on all the Arab neighborhoods
for many, many hours.
I interviewed some of the people.
They said that as soon as the bombing started
from the mountain
down on the Arab neighborhoods
people started panicking.
We all ran towards the port
thinking that perhaps the British
would protect us
and prevent our expulsion,
but they actually pushed us more and more
onto the boats and ships.
A UP news agency
correspondent reports:
"Fishing boats, ships and sailboats
sailed from Beirut to Haifa
"to bring Arab refugees to Lebanon.
"The sight really reminds me
of the Dunkirk evacuation."
UP news agency correspondent, 1948
Ben-Gurion looks down onto
the deserted downtown from Hadar Hacarmel.
"A terrifying and fantastic sight.
"A dead city, a corpse city.
"How could tens of thousands of people
without any sufficient reason
"leave their cities, homes and wealth?"
David Ben-Gurion
May 1948
Ben-Gurion stands and asks:
How could they flee?
But let's imagine you're there,
there are bombs,
you've heard about Deir Yassin,
and there's no leadership
at this stage, most of them had left.
There was no directing voice in Palestine
on the ground
to tell people what to do,
and there was chaos.
It seems that most of those who fled
think that by intervention
of either the UN or the Arab armies
they'll be able to return,
that their desertion is temporary,
just for a few weeks.
Ben-Gurion sums up
his visit in Haifa:
"It is not our job
to see to the return of the Arabs.
"When they flee,
we don't need to run after them.
"What happened in Haifa can happen
in large parts of the country."
David Ben-Gurion
May 1948
Already in February 1948
Ben-Gurion says:
The campaign will continue
for months
and in due course
the demographic situation in Palestine
may very well change in our favor.
Plan Dalet, according to which the Haganah
takes action on the ground,
translates the demographic desires
into security considerations.
In the opening part it says
that it is a plan to reinforce and defend
the soon-to-be established
Jewish state.
To do so,
the main transportation routes
that connect
the areas of Jewish settlement
must be in our full control.
Therefore many authorities were delegated
to the brigade commanders
which also include the decision
"to destroy, to burn down..."
"the Arab villages that are located
along these main routes."
There's a carte blanche for the
brigade and regiment commanders
to do whatever they want
and they won't be criticized for it.
Plan Dalet continues
to be implemented.
By the end of April Jaffa is also captured
and is almost completely empty.
In Jaffa, out of 70,000, like in Haifa,
only 2,000-3,000 Palestinians remained,
all the rest became refugees.
After Tiberias, Haifa and Jaffa
the next mixed city that is
emptied of its Arabs is Safed,
which is captured in early May.
On the other side, the long siege
on the Etzion Bloc settlements
brings about their fall.
The Palestinians execute
dozens of the bloc's defenders
while crying out:
Deir Yassin! Deir Yassin!
The day after the bloc's fall,
on Friday, May 14th, 1948
the High Commissioner leaves Palestine,
marking the end of the British Mandate.
At 4 pm
the Provisional State Council assembles
in the hall of the Tel Aviv Museum.
David Ben-Gurion declares
the establishment of the State of Israel
but does not declare
what the state's borders are.
When you declare a state
during war
you leave all the options open.
You don't close the door
to the possibility of more land.
Despite the war that the fledgling state
was enduring,
the Declaration of Independence
includes the following paragraph:
"We appeal -
in the very midst of the onslaught -
"launched against us now for months
to the Arab inhabitants
of the State of Israel
"to preserve peace and participate
in the upbuilding of the State
"on the basis of full
and equal citizenship."
From the Declaration of Independence
May 14th, 1948
The Zionist Movement can't...
It was Ben-Gurion's perception,
can't exist in the Middle East
without peaceful relations or at least
non-fighting relations with its neighbors.
After five months of the Arabs
attacking the Jews
I think Ben-Gurion
is very much interested
in as many Arabs
as possible leaving
and that no equal-rights citizens
remain in the state,
but of course
he doesn't say that.
He says they can stay,
because that's what you say
in declarations of independence.
Celebrations of the birth of the new state
end the next day
when Egyptian fighter planes
bomb Tel Aviv,
giving the signal
to the Arab nations to invade.
The Egyptian government
announces that:
"The objective of the invasion
is to restore security and order
"and put an end to massacres
perpetrated by Zionist terrorist gangs
"against Arabs and mankind."
Egyptian Government
May 1948
The Syrians announce:
"We shall restore the country
to its rightful owners."
Syrian President Shukri al-Quwatli
May 1948
Hundreds of thousands
of Palestinian refugees,
most of whom
went to Arab countries.
Some went to the capitals
of Arab countries.
And there was pressure from the Arab
public opinion on these administrations,
some of which did not even
want to intervene in the war.
They may not have joined
the fighting without that.
They're saying,
at least openly:
We're coming
to protect our brothers
because they're being
conquered and massacred.
The invasion of the expeditionary forces
of the Arab countries
wasn't aimed to establish
a Palestinian state.
It was aimed to maintain
Palestine's Arabness
and then they'd each
get their share of plunder.
Jordan invaded Palestine
because Abdullah decided:
I'm invading in order to take control
of the West Bank
and East Jerusalem
and annex them to Jordan,
so that my desert country,
which is nothing in terms of importance,
will at least have the holy sites.
I'll get al-Aqsa,
and I'll be somewhat compensated
not only politically,
but religiously too.
Egypt, Syria and the Iraqi army
intervene to prevent Abdullah
from annexing the Arab part
of the Partition Plan.
Whatever the motives
of the invasion might be,
the Israel Defense Forces,
which were founded with the state,
now need to deal
with a tremendous challenge:
Five regular armies
attacking from three directions.
The idea that was formed
beforehand by the Arab states
was to create a belt
that would get tighter and tighter
around what they call
"the Zionists' capital,"
and eventually capture Tel Aviv.
During the next three weeks
the IDF sustains heavy losses
but withstands the challenge heroically.
In the south,
the Egyptians are blocked at a bridge
that is later named Ad Halom (Up to Here).
In the north, Degania's defenders
stop the Syrian artillery.
On the eastern front
Israel is not as successful
and the Jordanian Legion
takes control of Judea and Samaria
which was supposed
to be part of the Arab state,
but also loses the Jewish quarter
in the Old City.
On the borderline between
Arab and Jewish Jerusalem
a separation barrier is built.
And not for the last time.
But ultimately
when the UN imposes
a ceasefire in the middle of June
the borders of Israel
are very similar to its borders
before the invasion.
Some 20 Jewish settlements
were captured during the fighting
as opposed to 200 Arab settlements,
whose residents fled or were driven out.
The number of refugees
surges to 350,000.
The UN takes advantage of the truce
To send a [mediator to our area
The first of many
The Swedish Count Bernadotte.
The Arab states place the condition
That remains on the negotiation table to this day
The return of the
Palestinian refugees to their homes.
When Bernadotte arrives here
in June 1948
his main goal is to stop
the flow of Palestinian refugees
out of Israel.
On June 16th, 1948
at a meeting of Israel's cabinet
there is a consensus, without voting,
not to allow the return of the refugees.
And orders are given to IDF units
along all the borders
to stop, even with gunfire,
the return of the refugees.
Moshe Sharett says
in that cabinet meeting:
"Had anyone arisen among us
and said that one day
"we should expel all of them,
"that have been madness,
"but if this happened
in the course of the turbulence of war...
"The aggressive enemy brought this about
and the blood is on his head.
"These are all the spoils of war,
"compensation for
the Jewish blood spoiled.
"They are not returning,
and this is our policy,
"that they don't return."
Moshe Sharett
June 1948
It doesn't matter whether
or not there was a master plan.
What matters is
why they didn't let them return.
And that's the main question.
Why they didn't let the refugees return.
-Why?
Because they want a Jewish state
with less Arabs.
The tables have already been turned
and their ability to see the state
being established with very few Arabs
and with a flow of refugees
which ultimately succeeds
in creating this state
as supposedly homogeneous
seemed to them
like a better solution
than trying to listen to the UN.
The Jewish leadership realizes
there is a demographic turnaround here
that they call a miracle
Ben-Gurion writes:
I'm going up to Jerusalem
and the whole way
is empty of Arabs.
The Jews who came here
feel uncomfortable among Arabs.
They don't know Arabic,
they don't care about Arabic
or about Arabs,
and in places where
there is a substantial Arab majority
they feel alienated, foreign,
they feel fear.
This yearning for
a Jewish surroundings
is something that
was shared by a large part
of the Jewish community
regardless of political affiliation.
Israel's refusal to discuss
the refugees' return
brings Bernadotte's endeavours
to a halt
and the truce crumbles into
10 days of battle.
Among other things, the IDF
sets out to expand the corridor
between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Ben-Gurion summed up
the achievements of the war
up until the first ceasefire
and said: But between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem
we still have two thorns in our side.
"While the fighting was in progress,
we had to grapple with a troublesome problem:
"the fate of the civilian population
of Lod and Ramle.
"Not even Ben-Gurion
offered any solution
"and during the discussions at the operational HQ
he remained silent
"as was his habit
in such situations.
"When we walked outside,
Allon repeated the question:
"What is to be done
with the population?
"Ben-Gurion waved his hand."
Yitzhak Rabin
July 1948
People like Yitzhak Rabin and Allon
understood exactly
what Ben-Gurion wanted
even without him
waving his hand.
You expel them
because you want
no Arabs in the central region.
Not because they're endangering you,
not for self-defense,
but due to a geo-strategic concept.
The Israeli forces capture the city,
the city surrenders,
many people are hiding
in a mosque.
There's a lot of controversy
over what exactly happened,
but we do know that there was
a massacre in the mosque.
During the two hottest days of 1948,
it was the month of Ramadan.
They force 10,000 people
with families that have small children
to walk from Ramle
to Ramallah or Al-Bireh.
"A multitude of residents
walked on after another.
"Occasionally you encountered a piercing look
from one of the youngsters in the column
"and the look said: We have not yet surrendered.
We shall return to fight you."
Palmach officer Shmarya Guttman
July 1948
The expulsion of Lod and Ramle
will become first and foremost
in the Palestinian Nakba stories.
Israel will claim that
it is an exception
that proves the rule.
There's a problem with
using the term "expulsion."
Expulsion is usually considered
when an IDF unit
goes into a certain village,
the villagers are still there
and the IDF says to them:
"You have 24 hours
"to pack your bags and
get out of here or we'll shoot you."
That's expulsion.
If people flee a village
that is being fired at,
or a neighboring village is being fired at
and it scares them, so they flee,
that's not exactly expulsion,
but it's not exactly
fleeing willingly.
It's something like
being driven away
because ultimately
most of the IDF units
and IDF officers and officials
wanted them to flee.
Is it expulsion or flight?
How can you even decide
on such a question?
And like idiots,
we sat there and counted
in how many place there was flight,
in how many places there was expulsion,
to get our heads around this story,
while it's not even the question.
The government decision
was not to let the refugees return.
That is the Nakba.
In war,
like Abd al-Qader al-Husseini said,
it's us or them.
It's the good against the bad,
the right against the wrong,
the winners against the losers.
But more than 70 years
after the war
we must acknowledge the fact
that this reality is more complex
and less clear-cut.
The problem is,
as long as the war continues
it's hard to acknowledge
the complexity of this reality.
And as long as it's hard to acknowledge
the complexity of this reality
the war continues.
Catch '48.
---
Northern Ireland, Vietnam,
Korea, Falkland Islands,
Bangladesh,
the Iran-Iraq War
the Greco-Turkish War,
the First and Second World Wars...
These are just some of the conflicts
that broke out and ended
while the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
goes on and on.
What is it about our conflict
that won't enable it to end?
Is what happened between us
so unforgivable and unsolvable?
We deserve full rights!
Let's go back to this story again,
but we'll try to tell it
not like it's told in an argument,
but like it's told in... a lesson.
Let's call it a refresher lesson.
Let's call it a Homeland Lesson.
HOMELAND LESSON
These difficult questions on
the inability to forgive or find a solution
refer mostly to the war
we are about to address,
the war that broke out following
the UN's Partition Resolution,
the war during which the Jews
will establish a state for themselves
and the Palestinians won't.
Right on the day after November 29th
a kind of civil war breaks out in Palestine,
but these civilians
do not have a state yet,
and the war is not
exactly a war yet.
There's the big demonstration in Manila
where some shops are set on fire.
I think two Jews
were killed too.
There's the attack on a bus
at Sirkin Junction,
a Jewish bus was attacked
by a squad of Abu-Kishk
and four or five people killed.
For the Palestinians,
it's like the continuation of the Arab Revolt.
Everything was spontaneous, random,
and occurred in different areas
without a plan, without a strategy,
without a leadership.
Haj Amin al-Husseini,
who is still in exile in Cairo,
relays orders to Palestine.
"The goal of the present operations
is to disturb
"and only disturb the Jews.
"Under no circumstances should
we engage in actions of a serious magnitude.
Haj Amin al-Husseini, 1948
Haj Amin hadn't been
in Palestine since 1937,
a whole decade.
He doesn't really know
what's going on in Palestine.
Husseini most likely
didn't want a heavy campaign
because he feared the British
would respond with a firm hand.
His strategy was to create
chaos in Palestine,
which would make
the international community
change their minds
about the Partition Plan.
The Haganah forces
also restrain themselves
as long as the British
are in Palestine,
but the British are busy
evacuating their troops
and don't intervene too much.
Not only that,
the event that will escalate the violence
and set the brutality bar
occurs in late December
in a factory
still controlled by the British,
the oil refineries in Haifa Bay.
Irgun operatives
throw a grenade and shoot
at workers who are about
to enter the refineries.
The news of what happened outside
reach the workers inside.
And the Arab workers kill the Jews
who work with them.
The result of this action -
a larger number of people killed.
39 Jewish workers
and dozens wounded.
The next day the Haganah strikes back
with a raid on Balad al-Sheikh,
just outside of Haifa,
the burial place
of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam
and where many
of the refinery workers live.
One of the raiders recounts:
"Our order was to enter the homes,
"tell the women and children
to stand to one side
"and shoot the men. Simple."
Fighter in the Palmach's 1st Battalion
In the raid in Balad al-Sheikh,
they kill too.
In explosions you can't distinguish
between fighters or workers,
workers who had
or hadn't worked that day.
Women, children...
And many people are killed.
As soon as the dam is opened
the violence causes
more and more violence.
The violence at the refinery and
the retaliation strike in Balad al-Sheikh
cause the beginning
of the Arab exodus from Haifa.
With the escalation,
with the surging violence
the fear factor surges too.
The exodus begins with
the financial, intellectual elite.
They must have fled expecting
to return once the battles are over.
And this was the beginning of the creation
of the Palestinian refugee problem.
The fighting escalates
not only in Haifa.
Palestine goes back to
the days of chaos of the Arab Revolt,
but this time the Jewish side
doesn't respond with restraint.
Within no time, there's an escalation.
In January, February,
there's an attack on Kfar Etzion.
The Haganah blows up
the Semiramis Hotel
in January, in Jerusalem.
The Irgun and Lehi blow up
the Saraya Building in Jaffa
also in early January.
The surging violence
lures back to Palestine
the two prominent military leaders
of the Arab Revolt.
Fawzi Qawuqji returns to Palestine
as head of a volunteer army
and Abd al-Qader al-Husseini
returns to represent
his uncle Haj Amin on the ground.
Abd al-Qader fully understands that
this campaign is different than the Arab Revolt
and more comprehensive.
"It's us or them,
either we come out of the war victorious
or we all die."
Abd al-Qader al-Husseini
December 1947
Their attitude was all or nothing.
There is no state that gives up
its land, its homeland.
Not half of its homeland
nor a quarter of its homeland.
Abd al-Qader al-Husseini forms
al-Jihad al-Muqaddas,
a Palestinian organization
of a few thousand men
primarily in the Jerusalem area.
The Palestinians' strategy:
We won't attack the settlements,
we'll attack
Jewish transportation to them.
It's a fight on the roads,
the convoys, and the Arabs succeeded.
The Hulda convoy, the Yehiam convoy,
the convoy to Kfar Etzion.
It creates a certain level of chaos.
Abd al-Qader's
most outstanding achievement
is an ambush on a convoy
that tries to reach besieged Etzion Bloc.
35 members of the convoy are killed.
Poet and Palmach member Haim Gouri
write about them in the famous lines:
Behold, our bodies are laid out
in a long, long line.
"Our faces have been altered.
Death looks from our eyes."
Haim Gouri, 1948
It's hard today
to describe the great tragedy
that befell the Jewish community
due to the Lamed-Haye.
It was an elite unit,
equivalent to today's
Special Forces recon unit times two.
Abd al-Qader realized
that a siege on Jerusalem
could give him victory
over the entire land,
because if Jerusalem falls,
the State of Israel will not be established.
The Jewish community concurs with
Abd al-Qader's evaluation of the situation.
Ben-Gurion says:
"If Jerusalem falls,
all the rest doesn't matter
Ben-Gurion
March 1948
The defeat of the convoys
truly harms Jewish morale
because it was considered, at least by
the public, as the beginning of devastation.
Ben-Gurion orders
not to wait for the British to leave
and to switch
to the offensive immediately.
The Haganah commanders hesitate
due to a lack of weapons.
Golda Meir raises 50 million dollars
from American Jews
and Czechoslovakia sells
used weapons to the Haganah
from WWII.
The Irgun and Lehi join forces
with the Haganah
and the real balance of power
starts to become clear.
Out of all the 1.3 million Arabs
who were living in Palestine at the time,
there were 5,000 fighters.
Half were with the Holy Jihad
and half were with Qawuqji
in the Arab Liberation Army.
The Jewish community, half in size,
650,000
had 24,000 in March,
five times more, half of the population...
That's a ratio of one in ten
in recruitment.
The Palestinians are a few thousand men
who have one kind of rifle or another,
they're not hierarchically organized
and they are volunteers.
Whereas the Jewish community
prepared the war
on an intelligence level.
They had "village files"
for all the Arab villages,
which came in handy
during the war itself.
It was like a coil
that had not yet been used.
The Jewish military power
had not yet been manifested.
The Palestinians worriedly follow
the Jewish coil preparing for action
and try to narrow the gap
in the arms race.
Abd al-Qader al-Husseini
traveled to Damascus in March 1948
to beg the Arab League leaders
to supply him with the arms and money
they had promised.
They nearly kicked him out.
They said: Don't be ridiculous,
you can't do anything.
Then suddenly, while he was
in Damascus asking for help
he hears that the Jews
captured the Qastel.
Indeed, while Abd al-Qader
is begging
the Arab League in Damascus
the Haganah sets out on
the war's first operation,
Operation Nachshon,
to open the road to Jerusalem.
On April 2nd after a bitter battle,
they capture
the village situated near the road,
Al-Qastel.
Usually they went out on retaliatory actions
and came home.
They had never captured an Arab village
and remained in it.
We can't protect our settlements
as long as the roads to them
are blocked by Arab villages.
So if a convoy can't
go up to Jerusalem,
because there's Lifta and Deir Yassin
and Saris along the way,
we won't escort convoys
and get shot at from the mountains,
we'll capture the ranges
and the villages on them.
Meanwhile in Damascus
the heads of the Arab League refuse
Abd al-Qader's request for help.
He says to them:
"You are criminals.
You are traitors.
"History will judge you
for abandoning Palestine.
"I will capture Al-Qastel
"and die, I and all my fighters."
Abd al-Qader al-Husseini
April 1948
He returned discouraged and upset
and announced to his men:
We're getting back Al-Qastel,
first thing.
He got there at night,
gathered a few hundred of his men,
and accidentally walked
straight into a Haganah position.
One of the soldiers who sees them
approaching says: Marhaba, ya jamaa.
Abd al-Qader says:
Hello, boys.
Only then the position's commander
realizes something's wrong
and unleashes a burst of gunfire
from his Sten.
Khalil al-Sakakini who, as we mentioned,
had been documenting the conflict in his diary
since World War I writes:
"If there is one person who deserves the epithet:
'The entire country walked behind his casket,'
"it is Abd al-Qader."
His funeral in Jerusalem is huge.
He is the admired figure
of the great leader who dies.
It's a terrible blow.
As if the admired leader's death
is not enough,
during the funeral
rumors from Deir Yassin
start spreading in the crowd.
The Irgun and Lehi
capture Deir Yassin
where they carry out a massacre.
There's a big argument
about what kind of massacre, etc...
They didn't make all the villagers
or most of the villagers stand
against a wall and then shot them,
that's not what happened,
and that's the acceptable definition
of a massacre.
What did happen there
was that during the fighting in the village
entire families were killed.
Families fled from their homes
when they heard gunfire,
they were killed on the streets,
some were taken captive
and were then murdered,
there were several atrocities
that occurred there
during the conquest
and right after the conquest
which together
are called "war crimes."
110 villagers are killed,
85 of them are women and children.
Hundreds of Arabs from Deir Yassin
flee their village
and arrive in Jerusalem in the middle
of Abd al-Qader's funeral.
They tell about the atrocities
that were committed in Deir Yassin,
but they're not the only ones
talking about the atrocities,
the Jews also talk about
the atrocities a great deal.
The Irgun and Lehi
loaded people on trucks
and drove them through
the streets of Jerusalem.
A victory parade through Jerusalem.
Masses of people
gather in Mahaneh Yehuda
and cheer and throw tomatoes
at the trucks with
the Deir Yassin captives.
The Jewish leadership strongly
condemns the events in Deir Yassin
but also fully understands
their tremendous
psychological impact.
Deir Yassin is truly
a turning point in the war.
The whole country was talking about
Deir Yassin, Deir Yassin, Deir Yassin,
as if: They're going
to do a Deir Yassin to us too.
Yigal Allon calls it
a "whispering campaign,"
psychological warfare. They say:
The Jews are about to attack you,
you'd better leave.
If up till then
the Palestinians thought
they were strong enough
to stand against the Jews,
these two events
were very traumatic
for the Palestinians.
The death of the admired leader
on one hand
and the Irgun and Lehi's attack
on Deir Yassin.
The sense of a turning point
in the war is reinforced
by Qawuqji's failed attempt
to capture Kibbutz Mishmar Haemek.
The Palestinians retaliate
later in April
when they attack a convoy
to the university
and Hadassah Hospital
on Mount Scopus
and kill 77 of its people.
The number of casualties on the Jewish side
will continue to rise at a staggering pace.
Some of them are killed just days,
sometimes even hours
after getting of immigrant ships.
The convoys continue to be an
easy target for the Palestinians,
and in besieged Jerusalem
there is a stringent rationing of food
and even water.
In the rest of the country
the Haganah forces are more successful
in taking control of the roads
and of mixed cities.
Tiberias is captured, and its Arab residents
leave under the auspices of the British.
The next Palestinian domino tile
is Haifa.
At the end of 1947
in Haifa
there are 70,000 Jews
and 70,000 Arabs.
The Jews control Haifa topographically
because the Jewish neighborhoods
are up on top,
but nevertheless
there are Arab groups
who open gunfire on Jews.
The Jews of Haifa suffered from
Arab sniper fire and bombs for months.
While the Arab neighborhoods
were being captured
the Haganah used
the mortars they had,
which the Arab side didn't have,
and fired them into the city.
They started firing from up on top,
on all the Arab neighborhoods
for many, many hours.
I interviewed some of the people.
They said that as soon as the bombing started
from the mountain
down on the Arab neighborhoods
people started panicking.
We all ran towards the port
thinking that perhaps the British
would protect us
and prevent our expulsion,
but they actually pushed us more and more
onto the boats and ships.
A UP news agency
correspondent reports:
"Fishing boats, ships and sailboats
sailed from Beirut to Haifa
"to bring Arab refugees to Lebanon.
"The sight really reminds me
of the Dunkirk evacuation."
UP news agency correspondent, 1948
Ben-Gurion looks down onto
the deserted downtown from Hadar Hacarmel.
"A terrifying and fantastic sight.
"A dead city, a corpse city.
"How could tens of thousands of people
without any sufficient reason
"leave their cities, homes and wealth?"
David Ben-Gurion
May 1948
Ben-Gurion stands and asks:
How could they flee?
But let's imagine you're there,
there are bombs,
you've heard about Deir Yassin,
and there's no leadership
at this stage, most of them had left.
There was no directing voice in Palestine
on the ground
to tell people what to do,
and there was chaos.
It seems that most of those who fled
think that by intervention
of either the UN or the Arab armies
they'll be able to return,
that their desertion is temporary,
just for a few weeks.
Ben-Gurion sums up
his visit in Haifa:
"It is not our job
to see to the return of the Arabs.
"When they flee,
we don't need to run after them.
"What happened in Haifa can happen
in large parts of the country."
David Ben-Gurion
May 1948
Already in February 1948
Ben-Gurion says:
The campaign will continue
for months
and in due course
the demographic situation in Palestine
may very well change in our favor.
Plan Dalet, according to which the Haganah
takes action on the ground,
translates the demographic desires
into security considerations.
In the opening part it says
that it is a plan to reinforce and defend
the soon-to-be established
Jewish state.
To do so,
the main transportation routes
that connect
the areas of Jewish settlement
must be in our full control.
Therefore many authorities were delegated
to the brigade commanders
which also include the decision
"to destroy, to burn down..."
"the Arab villages that are located
along these main routes."
There's a carte blanche for the
brigade and regiment commanders
to do whatever they want
and they won't be criticized for it.
Plan Dalet continues
to be implemented.
By the end of April Jaffa is also captured
and is almost completely empty.
In Jaffa, out of 70,000, like in Haifa,
only 2,000-3,000 Palestinians remained,
all the rest became refugees.
After Tiberias, Haifa and Jaffa
the next mixed city that is
emptied of its Arabs is Safed,
which is captured in early May.
On the other side, the long siege
on the Etzion Bloc settlements
brings about their fall.
The Palestinians execute
dozens of the bloc's defenders
while crying out:
Deir Yassin! Deir Yassin!
The day after the bloc's fall,
on Friday, May 14th, 1948
the High Commissioner leaves Palestine,
marking the end of the British Mandate.
At 4 pm
the Provisional State Council assembles
in the hall of the Tel Aviv Museum.
David Ben-Gurion declares
the establishment of the State of Israel
but does not declare
what the state's borders are.
When you declare a state
during war
you leave all the options open.
You don't close the door
to the possibility of more land.
Despite the war that the fledgling state
was enduring,
the Declaration of Independence
includes the following paragraph:
"We appeal -
in the very midst of the onslaught -
"launched against us now for months
to the Arab inhabitants
of the State of Israel
"to preserve peace and participate
in the upbuilding of the State
"on the basis of full
and equal citizenship."
From the Declaration of Independence
May 14th, 1948
The Zionist Movement can't...
It was Ben-Gurion's perception,
can't exist in the Middle East
without peaceful relations or at least
non-fighting relations with its neighbors.
After five months of the Arabs
attacking the Jews
I think Ben-Gurion
is very much interested
in as many Arabs
as possible leaving
and that no equal-rights citizens
remain in the state,
but of course
he doesn't say that.
He says they can stay,
because that's what you say
in declarations of independence.
Celebrations of the birth of the new state
end the next day
when Egyptian fighter planes
bomb Tel Aviv,
giving the signal
to the Arab nations to invade.
The Egyptian government
announces that:
"The objective of the invasion
is to restore security and order
"and put an end to massacres
perpetrated by Zionist terrorist gangs
"against Arabs and mankind."
Egyptian Government
May 1948
The Syrians announce:
"We shall restore the country
to its rightful owners."
Syrian President Shukri al-Quwatli
May 1948
Hundreds of thousands
of Palestinian refugees,
most of whom
went to Arab countries.
Some went to the capitals
of Arab countries.
And there was pressure from the Arab
public opinion on these administrations,
some of which did not even
want to intervene in the war.
They may not have joined
the fighting without that.
They're saying,
at least openly:
We're coming
to protect our brothers
because they're being
conquered and massacred.
The invasion of the expeditionary forces
of the Arab countries
wasn't aimed to establish
a Palestinian state.
It was aimed to maintain
Palestine's Arabness
and then they'd each
get their share of plunder.
Jordan invaded Palestine
because Abdullah decided:
I'm invading in order to take control
of the West Bank
and East Jerusalem
and annex them to Jordan,
so that my desert country,
which is nothing in terms of importance,
will at least have the holy sites.
I'll get al-Aqsa,
and I'll be somewhat compensated
not only politically,
but religiously too.
Egypt, Syria and the Iraqi army
intervene to prevent Abdullah
from annexing the Arab part
of the Partition Plan.
Whatever the motives
of the invasion might be,
the Israel Defense Forces,
which were founded with the state,
now need to deal
with a tremendous challenge:
Five regular armies
attacking from three directions.
The idea that was formed
beforehand by the Arab states
was to create a belt
that would get tighter and tighter
around what they call
"the Zionists' capital,"
and eventually capture Tel Aviv.
During the next three weeks
the IDF sustains heavy losses
but withstands the challenge heroically.
In the south,
the Egyptians are blocked at a bridge
that is later named Ad Halom (Up to Here).
In the north, Degania's defenders
stop the Syrian artillery.
On the eastern front
Israel is not as successful
and the Jordanian Legion
takes control of Judea and Samaria
which was supposed
to be part of the Arab state,
but also loses the Jewish quarter
in the Old City.
On the borderline between
Arab and Jewish Jerusalem
a separation barrier is built.
And not for the last time.
But ultimately
when the UN imposes
a ceasefire in the middle of June
the borders of Israel
are very similar to its borders
before the invasion.
Some 20 Jewish settlements
were captured during the fighting
as opposed to 200 Arab settlements,
whose residents fled or were driven out.
The number of refugees
surges to 350,000.
The UN takes advantage of the truce
To send a [mediator to our area
The first of many
The Swedish Count Bernadotte.
The Arab states place the condition
That remains on the negotiation table to this day
The return of the
Palestinian refugees to their homes.
When Bernadotte arrives here
in June 1948
his main goal is to stop
the flow of Palestinian refugees
out of Israel.
On June 16th, 1948
at a meeting of Israel's cabinet
there is a consensus, without voting,
not to allow the return of the refugees.
And orders are given to IDF units
along all the borders
to stop, even with gunfire,
the return of the refugees.
Moshe Sharett says
in that cabinet meeting:
"Had anyone arisen among us
and said that one day
"we should expel all of them,
"that have been madness,
"but if this happened
in the course of the turbulence of war...
"The aggressive enemy brought this about
and the blood is on his head.
"These are all the spoils of war,
"compensation for
the Jewish blood spoiled.
"They are not returning,
and this is our policy,
"that they don't return."
Moshe Sharett
June 1948
It doesn't matter whether
or not there was a master plan.
What matters is
why they didn't let them return.
And that's the main question.
Why they didn't let the refugees return.
-Why?
Because they want a Jewish state
with less Arabs.
The tables have already been turned
and their ability to see the state
being established with very few Arabs
and with a flow of refugees
which ultimately succeeds
in creating this state
as supposedly homogeneous
seemed to them
like a better solution
than trying to listen to the UN.
The Jewish leadership realizes
there is a demographic turnaround here
that they call a miracle
Ben-Gurion writes:
I'm going up to Jerusalem
and the whole way
is empty of Arabs.
The Jews who came here
feel uncomfortable among Arabs.
They don't know Arabic,
they don't care about Arabic
or about Arabs,
and in places where
there is a substantial Arab majority
they feel alienated, foreign,
they feel fear.
This yearning for
a Jewish surroundings
is something that
was shared by a large part
of the Jewish community
regardless of political affiliation.
Israel's refusal to discuss
the refugees' return
brings Bernadotte's endeavours
to a halt
and the truce crumbles into
10 days of battle.
Among other things, the IDF
sets out to expand the corridor
between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Ben-Gurion summed up
the achievements of the war
up until the first ceasefire
and said: But between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem
we still have two thorns in our side.
"While the fighting was in progress,
we had to grapple with a troublesome problem:
"the fate of the civilian population
of Lod and Ramle.
"Not even Ben-Gurion
offered any solution
"and during the discussions at the operational HQ
he remained silent
"as was his habit
in such situations.
"When we walked outside,
Allon repeated the question:
"What is to be done
with the population?
"Ben-Gurion waved his hand."
Yitzhak Rabin
July 1948
People like Yitzhak Rabin and Allon
understood exactly
what Ben-Gurion wanted
even without him
waving his hand.
You expel them
because you want
no Arabs in the central region.
Not because they're endangering you,
not for self-defense,
but due to a geo-strategic concept.
The Israeli forces capture the city,
the city surrenders,
many people are hiding
in a mosque.
There's a lot of controversy
over what exactly happened,
but we do know that there was
a massacre in the mosque.
During the two hottest days of 1948,
it was the month of Ramadan.
They force 10,000 people
with families that have small children
to walk from Ramle
to Ramallah or Al-Bireh.
"A multitude of residents
walked on after another.
"Occasionally you encountered a piercing look
from one of the youngsters in the column
"and the look said: We have not yet surrendered.
We shall return to fight you."
Palmach officer Shmarya Guttman
July 1948
The expulsion of Lod and Ramle
will become first and foremost
in the Palestinian Nakba stories.
Israel will claim that
it is an exception
that proves the rule.
There's a problem with
using the term "expulsion."
Expulsion is usually considered
when an IDF unit
goes into a certain village,
the villagers are still there
and the IDF says to them:
"You have 24 hours
"to pack your bags and
get out of here or we'll shoot you."
That's expulsion.
If people flee a village
that is being fired at,
or a neighboring village is being fired at
and it scares them, so they flee,
that's not exactly expulsion,
but it's not exactly
fleeing willingly.
It's something like
being driven away
because ultimately
most of the IDF units
and IDF officers and officials
wanted them to flee.
Is it expulsion or flight?
How can you even decide
on such a question?
And like idiots,
we sat there and counted
in how many place there was flight,
in how many places there was expulsion,
to get our heads around this story,
while it's not even the question.
The government decision
was not to let the refugees return.
That is the Nakba.
In war,
like Abd al-Qader al-Husseini said,
it's us or them.
It's the good against the bad,
the right against the wrong,
the winners against the losers.
But more than 70 years
after the war
we must acknowledge the fact
that this reality is more complex
and less clear-cut.
The problem is,
as long as the war continues
it's hard to acknowledge
the complexity of this reality.
And as long as it's hard to acknowledge
the complexity of this reality
the war continues.
Catch '48.