lived most of my life here and i have written several books on the history of the conflict and particularly on the history of the one hundred forty eight war i started to be interested in middle eastern history in general as history of palestine altogether and that really pushed me towards doing some more focused researched part of my academic career and i decided to go and do it outside of israel in order to have  another excellent supervisor rojo when today's the director of the center for middle eastern studies in harvard university and through them i also started to have a more neutral i would say was i knew was wrong and something or they knew was in there even and that i needed to go myself and look at the history of the place and after consulting with my supervisors we decided the day would work on the nine hundred forty eight history and i chose the i started by looking at the british policy ninety forty eight because i thought they disliked both sides to such an extent that that would probably mean that they had a more neutral position than the others on the on the whole situation in fact when i started working looking at the archives and they should say that both in israel and in britain there are regulations states in around one hundred seventy eight when i started working i was one of the first ones to look at documents which had been an accessible inaccessible until that time to most of the scholarly community and i thought i would be interested in the british policy but the more i looked at the archives the more i was drawn into the story of forty eight itself rather than to the story of the british policy i didn't finish sedation on the the basis for the conflict between israelis and palestinians and there it is in the as an educated israeli who had already one degree from university i knew very little about what happened in the most important  in our country's history and ever since then which is let's say the beginning of the one nine hundred eighty s i became i will have to admit i became obsessed with nine hundred forty eight because it's like i suppose it's like an american who would go back to either seventy seventy six or eight in sixty five and would feel that he knew very little about the theatre and that's what he knew was all distorted so it's quite a shock it's  eight which for me was very crucial and what i found totally contradicted what i learned and what i was told through the israeli official educational system through my service in the army and through my general interest in history and politics the first was that in one hundred forty eight we were brought up to believe in israel that this was a war between a davis and a goal yes and because the davis succeeded against all odds to to win the ninety forty eight war it produced the myth of the invincible israeli army which meant the israelis felt that there was super superman and you can really have no chance of winning any any kind of a battle now i also remember seeing in one of the many atlases many of the maps on the history of the conflict that there was always this famous metal nine hundred forty eight you very clear that there was at the beginning of the war a parity in the number of soldiers in both sides and very early on in the war the jews had the upper hand in terms of soldiers i mean mission you know just sticks and so on was not and we or i say we because i learned later on that i was not the only one who worked on the issue benny morris and other historians later to be known as a new historians work more or less at the same time and we all came to the same conclusions and we found all i found that the leaders of the jews in palestine knew exactly the balance of power so they produce an atmosphere of fear saying that the think about the american public it was very important to send to the american public that israelis constantly under the danger of being and he'll eat it and he will eat it or exterminated which blurs all of your skates any any american the expense of the palestinians and because they had such a good agreement with the strongest are of army it meant that it even reduced more the danger from the arab world to the young jewish state and  that the greenman to divide what used to be mandatory published time in the river jordan and the mediterranean between the hashemites people came from the peninsula with the help of the british and created their own kingdom next to palestine and the who came from abroad at the expense of the indigenous population also had very far reaching implications to my old concept of equality so that was number point number one the second point even is more important to my mind is th that the population of palestine was called upon by its own leaders and by leaders from other arab countries to leave and make way for the invading out of armies and with a promise to come back after the victory would be secure this is for me the most fascinating and tragic part of the story i found out that five found out that because of the way that the united nations petition plenty of all the don't want to go into too many beaters but let me just put it in three very short and clear stages so i think it will be clear to the viewers the united nations offered to divide palestine into two parts almost i would to equal part fifty percent of the jews fifty percent to not only on the fifty of the fifty percent promised by the united nation but an additional almost an additional thirty percent of the  that is to say eighty percent of palestine according to the jewish perception was to be the state of israel even before the war of one hundred forty eight in fact if you look at the map today the west bank and the gaza strip are the twenty percent which next to the jordanians as part of the agreement with the jews prior to the nine hundred forty eight now in that in their lou remaining eighty percent of palestine there were six hundred sixty thousand jews and meant having a state with a jewish majority if not jewish exclusivity and definitely if you look at the at the situation it was clear that if the jews were not to move anyone out of palestine out of the perspective israel they would be a minority within the state of israel and in the tense of much on the tense of march nineteenth forty eight the jewish military and political command have decided to cleanse palestine to expel as many palestinians as possible out of the nine hundred something we don't know even today how many exactly were expelled we know that it moves between seven hundred fifty thousand to eight hundred  to any such message coming in the radio there was no television coming in the air or and i found no evidence for anything in writing and in fact we no know for sure there was no such call there was  palestine now we're talking about nine hundred thousand people who lived for hundreds of years not cells and of years mostly in villages in the eleven towns and when the war ends five hundred villages are destroyed eleven towns are gone seven hundred fifty thousand maybe eight hundred thousand of the one hundred thousand become refugees their land they own most of their land in palestine the and the main responsibility according to my historical research lies with those people who decided to expel the zionist the dish so that's point number two first and foremost we have david been was the chairman of the executive committee of the jewish agency and later the first prime minister of israel a very powerful man most of the crucial decisions have to go through him if he had been against it but he had people who supported him eagle alone should they are with how to execute the transfer and what to do after the transfer if they can cause people to flee that's the best if they have to put people on trucks and transfer them that's all alright if they have to  even peace loving movement like the quakers had they been such a similar situation would have admitted to more than one massacre it's so ridiculous of these very thought that they can sort of be let off with their own official history of a saying book about the ethnic cleansing of palestine because i realized how little do we still know about it the planning the execution so on because i when i started my work as an historian i thought the whole historical  lies within the documents the archives the written sort of documentation but then i realize the people who leave behind that documented evidence are the  and through that project i realized how little we know about what actually happened in each village and village and how exactly the command from above to cleanse palestine became a reality on the ground  third point which is no less important thing than the other two which contradicts the official still graphy the fish and narrative is the whole story about the peace efforts after the forty eight war the israeli official is still graffiti is that israel has the israeli leaders stretched their hand and waited for the arab side for the arab side to you know take the opportunity and conclude peace treaty with israel divide the land into two states allow the palestinian refugees to return to their homes and you have to remember that most of the homes were still very forty eight and internationalize the city of jerusalem and effect the  do afterwards in the war itself and after the war it was not and in fact there was a chance for finding a different kind of a solution to the conflict in palestine but it was very useful for the israeli government later on for the enter such beats peace negotiations but on the country because the israelis were very happy with the results of the war and they wished they didn't see any need to go into negotiations which might change their or they had gained during the war so so that was my the major revelations about forty eight when i have to say and repeated it was not only my only my work it's the work of that group called a news story and we're not that many with three or four israelis dorian's who were working at the time at the same time on the same marco's reaching the same conclusions or portraying the same picture about the past how does the israeli public or anybody deal with what you're suggesting it was a long process of reaction which has its ups and downs and i would try and describe it because we came to the public arena if you want to call into the public  reaction it was very suspicious and it came through the articles in the printed press in the press and there was an attempt to just the global reaction was very different in very respectful and respected academic centers we our books were accepted works were regarded as solely started accepting at least part of what we were saying maybe not the whole picture not maybe not every into petition we gave to the facts about ninety forty eight but the skeleton of the story and in the end the  started in the electronic media in the printed media it was it was quite public it's a small country now the debate the reached its peak is or was still at the at the highest level of public attention as long as the peace process continued because it was very relevant to the peace process and affected one point there was a beaut public debate between what can be that would bother in the evening to sort of watching television whatever going here and historical the big and that was a very lively debate and i think it really many people even who didn't agree with this agreed that we did something very very positive to the israeli academia and to these radio research