the land known as the holy land is the birthplace of three of the world's principal religions judaism christianity and islam and has been a contested area since twelve hundred b c the original inhabitants the can were conquered in one thousand b c by the jews and for about three hundred years for the next fifteen hundred years a series of conquest and occupations left a residual jewish population in the area of less than twenty percent the rest being predominantly muslim and christian arabs during the eighteen hundred a nationalist movement among the jews and diaspora emerged in response to persecution these jews known as  reestablish jewish sovereignty in palestine during world war one the major imperial powers including britain france and russia were allied against germany in turkey and vied for control of the middle east and its newly discovered oil fields skillfully played off the need for the support of the jewish communities in each of these nations for the war effort in order to get backing for their settlements in palestine  assimilation into european culture in russia because of all the anti semitism unlike what was going on in western europe and they needed a country where they could call their own and so they looked back to where they had been two thousand years before and so once  people were highly militant and they criticized the first way because the first wave came over and while they purchased land absentee land owners by the way not palestinians who bought up the land of the one nine hundred centuries they did not expel the palestinians they used to work as labor and when you had the militant zionists who were very close to communism far right part left wing hardline people came in they said only jewish labor can build a new israel and you cannot have palestinian labor you say so they were very critical of this and at the same time they were quite open about their objectives so the palestinians were very might not have gone anywhere except for world war one and then in world war one when you have this conflict that includes the middle east you have the imperial powers allied britain and france with russia who had often been at onst total odds during most of the one nine hundred century quite often over the scramble for power the scramble for territories in africa as well as southeast asia you have this tremendous explosion this wasn't the beginning of imperialism but it was the real push we might say  and much more occupation particularly by france and north africa well what many people don't know is that a world war one your subjects from these these colonies are areas that you controlled you had them fighting for you  europe not just in the middle east you know tens of thousands of indians fighting their excedrin many muslims the french had many people from north africa they had people from west africa senegal exciter all in the trenches you say you want them happy you don't want them opposed to you and they're very worried about muslims particularly responding to this caleb will call for holy war against the british french and russians so you want to get an arab leader to revolt and there had been a lot mecca before so finally you get this correspondence in the last five months of nine hundred fifteen in which it appears that the british are promised independence in many areas with only certain areas excluded and well technically palestine was never included in the final version of the hussein mcmahon correspondence but the british had no intention of living up to any of it because they'd already had the french promise for syria and so they were very vague about what might be excluded subject to the interests of our ally france was saying agree with this and what was subject to the interests of our ally france with all of syria which then in the  sixteen and the french agreement became was it was awarded to the sphere of influence or control theory in lebanon to france and the british got control of iraq palestine was to be neutral then zionism comes along again because the leader of zionism is a briton vitamin has many close ties with british statesman and they want to declaration promising palestine to them and it's finally made in november  nineteen for wartime reasons weitzman has many close ties with british statesmen and they want to declaration promising palestine to them and it's finally made in november one thousand nine hundred nineteen for wartime reasons because by this ton the  the russians were about to collapse you had one revolution in march and now you're going to have a second one in november with the bolsheviks come in you're trying to forestall that in of russia goes out of the war you're terrified because germany can then put all  troops against you and france on the western front the united states it's in there that and so while there was a great deal of sympathy in the lloyd george david lloyd george government and arthur balfour was the foreign minister war time expediency played a major role because the argument was the way it was presented by vitamin and people was that if you promise palestine to the jewish people as a national home then you got so many both were jews they'll be totally sympathetic and they'll stay in the war conversely there are many americans who want to see this and this may influence would you wilson to actually commit troops because wilson had committed the united states to the war materially or but troops had not really com as a matter of fact it had no influence but troops did begin coming in in january and february of one nine hundred eighteen and without them germany might have won the war in a major offensive that happened in march here you had the victorious powers coming together and one of the deals after the war was that the victors could take all the cloak colonial possessions of the losers so this is gradual parceling out between the british french and the japanese inhabitants of a country should be considered as the primary concern if we're allowing european rulers to come in at the not going to be independent then the will of the population must be considered so it can't be colonies and so you created the idea of mandates in a mandate meant that anyone who took over a territory knew were otherwise in say palestine iraq syria and lebanon which had never existed as countries before a noun divided up and they become countries and they become mandatories of france and britain and the way you get around the idea of colonial spoils and all that is the say the mandate obligates you to prepare the inhabitants of these countries for self government at some time in the future but then palestine became a special case because the british violated the provisions of the mandate for palestine because they put the balfour declaration into the palestine mandate you say what do this mean it meant that for palestine the wishes of the inhabitants ninety percent arab would not be listened to and they would not be developed for independence it jews once they came in through immigration you say they would be allowed to develop and so it's really with the palestinian mandate and a violation of the mandatory provisions to give designers the right to create a majority of jews to create a palestinian state that the real palestinian is zionist complet begins with very few allusions on both sides and the scientists themselves knew quite well that the palestinians had national identity and they were fighting  jabotinsky was head of the right wing revisionist party likud is that today they wanted to control jordan as well trans jordan at the time to get just the west bank but he said look ladies and gentlemen he said in one nine hundred twenty one he said i've never heard of any people a welcoming the people who are going to conquer them and take them over and deprive them of their land we're going to fight them and his idea was that this would be an aryan wall that you have to impose your will on arabs  palestinians to show them that you are all powerful and ultimately they will submit so that a standard too was that you were going to have to crush the palestinians now the palestinians really didn't have very much power they couldn't get money in from outside the labor zionist the official zionist movement people don't know this was not the most powerful movement in palestine even though it was the official representative to britain of zionism behind vit london bangor in in palestine but the major investment in palestine was by independent jewish investors the americans george brandeis lou brandeis when they broke away from  labor zionism because they want socialism and they want to be controlled so it was really private investment more than anything else not the socialist labor zionism that got most of the land that you actually bought which was by one nine hundred forty eight still only one third of  land and palestinians were still two thirds of the population when hitler comes to power in one nine hundred thirty three you begin to have a situation and everyone knows what hitler is about and when he comes in you begin to get a course anti jewish laws races laws forbidding marriage with ariens and things like this and then it gets worse you're barred from employment and even before you really get the major choose looking at this and saying we're can we go and the nats seats are trying to encourage them to go and it's actually in the arrangement made with zionists in palestine so that german jews who want to go go to palestine and have the equivalent of their wealth leaving their property behind transferred so that they get the value of their possessions in palestine you say and so suddenly in one thousand thirty three thousand thirty six thirty seven you almost triple the populate jewish population of palestine because of these events in europe and the well to comes over is to very significant because this influx and some of it's from  against jews in poland as well during the time is able to build an infrastructure an industrial infrastructure that you've never had before you get a middle class upper middle class people with money to invest you get new industries which are not going to affect the palestinian arabs are totally separate from it and this is quite a different class of people than a panelist workers who are coming over in the twenty's that the labor designers were bringing over so it transforms things and with many other issues that are going on or ultimately leads to an arab revolt that is going to happen from one hundred thirty six and will not be fully crushed until nine hundred thirty nine and this is an arab revolt in it is the spear against what is seen suddenly you know the jewish presence hasn't been that much before but now suddenly you're getting a very large jewish presence so you seem to be losing ground in this way you become aware some of you that your leadership may have been some of that selling land to to sign this you have increasing expulsion from lands that are bought because the idea of jewish labor  also that this was in jail or in alienable jewish land and that meant that once jews bought land it could never be sold to a non jew and arabs living on the land would be thrown out and so while their percentage is not that large it is inability of the palestinian leadership to oppose this in any form whatsoever and so you ultimately get this revolt that is sparked actually by it's interesting this man shake property you're homeless cetera et cetera and so the revolt explodes dies down for a bit and the british women and propose a partition of palestine in the peel commission report of one nine hundred thirty seven and it's in reaction to that they get the real explosion of the arab revolt from later in one nine hundred thirty seven with the major casualties down to the early one nine hundred thirty nine and at one point the palestinian rebels small in a fall of more or less the land holdings in the northwest essentially in northern parts of palestine it was only about twenty five percent of palestine but it had the wealthiest land and it also had an equal population of parents who would have to leave you that forcible transfer presumably they'd be reimbursed but they had been there first and they had developed a situation in industry there long before design is came in so there was that sense of injustice then although the arabs got more land there was also the sense that there was no palestinian state because the way the british proposed this a little complicated the stay was to include trans jordan trans jordan because economically was a basket case and so he was but he was very close to the british so when the peel commission report comes in the arab palestinian arab area is going to be part of trans jordan with arabs are opposed to this from the beginning in part because they're simply not going to rule you see and also because they see that the land they're getting all those much more is a much less fight those scientists were upset because they wanted more land you see because after all let's face it hitler's ains are quite clear at this point in on the one hand the zionist leadership wants to get any state so they can control it and take it as many people as they can independent state of anyone in palestine because world war two it's coming there's going to be a war in the mediterranean europe and if we have independent leaders there we won't be able to act so they put the kybosh on the whole deal  to the boundaries of the partition with the palestinian area they never were they assume that at some point they might be able to take more land and expand and so the arabs in part rebelled against that as well as against their own leaders and it turned into a bloodbath in which then palestinians were turning against each other and the british were aligned with the zionists in terms of crushing it and once you thought you had peace in  europe and to the munich agreements when chamberlain came back in october thirty eight we had peace for our time then the british were able to send a lot of troops and armored cars over to palestine across the arab  ironically as soon as they did that they then turned around in a very cynical deal and undermined their commitment to the zionists in the one nine hundred thirty nine white paper that came out in may but they've been planning this for a while because here they are looking at you know ensuing war which is coming ever closer and they're saying well the arab countries surrounding palestine are getting increasingly upset and what's going on in palestine and it's safe to say that up to that time of the arab revolt in one hundred thirty six you would not had any major concern you had delegation from arab states but keep  all occupied by europeans the french were in syria in lebanon iraq had become independent nine hundred thirty true but with the deal for british air bases and things but nonetheless was much more independent egypt was under the control of britain so  and they change the government in the calling conferences you see to become more concerned and so it's only from that time that you begin to get people arabs in other areas really committed and starting to donate well there's not much you can do well the british are looking at this and they're looking at the war coming up and you have italy in libya and you assume you'll be fighting against mousseline and you have the french in north africa o b o worried more about egypt than the suez canal which is the major thin well what if you begin fighting you're fighting the italians in libya and you have a major arab uprising behind you not just in egypt which almost happened by the way in egypt one hundred forty two but also elsewhere behind your back so you have a situation then where how are we going to keep these people quiet because these arab delegations are getting really angry because their populations are getting angry we've got to promise them something so in the white paper one nine hundred thirty nine you actually say that the balfour declaration was never intended to create a jewish state against the will of the palestinian act well that's nonsense you know it was they were never consulted but you are now saying this and as a result you're saying that you're going to stop jewish immigration it's going to be very limited five thousand here five years i'm sorry fifteen thousand a year for five years up to seventy thousand by thousand year at stopping land sales because this is the other major friction immigration and land sales and in ten years this is that arbitrarily you'll negotiate with the arabs and assign is about what type of state and if they can agree that you will the british unilaterally impose a solution now what that would mean was a awful lot of them you were worried about your arab rulers and the states around and uprisings that might die for attention and troops from what you were going to do elsewhere designers were infuriated but they had no choice you see they had to go along with this have been going and said we'll fight the white paper as if there's no war will fight the wars that there's no white paper initially will cooperate and then we'll fight the white paper is that there's no war we'll fight the war first forget the white paper then we'll fight the hundred forty three on zionists in palestine with allies in the british army and finest in egypt began stealing arms from the british to prepare for war against the british after the war was over and they also had many people who with the british army in europe but these people retain their ties to their superiors in the hard going to the jewish depends groups and they were prepared then to align and to use their training against the british after the war if this was  necessary at this time then once you get the hearo the holocaust being known and that design is then have an excellent case to claim that because of what happened to the jewish people it was all the more necessary to have a haven for them that can only be a state of israel and the palestinian arabs being legal is are saying that we are not responsible for the holocaust we oppose that we condemn that but we also resist the developments that designed it's a claiming they have a right to to have namely to have a state and you begin then to have this whole period from one hundred forty five to forty eight in which the united states american jews were not committed zines and you wanted to arouse them also to the horrors of what was going on and try to push the roosevelt administration to do something also about the atrocities in europe and maybe do something camps this not happen but there's also led to a major split with and zionism because by some in with by some it was still in england and he wanted to negotiate peace to be the british gorean was saying is based in palestine did he come to this meeting in new york forget the british it's facts on the ground we're going to mobilize opinion in the united states against the british are necessary in order to do this and the history is very complicated from one thousand nine hundred five to forty eight but essentially the british are so weakened by world war two we don't realize this that they want a much worse off finally than the french the italians and the germans because we gave those people the marshall plan to develop their economies to stop appeal of communism you see it i mean and we rebuild japan for anticommunist reasons but the british economy remains terribly weak well into own into the one nine hundred sixty s and in the winter of forty six forty seven gas you couldn't buy gas for cars for six months and when it was so bad that people froze in their homes because there was none and of coal and the british were still trying to maintain their empire but you also were so frustrated was signed its resistance and terrorist attacks against the british and the united states truman for sometimes domestic political reasons was you know making statements favorable to zionism infuriating the british well as a result of all of this and when your raja lose his term  foreign secretary ernest bevan of great britain cruel palestine into the united nations ten o'clock they still have the mandate and they said they will withdraw in forty eight but they were no longer responsible for the united nations sent a  committee to evaluate this in the summer of forty seven and they recommended partition and design is the least up to this and the palestinian arabs didn't because they were still two thirds of the population and they felt this was unjust now you can argue all you want about whether they should have all their fault and certainly the israelis have said ever since that the palestinians never lost an opportunity to missed never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity but a lot of powers including israel and quite quite to make quite make quite sure at times that the palestinians would miss that opportunity you know the conditions would be such that they would feel they had no choice but to reject something and would on the left this partition which was approved in the