and the idea was that by blowing up these villages and eliminating their physical presence refugees would be less likely to return since their homes were no longer there and it would make the landscape it would sort of deep palestinian eyes the landscape basically would no longer look like there was a village there so you're racing the memory of palestinian presence on the l is the editor of the english language quarterly magazine of the big deal research center for palestinian residency and refugee rights in bethlehem palestine alternate focus sat down with has a man in his office in the movement is called the war of independence actually go back to europe in the late nineteenth century and the idea was after centuries of anti semitism and actually sort of a peak or spike in anti semitism during that period there were different responses within the jewish community in europe to how to deal with antisemitism and so as we see actually with immigrant communities in europe in north america today one of the very common responses was what we could call assimilation or sort of ducked down and hope nobody notices that you're jewish another response within the community was more sort of radical or even revolutionary which scientists semitism is just one side of the oppression brought about by these european regimes and so they were calling for different things like the overthrow of these systems because they were capitalist and imperialist and so and th anti semitism was just one side of these many different aspects of these oppressive regimes in the late nineteenth century it was sort of there emerged a new response to anti semitism which was very much informed by european culture at the time specifically the idea that if you're european you have some kind of right to go to africa asia latin america and colonize and that the indigenous communities in these areas could be treated the same as the trees and the rocks and the other mineral resources they didn't really have rights so to speak another aspect was this new idea of the nation that humanity is divided into these types of people so there's germans there's british there and for each one of these nations there's some kind of right to a political entity a state  so it's this period that we see german unification under the idea of a state for the german people cetera so the idea was that the jew as a response to anti semitism we can consider the jewish people and this is a unique case because it's a religious group before this idea comes out that this religious group is a nation and deserves a state and by have in this state somewhere outside of europe that we can colonize elsewhere this would be the response to anti semitism the state would protect the jewish people from anti semitism and it would be a place where jewish people could come together and make thrive and also interestingly this idea of the jewish state  is invested with a different sort of utah pick ideas and visions of different kinds of political trends within the jewish community so the jewish socialists in europe thought of the state as the socialist workers state while the fascists  within the jewish community saw this as you know the the ethnically pure jewish state that was in line with their political thinking so there's a very wide spectrum of this movement becomes called zionism and a very wide spectrum of zionist thought what the state would look like and there were even ideas i mean the palestinian community within this thought is largely invisible but as jewish coloniz begins and people begin to realize not only are there people in palestine but there are in fact there's a thriving economy and a culture and it's part of a wider civilization in the region some thoughts begin to emerge as to how to create for example the workers state of jewish and palestinian jewish palestinian workers or of you know one state for all of the people on the land but the idea of the jewish state remains and remains the dominant idea it wasn't always palestine that was the main goal different trends within the zionist movement had different ideas it's notable that the religious jewish establishment opposed zionism overall because it was counter to the teachings  or the scriptures the idea of creating the jewish state before the coming of the messiah was considered a form of heresy by many rabbis and zionists got over this by saying that no by creating the jewish state we could accelerate the coming of the messiah sort of so to make kind of a long story short the decision to come to palestine is made at a conference at the end of the century that's held in basel in switzerland and institutions are set up to facilitate this goal the main institution is one called the zionist organization in the early fifty's it's renamed the world zionist organization and this is the main umbrella of the zionist movement and continues to be until  today the act of bringing jewish people from outside of palestine to palestine survey that responsibility is given to something called the jewish colonization agency after world war one the word colonization is no longer in vogue so the name of the organization is changed to the jewish agency and this becomes a kind of defacto government of the jewish community in palestine and the twenty's thirty's and early forty's and the leadership of the jewish agency become the same people who become the prime minister and the ministers in the government and the leading officials of the israeli state after it's established this the other main organization here is something called the jewish national fund and  was given the responsibility and set up to acquire land and palestine and neighboring areas for the purpose of settling jewish people and in a sense exclusively jewish people this organization also continues to exist today although after nine hundred forty eight it changed its public image because what it began to do was to plant trees in parks and forests which are built on the land of palestinian  refugees most often you can actually see the destroyed villages as you walk through these parks and forests and it set out in earnest i mean most of this required massive fundraising abroad and this money was used both to bring jewish people in through the working of the jewish agency and to try to acquire land palestinians began to wake up to this in the twenty's and what had happened is in world war one the british had defeated the ottoman empire and its allies and so palestine came under british occupation or what was euphemistically called the mandate so palestine was sort of held in trust by the british and what the british had done in one nine hundred seventeen was promised the jewish people a homeland in the land of palestine this was the infamous balfour declaration of nine hundred seventeen and the it's notable that balfour himself was prominent anti semite you know he's on record in the british parliament saying that we shouldn't have to as people in britain and this is sort of one of the early signs of the kind of common interests between the zionist movement which wanted jewish people to leave europe and go somewhere else and many of the anti semitic currents in europe which wanted no jewish people to be in europe now in the twenty's and thirty's the british begin to  really help design as a movement how by facilitating immigration jewish immigration into palestine in the thirty's when there's a palestinian uprising the british begin to arm and train jewish police forces what they called the settlement police  certain jewish military units are trained specifically on how to punish a village which involved home demolitions and gathering people into central spaces and the different kinds of collective punishment and a host of other laws that give preferential treatment to jewish community members in the fields of work in the fields of different kinds of services facilitating the transfer of land from palestinians to the jewish national fund  holocaust there's a large large number of jewish people who just don't want to be in europe any more refugees of the holocaust and what countries like the united states canada britain australia do is they close off their borders to jewish refugees again this is very much a sign of anti semitism in what we call the west and me on the ground meant that a jewish refugee from the holocaust had to have very few options on where to go and one of the only options was palestine so even if they were not ideologically zionist then they would one of their only options was to actually come to palestine  o there's a huge influx of jewish refugees trying to come to palestine and in this sort of horrendous way this is kind of a zionist dream in the sense that there are now many more jewish people who want to come to palestine and the only way to create a jewish state in palestine is of jewish people actually come to palestine the main problem that the zionist movement had and they discover this when they start to come here and see that there's actually people and there is a society and there's an economy and there's a culture is that to create a jewish state you need a jewish majority but the majority is palestinian is the indigenous people who are not jewish so beginning in the twenty's and more earnest and thirty's in the fort the leaders of the movement begin to think in earnest logistically how do we go about creating a jewish state before this again the palestinians were invisible palestinians would voluntarily just leave because they were asked to as it progressed you know there were more i more ideas of how to sort of pay people to leave entice them create job opportunities outside of the country or different proposals on how to get palestinians to voluntarily leave  but also from very early on in the twenty's but definitely in the thirty's as i honestly do is begin to write down their thoughts in letters to one another to other family members etc that the way to create the jewish state would have to be by getting rid of this palestinian majority so that those remaining would be the jewish majority now there is very many ways to do this one way would be to kill off as many palestinians as possible which would be genocide another way would be what was done in south africa where you had an indigenous majority and what the colonizing minority did was said ok you can stay but you don't exist politically no vote no presence and in parliament which means that you don't actually exist politically you only exist as far as your exploitable labor exe and option three is kick out the largest number of the indigenous community which is what the zionist leaders had begun contemplating when they use different words for it transfer population exchange etc but the idea is to entice force as many palestinians as possible to leave and beginning in the thirty's the sort of military wing of the zionist movement begins to put together the actual logistical military plan for how to do this and this plan is revised three times and the fourth version is plan d or in hebrew plan ballot and really what the movement is waiting for is the opportunity to begin the implementation of what's been called the ethnic cleansing of palestine or that forcing the largest number of palestinians to leave the country the opportunity comes when britain after world war two overextended unable to maintain the areas of its vast empire that it couldn't continue to hold on to cheaply specifically india and palestine hands over responsibility of these two places to the united nations the newly formed united nations and says it's your problem now you deal with it and what the united nations does is it send us forms a committee and sends them over to to discuss or to find out to propose what the united nations can do and this committee comes to palestine the palestinians and the arabs boycott the can because there's an understanding that it's looking into how to divide how to create a jewish state on a land that palestinians and arabs had been living on for centuries and didn't see how it was that they were legitimately going to create a jewish state so there was a boycott and so that the people of that committee only spoke to were from the zionist movement for the most part ultimately what the majority of the slight majority in the committee recommends is partition the minority says that no it should remain one state for both people the minority decision is that there should be two states it hands over about internationally operated zone and then the small put the forty three percent of the land the remaining part is to be the arab majority state now it's very important this is called the un partition resolution or un general assembly resolution one eighty one and it's very important to note that even though i mean all the palestinians and arabs opposed it and there's a lot of questions about the legitimacy of this resolution to begin with the resolution itself does not call for population exchange in the case of india it does specifically say that there should be population exchange and there was the horrendous results that we saw with the deaths of thousands of hindus and muslims in the process of population exchange in the case of palestine the resolutions actually quite clear that palestinians and jews have the option of where they want to live they can choose to stay in the part in the piece of land that they are in and they can choose to move to the other one and they have the right fully to citizenship and if they're going to be giving a property they have the right to compensation for that property and so even this fundamental aspect of what's called the partition plan or a resolution one eighty one and up being basically the zionist movement has now received international legitimacy to create its own state now we should note that by this time by nine hundred forty seven the zionist movement with all of the refugees coming from europe and with all of the work of the jewish colonization agency until then had only basically accumulated about six hundred thousand jewish migrants into palestine while there were about one point two to one point three million p n jewish palestinians the one third of the population a far stretch from being a majority also in terms of land the work of the jewish national fund and a lot of it is has a lot of the big question mark on it in terms of sort of buying property from absentee landlords who had acquired the land in pretty tricky ways recruiting palestinian collaborators to buy land because palestinians once they realized what was up stop selling land to the jewish national fund and but had only acquired about six point seven percent of the land a very tiny part of i mean not tiny tiny but a very small part of the land so so here again you know the problem was stated very clearly one hundred forty seven were only one third of the population were only six point seven percent we only control six point seven percent of the land to create this jewish state that we're dreaming of we need the six hundred thousand to become the majority and we need to take control of most of the land  and so the plan is put in place planned which we talked about the military the logistics of how to create this jewish state begins and the plan essentially calls for connecting jewish existing jewish settlements to one another so clearing out palestinian towns and villages between them as well as clearing out palestinian villages from borders with the neighboring arab states in case of arab attack and this is what takes place and i mean the plan officially begins it implementation in march of one thousand nine hundred eighty eight between march and may of that year about half of the palestinian refugees are expelled about three hundred thousand palestinian refugees palestinians become refugees  and on may fourteenth israel is declared an independent after this arab armies invade of course there is also sort of you know the way that the official story is that you know these massive armies come and this little state of israel defends itself and wins and in the course of the war people leave and become refugees so that's the official story of why there are palestinian refugees and why passing refugees are the arab states fault for invading in the first place so of course we should remember that half of these refugees were expelled before any arab state invaded quote unquote but also that most of these arab states were either newly independent or still under some form of mandate system as was the case with syria and lebanon the egyptian army sent in basically soldiers with very little training and very old weapons many of which were dysfunctional and they were they didn't have much success militarily to the point that one of the battalions that almost stayed intact went back to egypt with the express intent of getting rid of the monarchy in egypt and within four years had done so and to  who became the president of egypt after the removal of the monarchy fought in palestine and the only really trained and armed arab army was the jordanian army which also had control over the iraqi army since they were coming through jordan and designers leadership had already sort of made a deal with the jordanians that the jordanians would get the west bank and israel could do what it pleased with the rest of the country and i mean palestinian refugees many of them knew this long before because they saw the behavior of the army the jordanian army when it came in but i mean the research has been done pretty conclusively in these are the archives on this deal  as an israeli professor named obvious lime in a book called collusion across the jordan so so that it wasn't really a miraculous victory it was a much better armed and trained army much which was trained in the fight against the nazis in europe so trained by official european armies and by the british here in palestine there is also i mean so most of the way that the villages the palestinian villages and towns were dealt with in one thousand forty eight was that the army would come in and surround them for two or three sides leaving one side open facing sort of towards the closest border and so the idea wasn't to kill off as many palestinians as possible it was force them to leave specifically to another to cross a border and become refugees usually and there's a general pattern for how this took place the army would come in and use artillery bombardment to force as many people to leave before the ground troops would go in later in one thousand forty eight the israeli military acquired an air force and the villages that were attacked after this experienced aerial bombardment as well after this the village would be occupied physically on by ground troops those who remained would be rounded up in a central area the men would be separated from the women and children the women and children would be forced to flee often with guns blaring behind them the men would you know there where the jewish national fund had kept files on each palestinian town and village which had you know the name of the village the types of crops grown the size of its land but also the names of palestinian collaborators who'd worked with the jewish national fund as well as palestinians who'd been involved with the resistance and so they would often use these collaborators to kind of pick out those who were involved in the resistance they would be executed and then those men who remained would either be put into prison camps into labor camps or forced to leave as well so this is the general pattern but every village has its own unique story as well so some villages hold out for three months four months five months facing a series of assaults military assaults other villages the military bombardment was enough to see to make them so afraid for their lives that they left the use of massacres by the zionist forces was also very effective i mean they committed these massacres but also ensured that news of these massacres would travel so one of the most famous of these is that there yes in massacre in april of one thousand forty eight and i mean the cases of rape and looting and murder and then parading the bodies in the streets of jerusalem made it so that  of this massacre travelled very very quickly and and frightened people to the point where they were much more likely to leave their village in its near jerusalem various scene which is also near bethlehem so many of the refugees here in this area who are from the villages and towns close to bethlehem in jerusalem are ones where it's very common in sort of the neck of a survivor stories to hear that didius in was one of the main reasons that they left news of dead a scene made them as soon as they heard that the zionist forces were coming they left for fear that what happened that they are seeing what happened to that a military a small military units would also come after the village was o town was occupied and the army had moved on the as a small military unit would come in responsible for look looting anything valuable in the homes and then just blowing up the houses and the idea was that by blowing up these villages and eliminating their physical presence refugees would be less likely to return since their homes were no longer there and it would make the landscape it would sort of deep palestinian eyes the landscape basically would no longer look like there was a village there so you're racing the memory of palestinian presence on what by the end of the next around thirteen thousand palestinians had been killed over five hundred thirty towns and villages had been depopulated and destroyed and over seven hundred fifty thousand palestinians have become refugees some palestinians who were displaced from their towns and villages didn't cross the border and sort of remained in the state but living somewhere else these are what we would internally displaced people today there's about three hundred thousand three hundred thousand palestinian citizens of the state of israel who continue to be internally displaced they live in the state they have citizenship in the state but their lands in the village have been confiscated  and they're not allowed to go back to their village and live there many of these villages again have been transformed into jewish national fund parks and forests in other cases it's land that it's now part of  israeli kibbutz or more for a city or town in the cities palestinians who were able to remain in the cities in this very tiny minority were most often concentrated into one neighborhood in the city so in jerusalem the citizens palestinians who pick who remained and became citizens were governed under what we call the military laws turn extension of the emergency laws that the british had put in place one of the defining aspects of these laws was that it control mobility into and out of palestinian villages and those neighborhoods the palestinians were confined to during these years from forty eight to sixty six so it was a you needed written permission from the military commander of your sort of reservation of of your area to be able to leave or come back and