Empire: World History - 300. Gaza: The 1948 War (Part 10)

Episode Date: October 20, 2025

Why did the British decide to end their Mandate in Palestine less than three decades after it began? What was the UN Partition Plan for Palestine and why did the Zionist leadership accept it whilst the Arab Higher Committee rejected it? How did the displacement of thousands of Palestinians during the War of 1948 affect Gaza?  Anita and William are joined once again by Eugene Rogan, Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at the University of Oxford, to discuss the War of 1948 which led to the creation of Israel and the displacement of 700,000 Palestinians.  Join the Empire Club: Unlock the full Empire experience – with bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to miniseries and live show tickets, exclusive book discounts, a members-only newsletter, and access to our private Discord chatroom. Sign up directly at empirepoduk.com  For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com. Email: [e-mail] Instagram: @empirepoduk Blue Sky: @empirepoduk X: @empirepoduk Assistant Producer: Becki Hills Producer: Anouska Lewis Executive Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community, discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpower.com. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Durimpa. Now, in the last episode, we left you, or Caroline Elkins, talked us through a Palestinian-ro-Bel. vault, a report sent to the League of Nations, yet all eyes are turned away as the world enters its next phase of tumult, and that is the Second World War. And with the end of that war,

the mandate entered its last and most fateful phase that led on one hand to the great triumph of the creation of the state of Israel, and on the other to the great catastrophe, the expulsion of most of the Palestinians known to them as the Nakhpa, meaning the catastrophe. Well, here to guide us through what is, I think it's fair to say, one of the most contested territories of history, is a rare figure who is respected by both sides of this conversation. Eugene Rogan, Professor of Middle Eastern History at the University of Oxford. He's the author of two seminal books that tell the story of this land. The Arabs, a history, and the fall of the Ottomans, a friend of the show since our very inception. Eugene, welcome to you. Thanks very much for being with us. It is a pleasure to be back

with you. Thank you, Anita. Eugene, we haven't mentioned there. You actually edited a book, didn't you, on exactly this topic? The War for Palestine, which I edited with Avishlaim and brought together a lot of the then-new historians and other leading scholars on the Nakhba itself in the 1948 war. Ninety-eight war, and that's very much what we're going to be diving deep into here. As we've said, this is highly controversial territory, but we're going to go through it factually and calmly with the help of Eugene. Now, by 1948, Eugene, this. The Zionist leadership has split in two, hasn't it? Both sides wanted the British out, but while the mainstream Zionists under Ben-Gurian were more cautious, especially about the use of violence,

their right-wing rivals, the Ergun and the Stern Gang, were ready to resort to what the British called terrorism. Tell us about that and tell us who the Stern gang are. What do they do and what do they want? Start by looking at Zionism. And Zionism is basically the national movement of the Jewish people seeking the revival of the Jewish people on the land of Palestine. And that mission had been led since Theodore Herzl's demise by the World Zionist organization. And by the time we get to the interwar years, it's been Hein Weizmann, who's been the leading shaper of the international efforts, and David Ben-Gurion, the leader of the Zionist movement in Palestine itself. But that movement does not hold together.

And there is a challenge from what is called the revisionist Zionist movement led by Zev Jabotinsky. And Jabotinsky is far less accommodating in plans for cohabitation between Arabs and Jews. He believed that the only way the Jews had realized their goal of statehood in Palestine was by erecting an iron wall of pure force and driving all Arab Palestinians out of the territory. The iron wall is his phrase, isn't it? It is his phrase. And this was a political platform that appealed to some of the more. radical Zionists, both in Palestine and in the diaspora. And this is where you get the breakaway movements that were inspired by Jabotinsky, the Stern Gang, or the Lehi, and the Ergunswee Leumi,

or the Etzal. And these would be challenges to the position of Ben-Gurion and holding the Zionist movement together. We're going to cover both of those. And also, you will have heard the term use Haganah. I think it would be really helpful to explain the origin stories of all three of these groups, Haganah, Irgun, and the Stern Gang. Who are they? Who makes them up? What is their inception, if you will? So the Haganah is basically the regular army of the Yishuv or the Jewish community of Palestine. And it's governed by the Jewish executive as part of the official Jewish state in the making that was going on under the British mandate. Very different from the experience of Palestinians who really never had the capacity to build such institutions as an army.

the Isshuv did, and that's the Haganah, and they're answerable to Ben-Gurion and his officers. Are they used by the British? What is the motivation of the British in allowing an armed force within their mandate? The British did draw on Jewish volunteers during the Second World War. The British were themselves quite divided between those who were phyllosemitic and were sympathetic to Jewish settlement in Palestine, and those who sided with the Arabs and were less supportive of the Balfour Declaration's promises. And among the phyllosemitic, you had people like Ord Wingate. Who we talked about with Caroline Elkins, this extraordinary figure. Yeah. Your listeners are familiar with Wingate, but he represents one of those Brits who would be training

up members of the Jewish community in Palestine for self-defense and for military action. Some are drawn into military service with the British and patrolling the Eastern Mediterranean, famously, this is when Moshe Dian, famous general in Israel, famous for his eyepatch, he lost his eye to a Senegalese rifleman serving for Vichy, France, off the coast of Lebanon when he was serving with the British in the Second World War. As a regular British soldier? As a regular British soldier. And the British allowed the Haganah arms?

They're allowed to have guns and training and uniforms and that sort of thing? Or what's the rules? The Haganah was not reliant uniquely on British. arms. And so while in the capacity that they were assisting and advancing British security interests, they were armed, there was at the same time an initiative by the Yishuv to acquire arms, particularly in the course of the Second World War, as the bid for statehood would lead the leaders of the Yishuv to see the risk of war. And just for clarity, there's no equivalent Palestinian group. There are Palestinians recruited into the regular army, but you don't have an

equivalent of the Haganah, which is an armed group, working with the British. No, there's no equivalent. There were no Palestinian militiam and working with the British. The closest you get would be the Palestine police, which recruited Arabs and Jews to the police force under British command. But as you will have covered in your last episode, you know, the Palestinians were more or less broken of all military capacities by the repression of the Palestine revolt at 1936 to 39. And they certainly had not recovered from that in the course of the Second World War. So that's the Haganah who are working closely with the British. You have also mentioned two other groups, the Irgun and the Stern Gang. Let's start with the Stern Gang and

their activities in the 1940s. Well, the Stern Gang is an offshoot of the Irgun, so it might actually make sense to begin with the Irgun. The Argun are directly linked to Zev Jabotinsky, the revisionist Zionist. And they had their own youth movement. This was where Menachim Begim was drawn into revisionist Zionism already in the Russian Empire. He had to join Betar and was an ardent supporter of revisionist Zionism. That is the beginning of the Irgun. From the Irgun, you'll have a breakaway movement in the 1940s, led by Abraham Stern. Stern himself was born in Poland, came to Palestine as a young man in the 1920s at the age of 18. So he really is fully established in the Yeshuv by the time we get to the Second World War.

And he is not persuaded of the more moderate position taken by Ben-Gurion to fight Nazism with the British while the British were now implementing measures that were limiting the scope for Jewish statehood. So Abraham Stern believe that you needed to treat the military. British-like a colonial occupier, he took his inspiration from Irish resistance in the IRA and believe that by assassinating key figures, you could change the formula. And so the Stern Gang would emerge as a movement that was seeking to use terrorist tactics to change the reality in Palestine. And in a very similar story to the Irish story that we've also covered here on Empire,

they focus in on those very high up in the British chain of command in the territory. So in In August of 1944, the Stern Gang attempt to assassinate the High Commissioner of Palestine, a man called Sir Harold McMichael. They don't manage to kill him. But in November, they succeed in killing the British Minister of State in Cairo. Tell us a little bit about the killing of Lord Moyne. Well, the assassination of Lord Moyne really established the Stern Gang's notoriety. And for the British, this was Ireland coming to Palestine.

and they were determined to respond in force to crush this movement before it gained traction. And of course, Abraham Stern then became one of the most wanted men in Palestine, and he was tracked down and ultimately was killed by the British authorities. Churchill, who has been a supporter of Zionism up to this point, it gives him pause. I mean, he says, if our dreams of Zionism are to end in the smoke of assassin's pistols and our labours for its future to produce a new set of gangsters worthy of Nazi, Germany, many like myself will have to reconsider the position we've maintained so consistently

and so long in the past. So, I mean, how much did that shake those involved in this idea that a state of Israel is within reach, if one of your greater supporters, is now being turned off the whole idea? Well, here we really come to the crux of the contradiction in Britain's position, since the Belford Declaration. There is a tendency to believe that since the Belford Declaration, Britain had been working to give Palestine to the Zionist movement to make a Jewish state. And I would argue that was never their agenda, that the British had hoped to use the Jewish community in Palestine as partners to help govern Palestine against the expected resistance of its Arab majority. And that the compact minority of Jews in Palestine would be totally dependent on Britain

and in that way totally dependable to work together with the British. But the British, I think all the evidence shows, intended to keep Palestine for their empire. They saw it still as essential for the security of the Suez Canal, and they were resisting the creation of a Jewish state. So in a sense, the actions of the Stern Gang were bringing things to a head, the contradiction between Britain seeming to be favoring the creation of a Jewish state, but in action doing everything it can to limit Jewish immigration to Palestine and to prevent the Jews from seizing statehood and creating Israel. And just again for clarity, the Haganah is legal and is working with the British and is armed partly by them, but the stern gang and the Urgun are both illegal and prescribed

organizations. Prescribed organizations that are not acting like formal militaries, but rather like militias or even as terrorist groups. And I don't use the word terrorist unadvisedly. It's the word that Began himself used for their methods. They saw themselves as deploying terror to change a political stalemate that they thought was to the disadvantage of Jewish national aspirations. And what did figures like Weitzman and Ben-Gurion make of these people? Well, publicly, they denounced the actions of the Ergun and of the Stern gang. In a sense, they had to because they continued to rely on the international community and Britain in particular. to advance their goals in the course of the wartime of destroying Nazi Germany, and then

they still hope to usher in a Jewish state in Palestine. But there are times in the Second World War where we can see that the Haganah was cooperating actively with both the Stern gang and the Irgun. And in that sense, the period of collaboration was to leave all Jewish armed organizations suspect in the eyes of the British authorities. The British, in the course of the Second World War, no longer knew who to trust as the Jewish community of Palestine was rising up in a Jewish revolt that was to prove far more devastating and effective than the earlier Palestine revolt of the 1930s. Right. Eugene, do tell us about the most famous action of the Irgun, the attack on the King David

Hotel. First of all, what was the importance of that as a landmark and what happened afterwards. So the King David Hotel was Jerusalem's biggest poshist hotel, and in the course of the Second World War had come to house the administration of the British mandate authorities in Palestine. In the immediate weeks before the attack on the King David Hotel, the British had conducted a series of operations to clamp down on the Irgun and the Stern gang. And they had seized a group of documents as they made hundreds of arrests that incriminated the Ergun Stern Gang and Haganah as having collaborated. It became imperative to the Zionist executive to eliminate the traces and the evidence of this because it would fundamentally compromise the Haganah standing and that of the

ishuv. And so the people of action here were the Ergoen led by Menachim Begen, himself, a late arrival in Palestine from his native Russia. And we should say, again, for people that don't know this name, Blackmagne goes on to become the Prime Minister of Israel. Absolutely. But in the course of the Second World War, we'd become one of the most wanted men in Palestine. So he was branded by the British as a terrorist.

The most notorious of his actions was the bombing of the King David Hotel. The Ergun infiltrated the basement of the hotel, dressed as milkmen, delivered a series of milk canisters into the basement. gave a warning, but too late to be actioned, and the bomb detonated, collapsed a full wing of the hotel. Over 90 people who killed, most of them Arab, no small number of them Jews, but a large number of British mandate officials. I've got the figures here. I think they're 41 Arabs, 28 Britons, and 17 Jewish workers. So you can see where this was indiscriminate violence, targeting primarily the British presence, but also trying to sap,

the morale of the British to continue to hold on to Palestine against such determined resistance. So, I mean, we have an account of that. So we're talking about the 22nd of July, 1946. And as you say, Eugene, this was sort of a housing point for journalists. And a British journalist called Barbara Baud was there. She'd been reporting from Palestine for a decade. So she was very Ophay with the region. She was walking into the King David Hotel when the explosion went off. And this is how she described it. the boom of exploding admiral roared over the city like a giant thunder clap. The six stories of the southern wing bulged swayed and crashed in the ghastly mountain of crumbling cement, twisted girders and snapped off blocks of masonry, out of which the screams of the

dying rose in a piercing chorus of agony, a whilst mushroom of sepia smoke climbed up into the sunlit sky and rolled away in the awful silence that followed. Now, she survived, but there is something in, you know, that kind of testimony, first-person testimony, that then gets published and republished and syndicated, that is very powerful when it comes to public opinion. And so was this attack on the King David Hotel scene changing in the minds of many countries around the world? It was certainly sea-changing in Britain. And I think the images of the bombing of the hotel, the reports of survivors, the death toll of those killed, there were, you know, atrocious stories that circulated, and I think it generated tremendous outrage.

You know, all this is happening in the aftermath of the Second World War, when full knowledge of the Holocaust is already reaching public consciousness, and yet you could still have very strong anti-Semitic responses to what groups were doing in Palestine when it caused British casualties. and it seemed to many in Britain that this was the ultimate betrayal that the British who had, through the Belford Declaration, paved the way towards the Jewish presence in Palestine, should now be victims of a Jewish revolt like this, provoked just fury in British public opinion. Eugene, what happens to Jerusalem overnight then? How does it transform after an attack like this? But Jerusalem became a security state. And basically the deployment of police, the unrolling of barbed wire, the controls on the free movement of people, were all, as it turns out, vain efforts to try and establish Britain's control over a situation

that was rapidly rolling beyond their reach. They were losing control of Palestine. And remember, this is after the end of the Second World War, where Britain had emerged victorious from that war, but at such a cost. And that cost meant that it had fewer and fewer means with which to respond to overseas challenges. It was still trying to rebuild London from the Blitz. It was dealing with, you know, the impending loss of India. simply did not have the means of the will to be combating this kind of insurgency now in Palestine. There is this feeling that you have in India at this time, which we just had in our partition series, talking about the end of the Raj, when there's just this feeling of exhaustion, the soldiers

want to go home, they fought a major war, or the ambition for empire, which has propelled the British for 300 years, is completely extinguished. They're exhausted, they want to go home, they're broke, and this is just a nightmare. This is a kicked hornet's nest for them. So as you say, you know, post-war exhaustion kicks in. But there's also sort of, you know, the moral difficulty of what do you do, especially if you've got an insurgency and things like the King David Hotel happening at the same time news of the Holocaust and the industrialised wiping out of a people because they are Jewish.

So Britain then what throws its hands up in the air and says, you know what, United Nations, that's what you're for, bye-bye, and passes it all over? I mean, is that how it happens? and is that why it happens? Well, there's one other element, Anita, and you will have covered in your last episode, but in 1939, the British announced a new policy. It was to try and bring an end to the Arab revolt, and it was trying to put a cap on Jewish ambitions.

And that policy basically said that the British would allow five years of reduced immigration, no more than 15,000 a year, a total of 75,000 more Zionist immigrants to be allowed into Palestine, and then no more Jewish immigration without the consent to the majority population, which would never, ever, ever happen. That was going to take the Jewish population of Palestine to 35%.

Compact minority, nothing bigger. This is what, if you like, Ben-Gurion, as well as the radical factions like this stern gang and the Ergun are fighting against. But Britain doesn't have another policy. And so it finds itself in this position of trying to reduce Jewish,

immigration to Palestine after the Second World War. This is where you get the Exodus and all the displaced person boats making the way across the Mediterranean to Palestine and the British continuing to resist to let them in, turning them back, and public opinion internationally is judging the British's action very, very harshly. Eugene, just for those that don't know the Exodus, don't know the novel that was inspired by Leon Uris or the movie, which then followed, which was a major, big Hollywood production. Just briefly tell us what the Exodus was. The Exodus represents all those boats that the Jewish agency hired,

many of them broken down tramp steamers that were not seaworthy, and just loaded them with Jews who survived the Holocaust. They were known as the displaced persons, and they were kept in camps that were called DP camps, displaced person camps. And for the Zionist movement, the idea was, overcome British policy restricting Jewish immigration, flood Palestine with the survivors of the Holocaust,

reach a critical mass to enable the bid to statehood. As long as the Jews would be a minority in Palestine, the chances of ever realizing their goal of statehood would be stymied. And the British continued to resist these tramp steamers, filled to the decks with survivors, people in just deplorable state of health, filthy conditions. The misery of these boats was captured by Leon Uris in his novel Exodus, based on established facts.

But the real story was being carried in the 1940s in the newspapers, and the villain was Britain. The awareness of the Holocaust, it's very hard for us in 2025 to understand how slowly that is entering public consciousness because after World War II and the millions who were killed on all sides, Jewish suffering had not yet been singled out as distinctive. The evil of the death camps was revealed by their liberation and the photographs that emerged of what was done there.

But it was against the background of the millions of Russian victims and all those around the world who died and of nuclear war in Nagasaki and Hiroshima. You know, it just took time for the Shoah to become what it is to us now. And I think it was maybe more of a driver for the Jews of Palestine trying to harness the survivors and to more desperate than ever to create a Jewish state so that there'd be one place in the world where Jews would be safe against ever-facing Holocaust again. So the Jews in Palestine knew what the Holocaust were. The rest of the world, they were waking up to it slowly. But it created a situation in which those displaced person

boats were adding more and more pressure to the British, along with all the violence of the Jewish revolt and the terrorism that they couldn't contain, and all the antagonists. magnetism internationally. When you talk about what leads the British to hand the file onto the United Nations, there was a lot of pressure that led to that decision. We should also just mention the figures. Between 1945 and 1947, the number of British troops in Palestine doubles from 50,000 to 100,000. Now, this is the opposite of what the British want. They want everything to be winding down. They're just about to leave India, and everyone wants to go home. Instead, they're forced to double. And then the price of this, one-tenth of the armed forces in the British Empire now

occupied a territory around the size of Wales. Palestine was costing the British exchequer close to 40 million a year. This is more than post-war Britain can afford. And so they hand the fire on, but the horrors do not stop. Well, I was just going to say, I mean, you've got that much expenditure, that much sort of troop investment. And yet, and yet, in July 1947, there's another incident that takes place that inflames British public opinion. And that is when the Irgun kidnapped and hanged two British sergeants in retaliation for the execution of three of its own members. Tell us a little bit more about that, because it was one of those stories. Again, newspapers have a crucial role to play in this because the Daily Express leads on the front page with a

picture of these hanged men on its front page. It would be hard to overstate the way that inflamed public opinion back home in Britain. The picture of young servicemen being hanged, body's actually been booby-trapped so that those who cut them down would also be maimed or killed. It just, one generated tremendous anger against a Jewish community in Palestine. And, you know, it's shameful to recount, but this led to pogroms against Jewish shops and communities in Britain, in Liverpool, in London, in other cities. You actually had riots targeting the Jewish community of Britain in anger against the hanging of the sergeants in Palestine. But in terms of sapping imperial morale to keep up the fight,

I mean, it was very effective. There just was consensus in Britain that there was no reason for young men to be dying in Palestine against such barbaric people. And I think it served the turns if terrorism pays. I think it was an instance of terrorism paying, but terrible consequences. Right. So that took place in July, and it is in September that Bevan, decides or declares rather that Britain's going to go the following year. So now you've got a clock ticking on all of this. So from the moment you have a clock ticking, Britain is left in the position of impotence. And in my own work, I've had the privilege of interviewing a number of Britons who served in the Palestine police at just this time. And they describe a time

where increasingly the initiative slipped out of the hands of British forces and officials in Palestine. They were clearly no longer seen as relevant. And increasingly, it will be the Jewish community, the Ishuv, that's going on a war footing with the Arab population. And they're just operating over the heads of the British without really any concern. It's clear that the British days are numbered. and with their announcement of, you know, ending the mandate and withdrawing, then everything was up for grabs. And it was a situation in which Palestinians and members of the Yeshuv were both driven by a view that the winner would take all. And in both of their minds, an existential crisis, I guess.

So for those who are seeking to create a safe place for a community that's gone through the Holocaust, this is existential. Either we have this, or we could go through this again. and for the people who live there already, an existential crisis, this is where we live. This is who we are. It's absolutely right, Anita. And again, to view things from the Zionist perspective, coming out of the experience of the Holocaust and 30 years of hostilities with Palestinian neighbors and with surrounding countries, there was no confidence that the compact Jewish community of the issue would

survive the hostility of its neighbors with the British gone. So their position was absolutely existential, and they have the Holocaust at the very forefront of their thinking as the risk that they face if they fail. And for the Palestinian Arabs, they have watched the population of Jews in their country go from under 10% to above 35% in the course of three decades. that means that the ishuv was on the cusp of reaching that critical 51% point where they would be the majority population. They could then say, you know, it's our decision to let as many people in as we want. Exactly so. And so I think for the Palestinian Arabs, it was the growth of the Jewish community that to them made them suddenly realize they were in risk of losing their country to this immigrant nation. And so, yes, both sides, very intransigent because it was existential for both of them.

And it's such an extraordinary transformation. It's just 30 years since the Battle of Gaza that you told us about in the last episode. 30 years since the British come as conquerors to Palestine, full of confidence and imperial ambition. And now 30 years later, with a completely transformed landscape, they are leaving with their tail between their legs. So little wonder then that it is decided to pass this awful situation to an organ. that at its inception was meant to deal with intractable problems after the war, the United Nations. Join us after the break when we find out what they did with their new responsibility. Welcome back. So, you know, we talked about the United Nations and its inception, even from the point when it was being discussed at Yalta and this great vision that Roosevelt had, that never again would we have major conflicts. The United Nations will be the body that sorts it all out before it takes.

turns to bloodshed. When this is passed on to them, well, the responsibility is going to be passed on to them, and as you said, the clock is ticking, finally that clock, the alarm sounds, and it is now the United Nations issued to deal with. Just talk through those early days, Eugene, and was there a sort of declaration of intent from the United Nations of what they wanted to happen here? Well, in the first instance, the United Nations followed on good British precedent by convening a commission of inquiry, and the United Nations Special Commission on Palestine, went round to meet with political leaders and members of communities on both sides of the dispute to try and work out what the issues were and what the solutions might be.

And at the end of their investigations, the commission came to two conclusions, a majority and a minority. The majority report called for a partition of Palestine. This is not the first time the partition of Palestine has been suggested. The British thought of the idea back in 1937 with the Peel Commission. And the United Nations returned to that idea that where you had an irreconcilable conflict between two national movements, then just separate them into two separate states. The majority opinion believed that you could not come to a peaceful separation of the territory, that partition would lead to conflict. And so you had to find ways to resolve the respective aspirations of the ischewan of the Palestinian Arabs

within the confines of one state. And the two positions were put to a vote of the General Assembly. Actually, the General Assembly was asked to vote on the majority position. And initially it looked as though the majority of the countries in the General Assembly, this was not put to the Security Council at this stage. It was a General Assembly movement, would not support partition. They were moved by the minority report calling for a unitary state. But it's at this point where I think the advocates of Jewish statehood really demonstrated their political acumen and gained support from actors in the United States, but they were able to

successfully lobby the members of the General Assembly one by one to overcome the resistance that the United Bloc of Arab states, who resisted partitioned Palestine, to secure a majority ruling in the UN General Assembly in November of 1947. And at that point, partition became the policy of the United Nations. It became the future. So, Eugene, when you say that the Arabs rejected the UN partition plan, let's just have complete clarity on this because it's a crucial part of the story. The United Nations partition plan for Palestine was a proposal by the United nations to partition mandatory Palestine at the end of the British mandate. It's drafted by the UN Special Committee on Palestine on the 3rd September 1947 and adopted by the UN General Assembly

on the 29th November, 1947, as Resolution 181. So the Arab state was to have a territory of 11,500 square kilometers or 42% of mandate territory, while the Jewish state has 15,200 square kilometers or 56% of the mandate territory. And the Arabs reject this. They think it's unfair that so much of their ancestral land be given away to what they regarded as new immigrants from Europe. But Ben-Gurion crucially accepts it. And in that division lies the seeds of much future conflict. For the first time, this is an international body that is rubber-stamping the creation of a Jewish state. So I guess in the region itself, you have different responses. There were news reports at the time of Jews in Jerusalem pouring onto the streets in jubilation. But at the

same time, what does the Arab community do when they hear that actually this is what the world has decided? Well, the Arab community, rather like the United Nations, was relatively new. You're dealing with countries that have only just come out of imperial rule. France and Lebanon only secured their independence in 1945-46. Egypt is still very much under British domination. Iraq and Transjordan still out of mandate but not recognized as entirely independent states. So they were unprepared. They didn't have, as it were, the freedom to build armies of their own choosing.

they were supplied and trained by the British. They were largely constrained. And so their first response, when faced with the prospect of conflict in Palestine, was to avoid sending in the national armies and to call instead for the creation of a volunteer force, uniting all Arabs. This is at the height of the Arab nationalist movement where people across the Arab world believe they had a common Arab destiny. So the idea was create an Arab liberation army.

for Palestine and allow volunteers from across the Arab world without the support of any given state to join that force. It was headed by a veteran of many defeated attempts by the Arabs against their imperial rulers named Fausi al-Ka-Wuchji. Immediately after the declaration of partition in November of 47, the Arab Liberation Army began to recruit and detrain soldiers to save Palestine from partition. So this is the moment of crux, isn't it, Eugene? A cycle of violence begins in January 48. And the Haganah, who are very much better organized than the Arabs, attack the Hotel Semiromis in the Catamon district of Jerusalem, mistakenly believing it's being used as headquarters of the local Arab forces. 26 people are killed, including the Spanish consul. Then the Palestine

post office is bombed. Tell us about this unfolding violence. From January onwards, Palestine will degenerate into what we tend to refer to as a civil war. This was now going to be increasingly tit-for-tat violence between Palestinian Arab and Yeshuv Jewish forces. And the British are still trying to keep the peace or maintain order in an increasingly disorderly period. And the British police themselves become a target of attack. We have regular instances of Jewish forces of Jewish forces. forces, barrel bombing, British police stations. What does a barrel bomb mean? Well, it was a device which literally was putting explosives into an oil barrel.

And then the insurgents would use dump trucks to tip them over the walls of police stations where they would detonate and sent shrapnel flying and whatever was inside the barrel along with the explosives. They inflicted very high casualties. One of the policemen that I interviewed who served in Palestine in 48 had a piece of his head shaved off, and his life was saved by a Palestinian doctor who was able to insert a metal plate. But he had a very vivid story about being on the receiving end of a barrel bomb. But the British, as I said before, were increasingly irrelevant here. This was really a fight between

Arab and Jew. This phase will see the better organization of the Haganah really begin to pay out against Palestinian Arabs who had not had the opportunity to organize militias since the breakup of the Arab Revolt in 39, who had not really been able to acquire arms from anywhere. They were coming out with really outdated muskets and 19th century rifles against Jewish militiamen and Haganah soldiers who were armed with, you know, latest, latest state-of-the-art weapons. They got a lot of weapons from Czech Slovakia, didn't they? There was a big shipment that arrived. Absolutely. So the Czech arm deal was huge for arming the Haganah to prepare for the battle. And this left the Palestinians is desperately pleading with their Arab neighbor states to assist him with the supply of arms.

And the person leading that was the leading militia leader of the Palestinian forces, Abduqadr El-Husani. Now, he fought in the Arab revolt of 1936 and 1939. So how does he sort of rise up in the ranks to then become such a pivotal figure? The Al-Husainis are one of the kind of grand families of Jerusalem, aren't they? Well, that's it, Willie. The El-Husainis are among the most influential notables of Jerusalem. His cousin was Hajamin al-Husaini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, who had come to stand as a sort of civilian leader of the Palestinian community and was much maligned by the British and by the Yeshuv. He's remembered today for his having defected to Nazi Germany in the Second World War where he was received by Hitler.

So there is this attempt to try and cast Hajamene as part of an extension of Third Reich anti-Semitism to the Palestinian movement. Abdul Qadr al-Husaini had none of that baggage with him. He was just seen as someone who had fought the good fight against the British in 36 to 39. He was able to mobilize resistance fighters. He was a very charismatic leader. And he seemed to be a good strategist. But in his efforts to lobby the leadership of the Arab world,

to arm the Palestinians to defend their land, he was absolutely frustrated at every turn. And, you know, the documents we have of his negotiation suggests that he knew he was returning to a suicide mission in trying to defend Palestine without the arms and weapons. And the Arab Liberation Army was failing in every way to assist the Palestinians to defend their land. And why is there such a poor Arab response? Is it just that neighboring Arab countries can't be bothered or they're not interested? What's the reason that there's such a, because potentially you'd have thought, you know, there's all these different Arab countries, they've all got armies, it could have been game

over in 10 minutes. And often you hear Israelis talk about the five Arab armies that descend on the state. Why did the Arabs fail to respond in a way that was effective? Well, I hinted already at the fact that the Arab states were themselves only newly emerging to independence. And in a sense, this is the first trial they face. And it's huge. It's well beyond their means.

Secondly, the Arab states were mutually suspicious. There were unresolved border issues. People had great mistrust for Amir Abdullah of Transjordan. They knew he had interests in Palestinian territory. He was popular with certain Syrian opposition groups, so the Syrians thought he might have aims on them. Tensions between the Saudis and the Transjordidians, Hashemites and Saudis were very strong going back to the First World War.

The Saudis had kicked the Hashemites out of what's now Saudi Arabia. Absolutely. And very strong tensions between the Jordanians and the Egyptians. You had all this sort of working against each other instead of working together. And lastly, they did not have independent means to arm their armed forces. The Egyptians, the Transjordanians and the Iraqis were all dependent on the British for their supply. They had no alternate source. And the British turned off the tap. They refused to provide any ammunition or any weaponry to the Arab states as a way of trying to stop the war from proceeding, but that immediately gave the advantage to the Haganah and the Shu fighters who were able to take advantage of the Jewish

diaspora and its connections to different countries to open pathways for the supply of the Jewish armed forces to give them the edge of the war. Eugene, so we've talked about Abdul Qadda. Tell us about his death in the Battle of Castel. What goes on? Well, Abdul Qadda leaves Damascus, empty handed, the leaders of the Arab world, refusing to provide arms and assistance to Palestinian militias, insisting they put their trust instead in the Arab Liberation Army. And so Abdul-Cadr tells them that basically he was going home on a suicide mission to try and defend Palestine against this civil war in which Jewish forces were so much better armed. And what he first does is he tries to stop the Jewish forces from.

opening a road to Jerusalem to allow them to relieve the siege of Jerusalem that was trapping the Jewish community surrounded by Arab fighters. And the clutch point for that was a village on the road between Jaffa and Jerusalem, El Castal, which is where Abdul Qadr makes his last stand. And with Palestinian militiamen, they succeed in driving Jewish forces out of El Castal, but in the process he himself is mortally wounded. And we talked about disunity between different Arab states, but there's also disunity isn't there even within the Palestinians,

because one of the crucial moments is that the Haganah forces break through in Abu Ghosh, which is a village which doesn't fight. It allows them to come through. Abu Ghosh to this day is regarded by other Palestinians as traitors to the Palestinian cause. Yes, of course, but there were many villages who chose to take a non-hostility position with Yeshua forces, most notoriously, Der Yassin. Just to be clear, is a village. It's a hilltop village that had been, you know,

sort of determined to stay out of it all. That is correct. And so they had concluded a non-hostility pact with Jewish forces, but were to become the target of a joint attack by the Ergoin and the stern gangs. That led to a massacre that was to play a key role and provoked. terror and flight, which I think was probably the intention of the authors of the massacre. So what happens at Dasey? They have a non-hastity fact they don't fight, and so they're not armed, presumably, or are they armed? They are not armed. There were a few villagers who had

guns or whatnot tucked away in their mattresses, but there is no armed resistance. There is an attempt to try and get women and children away, but the village is overrun. 120 strong force invades the village. And over 100 are killed. The figures originally given out by the Red Cross for more of like 250, but Palestinian researchers have lowered the number to about 107, who were killed in the course of the massacre in Dariusene. Survivors were rounded up and were paraded through Jewish quarters of Jerusalem

as sort of war trophies as a way of trying to raise morale in the Jewish. Jewish community and lower morale in the Arab community. And again, it worked. It just sowed terror in the hearts of Palestinian villagers who saw there was no armed force to protect them, but they had armed enemies who would massacre them. And they ran from their homes to find safety in neighboring countries where they could be behind army lines like those of the Jordanian Arab Legion. Is it true to say, though, that the Deriyasin massacre infuriated David Ben-Gurian completely, because he said, I didn't know about it. You didn't ask me. Ben-Gurion denounced the massacre in Dairasin. It was widely condemned by Jewish leaders around the world.

So it was recognized as a stain on the reputation of the issue of. But then how did it happen? I mean, you know, sort of who ordered it? Well, it was definitely launched by Ergoan fighters who were advancing the goals of the Haganah, but were outside the ranks of the Haganah. Therefore, you know, there are different groups doing what they want to do without a central command, or there is a central command? I mean, they're loosely affiliated. They've got the same goal, as you said before, but there isn't a command structure, or is there? It's really hard for us to be able to say what linkages might have gone on between the Haganah and the factions that split off from the Haganah. They were consistently

denied recognition by the Jewish executive in the Isshuv. And then the tactics they pursued and the horror that produced was something that Ben-Gurion and his fellows were quick to denounce. They did not wish to be associated with that. Well, I mean, you have an event like that, you know, predictably there's tit-for-tap violence, and we see that escalation very soon after Daryasim. Can you just talk us through a little bit about what happened? So the response immediately after Daryosin was an attack on a group of doctors in a medical convoy that led to scores of Jewish doctors and nurses.

is being killed in the ambulances in which they were being transported. And the dead were photographed, and these photographs were published and sold commercially as sort of war trophies. So it's exactly the dehumanizing effect that such a deeply entrenched conflict generates where tit-for-tat killings and a desire for revenge leads to the very lowest in human nature. Eugene, the news of Diocese now passes from village to village, and many begin to flee. There is like a domino effect. Tell us about this in the days that follow the massacre.

So by the time we get to April, 1948, in advance of a British withdrawal on the 14th of May, the difference in military resources really begins to show. and Yeshua forces are increasingly mobilizing to take key cities in the territories allocated to the Jewish state by the partition plan and beyond. And it's at this time where we'll see the fall of key cities like Safad, like Tiberius, like Haifa, like Jaffa, where with Darienisene and similar violence in the background, the arrival of Haganah forces, their use of artillery, their assaults on cities, drove more and more civilians to flee their homes. They believed temporarily, hoping to return once peace had been restored, to reclaim their property. They took their keys, they took a suitcase with their clothes, and they went into exile, almost without exception, never to return. Those in the north of the territory tended to flee towards Lebanon.

Those who fled from Jaffa and surrounding areas to the south made their way to Gaza. And it's at this point where the population of Gaza will go from a compact community of 20,000 people, 30,000 people, to witness the expansion of population beyond what anyone had ever conceived, the small coastal strip, small coastal enclave of Gaza might encompass. So April, you see the Haganah advancing and Palestinian villagers fleeing in all directions. And it's another 14 days into May. The British leave in defeat and ignoenix. Alan Cunningham, the last British High Commissioner, leaves Jerusalem to board a waiting ship in Haifa.

Later that day, in a museum in Tel Aviv, Ben-Gurion proclaims the birth of the state of Israel. It was, wrote one historian, a Jewish triumph, an Arab tragedy, and a British failure. 30 years, five months and four days after General Alan B. had entered Jerusalem in triumph, British rule ended in total disgrace. We will continue with the mixed triumph and tragedy of 1948 of the triumph for the birth of Israel, the tragedy of the Palestinians in the next episode. So that's goodbye from me, William Duremberg. And goodbye from me, Anita Arndt.