1973: Former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir gives a poignant history lesson.

0:00 and it is prime minister golden Mayer Who will be speaking freely today Mr Mayer I wonder whether we might Begin by speaking of Arab groups of the kind that hijack airplanes and killed Israeli athletes of Munich they talk a great deal about the Palestinian Homeland and now they've been deprived of it is there any legitimacy in talk about an Arab Palestinian Homeland no I think not at any rate if uh the Homeland that is thought you were supposed to be Israel I think it would be worthwhile just to take a minute go back a little bit in history for instance between before the first world war there were um no independent Arab

0:45 countries this area that is Israel today and as a matter of fact up to the Jordan was considered the southern part of Syria when after the war the uh Great Britain got the U mandate over Palestine Palestine was then between the entire area between the Mediterranean and the Iraqian border all of that was paltin there was one High Commissioner and considered one one country the first partitioning of Palestine took place in 1922 when after the war uh Great Britain was saw fit to

1:32 parcel out this area of the Middle East and give part of to every one of the shf who were helpful in the war they had to do something else abah so they partitioned Palestine made the western part of of the Jordan River Palestine the eastern part was called trans Jordan second time palestin was F condition was in 47 of of course now but until 22 all of that was one country was one pal of course in the in trans Jordan over this Jordan today there are bin there are others but you will not find one single

2:18 country in this area in Arab country that hasn't various groups of Arab people to say that there is a Palestinian people as apart from those that are in Jordan especially uh this is not true to to fact and that's true to history between 48 and 67 after the war of Liberation the Western Bank was later annexed by abdala they were there I they were the majority in Jordan if they wanted to set up a state or to call that state Palestine of course they didn't have to

3:03 ask our permission and we would have had nothing to do with it therefore when they say the Palestinian people want the right to their land but what it really means is to drive the Jews out of this area and take over in addition to the about 19 or 20 independent Arab countries all that have been created between the first and second world war create one more country instead of Israel this is really what is me what what then is the significance of the acts of Terror that we see the acts of pressure and propaganda of various kinds why then do these people behave as they do they don't want us here but to my sorrow it isn't only they that do not

3:51 want us here who are they they're the people who because of the war of 48 fled this area into Jordan into Syria other places and have never been resettled that is of a refugee and certainly I admit one has to admit it that as far from the humanitarian point of view there are groups of hundreds of thousands of people who have lived u in camps for so many years under miserable condition why haven't they been resettled Jordan actually was not viable

4:36 without these people Jordan had a population of maybe about 300,000 but why would they not resettled some of them were but generally why was there not a resettlement of refugees of the Arab Refugee because not only the refugee but the Arab countries themselves felt that they should remain in their camps they should not be resettled it was one of the weapons against Israel were military measures of Economic boyup and one of the methods was to keep the refugees in the camps of feeding a hope that someday they'll March into the country and March us out

5:24 so um they don't like it they don't want it here our Arab neighbors to my S have not yet acas therefore for Wars and uh it's all one problem really that the Arabs in this area in the immediate area and not this is May to fearsome what you say that you accept that Palestinians or whatever you want to call them refugees have been made victims one way or another that they have a legitimate griev what can be done to meet the grievance friend they have become victims to the fact that after the United Nations in

6:11 47 decided on the partitioning of Palestine mind you West out the Jordan River into a Jewish State and an Arab State we accepted and uh the Arab countries did not and there was war can't imagine that there ever was a war without refugees the difference is in this case that U the Arab people who fled the area that became Israel afterward were actually among their own people for instance uh we Jews are a classic nation of refugees but uh when we were refugees we were U among strangers with

6:56 different people who had different religion spoke a different language a different culture entirely different these people are among their own people it's the same language the same religion the same way of line the fact that a line was the drawn didn't make them any different and uh but that they suffered I accept the question is was that necessary because during that period during these years Israel has absorb from the Arab countries a much larger number of Jews than the number of Arabs that left this area nobody speaks of U Iraqian Jewish refugees in in Israel or

7:45 uh a Syrian Jewish refugees a Moroccan Jewish refugees hundreds and hundreds of thousands of them and anybody that knows the situation will agree that um there was a greater clash between European Jews that came there or Israel Jews who have been here for centuries generations and Jews that came from Yemen or Jews that came from let's say the atlet over Morocco the only thing that really made us one was religion we Jews we one the same Nation but no common language and sometimes centuries apart in culture and

8:34 yet we absorb them and uh we're one people is there anything Mr Prime Minister that Israel can do to remove this Center of infection really the source of infection for the whole Middle East these Arab refugees these unsatisfied unhappy people unsettled really because going around as I've been doing the last few days one still sees refugees G camps would go back to 1948 that's right is there anything that Israel can do we have said immediately after the war after the war of Liberation in 4849 that uh we have terorist to pay compensation for anything that these

9:20 people have left behind whether it's uh land whether it's orange gold whether it's houses anything we have allowed tens of thousands of them to come back because families were separated during the fighting and part of the families remain here and if they no problem of security we allow them to come back now the United Nations had a committee to investigate what these people left behind and we cooperated with them it comes up uh large sums of money now if there had been fees this

10:05 money uh the aid from International Aid and from various governments there's no doubt this thing would have been forgotten and they would have been resettled in agriculture and industry or in any other way instead the United Nations during these years for hundreds of millions of dollars into miserable camps we found the camps now for instance in the Gaza Strip unhe of that people should be kept in conditions of that but it was done with this idea the worst the better these people must be miserable they must live in conditions

10:51 of that kind they must not resettle and have a Home of Their Own or so on so that uh they will be an instrument against Israel