The Birth of Israel (1 of 32)

The Birth of Israel

60 years ago, Israel fought and won a war for its independence.
For Palestinians, defeat was a catastrophe.
The two sides have been fighting ever since.
What happened 60 years ago still shapes lives in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.
If they want peace, they'll need to overcome the legacy of l948.
Gaza - home to 1.4 million Palestinians, most of whom are refugees from the land that became Israel.
The current battleground in this long war lies in and around the Gaza Strip.

Israel uses air strikes and ground incursions.
Palestinians rocket Israeli border towns.
Both sides blame each other.
Two miles to the north of Gaza, this is kibbutz Yad Mordechai.
Some of the thousands of rockets fired into Israel have landed here.
History is never far away.
This kibbutz - or communal farm - was founded in the 1930s by Jews from Poland.
They were Zionists, who wanted to return to the biblical home of the Jews to make a state.
We build a society with our own hands.
By new forms of life, not only by high-technology.
The kibbutz, and the development towns.
Those are forms of life that without it, you cannot understand what Israel is.
We developed the best agriculture maybe on earth.