A 300-page dossier details atrocities by British soldiers against Palestinians during UK rule.
The people of al-Bassa got their lesson in imperial brutality when the British soldiers came after dawn.
It was the autumn of 1938 and UK forces were facing a rebellion in Palestine, under British control after the defeat two decades earlier of the Ottoman Empire. A BBC review of the historical evidence involved includes details of arbitrary killings, torture, the use of human shields and the introduction of home demolitions as collective punishment. Much of it was conducted within formal policy guidelines for UK forces at the time or with the consent of senior officers.
The two communities assess Britain's historical legacy from different standpoints, while both at varying times resisted hostility, abuses or broken promises during UK rule. Mr Emmerson says the legal team has unearthed evidence of "shocking crimes committed by certain elements of the British Mandatory forces systematically on the Palestinian population".
"These were not revolutionaries, they were farmers. The revolutionaries were hiding in mountains," says Mohammed Abu Rayan, 88, who was a boy when the British soldiers stormed his home and occupied the rooftop."The whole country became something of a prison" - Prof Matthew Hughes, military historian The UK was given a mandate to govern, allowing levels of Jewish immigration and land acquisition to rise, fuelling growing tensions with Palestinian Arabs that frequently broke out into violence.
Instead, he says, Britain introduced a system of "daily pacification" that was "much more fundamental, cumulative and attritional in wearing down the Palestinians", citing measures including restrictions on movement, curfews, seizure of property or crops as punitive measures, arbitrary detention and using forced labour to build roads and military bases.
Another soldier with the Manchester Regiment, Arthur Lane, described how they would "go down to Acre jail and borrow say five rebels, three rebels, and you'd sit them on the bonnet, so the guy up in the hill could see an Arab on the truck so he wouldn't blow it… If [the rebel] was unlucky the truck coming up behind would hit him. But nobody bothered to pick the bits up. They were left.
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