WATCH: Settling the Negev in 1946

In 1946, directly after the Yom Kippur fast, Jewish settlers set up camp at 11 points throughout the Negev desert. They wanted to claim the land and ensure the area would be included as part of the Jewish State when Palestine was partitioned later in the year.

In this newsreel, settlers labor in a settlement near Kastina.

“The plan, which they called Operation Negev, was carried out at dawn on the 6th of October, just after the Day of Atonement,” the narrator reports, as the settlers toil away on-screen.

According to the announcer, this land was owned by the Jewish National Fund.

“This particular settlement, filmed about 24 hours after the start, could already show houses well on the way to completion, and the whole place surrounded by a barbed-wire fence,” he adds.

(The Associated Press and Movietone News recently released their vast video archives on YouTube, allowing the public to freely access a million minutes worth of historical news clips dating back to 1895 — including many iconic scenes from Israel’s history featured in this Times of Israel series.)