United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine
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. Drafted by the UN Special Committee on Palestine on 3 September 1947, the Plan was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 29 November 1947 as Resolution 181 . The resolution recommended the creation of independent but economically linked Arab and Jewish states and an extraterritorial "Special International Regime" for the city of Jerusalem and its surroundings.
The Partition Plan, a four-part document attached to the resolution, provided for the termination of the Mandate; the gradual withdrawal of British armed forces by no later than 1 August 1948; and the delineation of boundaries between the two states and Jerusalem at least two months after the withdrawal, but no later than 1 October 1948. The Arab state was to have a territory of 11,592 square kilometres, or 42.88 percent of the Mandate's territory, and the Jewish state a territory of 15,264 square kilometres, or 56.47 percent; the remaining 0.65 percent or 176 square kilometres—comprising Jerusalem, Bethlehem and the adjoining area—would become an international zone. The Plan also called for an economic union between the proposed states and for the protection of religious and minority rights.
By the 1940s, Mandatory Palestine represented a fraction of the territory Zionists identified as the Jewish homeland, parts of which had already been transferred to Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. The 1947 Plan applied to what remained.
The Plan sought to address the conflicting objectives and claims of two competing movements: Palestinian nationalism and Jewish nationalism in the form of Zionism. Jewish organizations collaborated with UNSCOP during the deliberations, while Palestinian Arab leadership boycotted it. The Plan's detractors considered the proposal to be pro-Zionist, as it allocated most land to the Jewish state despite Palestinian Arabs numbering twice the Jewish population. The Plan was celebrated by most Jews in Palestine and reluctantly accepted by the Jewish Agency for Palestine with misgivings. Zionist leaders, in particular David Ben-Gurion, viewed the acceptance of the plan as a tactical step and a steppingstone to future territorial expansion over all of Palestine.
The Arab Higher Committee, the Arab League and other Arab leaders and governments rejected the Plan, as aside from Arabs forming a two-thirds majority, they owned most of the territory. They also indicated an unwillingness to accept any form of territorial division, arguing that it violated the principles of national self-determination in the UN Charter that granted people the right to decide their own destiny. They announced their intention to take all necessary measures to prevent the implementation of the resolution. The plan was not implemented and a civil war quickly broke out in Palestine, eventually becoming a larger regional war, and leading to the expulsion and flight of 85% of the Palestinians living in the areas that became the State of Israel.
Background
The British administration was formalized by the League of Nations under the Palestine Mandate in 1923, as part of the Partitioning of the Ottoman Empire following World War I. The Mandate reaffirmed the 1917 British commitment to the Balfour Declaration, for the establishment in Palestine of a "National Home" for the Jewish people, with the prerogative to carry it out. A British census of 1918 estimated 700,000 Arabs and 56,000 Jews.In 1937, following a six-month-long Arab General Strike and armed insurrection which aimed to pursue national independence and secure the country from foreign control, the British established the Peel Commission. The Commission concluded that the Mandate had become unworkable, and recommended partition into an Arab state linked to Transjordan; a small Jewish state; and a mandatory zone. To address problems arising from the presence of national minorities in each area, it suggested a land and population transfer involving the transfer of some 225,000 Arabs living in the envisaged Jewish state and 1,250 Jews living in a future Arab state, a measure deemed compulsory "in the last resort". To address any economic problems, the Plan proposed avoiding interfering with Jewish immigration, since any interference would be liable to produce an "economic crisis", most of Palestine's wealth coming from the Jewish community. To solve the predicted annual budget deficit of the Arab State and reduction in public services due to loss of tax from the Jewish state, it was proposed that the Jewish state pay an annual subsidy to the Arab state and take on half of the latter's deficit. The Palestinian Arab leadership rejected partition as unacceptable, given the inequality in the proposed population exchange and the transfer of one-third of Palestine, including most of its best land, to recent immigrants. The Jewish leaders, Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion, persuaded the Zionist Congress to lend provisional approval to the Peel recommendations as a basis for further negotiations. In a letter to his son in October 1937, Ben-Gurion explained that partition would be a first step to "possession of the land as a whole". The same sentiment, that acceptance of partition was a temporary measure beyond which the Palestine would be "redeemed... in its entirety," was recorded by Ben-Gurion on other occasions, such as at a meeting of the Jewish Agency executive in June 1938, as well as by Chaim Weizmann.
The British Woodhead Commission was set up to examine the practicality of partition. The Peel plan was rejected and two possible alternatives were considered. In 1938, the British government issued a policy statement declaring that "the political, administrative and financial difficulties involved in the proposal to create independent Arab and Jewish States inside Palestine are so great that this solution of the problem is impracticable". Representatives of Arabs and Jews were invited to London for the St. James Conference, which proved unsuccessful.
With World War II looming, British policies were influenced by a desire to win Arab world support and could ill afford to engage with another Arab uprising. The MacDonald White Paper of May 1939 declared that it was "not part of policy that Palestine should become a Jewish State", sought to limit Jewish immigration to Palestine and restricted Arab land sales to Jews. However, the League of Nations commission held that the White Paper was in conflict with the terms of the Mandate as put forth in the past. The outbreak of the Second World War suspended any further deliberations. The Jewish Agency hoped to persuade the British to restore Jewish immigration rights, and cooperated with the British in the war against Fascism. Aliyah Bet was organized to spirit Jews out of Nazi controlled Europe, despite the British prohibitions. The White Paper also led to the formation of Lehi, a small Jewish organization which opposed the British.
After World War II, in August 1945 President Truman asked for the admission of 100,000 Holocaust survivors into Palestine but the British maintained limits on Jewish immigration in line with the 1939 White Paper. The Jewish community rejected the restriction on immigration and organized an armed resistance. These actions and United States pressure to end the anti-immigration policy led to the establishment of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry. In April 1946, the Committee reached a unanimous decision for the immediate admission of 100,000 Jewish refugees from Europe into Palestine, rescission of the White Paper restrictions of land sale to Jews, that the country be neither Arab nor Jewish, and the extension of U.N. Trusteeship. The U.S. endorsed the Commission's findings concerning Jewish immigration and land purchase restrictions, while the British made their agreement to implementation conditional on U.S. assistance in case of another Arab revolt. In effect, the British continued to carry out their White Paper policy. The recommendations triggered violent demonstrations in the Arab states, and calls for a jihad and an annihilation of all European Jews in Palestine.
United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP)
Under the terms of League of Nations A-class mandates each such mandatory territory was to become a sovereign state on termination of its mandate. By the end of World War II, this occurred with all such mandates except Palestine; however, the League of Nations itself lapsed in 1946, leading to a legal quandary.In February 1947, Britain announced its intent to terminate the Mandate for Palestine, referring the matter of the future of Palestine to the United Nations. According to William Roger Louis, British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin's policy was premised on the idea that an Arab majority would carry the day, which met difficulties with Harry S. Truman who, sensitive to Zionist electoral pressures in the United States, pressed for a British-Zionist compromise. In May, the UN formed the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine to prepare a report on recommendations for Palestine. The Jewish Agency pressed for Jewish representation and the exclusion of both Britain and Arab countries on the Committee, sought visits to camps where Holocaust survivors were interned in Europe as part of UNSCOP's brief, and in May won representation on the Political Committee. The Arab states, convinced statehood had been subverted, and that the transition of authority from the League of Nations to the UN was questionable in law, wished the issues to be brought before an International Court, and refused to collaborate with UNSCOP, which had extended an invitation for liaison also to the Arab Higher Committee. In August, after three months of conducting hearings and a general survey of the situation in Palestine, a majority report of the committee recommended that the region be partitioned into an Arab state and a Jewish state, which should retain an economic union. An international regime was envisioned for Jerusalem.
The Arab delegations at the UN had sought to keep separate the issue of Palestine from the issue of Jewish refugees in Europe. During their visit, UNSCOP members were shocked by the extent of Lehi and Irgun violence, then at its apogee, and by the elaborate military presence attested by endemic barb-wire, searchlights, and armoured-car patrols. Committee members also witnessed the SS Exodus affair in Haifa and could hardly have remained unaffected by it. On concluding their mission, they dispatched a subcommittee to investigate Jewish refugee camps in Europe. The incident is mentioned in the report in relation to Jewish distrust and resentment concerning the British enforcement of the 1939 White Paper.