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ROLE OF THE UN |
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ROLE OF THE UN |
Caught between Arab and Jewish demands and short on funds, the Attlee government of Great Britain in February 1947 declared its Mandate in Palestine "unworkable" and referred the matter to the youthful UN. That body, with a surprising show of agreement between blocs, created a special committee of eleven member states to study the issues and report its recommendations.
The UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) was the first truly independent tribunal to examine the Palestine question. In the summer of 1947 UNSCOP traveled to Palestine and held hearings in Jerusalem. The Palestine Arabs boycotted it. After completing its work in Palestine, the Committee drew up its recommendations in Geneva. Committee members were especially moved by the plight of desperate Holocaust survivors denied entry to Palestine.
Countering Arab claims that there was no basis for Jewish statehood in Palestine, in July 1947, the Christian Maronite Archbishop of Beirut, Lebanon, Ignatiyus Mubarak, presented a memorandum to UNSCOP in which he advocated the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine:
He also declared that:
It was Australia’s External Affairs Minister, Dr H.V. Evatt, chairing the UN committee dealing with Palestine in 1947, played a large role in persuading the UN to adopt partition. UNSCOP's report concluded that the League of Nations pledge of a Jewish national home had never been fulfilled, as Jewish immigration and land purchases had been artificially restricted by the British Mandate authorities.
The committee recommended an end to the British Mandate and the partitioning of the area. However, the partition plan was directed only at the 23% of the original Mandate that was left after the British subdivision that gave 77% to create the Arab territory of Transjordan. Of the remaining 23%, 56% was allocated to a Jewish state, 42% to an Arab state, and an international zone for the holy places in and around Jerusalem was allocated 2%. Summarizing this in a table:
| Territory | Arab Portion | Jewish Portion | Shared Portion |
|---|---|---|---|
| Original British Mandate | 77% (Transjordan) | 0% | 23% (West of Jordan) |
| UN Partition Plan | 87% (77%+10%) | 13% | < 1% |
The area designated as a Jewish state as over 75% desert; it had a population of 498,000 Jews and 325,000 Arabs. The proposed Arab state area had 807,000 Arab inhabitants and 10,000 Jewish inhabitants. The international trusteeship regime in Jerusalem would have a population of 100,000 Jews and 105,000 Arabs.
On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly, in its 128th plenary session, by a two-thirds vote (33 to 13 with Britain and nine others abstaining) passed Resolution 181 partitioning Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab. The Jewish community of Palestine jubilantly accepted partition despite the small size and strategic vulnerability of the proposed state. Not only were the West Bank and Gaza Strip not included, but also Jerusalem, most of the Galilee in the North and parts of the Negev desert in the South were excluded.
After the vote was announced, the six Arab delegations of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen stormed out threatening war and the annihilation of the Palestinian Jews. Pakistan's delegation followed suit. The Arab national movement in Palestine, as well as all the Arab states, angrily rejected partition. They demanded the entire country for themselves and threatened to resist partition by force. Had they accepted the UN proposal in 1947, the independent Palestinian Arab state, covering an area much larger than Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and Gaza, would have been created along with Israel. Instead, they rejected the plan and launched a war to destroy the nascent Jewish state.
Almost immediately there was Arab violence against the Jews in Palestine. Mordechai Palzur, the former chief of protocol at the Israeli Foreign Ministry, quotes a report published in Foreign Relations of the United States 1947 by Robert Macatee, consul general of Jerusalem:
The Arabs were blunt in taking responsibility for starting the war. Jamal Husseini, the Arab Higher Committee's spokesman, told the Security Council on April 16, 1948:
The British commander of Jordan's Arab Legion, John Bagot Glubb admitted:
UNSCOP was prevented by Arab and British forces from doing a full investigation in Palestine. They reported to the Security Council on 16 February 1948:
Jerusalem became the scene of the bloodiest battles, in danger of destruction, which aroused international concern. On 6 May 1948, the Special Session of the General Assembly recommended that:
A Philadelphia attorney, Mr. Harold Evans, was appointed to the post, but he never set foot in Jerusalem. The General Assembly failed to decide on a Statute of Jerusalem, and turned down a proposal submitted at the decisive hour before the Mandate lapsed for a temporary trusteeship regime of the city.
The United States, the Soviet Union and most other member states of the United Nations immediately recognized Israel after it declared independence on May 14, 1948, and indicted the Arabs for their aggression. The United States urged a resolution charging the Arabs with breach of the peace. Soviet delegate Andrei Gromyko told the Security Council, May 29, 1948:
The initial phase of the fighting ended after the Security Council threatened July 15 to cite the Arab governments for aggression under the Charter. By this time, the Haganah had been renamed the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and succeeded in stopping the Arab offensive.
During the summer of 1948, Count Folke Bernadotte was sent by the UN to Palestine to mediate a truce and try to negotiate a settlement. Bernadotte's plan called for the Jewish State to relinquish the Negev and Jerusalem to Transjordan and to receive the western Galilee. This was similar to the boundaries that had been proposed prior to the partition vote, and had been rejected by all sides. Now, the proposal was being offered after the Arabs had gone to war to prevent partition and a Jewish state had been declared. The Jews and Arabs both rejected the plan. Bernadotte was assassinated by LEHI extremists in Jerusalem on September 17, 1948, an act that resulted in the elimination of the LEHI organization by mainstream Jewish leaders.
Although UN Resolution 181 is still sometimes cited when it is advantageous to the pro-Arab Palestinian position, the State of Israel has consistently maintained that the Partition Resolution became null and void when it was rejected by the Arab side in 1947.
As late as 1999, Resolution 181 was once again the focus of attention, more than 50 years after it was passed by the United Nations and rejected by the Arabs. The Palestinian Authority arranged for the United Nations Commission on Human Rights to pass a resolution calling for Palestinian self-determination only on the basis UN Resolution 181. This was a blatent attempt to rewrite all of the history of the years between 1947 and 1999 and it was swiftly denounced.
Ironically, the United Nations has been an anti-Israel institution since shortly after the UN was instrumental in the founding of the State of Israel. Unfortunately the UN was often subverted by a coalition of third-world countries, Soviet client states, pro-Arab and anti-Semitic forces who could use actions against Israel as a proxy for stabs against the United States and its democratic allies. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, this coalition was absorbed by the Middle Eastern forces seeking to destroy Israel. Today, the UN cannot be seen as a useful guide to world opinion or the moral course of action.
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