Arab-Israeli Conflict - United
Nations Partition Plan of 1947
On 29 November 1947
the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, a plan to resolve the
Arab-Jewish conflict in the British Mandate of Palestine, was approved
by the United Nations General Assembly, at the UN World Headquarters in
New York. The plan partitioned the territory into Jewish and Arab
states, with the Greater Jerusalem area (encompassing Bethlehem) coming
under international control. The failure of this plan led to the 1948
Arab-Israeli War.
Creation of the plan
The United Nations, the successor to the League of Nations, attempted to
solve the dispute between the Jews and Arabs in Palestine. On May 15,
1947 the UN appointed a committee, the UNSCOP, composed of
representatives from eleven states. To make the committee more neutral,
none of the Great Powers were represented. After spending three months
conducting hearings and general survey of the situation in Palestine,
UNSCOP officially released its report on August 31. A majority of
nations (Canada, Czechoslovakia, Guatemala, Netherlands, Peru, Sweden,
Uruguay) recommended the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states,
with Jerusalem to be placed under international administration. A
minority (India, Iran, Yugoslavia) supported the creation of a single
federal state containing both Jewish and Arab constituent states.
Australia abstained.
On November 29, the UN General Assembly voted 33 to 13, with 10
abstentions, in favor of the Partition Plan, while making some
adjustments to the boundaries between the two states proposed by it. The
division was to take effect on the date of British withdrawal.
The 33 countries that voted in favor of UN Resolution 181: Australia,
Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Belarus, Canada, Costa Rica, Czechoslovakia,
Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, France, Guatemala, Haiti, Iceland,
Liberia, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway,
Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Sweden, Ukraine, South
Africa, USSR, USA, Uruguay, Venezuela.
The 13 countries that voted against UN Resolution 181: Afghanistan,
Cuba, Egypt, Greece, India, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia,
Syria, Turkey, Yemen.
The ten countries that abstained: Argentina, Chile, China, Colombia, El
Salvador, Ethiopia, Honduras, Mexico, United Kingdom, Yugoslavia.
The Jewish state was to receive 55% of Mandatory Palestine. This
included the fruitful shore plain and the Negev desert. The desert was
not suitable for agriculture, nor for urban development at that time.
The land allocated to the Jewish state was largely that where there was
a significant Jewish population (Map of population distribution). Much
was owned by Jewish interests (about 6.5% of the area of Palestine) or
the state.
The UN made the recommendation for a three-way partition of Palestine
into a Jewish State, an Arab State and a small internationally
administered zone including the religiously significant towns Jerusalem
and Bethlehem. The two states envisioned in the plan were each composed
of three major sections, linked by extraterritorial crossroads. The
Jewish state would receive the Coastal Plain, stretching from Haifa to
Rehovot, the Eastern Galilee (surrounding the Sea of Galilee and
including the Galilee panhandle) and the Negev, including the southern
outpost of Umm Rashrash (now Eilat). The Arab state would receive the
Western Galilee, with the town of Acre, the Samarian highlands and the
Judean highlands, and the southern coast stretching from north of Isdud
(now Ashdod) and encompassing what is now the Gaza Strip, with a section
of desert along the Egyptian border. The UNSCOP report placed the
mostly-Arab town of Jaffa, just south of Tel Aviv, in the Jewish state,
but it was moved to form an enclave part of the Arab State before the
proposal went before the UN.
The plan was a compromise position based on two other plans, giving more
or less land to each state.
Reactions to the plan
Political pressure by proponents of partition was used to get the UN to
pass the partition proposal. Most of the Jews accepted the proposal, in
particular the Jewish Agency, which was the Jewish state-in-formation.
The more extreme nationalist Jewish groups like Menachem Begin's Irgun
Tsvai Leumi and Yitzhak Shamir's Lehi (group), (known as the Stern Gang)
which had been fighting the British, rejected it. Numerous records
indicate the joy of Palestine's Jewish inhabitants as they attended to
the U.N. session voting for the division proposal. Up to this day,
Israeli history books mention November 29th (the date of this session)
as the most important date in the Israel's acquisition of independence.
However Jews did criticise the lack of territorial continuity for the
Jewish state.
The Arab leadership opposed the plan, arguing that it violated the
rights of the majority of the people in Palestine, which at the time was
67% non-Jewish (1,237,000) and 33% Jewish (608,000). They criticised the
amount and quality of land given to Israel. The Jews had been offered
55% percent of the land when they owned 6.5% of it. However, it should
be noted that over 70% of the land area (which was mostly desert) was
state-owned. The population for the proposed Jewish State would be
498,000 Jews and 325,000 non-Jews. The population for the proposed Arab
State would be 807,000 non-Jews and 10,000 Jews. The population for the
proposed International Zone would be 105,000 non-Jews and 100,000 Jews.
Fighting began almost as soon as the plan was approved, begining with
the Jerusalem Riots of 1947.
Arabs also feared that the Jewish state would be a stepping stone for
further advancement; this view is supported by statements from David Ben
Gurion and other leaders recently discovered by Israel's New Historians
and other independent scholars.
From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan
Back to Arab-Israeli Conflict
|
|
