The United Nations Partition Plan
Following World War II, escalating hostilities
between Arabs and Jews over the fate of Palestine and between
the Zionist militias and the British army compelled Britain
to relinquish its mandate over Palestine. The British requested
that the recently established United Nations determine the
future of Palestine. But the British government's hope was
that the UN would be unable to arrive at a workable solution,
and would turn Palestine back to them as a UN trusteeship.
A UN-appointed committee of representatives from various countries
went to Palestine to investigate the situation. Although members
of this committee disagreed on the form that a political resolution
should take, there was general agreement that the country would
have to be divided in order to satisfy the needs and demands
of both Jews and Palestinian Arabs. At the end of 1946, 1,269,000
Arabs and 608,000 Jews resided within the borders of Mandate
Palestine. Jews had acquired by purchase 6 to 8 percent of
the total land area of Palestine amounting to about 20 percent
of the arable land.
On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly
voted to partition Palestine into two states, one Jewish and
the other Arab. The UN partition plan divided the country in
such a way that each state would have a majority of its own
population, although some Jewish settlements would fall within
the proposed Palestinian state and many Palestinians would
become part of the proposed Jewish state. The territory designated
to the Jewish state would be slightly larger than the Palestinian
state (56 percent and 43 percent of Palestine, respectively)
on the assumption that increasing numbers of Jews would immigrate
there. According to the UN partition plan, the area of Jerusalem
and Bethlehem was to become an international zone.
Publicly, the Zionist leadership accepted the
UN partition plan, although they hoped somehow to expand the
borders allotted to the Jewish state. The Palestinian Arabs
and the surrounding Arab states rejected the UN plan and regarded
the General Assembly vote as an international betrayal. Some
argued that the UN plan allotted too much territory to the
Jews. Most Arabs regarded the proposed Jewish state as a settler
colony and argued that it was only because the British had
permitted extensive Zionist settlement in Palestine against
the wishes of the Arab majority that the question of Jewish
statehood was on the international agenda at all.
Fighting began between the Arab and Jewish residents
of Palestine days after the adoption of the UN partition plan.
The Arab military forces were poorly organized, trained and
armed. In contrast, Zionist military forces, although numerically
smaller, were well organized, trained and armed. By the spring
of 1948, the Zionist forces had secured control over most of
the territory allotted to the Jewish state in the UN plan.
On May 15, 1948, the British evacuated Palestine,
and Zionist leaders proclaimed the state of Israel. Neighboring
Arab states (Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq) then invaded Israel
claiming that they sought to "save" Palestine from the Zionists.
In fact, the Arab rulers had territorial designs on Palestine
and were no more anxious to see a Palestinian Arab state emerge
than the Zionists. During May and June 1948, when the fighting
was most intense, the outcome of this first Arab-Israeli War
was in doubt. But after arms shipments from Czechoslovakia
reached Israel, its armed forces established superiority and
conquered territories beyond the UN partition plan borders
of the Jewish state.
In 1949, the war between Israel and the Arab
states ended with the signing of armistice agreements. The
country once known as Palestine was now divided into three
parts, each under separate political control. The State of
Israel encompassed over 77 percent of the territory. Jordan
occupied East Jerusalem and the hill country of central Palestine
(the West Bank). Egypt took control of the coastal plain around
the city of Gaza (the Gaza Strip). The Palestinian Arab state
envisioned by the UN partition plan was never established. |
