On This Day: UN Votes to Partition Palestine

Four of the six Arab states in attendance at that UN meeting said they would not be bound by the vote; the representatives of two other Arab countries remained silent and walked out with the others.

The partition ruling, the effects of which still reverberate to this day, came after Britain questioned the fate of the region before the General Assembly in March 1946.

The British had overseen the area since obtaining the Palestine Mandate from the League of Nations after World War I, following the breakup of the Ottoman Empire. Britain avowed that by Aug. 1, 1948, at the latest, the mandate would end and it would withdraw all its troops.

Arab opponents of the plan for a Jewish homeland argued that Palestine was neither Britain’s nor the UN’s to give away. But after World War II, and Hitler’s attempt to exterminate the Jews in Europe, the cause of the Zionists, who mobilized support for a Jewish nation, resonated more strongly than ever. This was particularly the case in the United States and Britain, which had both failed to welcome Jewish refugees when they fled Nazi persecution.

On May 14, 1948, the day before the mandate over Palestine ended, Israel declared its independence. This was soon followed by the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, which, after two truces, lasted until July 1949.

On the day of the vote, 33 countries supported partition, 13 voted against; 10, including Britain, abstained, and Thailand, then known as Siam, was absent, according to a New York Times report.

The details of the UN partition proposal are spelled out in this copy of the text.

The British Influence in Palestine

The British government committed itself to a Jewish homeland in Palestine in the Balfour Declaration, a letter signed by Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour, addressed to Lord Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, with a request that it be passed on to the Zionist Federation.

The text of the Palestine Mandate issued to Britain by the Council of the League of Nations is available online from Yale University.

The War of Independence, 1948

Israel was founded after World War II, in the shadow of the Holocaust and under the auspices of the United Nations. The original UN plan was to divide the area then called Palestine into separate, autonomous Arab and Jewish states.

On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion, who became Israel’s first prime minister, declared the establishment of the State of Israel. The next day, Britain ended its mandate in the region and five Middle Eastern nations attacked the fledgling country. Over 15 months of fighting, Israel expanded the territory apportioned to it by the United Nations. Non-Jewish residents fled from both within the original borders of Israel and from the land that had been taken, becoming the first of the Palestinian refugees.

The text of Israeli independence: “By virtue of our natural and historic right and on the strength of the resolution of the United Nations General Assembly, [we] hereby declare the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the state of Israel.”

Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1948 Onward

Four major wars have been fought between Israel and its Arab neighbors, the first being in 1948. Accounts of each, plus other related confrontations, are detailed by the Northfield Mount Hermon School's History of the Middle East Database.

Arab-Jewish History

The history of Arab-Jewish relations provided by MideastWeb is prefaced by a pertinent quote from Harry S. Truman: “No two historians ever agree on what happened, and the damn thing is they both think they’re telling the truth.”

Zionism made an active, and eventually persuasive, case for Jews to be given their own homeland, according to the Jewish Virtual Library.

Zionism is not synonymous with Judaism, a fact illustrated by the existence of Jews Against Zionism. Among its members are Ultra-Orthodox Jews who believe that the drive for a Jewish homeland runs counter to their religious teaching.

A disputed political view of Zionism is given by Norman G. Finkelstein, who has been supported by the likes of Noam Chomsky and virulently opposed by Alan Dershowitz.

Alan Dershowitz tells of the hazards of supporting Israel, with references to Finkelstein, Chomsky, and many others.

After examining the pros and the cons of the partition of Palestine, this article by David Derrick, which originally appeared in Foreign Affairs, concludes that a number of countries have to share the blame for the deadly events that followed, with Britain being the main offender.