On this day in 1947, the UN Partition Plan for Palestine—otherwise known as General Assembly Resolution 181—was passed. Diplomats thought that it would bring peace to Palestine. Others argued that it would bring disaster, calling for outright Arab rejection.
Throughout the Arab world, only one person dared to argue on its behalf, ex-Syrian Prime Minister Husni al-Barazi, who, speaking before parliament, said that given their weakness and differences, this is the best offer the Arabs could get—at least for now. He was denounced as a traitor and paid agent of Zionism.
For his part, the Lebanese-born Arab nationalist Fawzi al-Qawuqji had begun recruiting Arabs into his Army of Deliverance, vowing that the Partition Plan would never see the light of day. He was right; it never materialised. Instead, Israel took over the land, and instead of getting half of their ancestral homeland, Palestinians were left with nothing.
One year before the Partition Plan was passed, Arab leaders held their first summit in Inshas, Egypt, in May 1946, under the chairmanship of King Farouk. It was a significant photo-op for Arab leaders, dedicated entirely to the Palestinian cause. They agreed that Palestine “must remain Arab” and denounced Zionism as a threat not only to Palestine “but to all the people of Islam.”
One month later, the Arab League held a meeting in the summer resort of Bloudan, near Damascus, co-chaired by its Secretary-General Abdul Rahman Azzam Pasha and Syrian Prime Minister Saadallah al-Jabiri who pledged to support the Palestinian resistance with money and arms, flatly rejecting any concessions to the Zionists.
Hours of radio broadcasts throughout the Arab world discussed the confiscation of lands and the expedited Jewish immigration from Europe. The Syrian and Egyptian armies began producing audio-visual material on their readiness for war and showing it at movie theatres to raise public morale.
UNSCOP and the Zionist lobby
Meanwhile, at the United Nations, British diplomats were proposing a settlement for Palestine's future. Having just partitioned and exited India, they planned to partition and exit Palestine as well. A United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) was created in mid-May 1947, charged with investigating the cause of the Palestinian conflict and proposing a viable solution.
UNSCOP comprised representatives from 11 nations: Holland, Sweden, Australia, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Canada, India, Iran, Peru, Guatemala, and Uruguay. To ensure neutrality, none of the Great Powers or Arabs were represented. Ralph Bunch, the young US advisor at UNSCOP, commented: “This was just about the worst group I have ever had to work with. If they do a good job, it would be a real miracle.”
On 14 May 1947, Soviet representative to the UN, Andrei Gromyko, delivered a speech describing the “exceptional and indescribable sorrow and suffering of the Jews” during the Holocaust. Gromyko dedicated a good three paragraphs to Jewish suffering, adding that after enduring so much at the hands of Adolf Hitler, the Jews were now entitled to “self-determination.”
Syria’s representative at the UN, Prime Minister Fares al-Khoury, recommended building bridges with the one UNSCOP member whom he described as pro-Arab, Nasrallah Entizam of Iran. The same could not be said of Emil Sandstrom, the Swedish judge heading UNSCOP, whom al-Khoury described as “dull and pro-Zionist.” As for the other members, he said: “None of them have any experience in Arab affairs. In fact, they are alien to the Middle East, and the Zionists have already started a massive lobbying campaign aimed at winning them over, one by one. We ought to do the same. We don’t have the money, but we have the brains.”
But those Arab brains were incapable of keeping Palestine Arab as the Jewish Agency had already appointed two full-time attaches to UNSCOP, Abba Ebban (future foreign minister of Israel in 1966) and David Horowitz (future founding governor of the Bank of Israel in 1954).
For their part, the Arabs appointed future Lebanese president Camille Chamoun as the Arab liaison to UNSCOP. A seasoned statesman, he would be awarded the Syrian Order of Merit, Excellence Class, for his defence of Palestine, years before Chamoun took a strikingly different approach to the Israeli invasion of his country in 1982, where he sided with the Lebanese Phalange in relying on the Israelis to rid him, and Lebanese Christians, from Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO).
Palestinian rejection
UNSCOP team spent five weeks in Palestine in the summer of 1947. Rather than take al-Khoury’s recommendations seriously, many Arabs treated them as enemies or, at best, intruders with visible scorn and mistrust. On the day of their arrival, they were welcomed with a daylong anti-Zionist demonstration.
Meanwhile, the Jewish Agency was introducing them to settlers who spoke fluent Spanish, Persian, and Swedish. When they visited an Arab school in Bier al-Sabe, schoolteachers refused to interrupt classes or allow them to listen to students. At another school in Galilee, schoolchildren hissed and cursed at them. Al-Khoury angrily wrote back to Damascus and the Arab League in Cairo: “This is wrong. All we are getting is bad publicity.” Wherever UNSCOP went, they saw tidy, modern settlements, which were in contrast with chaotic Arab villages. Child labour at factories and cafes only further appalled UNSCOP members.
The only Palestinian of reputed standing who bravely decided to talk to them was Hussein al-Khalidi, the former mayor of Jerusalem and future prime minister of Jordan. In a lengthy meeting on 16 July 1947, he said: “Jews have no historical claim to Palestine, and Arabs should not pay the price for Hitler’s Holocaust. Hitler committed it, after all, and not the Palestinians.” He spoke out aggressively against partition, calling instead for a bi-national democratic state with an Arab majority. Musa Nasser, the headmaster of Bir Zeit School, added that once the British exit and such a state be inaugurated, autonomous Jewish pockets might be discussed.
On 21 July, UNSCOP headed to Beirut, where they met with Lebanese Prime Minister Riad Al Solh and his foreign minister, Hamid Frangieh. They, too, warned that partition would never pass, claiming that the Zionists had ambitions in Syria and Lebanon and were not restricted to Palestine.
On 23 July, Syrian and Iraq Foreign Ministers Naim Antaki and Mohammad Fadel al-Jamali travelled to Sofar, Lebanon, to meet UNSCOP. Antaki was blunt: “The Jews are illegal in Palestine. They shall be expelled. It might take time, but they have no future in the Middle East.” Al-Jamali went a step further, comparing Zionism to Nazism.
Finally, UNSCOP headed to Amman, where King Abdullah and Prime Minister Samir al-Rifaii Pasha received them. The king was very careful in choosing his words but clearly favoured a two-state solution. He didn’t envision one between Jews and Palestinian Arabs but rather between himself and the Jews.
Back in New York, piles of letters and petitions were being received by airmail from Jews across the world, affirming their rights to Palestine. The written petitions amounted to two tons of material, which were placed in the hands of UNSCOP. Very little came from the Arab world, in comparison. Zionist leaders, however, wined and dined with UNSCOP members, lobbying heavily to influence the outcome. None of the Arabs were present in the final debate, although Abba Ebban and David Horowitz were. UNSCOP officially released its report on 31 August 1947, calling for “partition with economic union.”
A majority of nations (Canada, Czechoslovakia, Guatemala, Netherlands, Peru, Sweden, and Uruguay) recommended the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states, with Jerusalem to be placed under international administration. A minority (India, Iran, and Yugoslavia) supported the creation of a single federal state containing both Jewish and Arab constituent states. Australia abstained.
The Jews would receive 26% of Palestine, including the Coastal Plain north of Haifa, the Negev Desert, and Jaffa. It would be composed of one million Jews and approximately 416,000 Arabs, in addition to 90,000 Bedouins who were not considered permanent residents. The Arabs would receive approximately 35%, including Hebron, Nablus, Jenin, and central and western Galilee (Acre and Nazareth).
The Arab state would be composed of 700,000 Arabs and 8,000 Jews. During the first year of its existence, Jews and Arabs would be allowed repatriation in whatever state they chose to live in. Jerusalem and Bethlehem, placed under a UN Trusteeship Council, would have 200,000 inhabitants, half Arab, half Jew. David Ben Gurion described it as “the beginning, indeed more than the beginning, of our salvation.” Syrian President Shukri al-Quwatli noted: “This is ludicrous; no sane Arab would accept it!”
Resolution 181
Three months later, the UN issued its partition plan for Palestine, which included a non-binding recommendation for a three-way partition into an Arab state and a Jewish state, with special status given to the religiously significant cities of Jerusalem and Bethlehem. The land allocated to the Arab state consisted of all of the highlands, except for Jerusalem, plus one-third of the coastline.
The highlands contained no large bodies of standing water and were relatively secure from malaria, allowing a substantial permanent population to exist. It also encompassed the Western Galilee, with Acre, and the southern coast stretching from north of Isdud, 32 km from Tel Aviv. It included 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 of the Arab State before the proposal went to the UN.
The Jewish state was to receive 55% of Mandatory Palestine. In the north, this area included Marj Bani Amer (renamed the Jezreel Valley after 1948), a large fertile plain and inland valley south of the Lower Galilee. It also received the Coastal Plain, Haifa, Eastern Galilee, the Negev, and the southern outpost of Umm Rashrash (later renamed Eilat).
However, the bulk of the proposed Jewish state's territory consisted of the Negev Desert. At the time, the desert was neither suitable for agriculture nor for urban development. The Jewish state was also given sole access to the Red Sea and the Sea of Galilee (Palestine's largest source of fresh water).
At the time of partition, Arabs owned slightly less than half the land in all of Palestine, while around the same amount was "crown land" owned by the Arabs but belonging to the British mandate regime. Only around 7% of the land was owned by Jews. Much of the Jewish population, especially in rural areas, lived on land leased from Arab owners.
Before the resolution passed, plenty of lobbying had to be done. The bar of the posh Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York became a daily gathering spot for Zionist lobbyists. Al-Khoury would walk down to the hotel daily and drink a Scotch with US Congressmen and community leaders. He was, however, alone in this endeavour.
Few of his Arab counterparts at the UN put in half the effort he did to influence the world’s diplomats. Even back home, locals were not helping him. Veteran revolt leader Fawzi al-Qawuqji, who was to lead an armed resistance into Palestine only weeks later, said: “We will murder, wreck, and ruin everything that stands in our way, be it English, American, or Jewish.”
On the other side of the debate, the Zionists were unleashing a massive propaganda campaign, trying hard to turn the voting in their favour. India, for example, was publically opposed to the resolution and was bound to create trouble for the Jewish Agency.
Albert Einstein, the world-famous Jewish scientist, wrote directly to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, reminding him that Jews have been the “victims of history for centuries.” India should think twice, he added, before it stood in the way of Jewish dreams of salvation. Nehru wrote back, expressing “deepest sympathy for the great suffering of the Jewish people”, but he refused to budge on partition.
China, however, was swayed from the initial rejection of the resolution to what the Zionists described as “benevolent neutrality.” Chinese ambassador to the UN, Wellington Koo, said, “China has her own difficulties. The Chinese Republic has twenty million Muslims, whose leaders hold important positions throughout China.” His country would abstain, as would Paraguay. Cuba and the Vatican were against the partition.
France’s position was unclear. It had 16 million Muslims throughout its colonies in North Africa. Its vote would certainly influence Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, and Denmark. Ex-Prime Minister Leon Blum, a French Jew and a socialist, was called out of retirement and asked to lobby his government in favour of the Zionists. US President Harry Truman wrote that never in his life had he been subjected to such pressure and propaganda.
On 25 November, his special aide David Niles instructed the US ambassador to the UN to “get all the votes” he could or else “there would be hell to pay for if voting went wrong.” Twenty-eight senators began cabling world leaders to vote for the UN Resolution. Camille Chamoun wrote to the Arab League that the US was practising “dark and obscure tyranny at the UN.”
On 29 November 1947, the General Assembly voted 33 to 13 in favour of the Partition Plan, with ten abstentions. The division was to take effect immediately after the British Mandate expired in mid-May 1948. The mandate would be terminated no later than 1 August 1948.
