Today is October 17, 2023. I hereby found Folke Bernadotte Day in memory of those Peaceful People who sought a Peaceful Way, for the Jews, and other Peoples to live in Peace, at the Supernova Music Festival. Two days after this hideous attack by the Evil Hamas Monsters, a survivor prayed all his friends that were taken hostage – would know dearth- because he knew they would be raped and tortured for years. The Dark Semitic Devil who infest the Gaza want all the billions of people of the world to think about them every waking minute of the day! They are blood-thirsty for attention. The same thing can be said about the Semitic Monsters of Israel. If you read your Torah, your New Testament, The Koran, then you know these books are FULL of Bloody Arguments- that lead to evil violence!

Folke Bernadotte was ASSASSINATED by the Murderous Zionist Stern Gang – a Terrorist Organization – because they did not like his UN Solution for the Partition of Palestine. President Biden is going to be in Israel to try to do what Folke and the UN failed to do. I hope he reads Bernadotte’s assessment on the plane. The Democratic President will be buried in Hateful Semitic Arguments – from all peoples – starting with the Republicans – who will Wish Evil On Him in the name of Jesus – The Semitic Jew!

The goal of those who celebrate Folke Bernadotte Day, is not NOT – for just one day – have a Semitic Thought, or, Think of Semitic Person, or entertain a Semitic Philosophy or Religion. NOT Pondering The Seed of Abraham, or the God the descendants of Abraham – is highly recommended. It is NOT FORBIDDEN lest one meet with violence, or – threats of violence. For this reason I suggest celebrants never gather in Folke’s Name, or hold a sign, or flag, that identifies you a a Peaceful Follower of Folke – The One Who Tried! ALL Semitic Peoples are welcome to celebrate on October 17yh.

Meditate on Peace – only! Try to clear your mind – for just one day! You will fail. This takes practice. Ask yourself if you THOUGHT about China, and the threat from the all the Chinese People -yesterday? They outnumber the Semitic Peoples. Is it O.K to hate, fear, and defame an oriental person – who do not live in a Democracy. How many Semitic People live in a True Democracy? Almost half of the Jews in Israel were protesting against he right-wing Jews who were gleefully getting rid of of Democracy. Why?

Uh-oh! I just had a Semitic thought – full of unsolvable riddles!

Peace! Peace be with you – on thiis day!

John ‘For Peace’ Presco

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Bernadotte

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folke_Bernadotte

Folke Bernadotte

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Folke Bernadotte
Count of Wisborg
Bernadotte in the mid 1940s
Born	2 January 1895 Stockholm, Sweden
Died	17 September 1948 (aged 53) Jerusalem, Israel
Burial	Northern Cemetery, Solna
Spouse	Estelle Romaine Manville(m. 1928)
Issue	Count Gustaf EduardCount FolkeCount Fredrik OscarCount Bertil Oscar
House	Bernadotte
Father	Prince Oscar Bernadotte
Mother	Ebba Munck af Fulkila

Folke Bernadotte, Count of Wisborg (2 January 1895 – 17 September 1948) was a Swedish nobleman and diplomat. In World War II he negotiated the release of about 31,000 prisoners from German concentration camps, including 450 Danish Jews from the Theresienstadt camp. They were released on 14 April 1945.^[1]^[2]^[3] In 1945 he received a German surrender offer from Heinrich Himmler, though the offer was ultimately rejected.

After the war, Bernadotte was unanimously chosen to be the United Nations Security Council mediator in the Arab–Israeli conflict of 1947–1948. He was assassinated in Jerusalem in 1948 by the paramilitary Zionist group Lehi while pursuing his official duties. Upon his death, Ralph Bunche took up his work at the UN, successfully mediating the 1949 Armistice Agreements between Israel and Egypt.

Early life

Folke Bernadotte was born in Stockholm into the House of Bernadotte, the Swedish royal family. His father, Prince Oscar Bernadotte, Count of Wisborg (formerly Prince Oscar of Sweden, Duke of Gotland), was the second son of King Oscar II of Sweden; his mother, Ebba Munck af Fulkila, had been a lady in waiting to Victoria of Baden, the wife of Crown Prince Gustaf. Oscar had married Ebba without the consent of the King, and so was forced to renounce his Swedish titles; in 1892, he was granted the titles of Prince Bernadotte and Count of Wisborg by his uncle, Adolphe, Grand Duke of Luxembourg.^[4]^[5]

Bernadotte attended school in Stockholm, after which he entered training to become a cavalry officer at the Royal Military Academy. He took the officer’s exam in 1915, was commissioned a lieutenant in 1918, and subsequently was promoted to the rank of major.

Bernadotte represented Sweden in 1933 at the Chicago Century of Progress Exposition, and later served as Swedish commissioner general at the New York World’s Fair in 1939–40. Bernadotte had long been involved with the Swedish Boy Scouts (Sveriges Scoutförbund), and took over as director of the organization in 1937. At the outbreak of World War II, Bernadotte worked to integrate the scouts into Sweden’s defense plan, training them in anti-aircraft work and as medical assistants. Bernadotte was appointed Vice Chairman of the Swedish Red Cross in 1943.^[6]

Diplomatic career

World War II

During the autumns of 1943 and 1944, he organized prisoner exchanges which brought home 11,000 prisoners from Germany via Sweden. While Vice-President of the Swedish Red Cross in 1945, Bernadotte attempted to negotiate an armistice between Germany and the Allies. He also led several rescue missions in Germany for the Red Cross. In April 1945, Heinrich Himmler asked Bernadotte to convey a peace proposal to Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Harry S. Truman without the knowledge of Adolf Hitler. The main point of the proposal was that Germany would surrender only to the Western Allies (the United Kingdom and the United States), but would be allowed to continue resisting the Soviet Union. According to Bernadotte, he told Himmler that the proposal had no chance of acceptance, but nevertheless he passed it on to the Swedish government and the Western Allies. It had no lasting effect.^[7]^[8]

White Buses

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Main article: White Buses

Upon the initiative of the Norwegian diplomat Niels Christian Ditleff in the final months of the war, Bernadotte acted as the negotiator for a rescue operation transporting interned Norwegians, Danes and other western European inmates from German concentration camps to hospitals in Sweden.

In the spring of 1945, Bernadotte was in Germany when he met Heinrich Himmler, who was briefly appointed commander of an entire German army following the assassination attempt on Hitler the year before. Bernadotte had originally been assigned to retrieve Norwegian and Danish POWs in Germany. He returned on 1 May 1945, the day after Hitler’s death. Following an interview, the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet wrote that Bernadotte succeeded in rescuing 15,000 people from German concentration camps, including about 8,000 Danes and Norwegians and 7,000 women of French, Polish, Czech, British, American, Argentinian, and Chinese nationalities. The missions took around two months, and exposed the Swedish Red Cross staff to significant danger, both due to political difficulties and by taking them through areas under Allied bombing.

The mission became known for its buses, painted entirely white except for the Red Cross emblem on the side, so that they would not be mistaken for military targets. In total it included 308 personnel (about 20 medics and the rest volunteer soldiers), 36 hospital buses, 19 trucks, seven passenger cars, seven motorcycles, a tow truck, a field kitchen, and full supplies for the entire trip, including food and gasoline, none of which was permitted to be obtained in Germany. A count of 21,000 people rescued included 8,000 Danes and Norwegians, 5,911 Poles, 2,629 French, 1,615 Jews, and 1,124 Germans.

After Germany’s surrender, the White Buses mission continued in May and June and about 10,000 additional liberated prisoners were thus evacuated.

Bernadotte recounted the White Buses mission in his book The End. My Humanitarian Negotiations in Germany in 1945 and Their Political Consequences, published on June 15, 1945 in Swedish.^[9]

Felix Kersten and the White Buses controversy

Following the war, some controversies arose regarding Bernadotte’s leadership of the White Buses expedition, some personal and some as to the mission itself. One aspect involved a long-standing feud between Bernadotte and Himmler’s personal masseur, Felix Kersten, who had played some role in facilitating Bernadotte’s access to Himmler,^[10] but whom Bernadotte resisted crediting after the war.^[11] The resulting feud between Bernadotte and Kersten came to public attention through British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper.^[12] In 1953, Trevor-Roper published an article based on an interview and documents originating with Kersten.^[13] The article stated that Bernadotte’s role in the rescue operations was that of “transport officer, no more”. Kersten was quoted as saying that, according to Himmler, Bernadotte was opposed to the rescue of Jews and understood “the necessity of our fight against World Jewry”.

Shortly following the publication of his article, Trevor-Roper began to retreat from these charges. At the time of his article, Kersten had just been nominated by the Dutch government for the Nobel Peace Prize for thwarting a Nazi plan to deport the entire Dutch population, based primarily on Kersten’s own claims to this effect.^[14] A later investigation by Dutch historian Louis de Jong concluded that no such plan had existed, however, and that Kersten’s documents were partly fabricated.^[15] Following these revelations and others, Trevor-Roper told journalist Barbara Amiel in 1995 that he was no longer certain about the allegations, and that Bernadotte may merely have been following his orders to rescue Danish and Norwegian prisoners.^[16] A number of other historians have also questioned Kersten’s account, concluding that the accusations were based on a forgery or a distortion devised by Kersten.^[17]^[18]

Some controversy regarding the White Buses trip has also arisen in Scandinavia, particularly regarding the priority given to Scandinavian prisoners.^[19] Political scientist Sune Persson judged these doubts to be contradicted by the documentary evidence. He concluded, “The accusations against Count Bernadotte … to the effect that he refused to save Jews from the concentration camps are obvious lies” and listed many prominent eyewitnesses who testified on Bernadotte’s behalf, including the World Jewish Congress representative in Stockholm in 1945.^[20]

UN mediator

Main article: Bernadotte plan

On 20 May 1948, Folke Bernadotte was appointed “United Nations Mediator in Palestine”, in accordance with UN-resolution 186 of 14 May 1948.^[21] It was the first official mediation in the UN’s history. This was necessitated by the immediate violence that followed the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine and the subsequent unilateral Israeli Declaration of Independence. In this capacity, he succeeded in achieving an initial truce during the subsequent 1948 Arab–Israeli War and laid the groundwork for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. The specific proposals showed the influence of the previously responsible British government, and to a lesser extent the U.S. government.^[22] Bernadotte wrote that: “in putting forward any proposal for the solution of the Palestine problem, one must bear in mind the aspirations of the Jews, the political difficulties and differences of opinion of the Arab leaders, the strategic interests of Great Britain, the financial commitment of the United States and the Soviet Union, the outcome of the war, and finally the authority and prestige of the United Nations.”^[23]

After Bernadotte’s assassination, his assistant American mediator Ralph Bunche was appointed to replace him. Bunche eventually negotiated a ceasefire, signed on the Greek island of Rhodes. See 1949 Armistice Agreements.

Assassination

Bernadotte was assassinated on Friday 17 September 1948 by members of the group Lehi, a Zionist terrorist organization, commonly known in the West as the Stern Gang. Immediately after Bernadotte was pronounced dead, his body was moved to the YMCA, after which it was taken to Haifa and flown back to Sweden. Bernadotte was granted a state funeral, Abba Eban attended on behalf of Israel. Bernadotte was survived by a widow and two sons, a 12-year-old and a 17-year-old. He was buried in Prince Oscar Bernadotte‘s family tomb at the Northern Cemetery in Stockholm.^[24]

Planning and background

The Stern Gang saw Bernadotte as a puppet of the British and the Arabs and therefore a serious threat to the emerging State of Israel.^[25] Most immediately, a truce was in force, and Lehi feared that the Israeli leadership would agree to Bernadotte’s peace proposals, which it considered disastrous.^[26]^[27] The group was unaware the Israeli government had already decided to reject Bernadotte’s plan and to take the military option.^[28]^[29]

The killing was approved by the three-man ‘center’ of Lehi: Yitzhak Yezernitsky (the future Prime Minister of Israel Yitzhak Shamir), Nathan Friedmann (also called Natan Yellin-Mor) and Yisrael Eldad (also known as Scheib). A fourth leader, Emmanuel Strassberg (Hanegbi) was also suspected by the Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion of being part of the group that ordered the assassination.^[30]^[31]^[32]^[33] The assassination was planned by Lehi’s Jerusalem operations chief, Yehoshua Zettler.^[34]

The attack

A four-man team, consisting of Yehoshua Cohen, Yitzhak Ben-Moshe (Markovitz), Avraham Steinberg, and Meshulam Makover, ambushed Bernadotte’s motorcade in Jerusalem’s Katamon neighborhood. The team left a Lehi base in a Jeep and set up a makeshift roadblock at Ben Zion Guini Square, off Hapalmach Street, and waited in the jeep. When Bernadotte’s motorcade approached, Cohen, Ben-Moshe, and Steinberg got out and approached it, while Makover, the driver, remained in the jeep. Captain Moshe Hillman, the motorcade’s Israeli liaison officer, who was sitting in the leading UN vehicle, called out in Hebrew to let them through, but was ignored. Cohen came up to Bernadotte’s sedan and fired through an open window, pumping 6 shots into Bernadotte’s chest, throat and arms and 18 into Colonel André Serot who was seated to his left, killing both.^[35] Serot had swapped places in the motorcade to join Bernadotte and thank him personally for having saved his wife’s life in a German concentration camp.^[35] Ben-Moshe and Steinberg shot at the tires of the UN vehicles, while Cohen finished the magazine by firing at the radiator. The driver of the sedan, Colonel Begley, got out and tried to grapple with Cohen as he fired his last shots, but was burned in the face by the gun flashes. Ben-Moshe and Steinberg then rushed back and mounted the jeep, which quickly accelerated down a side road, while Cohen ran away from the scene across a roadside field.^[34]^[36]^[37]^[38]

Following the shooting, Bernadotte’s car sped to Hadassah Mount Scopus Hospital, despite damage to the radiator; the lead vehicle followed as its tires came apart. At the hospital, Bernadotte was pronounced dead. General Åge Lundström, who was in the UN vehicle, described the incident as follows:

In the Katamon quarter, we were held up by a Jewish Army type jeep placed in a road block and filled with men in Jewish Army uniforms. At the same moment, I saw an armed man coming from this jeep. I took little notice of this because I merely thought it was another checkpoint. However, he put a Tommy gun through the open window on my side of the car, and fired point blank at Count Bernadotte and Colonel Serot. I also heard shots fired from other points, and there was considerable confusion… Colonel Serot fell in the seat in back of me, and I saw at once that he was dead. Count Bernadotte bent forward, and I thought at the time he was trying to get cover. I asked him: ‘Are you wounded?’ He nodded, and fell back…. When we arrived [at the Hadassah hospital]… I carried the Count inside and laid him on the bed…. I took off the Count’s jacket and tore away his shirt and undervest. I saw that he was wounded around the heart and that there was also a considerable quantity of blood on his clothes about it. When the doctor arrived, I asked if anything could be done, but he replied that it was too late.^[39]

All four members of the hit team made it to the religious community of Shaarei Pina, where they hid with local Haredi sympathizers. After a few days in hiding, they fled to Tel Aviv in the back of a furniture truck.^[40]

Investigation

Lehi leaders initially denied responsibility for the attack.^[41] Only later did Lehi take responsibility for the killings in the name of Hazit Hamoledet (the Homeland Front), a name they copied from a war-time Bulgarian resistance group.^[42]

Lehi was forcibly disarmed and many members were arrested, but nobody was charged with the killings. The Israel Police, along with the military police and security services, investigated the assassination, but failed to identify any of the participants in the assassination, and the case was eventually closed without any of the participants having been identified. It has been suggested that the reasons for the failure of the investigation were poor coordination between these bodies, which resulted in information that may have assisted the police not being turned over to them, and the lack of proficiency among police officers and investigators in the early days of the Israel Police.^[43] The murder case was identified as 148/48 in Israeli police records.^[44]

Yellin-Mor and another Lehi member, Mattityahu Shmulevitz, were charged with belonging to a terrorist organization. They were found guilty but immediately released and pardoned. Yellin-Mor had meanwhile been elected to the first Knesset.^[45] Betty Knut-Lazarus, a Lehi militant, and the granddaughter of composer Alexander Scriabin, was also imprisoned for being allegedly involved in the killing, before being subsequently released.^[46]

Years later, Cohen’s role was uncovered by David Ben-Gurion‘s biographer Michael Bar Zohar, while Cohen was working as Ben-Gurion’s personal bodyguard. The first public admission of Lehi’s role in the killing was made on the anniversary of the assassination in 1977.^[47] The statute of limitations for the murder had expired in 1971.^[32]^[48] In 1988, two years after Cohen’s death, Zettler and Makover publicly confessed their role in the assassination and confirmed that Cohen had killed Bernadotte.^[44]

The weapon which was used in the assassination (an MP 40, serial number 2581)^[44] was lost, and was only found again in 2018 during an inventory check in the Heritage house of the Israel Police, when an unidentified box was found to contain an MP 40 machine pistol and the curator, Shlomi Shitrit, decided to identify the history of the weapon. Prior to finding it, it was believed to have been destroyed.^[44]

Diplomatic fallout

The day after the murders, the United Nations Security Council condemned the killing of Bernadotte as “a cowardly act which appears to have been committed by a criminal group of terrorists in Jerusalem while the United Nations representative was fulfilling his peace-seeking mission in the Holy Land.”^[49]

The Swedish government believed that Bernadotte had been assassinated by Israeli government agents.^[50] They publicly attacked the inadequacy of the Israeli investigation, and campaigned unsuccessfully to delay Israel’s admission to the United Nations.^[51] In 1950, Sweden recognized Israel, but relations remained frosty despite Israeli attempts to mollify Sweden, such as through the planting of a Bernadotte Forest by the Jewish National Fund in Israel.^[52] At a ceremony in Tel Aviv in May 1995, attended by the Swedish deputy prime minister, Israeli Foreign Minister and Labor Party member Shimon Peres issued a “condemnation of terror, thanks for the rescue of the Jews and regret that Bernadotte was murdered in a terrorist way”, adding that “We hope this ceremony will help in healing the wound.”^[53]

Ralph Bunche, Bernadotte’s American deputy, succeeded him as U.N. mediator. Bunche was successful in bringing about the signing of the 1949 Armistice Agreements, for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize.

Awards and memorials

In 1998, Bernadotte was posthumously awarded one of the first three Dag Hammarskjöld Medals, given to UN peacekeepers who are killed in the line of duty.^[54]

The university library at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, US is named after him.

Wife and children

In 1928 in Pleasantville, New York,^[55] Folke Bernadotte married Estelle Romaine Manville (1904–1984), whose family had founded part of the Johns-Manville Corporation. They had four sons, two of whom died in childhood.

Count Gustaf Eduard Bernadotte of Wisborg (1930–1936)
Count Folke Bernadotte of Wisborg (born 1931), married Christine Glahns
Count Fredrik Oscar Bernadotte of Wisborg (1934–1944)
Count Bertil Oscar Bernadotte of Wisborg (born 1935) married Rose-Marie Heering (1942–1967) and Jill Georgina Rhodes-Maddox

Seven grandchildren were all born after Folke Bernadotte’s death. His widow Estelle Bernadotte remarried in 1973.

In September 2008, it became official that before his marriage Bernadotte had a daughter with actress Lillie Ericson-Udde (Lillie Christina Ericson, 1892–1981):^[56]

Jeanne Birgitta Sofia Kristina Matthiessen, née Ericson (1921–1991), who was adopted by Carl G. W. Matthiessen (1886–1951) when he married Lillie Ericson in 1925.

Books

Bernadotte, Folke (1945). The Curtain Falls. Translated by Count Eric Lewenhaupt. New York: A. A. Knopf. LCCN 45008956. (Swedish title: Slutet.)
Bernadotte, Folke (1948). Instead of arms: autobiographical notes. Stockholm; New York: Bonniers. ISBN 978-1-125-28453-7.
Bernadotte, Folke (1947). Människor jag mött [People I Met] (in Swedish). Stockholm: A. Bonnier.
Bernadotte, Folke (1976) [1951]. To Jerusalem. Translated by Joan Bulman. Westport, Connecticut: Hyperion Press.

United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine

36 languages

“Partition of Palestine” redirects here. For the partition of Palestine into Israel, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank, see 1949 Armistice Agreements.

UN General Assembly Resolution 181 (II)
UNSCOP (3 September 1947; see green line) and UN Ad Hoc Committee (25 November 1947) partition plans. The UN Ad Hoc Committee proposal was voted on in the resolution.
Date	29 November 1947
Meeting no.	128
Code	A/RES/181(II) (Document)
Voting summary	33 voted for13 voted against10 abstained
Result	Adopted

The United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine was a proposal by the United Nations, which recommended a partition of Mandatory Palestine at the end of the British Mandate. On 29 November 1947, the UN General Assembly adopted the Plan as Resolution 181 (II).^[1]

The resolution recommended the creation of independent Arab and Jewish States and a Special International Regime for the city of Jerusalem. The Partition Plan, a four-part document attached to the resolution, provided for the termination of the Mandate, the progressive withdrawal of British armed forces and the delineation of boundaries between the two States and Jerusalem. Part I of the Plan stipulated that the Mandate would be terminated as soon as possible and the United Kingdom would withdraw no later than 1 August 1948. The new states would come into existence two months after the withdrawal, but no later than 1 October 1948. The Plan sought to address the conflicting objectives and claims of two competing movements, Palestinian nationalism and Jewish nationalism, or Zionism.^[2]^[3] The Plan also called for Economic Union between the proposed states, and for the protection of religious and minority rights.^[4] While Jewish organizations collaborated with UNSCOP during the deliberations, the Palestinian Arab leadership boycotted it.^[5]

The proposed plan is considered to have been pro-Zionist by its detractors, with 62% of the land allocated to the Jewish state despite the Palestinian Arab population numbering twice the Jewish population.^[6] Consequently, the partition plan was accepted by Jewish Agency for Palestine and most Zionist factions who viewed it as a stepping stone to territorial expansion at an opportune time.^[7]^[5] The Arab Higher Committee, the Arab League and other Arab leaders and governments rejected it on the basis that in addition to the Arabs forming a two-thirds majority, they owned a majority of the lands.^[8]^[9] They also indicated an unwillingness to accept any form of territorial division,^[10] arguing that it violated the principles of national self-determination in the UN Charter which granted people the right to decide their own destiny.^[5]^[11] They announced their intention to take all necessary measures to prevent the implementation of the resolution.^[12]^[13]^[14]^[15] Subsequently a civil war broke out in Palestine^[16] and the plan was not implemented.^[17]

Background

The British administration was formalized by the League of Nations under the Palestine Mandate in 1923, as part of the Partitioning of the Ottoman Empire following World War I. The Mandate reaffirmed the 1917 British commitment to the Balfour Declaration, for the establishment in Palestine of a “National Home” for the Jewish people, with the prerogative to carry it out.^[18]^[19] A British census of 1918 estimated 700,000 Arabs and 56,000 Jews.^[18]

In 1937, following a six-month-long Arab General Strike and armed insurrection which aimed to pursue national independence and secure the country from foreign control, the British established the Peel Commission.^[20] The Commission concluded that the Mandate had become unworkable, and recommended Partition into an Arab state linked to Transjordan; a small Jewish state; and a mandatory zone. To address problems arising from the presence of national minorities in each area, it suggested a land and population transfer^[21] involving the transfer of some 225,000 Arabs living in the envisaged Jewish state and 1,250 Jews living in a future Arab state, a measure deemed compulsory “in the last resort”.^[21]^[22]^[23] To address any economic problems, the Plan proposed avoiding interfering with Jewish immigration, since any interference would be liable to produce an “economic crisis”, most of Palestine’s wealth coming from the Jewish community. To solve the predicted annual budget deficit of the Arab State and reduction in public services due to loss of tax from the Jewish state, it was proposed that the Jewish state pay an annual subsidy to the Arab state and take on half of the latter’s deficit.^[21]^[22]^[24] The Palestinian Arab leadership rejected partition as unacceptable, given the inequality in the proposed population exchange and the transfer of one-third of Palestine, including most of its best agricultural land, to recent immigrants.^[23] The Jewish leaders, Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion, persuaded the Zionist Congress to lend provisional approval to the Peel recommendations as a basis for further negotiations.^[25]^[26]^[27]^[28] In a letter to his son in October 1937, Ben-Gurion explained that partition would be a first step to “possession of the land as a whole”.^[29]^[30]^[31] The same sentiment, that acceptance of partition was a temporary measure beyond which the Palestine would be “redeemed . . in its entirety,”^[32] was recorded by Ben-Gurion on other occasions, such as at a meeting of the Jewish Agency executive in June 1938,^[33] as well as by Chaim Weizmann.^[31]^[34]

The British Woodhead Commission was set up to examine the practicality of partition. The Peel plan was rejected and two possible alternatives were considered. In 1938 the British government issued a policy statement declaring that “the political, administrative and financial difficulties involved in the proposal to create independent Arab and Jewish States inside Palestine are so great that this solution of the problem is impracticable”. Representatives of Arabs and Jews were invited to London for the St. James Conference, which proved unsuccessful.^[35]

With World War II looming, British policies were influenced by a desire to win Arab world support and could ill afford to engage with another Arab uprising.^[36] The MacDonald White Paper of May 1939 declared that it was “not part of [the British government’s] policy that Palestine should become a Jewish State”, sought to limit Jewish immigration to Palestine and restricted Arab land sales to Jews. However, the League of Nations commission held that the White Paper was in conflict with the terms of the Mandate as put forth in the past. The outbreak of the Second World War suspended any further deliberations.^[37]^[38] The Jewish Agency hoped to persuade the British to restore Jewish immigration rights, and cooperated with the British in the war against Fascism. Aliyah Bet was organized to spirit Jews out of Nazi controlled Europe, despite the British prohibitions. The White Paper also led to the formation of Lehi, a small Jewish organization which opposed the British.

After World War II, in August 1945 President Truman asked for the admission of 100,000 Holocaust survivors into Palestine^[39] but the British maintained limits on Jewish immigration in line with the 1939 White Paper. The Jewish community rejected the restriction on immigration and organized an armed resistance. These actions and United States pressure to end the anti-immigration policy led to the establishment of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry. In April 1946, the Committee reached a unanimous decision for the immediate admission of 100,000 Jewish refugees from Europe into Palestine, rescission of the white paper restrictions of land sale to Jews, that the country be neither Arab nor Jewish, and the extension of U.N. Trusteeship. The U.S. endorsed the Commission’s findings concerning Jewish immigration and land purchase restrictions,^[40] while the British made their agreement to implementation conditional on U.S. assistance in case of another Arab revolt.^[40] In effect, the British continued to carry out their White Paper policy.^[41] The recommendations triggered violent demonstrations in the Arab states, and calls for a Jihad and an annihilation of all European Jews in Palestine.^[42]

United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP)

Further information: UNSCOP

Under the terms of League of Nations A-class mandates each such mandatory territory was to become a sovereign state on termination of its mandate. By the end of World War II, this occurred with all such mandates except Palestine, however the League of Nations itself lapsed in 1946 leading to a legal quandary.^[45]^[46] In February 1947, Britain announced its intent to terminate the Mandate for Palestine, referring the matter of the future of Palestine to the United Nations.^[47]^[48] The hope was that a binational state would ensue, which meant an unpartitioned Palestine. British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin‘s policy was premised on the idea that an Arab majority would carry the day, which met difficulties with Harry S. Truman who, sensitive to Zionist electoral pressures in the United States, pressed for a British-Zionist compromise.^[49] In May, the UN formed the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) to prepare a report on recommendations for Palestine. The Jewish Agency pressed for Jewish representation and the exclusion of both Britain and Arab countries on the Committee, sought visits to camps where Holocaust survivors were interned in Europe as part of UNSCOP’s brief, and in May won representation on the Political Committee.^[50] The Arab states, convinced statehood had been subverted, and that the transition of authority from the League of Nations to the UN was questionable in law, wished the issues to be brought before an International Court, and refused to collaborate with UNSCOP, which had extended an invitation for liaison also to the Arab Higher Committee.^[46]^[51] In August, after three months of conducting hearings and a general survey of the situation in Palestine, a majority report of the committee recommended that the region be partitioned into an Arab state and a Jewish state, which should retain an economic union. An international regime was envisioned for Jerusalem.

The Arab delegations at the UN had sought to keep separate the issue of Palestine from the issue of Jewish refugees in Europe. During their visit, UNSCOP members were shocked by the extent of Lehi and Irgun violence, then at its apogee, and by the elaborate military presence attested by endemic barb-wire, searchlights, and armoured-car patrols. Committee members also witnessed the SS Exodus affair in Haifa and could hardly have remained unaffected by it. On concluding their mission, they dispatched a subcommittee to investigate Jewish refugee camps in Europe.^[52]^[53] The incident is mentioned in the report in relation to Jewish distrust and resentment concerning the British enforcement of the 1939 White Paper.^[54]

UNSCOP report

On 3 September 1947, the Committee reported to the General Assembly. CHAPTER V: PROPOSED RECOMMENDATIONS (I), Section A of the Report contained eleven proposed recommendations (I – XI) approved unanimously. Section B contained one proposed recommendation approved by a substantial majority dealing with the Jewish problem in general (XI). CHAPTER VI: PROPOSED RECOMMENDATIONS (II) contained a Plan of Partition with Economic Union to which seven members of the Committee (Canada, Czechoslovakia, Guatemala, the Netherlands, Peru, Sweden and Uruguay), expressed themselves in favour. CHAPTER VII RECOMMENDATIONS (III) contained a comprehensive proposal that was voted upon and supported by three members (India, Iran, and Yugoslavia) for a Federal State of Palestine. Australia abstained. In CHAPTER VIII a number of members of the Committee expressed certain reservations and observations.^[55]

Proposed partition

Land ownership

Population distribution

Two maps reviewed by UN Subcommittee 2 in considering partition

The report of the majority of the Committee (CHAPTER VI) envisaged the division of Palestine into three parts: an Arab State, a Jewish State and the City of Jerusalem, linked by extraterritorial crossroads. The proposed Arab State would include the central and part of western Galilee, with the town of Acre, the hill country of Samaria and Judea, an enclave at Jaffa, 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 proposed Jewish State would include the fertile Eastern Galilee, the Coastal Plain, stretching from Haifa to Rehovot and most of the Negev desert,^[56] including the southern outpost of Umm Rashrash (now Eilat). The Jerusalem Corpus Separatum included Bethlehem and the surrounding areas.

The primary objectives of the majority of the Committee were political division and economic unity between the two groups.^[4] The Plan tried its best to accommodate as many Jews as possible into the Jewish State. In many specific cases,^{[citation needed]} this meant including areas of Arab majority (but with a significant Jewish minority) in the Jewish state. Thus the Jewish State would have an overall large Arab minority. Areas that were sparsely populated (like the Negev desert), were also included in the Jewish state to create room for immigration. According to the plan, Jews and Arabs living in the Jewish state would become citizens of the Jewish state and Jews and Arabs living in the Arab state would become citizens of the Arab state.

By virtue of Chapter 3, Palestinian citizens residing in Palestine outside the City of Jerusalem, as well as Arabs and Jews who, not holding Palestinian citizenship, resided in Palestine outside the City of Jerusalem would, upon the recognition of independence, become citizens of the State in which they were resident and enjoy full civil and political rights.

The Plan would have had the following demographics (data based on 1945).

Territory	Arab and other population	% Arab and other	Jewish population	% Jewish	Total population
Arab State	725,000	99%	10,000	1%	735,000
Jewish State	407,000	45%	498,000	55%	905,000
International	105,000	51%	100,000	49%	205,000
Total	1,237,000	67%	608,000	33%	1,845,000
Data from the Report of UNSCOP: 3 September 1947: CHAPTER 4: A COMMENTARY ON PARTITION

The land allocated to the Arab State in the final plan included about 43% of Mandatory Palestine^[57]^[58]^[59] and consisted of all of the highlands, except for Jerusalem, plus one-third of the coastline. The highlands contain the major aquifers of Palestine, which supplied water to the coastal cities of central Palestine, including Tel Aviv.^{[citation needed]} The Jewish State allocated to the Jews, who constituted a third of the population and owned about 7% of the land, was to receive 56% of Mandatory Palestine, a slightly larger area to accommodate the increasing numbers of Jews who would immigrate there.^[58]^[59]^[60] The Jewish State included three fertile lowland plains – the Sharon on the coast, the Jezreel Valley and the upper Jordan Valley. The bulk of the proposed Jewish State’s territory, however, consisted of the Negev Desert,^[56] which was not suitable for agriculture, nor for urban development at that time. The Jewish State would also be given sole access to the Sea of Galilee, crucial for its water supply, and the economically important Red Sea.

The committee voted for the plan, 25 to 13 (with 17 abstentions and 2 absentees) on 25 November 1947 and the General Assembly was called back into a special session to vote on the proposal. Various sources noted that this was one vote short of the two-thirds majority required in the General Assembly.^[60]

Ad hoc Committee

Map comparing the borders of the 1947 partition plan and the armistice of 1949. — **Boundaries defined in the 1947 UN Partition Plan for Palestine:**

Area assigned for a Jewish state Area assigned for an Arab state Planned *Corpus separatum* with the intention that Jerusalem would be neither Jewish nor ArabArmistice Demarcation Lines of 1949 (Green Line):

Israeli controlled territory from 1949 Egyptian and Jordanian controlled territory from 1948 until 1967

Main article: Ad Hoc Committee on the Palestinian Question

On 23 September 1947 the General Assembly established the Ad Hoc Committee on the Palestinian Question to consider the UNSCOP report. Representatives of the Arab Higher Committee and Jewish Agency were invited and attended.^[61]

During the committee’s deliberations, the British government endorsed the report’s recommendations concerning the end of the mandate, independence, and Jewish immigration.^{[citation needed]} However, the British did “not feel able to implement” any agreement unless it was acceptable to both the Arabs and the Jews, and asked that the General Assembly provide an alternative implementing authority if that proved to be the case.

The Arab Higher Committee rejected both the majority and minority recommendations within the UNSCOP report. They “concluded from a survey of Palestine history that Zionist claims to that country had no legal or moral basis”. The Arab Higher Committee argued that only an Arab State in the whole of Palestine would be consistent with the UN Charter.

The Jewish Agency expressed support for most of the UNSCOP recommendations, but emphasized the “intense urge” of the overwhelming majority of Jewish displaced persons to proceed to Palestine. The Jewish Agency criticized the proposed boundaries, especially in the Western Galilee and Western Jerusalem (outside of the old city), arguing that these should be included in the Jewish state. However, they agreed to accept the plan if “it would make possible the immediate re-establishment of the Jewish State with sovereign control of its own immigration.”

Arab states requested representation on the UN ad hoc subcommittees of October 1947, but were excluded from Subcommittee One, which had been delegated the specific task of studying and, if thought necessary, modifying the boundaries of the proposed partition.^[62]

Sub-Committee 2

The Sub-Committee 2, set up on 23 October 1947 to draw up a detailed plan based on proposals of Arab states presented its report within a few weeks.^[63]

Based on a reproduced British report, the Sub-Committee 2 criticised the UNSCOP report for using inaccurate population figures, especially concerning the Bedouin population. The British report, dated 1 November 1947, used the results of a new census in Beersheba in 1946 with additional use of aerial photographs, and an estimate of the population in other districts. It found that the size of the Bedouin population was greatly understated in former enumerations. In Beersheba, 3,389 Bedouin houses and 8,722 tents were counted. The total Bedouin population was estimated at approximately 127,000; only 22,000 of them normally resident in the Arab state under the UNSCOP majority plan. The British report stated:

“the term Beersheba Bedouin has a meaning more definite than one would expect in the case of a nomad population. These tribes, wherever they are found in Palestine, will always describe themselves as Beersheba tribes. Their attachment to the area arises from their land rights there and their historic association with it.”^[64]

In respect of the UNSCOP report, the Sub-Committee concluded that the earlier population “estimates must, however, be corrected in the light of the information furnished to the Sub-Committee by the representative of the United Kingdom regarding the Bedouin population. According to the statement, 22,000 Bedouins may be taken as normally residing in the areas allocated to the Arab State under the UNSCOP’s majority plan, and the balance of 105,000 as resident in the proposed Jewish State. It will thus be seen that the proposed Jewish State will contain a total population of 1,008,800, consisting of 509,780 Arabs and 499,020 Jews. In other words, at the outset, the Arabs will have a majority in the proposed Jewish State.”^[65]

The Sub-Committee 2 recommended to put the question of the Partition Plan before the International Court of Justice (Resolution No. I ^[66]). In respect of the Jewish refugees due to World War II, the Sub-Committee recommended to request the countries of which the refugees belonged to take them back as much as possible (Resolution No. II^[67]). The Sub-Committee proposed to establish a unitary state (Resolution No. III^[68]).

Boundary changes

The ad hoc committee made a number of boundary changes to the UNSCOP recommendations before they were voted on by the General Assembly.

The predominantly Arab city of Jaffa, previously located within the Jewish state, was constituted as an enclave of the Arab State. The boundary of the Arab state was modified to include Beersheba and a strip of the Negev desert along the Egyptian border,^[56] while a section of the Dead Sea shore and other additions were made to the Jewish State. This move increased the Jewish percentage in the Jewish state from 55% to 61%.^{[citation needed]}

The proposed boundaries would also have placed 54 Arab villages on the opposite side of the border from their farm land.^{[citation needed]} In response, the United Nations Palestine Commission established in 1948 was empowered to modify the boundaries “in such a way that village areas as a rule will not be divided by state boundaries unless pressing reasons make that necessary”. These modifications never occurred.

The vote

Passage of the resolution required a two-thirds majority of the valid votes, not counting abstaining and absent members, of the UN’s then 57 member states. On 26 November, after filibustering by the Zionist delegation, the vote was postponed by three days.^[70]^[71] According to multiple sources, had the vote been held on the original set date, it would have received a majority, but less than the required two-thirds.^[71]^[72]^[73] Various compromise proposals and variations on a single state, including federations and cantonal systems were debated (including those previously rejected in committee).^[74]^[75] The delay was used by supporters of Zionism in New York to put extra pressure on states not supporting the resolution.^[70]

Reports of pressure for and against the Plan

Reports of pressure for the Plan

Zionists launched an intense White House lobby to have the UNSCOP plan endorsed, and the effects were not trivial.^[76] The Democratic Party, a large part of whose contributions came from Jews,^[77] informed Truman that failure to live up to promises to support the Jews in Palestine would constitute a danger to the party. The defection of Jewish votes in congressional elections in 1946 had contributed to electoral losses. Truman was, according to Roger Cohen, embittered by feelings of being a hostage to the lobby and its ‘unwarranted interference’, which he blamed for the contemporary impasse. When a formal American declaration in favour of partition was given on 11 October, a public relations authority declared to the Zionist Emergency Council in a closed meeting: ‘under no circumstances should any of us believe or think we had won because of the devotion of the American Government to our cause. We had won because of the sheer pressure of political logistics that was applied by the Jewish leadership in the United States’. State Department advice critical of the controversial UNSCOP recommendation to give the overwhelmingly Arab town of Jaffa, and the Negev, to the Jews was overturned by an urgent and secret late meeting organized for Chaim Weizman with Truman, which immediately countermanded the recommendation. The United States initially refrained from pressuring smaller states to vote either way, but Robert A. Lovett reported that America’s U.N. delegation’s case suffered impediments from high pressure by Jewish groups, and that indications existed that bribes and threats were being used, even of American sanctions against Liberia and Nicaragua.^[78] When the UNSCOP plan failed to achieve the necessary majority on 25 November, the lobby ‘moved into high gear’ and induced the President to overrule the State Department, and let wavering governments know that the U.S. strongly desired partition.^[79]

Proponents of the Plan reportedly put pressure on nations to vote yes to the Partition Plan. A telegram signed by 26 US Senators with influence on foreign aid bills was sent to wavering countries, seeking their support for the partition plan.^[80] The US Senate was considering a large aid package at the time, including 60 million dollars to China.^[81]^[82] Many nations reported pressure directed specifically at them:

United States (Vote: For): President Truman later noted, “The facts were that not only were there pressure movements around the United Nations unlike anything that had been seen there before, but that the White House, too, was subjected to a constant barrage. I do not think I ever had as much pressure and propaganda aimed at the White House as I had in this instance. The persistence of a few of the extreme Zionist leaders—actuated by political motives and engaging in political threats—disturbed and annoyed me.”^[83]
India (Vote: Against): Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru spoke with anger and contempt for the way the UN vote had been lined up. He said the Zionists had tried to bribe India with millions and at the same time his sister, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, the Indian ambassador to the UN, had received daily warnings that her life was in danger unless “she voted right”.^[84] Pandit occasionally hinted that something might change in favour of the Zionists. But another Indian delegate, Kavallam Pannikar, said that India would vote for the Arab side, because of their large Muslim minority, although they knew that the Jews had a case.^[85]
Liberia (Vote: For): Liberia’s Ambassador to the United States complained that the US delegation threatened aid cuts to several countries.^[86] Harvey S. Firestone, Jr., President of Firestone Natural Rubber Company, with major holdings in the country, also pressured the Liberian government^[72]^[80]
Philippines (Vote: For): In the days before the vote, Philippines representative General Carlos P. Romulo stated “We hold that the issue is primarily moral. The issue is whether the United Nations should accept responsibility for the enforcement of a policy which is clearly repugnant to the valid nationalist aspirations of the people of Palestine. The Philippines Government holds that the United Nations ought not to accept such responsibility.” After a phone call from Washington, the representative was recalled and the Philippines’ vote changed.^[80]
Haiti (Vote: For): The promise of a five million dollar loan may or may not have secured Haiti’s vote for partition.^[87]
France (Vote: For): Shortly before the vote, France’s delegate to the United Nations was visited by Bernard Baruch, a long-term Jewish supporter of the Democratic Party who, during the recent world war, had been an economic adviser to President Roosevelt, and had latterly been appointed by President Truman as United States ambassador to the newly created UN Atomic Energy Commission. He was, privately, a supporter of the Irgun and its front organization, the American League for a Free Palestine. Baruch implied that a French failure to support the resolution might block planned American aid to France, which was badly needed for reconstruction, French currency reserves being exhausted and its balance of payments heavily in deficit. Previously, to avoid antagonising its Arab colonies, France had not publicly supported the resolution. After considering the danger of American aid being withheld, France finally voted in favour of it. So, too, did France’s neighbours, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands.^[70]
Venezuela (Vote: For): Carlos Eduardo Stolk, Chairman of the Delegation of Venezuela, voted in favor of Resolution 181 .^[88]
Cuba (Vote: Against): The Cuban delegation stated they would vote against partition “in spite of pressure being brought to bear against us” because they could not be party to coercing the majority in Palestine.^[89]
Siam (Absent): The credentials of the Siamese delegations were cancelled after Siam voted against partition in committee on 25 November.^[71]^[90]

There is also some evidence that Sam Zemurray put pressure on several “banana republics” to change their votes.^[91]

Reports of pressure against the Plan

According to Benny Morris, Wasif Kamal, an Arab Higher Committee official, tried to bribe a delegate to the United Nations, perhaps a Russian.^[92]

Concerning the welfare of Jews in Arab countries, a number of direct threats were made:

Jamal Husseini promised, “The blood will flow like rivers in the Middle East”.^[93]
Iraq’s prime minister Nuri al-Said told British diplomats that if the United Nations solution was not “satisfactory”, “severe measures should be taken against all Jews in Arab countries”.^[94]

Concerning the welfare of Jews in Arab countries, a number of predictions were made:

‘”On 24 November the head of the Egyptian delegation to the General Assembly, Muhammad Hussein Heykal Pasha, said that “the lives of 1,000,000 Jews in Moslem countries would be jeopardized by the establishment of a Jewish state.”^[95] At the 29th Meeting of the UN Ad Hoc Committee on Palestine on 24 November 1947, Dr Heykal Pasha, the Egyptian delegate, said, “if the U.N decide to amputate a part of Palestine in order to establish a Jewish state, no force on earth could prevent blood from flowing there… Moreover… no force on earth can confine it to the borders of Palestine itself… Jewish blood will necessarily be shed elsewhere in the Arab world… to place in certain and serious danger a million Jews.” Mahmud Bey Fawzi (Egypt) said: “… imposed partition was sure to result in bloodshed in Palestine and in the rest of the Arab world”.^[96]
In a speech at the General Assembly Hall at Flushing Meadow, New York, on Friday, 28 November 1947, Iraq’s Foreign Minister, Fadel Jamall, included the following statement: “Partition imposed against the will of the majority of the people will jeopardize peace and harmony in the Middle East. Not only the uprising of the Arabs of Palestine is to be expected, but the masses in the Arab world cannot be restrained. The Arab-Jewish relationship in the Arab world will greatly deteriorate. There are more Jews in the Arab world outside of Palestine than there are in Palestine. In Iraq alone, we have about one hundred and fifty thousand Jews who share with Moslems and Christians all the advantages of political and economic rights. Harmony prevails among Moslems, Christians and Jews. But any injustice imposed upon the Arabs of Palestine will disturb the harmony among Jews and non-Jews in Iraq; it will breed inter-religious prejudice and hatred.”^[97]

The Arab states warned the Western Powers that endorsement of the partition plan might be met by either or both an oil embargo and realignment of the Arab states with the Soviet Bloc.^[98]

Final vote

The 1947 meeting at the General Assembly meeting place between 1946 and 1951 in Flushing, New York

On 29 November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly voted 33 to 13, with 10 abstentions and 1 absent, in favour of the modified Partition Plan. The final vote, consolidated here by modern United Nations Regional Groups rather than contemporary groupings, was as follows:^[99]

In favour (33 countries, 72% of total votes)

Latin American and Caribbean (13 countries):

Western European and Others (8 countries):

Eastern European (5 countries):

African (2 countries):

Asia-Pacific (3 countries)

North America (2 countries)

Against (13 countries, 28% of total votes)

Asia-Pacific (9 countries, primarily Middle East sub-area):

Western European and Others (2 countries):

African (1 country):

Egypt

Latin American and Caribbean (1 country):

Cuba

Abstentions (10 countries)

Latin American and Caribbean (6 countries):

Asia-Pacific (1 country):

China

African (1 country):

Ethiopia

Western European and Others (1 country):

United Kingdom

Eastern European (1 country):

Yugoslavia

Absent (1 country)

Asia-Pacific (1 country):

Thailand

Votes by modern region

If analysed by the modern composition of what later came to be known as the United Nations Regional Groups showed relatively aligned voting styles in the final vote. This, however, does not reflect the regional grouping at the time, as a major reshuffle of regional grouping occurred in 1966. All Western nations voted for the resolution, with the exception of the United Kingdom (the Mandate holder), Greece and Turkey. The Soviet bloc also voted for partition, with the exception of Yugoslavia, which was to be expelled from Cominform the following year. The majority of Latin American nations following Brazilian leadership^{[citation needed]}, voted for partition, with a sizeable minority abstaining. Asian countries (primarily Middle Eastern countries) voted against partition, with the exception of the Philippines.^[100]

Regional Group	Members in UNGA181 vote	UNGA181 For	UNGA181 Against	UNGA181 Abstained
African	4	2	1	1
Asia-Pacific	11	1	9	1
Eastern European	6	5	0	1
LatAm and Caribb.	20	13	1	6
Western Eur. & Others	15	12	2	1
Total UN members	56	33	13	10

Reactions

Jews

Most Jews in Palestine and around the world reacted to the UN resolution with satisfaction, but some did not. Jews gathered in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem to celebrate the U.N. resolution during the whole night after the vote. Great bonfires blazed at Jewish collective farms in the north. Many big cafes in Tel Aviv served free champagne.^[7]^[101] Mainstream Zionist leaders emphasized the “heavy responsibility” of building a modern Jewish State, and committed to working towards a peaceful coexistence with the region’s other inhabitants:^[102]^[103] Jewish groups in the United States hailed the action by the United Nations. Most welcomed the Palestine Plan but some felt it did not settle the problem.^[104]

Some Revisionist Zionists rejected the partition plan as a renunciation of legitimately Jewish national territory.^[104] The Irgun Tsvai Leumi, led by Menachem Begin, and the Lehi (also known as the Stern Group or Gang), the two Revisionist-affiliated underground organisations which had been fighting against both the British and Arabs, stated their opposition. Begin warned that the partition would not bring peace because the Arabs would also attack the small state and that “in the war ahead we’ll have to stand on our own, it will be a war on our existence and future.”^[105] He also stated that “the bisection of our homeland is illegal. It will never be recognized.”^[106] Begin was sure that the creation of a Jewish state would make territorial expansion possible, “after the shedding of much blood.”^[107]

Some Post-Zionist scholars endorse Simha Flapan‘s view that it is a myth that Zionists accepted the partition as a compromise by which the Jewish community abandoned ambitions for the whole of Palestine and recognized the rights of the Arab Palestinians to their own state. Rather, Flapan argued, acceptance was only a tactical move that aimed to thwart the creation of an Arab Palestinian state and, concomitantly, expand the territory that had been assigned by the UN to the Jewish state.^[108]^[109]^[110]^[111]^[112] Baruch Kimmerling has said that Zionists “officially accepted the partition plan, but invested all their efforts towards improving its terms and maximally expanding their boundaries while reducing the number of Arabs in them.”^[113]

Addressing the Central Committee of the Histadrut (the Eretz Israel Workers Party) days after the UN vote to partition Palestine, Ben-Gurion expressed his apprehension, stating:

the total population of the Jewish State at the time of its establishment will be about one million, including almost 40% non-Jews. Such a [population] composition does not provide a stable basis for a Jewish State. This [demographic] fact must be viewed in all its clarity and acuteness. With such a [population] composition, there cannot even be absolute certainty that control will remain in the hands of the Jewish majority… There can be no stable and strong Jewish state so long as it has a Jewish majority of only 60%.^[114]

Ben-Gurion said “I know of no greater achievement by the Jewish people … in its long history since it became a people.”^[115]

Arabs

Arab leaders and governments rejected the plan of partition in the resolution and indicated that they would reject any other plan of partition.^[9] The Arab states’ delegations declared immediately after the vote for partition that they would not be bound by the decision, and walked out accompanied by the Indian and Pakistani delegates.^[116]

They argued that it violated the principles of national self-determination in the UN charter which granted people the right to decide their own destiny.^[5]^[11] The Arab delegations to the UN issued a joint statement the day after that vote that stated: “the vote in regard to the Partition of Palestine has been given under great pressure and duress, and that this makes it doubly invalid.”^[117]

On 16 February 1948, the UN Palestine Commission reported to the Security Council that: “Powerful Arab interests, both inside and outside Palestine, are defying the resolution of the General Assembly and are engaged in a deliberate effort to alter by force the settlement envisaged therein.”^[118]

Arab states

A few weeks after UNSCOP released its report, Azzam Pasha, the General Secretary of the Arab League, told an Egyptian newspaper “Personally I hope the Jews do not force us into this war because it will be a war of elimination and it will be a dangerous massacre which history will record similarly to the Mongol massacre or the wars of the Crusades.”^[119] (This statement from October 1947 has often been incorrectly reported as having been made much later on 15 May 1948.)^[120] Azzam told Alec Kirkbride “We will sweep them [the Jews] into the sea.” Syrian president Shukri al-Quwatli told his people: “We shall eradicate Zionism.”^[121]

King Farouk of Egypt told the American ambassador to Egypt that in the long run the Arabs would soundly defeat the Jews and drive them out of Palestine.^[122]

While Azzam Pasha repeated his threats of forceful prevention of partition, the first important Arab voice to support partition was the influential Egyptian daily Al Mokattam [d]: “We stand for partition because we believe that it is the best final solution for the problem of Palestine… rejection of partition… will lead to further complications and will give the Zionists another space of time to complete their plans of defense and attack… a delay of one more year which would not benefit the Arabs but would benefit the Jews, especially after the British evacuation.”^[123]

On 20 May 1948, Azzam told reporters “We are fighting for an Arab Palestine. Whatever the outcome the Arabs will stick to their offer of equal citizenship for Jews in Arab Palestine and let them be as Jewish as they like. In areas where they predominate they will have complete autonomy.”^[124]

The Arab League said that some of the Jews would have to be expelled from a Palestinian Arab state.^[125]

Abdullah appointed Ibrahim Hashem Pasha as Military Governor of the Arab areas occupied by troops of the Transjordan Army. He was a former prime minister of Transjordan who supported partition of Palestine as proposed by the Peel Commission and the United Nations.^[126]

Arabs in Palestine

Haj Amin al-Husseini said in March 1948 to an interviewer from the Jaffa daily Al Sarih that the Arabs did not intend merely to prevent partition but “would continue fighting until the Zionists were annihilated.”^[121]

Zionists attributed Arab rejection of the plan to mere intransigence. Palestinian Arabs opposed the very idea of partition but reiterated that this partition plan was unfair: the majority of the land (56%) would go to a Jewish state, when Jews at that stage legally owned only 6–7% of it and remained a minority of the population (33% in 1946).^[127]^[128]^[129]^[130]^[131]^[132]^[133]^[134]^[135] There were also disproportionate allocations under the plan and the area under Jewish control contained 45% of the Palestinian population. The proposed Arab state was only given 45% of the land, much of which was unfit for agriculture. Jaffa, though geographically separated, was to be part of the Arab state.^[135] However, most of the proposed Jewish state was the Negev desert.^[56]^[55] The plan allocated to the Jewish State most of the Negev desert that was sparsely populated and unsuitable for agriculture but also a “vital land bridge protecting British interests from the Suez Canal to Iraq”^[136]^[137]

Few Palestinian Arabs joined the Arab Liberation Army because they suspected that the other Arab States did not plan on an independent Palestinian state. According to Ian Bickerton, for that reason many of them favored partition and indicated a willingness to live alongside a Jewish state.^[138] He also mentions that the Nashashibi family backed King Abdullah and union with Transjordan.^[139]

The Arab Higher Committee demanded that in a Palestinian Arab state, the majority of the Jews should not be citizens (those who had not lived in Palestine before the British Mandate).^[93]

According to Musa Alami, the mufti would agree to partition if he were promised that he would rule the future Arab state.^[140]

The Arab Higher Committee responded to the partition resolution and declared a three-day general strike in Palestine to begin the following day.^[141]

British government

When Bevin received the partition proposal, he promptly ordered for it not to be imposed on the Arabs.^[142]^[143] The plan was vigorously debated in the British parliament.

In a British cabinet meeting at 4 December 1947, it was decided that the Mandate would end at midnight 14 May 1948, the complete withdrawal by 1 August 1948, and Britain would not enforce the UN partition plan.^[144] On 11 December 1947, the British government publicly announced these plans.^[145] During the period in which the British withdrawal was completed, Britain refused to share the administration of Palestine with a proposed UN transition regime, to allow the UN Palestine Commission to establish a presence in Palestine earlier than a fortnight before the end of the Mandate, to allow the creation of official Jewish and Arab militias or to assist in smoothly handing over territory or authority to any successor.^[146]^[147]

United States government

The United States declined to recognize the All-Palestine government in Gaza by explaining that it had accepted the UN Mediator’s proposal. The Mediator had recommended that Palestine, as defined in the original Mandate including Transjordan, might form a union.^[148] Bernadotte’s diary said the Mufti had lost credibility on account of his unrealistic predictions regarding the defeat of the Jewish militias. Bernadotte noted “It would seem as though in existing circumstances most of the Palestinian Arabs would be quite content to be incorporated in Transjordan.”^[149]

Subsequent events

The Partition Plan with Economic Union was not realized in the days following 29 November 1947 resolution as envisaged by the General Assembly.^[17] It was followed by outbreaks of violence in Mandatory Palestine between Palestinian Jews and Arabs known as the 1947–48 Civil War.^[16] After Alan Cunningham, the High Commissioner of Palestine, left Jerusalem, on the morning of 14 May the British army left the city as well. The British left a power vacuum in Jerusalem and made no measures to establish the international regime in Jerusalem.^[150] At midnight on 14 May 1948, the British Mandate expired,^[151] and Britain disengaged its forces. Earlier in the evening, the Jewish People’s Council had gathered at the Tel Aviv Museum (today known as Independence Hall), and approved a proclamation, declaring “the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel, to be known as the State of Israel”.^[5]^[152] The 1948 Arab–Israeli War began with the invasion of, or intervention in, Palestine by the Arab States on 15 May 1948.^[153]

Resolution 181 as a legal basis for Palestinian statehood

In 1988, the Palestine Liberation Organization published the Palestinian Declaration of Independence relying on Resolution 181, arguing that the resolution continues to provide international legitimacy for the right of the Palestinian people to sovereignty and national independence.^[154] A number of scholars have written in support of this view.^[155]^[156]^[157]

A General Assembly request for an advisory opinion, Resolution ES-10/14 (2004), specifically cited resolution 181(II) as a “relevant resolution”, and asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) what are the legal consequences of the relevant Security Council and General Assembly resolutions. Judge Abdul Koroma explained the majority opinion: “The Court has also held that the right of self-determination as an established and recognized right under international law applies to the territory and to the Palestinian people. Accordingly, the exercise of such right entitles the Palestinian people to a State of their own as originally envisaged in resolution 181 (II) and subsequently confirmed.”^[158] In response, Prof. Paul De Waart said that the Court put the legality of the 1922 League of Nations Palestine Mandate and the 1947 UN Plan of Partition beyond doubt once and for all.^[159]

Retrospect

In 2011, Mahmoud Abbas stated that the 1947 Arab rejection of United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine was a mistake he hoped to rectify.^[160]

Commemoration

A street in the Katamon neighborhood of Jerusalem is named Kaf-tet benovember (29th of November Street). On November 29, 2022, a monument designed and executed by sculptor Sam Philipe was unveiled on a hilltop in Netanya to mark the 75th anniversary of the UN Partition Plan for Palestine.^[161] The date also marks the annual International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.^[162]