UN Partition Plan for Palestine 1947: Resolution 181 Explained

The UN Partition Plan for Palestine was a proposal adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 29 November 1947 as Resolution 181 (II). It recommended ending the British Mandate and dividing Palestine into an independent Jewish state and an independent Arab state, linked by an economic union, with Jerusalem under an international regime.

The vote was a landmark in the creation of the State of Israel and in the Arab–Israeli conflict. The Jewish Agency accepted the plan, Arab leaders rejected it, and civil war broke out in Palestine the next day.

Background

Britain had governed Palestine since the end of the First World War under a League of Nations mandate that included the commitment of the Balfour Declaration to a Jewish national home. Jewish immigration, especially in the 1930s, and Arab opposition to it produced repeated violence, including the Arab revolt of 1936–1939. A British Royal Commission, the Peel Commission, had first proposed partition in 1937.

After the Second World War and the Holocaust, pressure for Jewish immigration grew, while Britain faced a Jewish armed insurgency that included the King David Hotel bombing of July 1946. Exhausted and in debt, Britain announced in February 1947 that it would refer the question to the United Nations and formally asked the General Assembly to consider it in April 1947.

UNSCOP and its report

A special session of the General Assembly created the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) on 15 May 1947. Its eleven members were Australia, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Guatemala, India, Iran, the Netherlands, Peru, Sweden, Uruguay and Yugoslavia, with the Swedish judge Emil Sandström as chairman. No great powers were included, so that the committee could be seen as neutral.

UNSCOP visited Palestine in June and July 1947. The Jewish Agency cooperated, but the Arab Higher Committee, led by Amin al-Husseini, boycotted the committee. Some members witnessed the fate of the refugee ship Exodus 1947, whose passengers were sent back to Europe by the British.

The committee reported on 31 August 1947. All members agreed that the Mandate should end. A majority of seven recommended partition into two states with economic union; a minority of three, India, Iran and Yugoslavia, proposed a single federal state, and Australia abstained from both.

The plan

An ad hoc committee of the General Assembly revised the majority plan in autumn 1947, adjusting the borders, for example placing the largely Arab city of Jaffa in the Arab state as an enclave. The final plan provided that:

• the Mandate would end and British forces withdraw as soon as possible, and no later than 1 August 1948;
• a Jewish state and an Arab state would come into existence two months after the withdrawal, and no later than 1 October 1948;
• each state would consist of three main sections, linked at crossing points, and the two would form an economic union with a joint currency and customs;
• Jerusalem, with Bethlehem and surrounding villages, would be a corpus separatum, a separate entity administered by the UN Trusteeship Council.

The proposed Jewish state included about 55 to 56 per cent of the land, including most of the Negev desert, and the Arab state about 42 to 43 per cent. At the time Jews made up about one-third of a population of roughly 1.8 to 1.9 million and owned around 6 to 7 per cent of the land. The Jewish state as drawn would have had a Jewish majority but also a large Arab minority of roughly 400,000 people. The Arab state would have had about 725,000 Arabs and around 10,000 Jews, and the Jerusalem zone roughly equal numbers of Arabs and Jews, around 100,000 each.

The plan also set out guarantees for religious and minority rights, free access to holy places and the protection of existing rights to property and religious buildings. Each state was to hold elections for a constituent assembly and adopt a democratic constitution. A five-member UN Palestine Commission was to take over administration from the British step by step and hand it to provisional councils in each state.

The vote

The General Assembly, then meeting at Flushing Meadows in New York, voted on 29 November 1947. A two-thirds majority was needed. After intense lobbying, the resolution passed by 33 votes to 13, with 10 abstentions and one member, Siam (Thailand), absent.

The support of both the United States and the Soviet Union, rare at the start of the Cold War, was decisive. Soviet backing surprised many observers; the Soviet representative, Andrei Gromyko, had already said in May 1947 that partition was acceptable if a single binational state proved impossible. The vote was postponed for several days, and both supporters and opponents lobbied smaller countries hard in the final week.

Reactions and civil war

Jewish crowds celebrated in Palestine and elsewhere, and the Jewish Agency, led by David Ben-Gurion, accepted the plan, although some Zionist groups rejected it as giving too little. The Arab Higher Committee and the Arab League rejected it outright, arguing that the UN had no right to impose partition against the will of the majority of the population.

On 30 November 1947 Arab gunmen attacked buses carrying Jewish passengers, and fighting quickly spread between Jewish and Arab communities. Britain declined to implement the plan and set 15 May 1948 as the end of the Mandate. A UN Palestine Commission was unable to take up its role, and in March 1948 the United States briefly suggested a temporary trusteeship instead of partition.

The civil war escalated in spring 1948, with atrocities on both sides, including the Deir Yassin massacre in April. On 14 May 1948 David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the State of Israel, and the next day neighbouring Arab states invaded, beginning the Arab–Israeli War of 1948.

Key people

• Emil Sandström (1886–1962): Swedish judge who chaired UNSCOP.
• David Ben-Gurion (1886–1973): chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive, who accepted the plan and became Israel’s first prime minister.
• Amin al-Husseini (c. 1897–1974): Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and head of the Arab Higher Committee, which rejected the plan.
• Andrei Gromyko (1909–1989): Soviet representative at the UN, whose support for partition helped secure the vote.
• Chaim Weizmann (1874–1952): veteran Zionist leader who lobbied in the United States, including with President Truman, and later became Israel’s first president.

Timeline

• 1937, July: The Peel Commission first proposes partition of Palestine.
• 1947, February: Britain announces it will refer Palestine to the United Nations.
• 1947, 15 May: The General Assembly creates UNSCOP.
• 1947, 31 August: UNSCOP completes its report recommending partition by majority.
• 1947, 29 November: The General Assembly adopts Resolution 181 by 33 votes to 13.
• 1947, 30 November: Attacks on Jewish buses mark the start of civil war.
• 1948, 14 May: Israel declares independence as the Mandate ends.

Why it matters

Resolution 181 gave international backing to the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine and is cited in Israel’s declaration of independence. It also proposed an Arab state that never came into being and an international Jerusalem that was never created. The plan’s borders were overtaken by war, but the principle of two states in the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean has remained at the centre of diplomacy ever since.