What was un partition plan

However, the borders it laid out have been critical to subsequent negotiations. Below are excerpts from the Partition Plan. United Nations Partition Plan The General Assembly, Having met in special session at the request of the mandatory Power to constitute and instruct a Special Committee to prepare for the consideration of the question of the future Government of Palestine at the second regular session;.

Having constituted a Special Committee and instructed it to investigate all questions and issues relevant to the problem of Palestine, and to prepare proposals for the solution of the problem, and. Considers that the present situation in Palestine is one which is likely to impair the general welfare and friendly relations among nations;. Takes note of the declaration by the mandatory Power that it plans to complete its evacuation of Palestine by l August ;.

Recommends to the United Kingdom, as the mandatory Power for Palestine, and to all other Members of the United Nations the adoption and implementation, with regard to the future Government of Palestine, of the Plan of Partition with Economic Union set out below;.

The Mandate for Palestine shall terminate as soon as possible but in any case not later than 1 August The armed forces of the mandatory Power shall be progressively withdrawn from Palestine, the withdrawal to be completed as soon as possible but in any case not later than 1 August The mandatory Power shall advise the Commission, as far in advance as possible, of its intention to terminate the mandate and to evacuate each area.

The mandatory Power shall use its best endeavours to ensure that an area situated in the territory of the Jewish State, including a seaport and hinterland adequate to provide facilities for a substantial immigration, shall be evacuated at the earliest possible date and in any event not later than 1 February Independent Arab and Jewish States and the Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem, set forth in Part III of this Plan, shall come into existence in Palestine two months after the evacuation of the armed forces of the mandatory Power has been completed but in any case not later than 1 October The period between the adoption by the General Assembly of its recommendation on the question of Palestine and the establishment of the independence of the Arab and Jewish States shall be a transitional period.

The Commission shall instruct the Provisional Councils of Government of both the Arab and Jewish States, after their formation, to proceed to the establishment of administrative organs of government, central and local. The Provisional Council of Government of each State shall, within the shortest time possible, recruit an armed militia from the residents of that State, sufficient in number to maintain internal order and to prevent frontier clashes.

The Provisional Council of Government of each State shall, not later than two months after the withdrawal of the armed forces of the mandatory Power, hold elections to the Constituent Assembly which shall be conducted on democratic lines. The election regulations in each State shall be drawn up by the Provisional Council of Government and approved by the Commission. Qualified voters for each State for this election shall be persons over eighteen years of age who are a Palestinian citizens residing in that State; and b Arabs and Jews residing in the State, although not Palestinian citizens, who, before voting, have signed a notice of intention to become citizens of such State.

Arabs and Jews residing in the City of Jerusalem who have signed a notice of intention to become citizens, the Arabs of the Arab State and the Jews of the Jewish State, shall be entitled to vote in the Arab and Jewish States respectively.

Johnson, from On November 29, , President Lyndon B. Johnson appoints a special commission to investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, which had occurred a week earlier, on November 22, , in Dallas, Texas.

According to his memoirs and biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin, She was 43 years old. Sign up now to learn about This Day in History straight from your inbox.

Making good on his most dramatic presidential campaign promise, newly elected Dwight D. Eisenhower goes to Korea to see whether he can find the key to ending the bitter and frustrating Korean War. During the presidential campaign of , Republican candidate Eisenhower was The causes of the Sand Creek massacre were rooted in the long conflict for control of the Great Plains of These minutes contain extensive discussions by the Permanent Mandates Commission, which examined the British proposal to partition Palestine.

It also includes various petitions submitted to the commission from Arab and Jewish groups in Palestine. Known as the Woodhead Commission, this was a British technical commission established following the work of the Peel Commission to draw up a detailed scheme for the partition of Palestine.

The report questioned the economic and political viability of partition and suggested that the two new states remain in a customs union with the Mandatory Government. Palestine: Statement of Policy May Cmd. In an apparent reversal of policy, the British Government decided that a self-governing unitary Palestine State should be established after an intervening transitional period of ten years when the machinery of government could be put in place.

The objective was the establishment within ten years of an independent Palestine State in treaty relations with the United Kingdom. These minutes contain discussions by the Permanent Mandates Commission on the apparent reversal of British policy in Palestine, and whether it was consistent with British policy toward the Jews.

It includes the minutes of an interview with Malcolm MacDonald, the Colonial Secretary, and Sir Grattan Bushe, the legal advisor, as well as petitions submitted from Arab and Jewish groups in Palestine. Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login. Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions.

Prior to the vote, the General Assembly empowered UNSCOP, comprising representatives of eleven uninvolved member-states, to investigate the situation and make recommendations to the General Assembly.

This is now standard procedure in the handling of conflicts, and it was here that the Palestinian Arabs made their first mistake -- one that their apologists, to this day, seek to cover up. If you believe Columbia professor Rashid Khalidi, you'll take it as fact that Palestinian Arabs "were either not consulted, or were effectively ignored by the various international efforts that culminated in this resolution.

This is false and deceptive. Henry Cattan, a Jerusalem jurist and advocate for the Palestinian cause, thought this decision "unfortunate," since it allowed the Zionists to present their arguments "without contradiction from the Arab side. I transmitted his view to the Arab Higher Committee but without result. Its attitude was adamant: there was no need for any inquiry or investigation, since the only course was to end the Mandate and to proclaim [Arab] Palestine's independence.

Not only did the Arab Higher Committee then reject the majority report of UNSCOP, which recommended the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states; it also rejected the minority report, which recommended a federated, binational state. In the Arab view, the Jews had no right to anything -- not a single immigrant, not a shred of self-government. Once the Mandate ended, the Arabs believed they could set the clock back to Their leaders and thinkers, lost in a fog of wishful thinking, had no way to gauge the strength of the yishuv, which had gathered near-sovereign force under their very noses.

Their second mistake compounded the first. The Arabs misread the significance of the partition vote. Partition was adopted by a two-thirds majority vote in the General Assembly -- not by a secret agreement, not by a great-power proclamation, but by an open vote of sovereign states. This is a procedure we have come to regard as fundamental to international legitimacy. No less important, the two rising superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, drove the "yes" vote forward.

This, despite the fact that the Soviets had been hostile to Zionism and supportive of the Arabs all through the s and s. The sudden Soviet turnabout showed how strongly the wind was now blowing against the Arabs. The voting procedure, and the identity of the yes-sayers, meant that the partition resolution had far greater political weight than the Balfour Declaration. It's also why the international two-state consensus forged by it has lasted to this day.

Yet the Arabs rejected the partition vote exactly as they had rejected the Balfour Declaration -- not a partial rejection, but a total one. Because they thought that once the British left, they would defeat the Jews. An example of this thinking is the testimony of the late Palestinian academic Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, a native of Jaffa, who left a telling account of the mood there on the eve of the war:.

They thought that, as the country belonged to the Arabs, they were the ones who would defend their homeland with zeal and patriotism. In short, there was a belief that the Jews were generally cowards. This is why the Arabs refused to accept partition, or a federated state, or any plan that recognized any Jewish rights at all.

Why concede anything to a motley mob of cowardly Jews? The people of Jaffa, Abu-Lughod went on to say, believed that "if they made ready a bit. Instead the Palestinians went down to an ignominious defeat, dragging the Arab states with them. Indeed, their conduct in the war conformed almost precisely to the conduct they had expected of the Jews, making them contemptible in their own eyes and in the eyes of other Arabs.

It took more than 60 years for a Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, to describe Palestinian and Arab rejection of partition as a "mistake" in an interview in But this was far from a full accounting. The outer limit of permissible Palestinian introspection is demonstrated by Hussein Ibish, the most moderate of Palestinian-Americans:. Palestinians obviously made a mistake, but, in all honesty, what community in its situation would ever have acted differently?

The answer to Ibish's question is simple. What community "would ever have acted differently? Which is why it is important to mark this 70th anniversary, and every anniversary to come. It isn't just a reminder of Israel's legitimacy; it's a reminder of Arab responsibility. Benny Morris, Michael Mandelbaum, and Harvey Klehr, my three respondents, have made many fascinating points with which I'm in full agreement, and I'm also grateful for the generosity of their praise.

On two particular points, my perspective differs. I thank Michael Mandelbaum for finding the shared thread of my two Mosaic essays. He's quite right: it's hard to think of another state established in the 20th century with as many international endorsements as Israel.

And he is also right that the story of Zionism belongs to the greater saga of national self-determination. The pseudo-scholarly project of shoving Zionism into the despised category of "settler colonialism" rips Zionism from its actual historical context, the better to defame it. Objectively, however, Zionism wasn't colonialism or socialism, for that matter , but a Jewish adaptation of 19th-century European nationalism. The Zionists were up to the same thing as other fresh converts to nationalism on Europe's borderlands, and later in all of Asia and Africa.

Zionists didn't seek a place to exploit economically, or even a refuge for endangered Jews.