The Palestine Commission

In the shadow of conflicting national ambitions of Zionists and Palestinians in the land of Mandatory Palestine, Britain decided in early 1947 to pass the question of Palestine's political fate over to the United Nations (UN). Accordingly, the General Assembly appointed the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) to enquire into the matter and propose a solution. NSCOP's majority proposal, later known as the 'Partition Plan' , was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 29 November 1947 as Resolution 181. The 22-page document sought to replace the British Mandate over Palestine with two independent nation-states, one Arab and one Jewish. The future countries were to be bound by an economic union, with Jerusalem placed under an international regime. A preparatory commission, later known as the 'Palestine Commission' , was devised to implement Resolution 181 by travelling to Palestine, gradually assuming control from the British Mandate, and then facilitating the creation of the new countries. The Commission was meant to help the future states set up their provisional governments, hold democratic elections, organize armed militias for their defence, and so on. evertheless, reality quickly complicated the execution of the ambitious plan. While the Zionists were quick to support partition, because it would grant them their long-awaited independent Jewish state, 3 the Palestinian leadership embodied by the Arab Higher Committee (AHC) had resisted this notion since before Resolution 181 and boycotted UNSCOP's enquiry. 4 Soon after the adoption of Resolution 181, the AHC and the Arab League states threatened to forcefully resist its implementation. A Palestinian general strike followed, and violent clashes erupted between Arabs and Jews in Palestine. n New York, Jamal al-Husseini, one of the AHC leaders, had articulated the organization's resistance to partition, roughly 2 months before the adoption of Resolution 181. Al-Husseini made four main points: first, the Arabs of Palestine had a strong claim over Palestine because they had been residing there for many generations. Second, the Zionist claim was weak and based on an obsolete association between Jews and Palestine over 2000 years before. Third, any attempt by non-Palestinians to relieve the world's Jewry at the expense of the Palestinians and their homeland was both immoral and illegal. Fourth, a Jewish national presence in Palestine would disrupt the continuity of the surrounding Arab world. He contended, therefore, that the Arabs of Palestine, who constituted the majority there, were entitled to a single Arab independent state in all of Palestine. further setback to partition was noted when the Arab-Jewish violence subsequently eroded the former Washington-Moscow consensus on the two-state solution. Over the next few months, the Americans reconsidered whether the execution of Resolution 181 was realistically feasible, and accordingly proposed replacing partition with a UN trusteeship government in Palestine

Ancient history · Commission · Conflict resolution · General assembly · Mandatory Palestine · Palestine · Partition (number theory · Peacekeeping · Peacemaking · Political science · Tel aviv · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law · Peacebuilding and International Security · Public Administration

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