by Eli E. Hertz
In 1947 the British put the future of western Palestine into the hands of the United Nations, the successor organization to the League of Nations which had established the "Mandate for Palestine." A UN Commission recommended partitioning what was left of the original Mandate - western Palestine - into two new states, one Jewish and one Arab. Jerusalem and its surrounding villages were to be temporarily classified as an international zone belonging to neither polity."According to David Lloyd George, then British Prime Minister, the Balfour Declaration implied that the whole of Palestine, including Transjordan, should ultimately become a Jewish state. Transjordan had, nevertheless, been severed from Palestine in 1922 and had subsequently been set up as an Arab kingdom".
What
resulted was Resolution 181 [known also as the 1947 Partition Plan], a
nonbinding recommendation to partition Palestine, whose implementation
hinged on acceptance by both parties - Arabs and Jews. The resolution
was adopted on November 29, 1947 in the General Assembly by a vote of
33-12, with 10 abstentions. Among the supporters were the United States
and the Soviet Union, as well as other nations including France and
Australia. The Arab nations, including Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Saudi
Arabia denounced the plan on the General Assembly floor and voted as a
bloc against Resolution 181 promising to defy its implementation by force.
The
resolution recognized the need for immediate Jewish statehood [and a
parallel Arab state], but the blueprint for peace became a moot issue
when the Arabs refused to accept it. Subsequently, realities on the
ground in the wake of Arab aggression [and Israel's survival] became the
basis for UN efforts to bring peace.
Aware of Arab's past aggression, Resolution 181, in paragraph C, calls on the Security Council to:
"Determine
as a threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression, in
accordance with Article 39 of the Charter, any attempt to alter by force
the settlement envisaged by this resolution." [Italics by author]
The
ones who sought to alter the settlement envisioned in Resolution 181 by
force, were the Arabs who threatened bloodshed if the United Nations
was to adopt the Resolution:
"The [British] Government of Palestine fear that strife in Palestine
will be greatly intensified when the Mandate is terminated, and that the
international status of the United Nations Commission will mean little
or nothing to the Arabs in Palestine, to whom the killing of Jews now
transcends all other considerations. Thus, the Commission will be faced
with the problem of how to avert certain bloodshed on a very much wider
scale than prevails at present. ... The Arabs have made it quite clear
and have told the Palestine government that they do not propose to
co-operate or to assist the Commission, and that, far from it, they
propose to attack and impede its work in every possible way. We have no
reason to suppose that they do not mean what they say." [Italics by
author]
Arab's intentions and deeds did not fare better after Resolution 181 was adopted:
"Taking
into consideration that the Provisional Government of Israel has
indicated its acceptance in principle of a prolongation of the truce in
Palestine; that the States members of the Arab League have rejected
successive appeals of the United Nations Mediator, and of the Security
Council in its resolution 53 (1948) of 7 July 1948, for the prolongation
of the truce in Palestine; and that there has consequently developed a
renewal of hostilities in Palestine."
The conclusion:
"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 having received
and examined the report of the Special Committee (document A/364). ... 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;" [Italics by author].
In
the late 1990s, more than 50 years after Resolution 181 was rejected by
the Arab world, Arab leaders suddenly recommended to the General
Assembly that UN Resolution 181 be resurrected as the basis for a peace
agreement. There is no foundation for such a notion.
Resolution 181 was the last of a series of recommendations that had been
drawn up over the years by the Mandatory and by international
commissions, plans designed to reach an historic compromise between
Arabs and Jews in western Palestine. The first was in 1922 when Great
Britain unilaterally partitioned Palestine, which did not satisfy the
Arabs who wanted the entire country to be Arab. Resolution 181 followed
such proposals as the Peel Commission (1937); the Woodhead Commission
(1938); two 1946 proposals that championed a binational state; one
proposed by the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry in April 1946 based
on a single state with equal powers for Jews and Arabs; and the
Morrison-Grady Plan raised in July 1946 which recommended a federal
state with two provinces - one Jewish, one Arab. Every scheme since 1922
was rejected by the Arab side, including decidedly pro-Arab ones merely
because these plans recognized Jews as a nation a
nd gave Jewish citizens of Mandate Palestine political representation.
Arabs rejected the "unbalanced" Partition Plan. The UN International
Court of Justice (ICJ) uses the term "unbalanced" in describing the
reason for Arab rejectionism of Resolution 181, which does not exactly
fit reality. Seventy-seven percent of the landmass of the original
Mandate for the Jews was excised in 1922 to create a fourth Arab state -
Trans-Jordan (today Jordan).
In a statement by Dr. Abba Hillel Silver, the representative of the
Jewish Agency for Palestine to the United Nations Special Committee on
Palestine (UNSCOP), he had that to say about fairness, balance, and
justice: "According to David Lloyd George, then British Prime Minister,
the Balfour Declaration implied that the whole of Palestine, including
Transjordan, should ultimately become a Jewish state. Transjordan had,
nevertheless, been severed from Palestine in 1922 and had subsequently
been set up as an Arab kingdom. Now a second Arab state was to be carved
out of the remainder of Palestine, with the result that the Jewish
National Home would represent less than one eighth of the territory
originally set aside for it. Such a sacrifice should not be asked of the
Jewish people." Referring to the Arab States established as independent
countries since the First World War, he said:
"17,000,000
Arabs now occupied an area of 1,290,000 square miles, including all the
principal Arab and Moslem centers, while Palestine, after the loss of
Transjordan, was only 10,000 square miles; yet the majority plan
proposed to reduce it by one half. UNSCOP proposed to eliminate Western
Galilee from the Jewish State; that was an injustice and a grievous
handicap to the development of the Jewish State." [Italics by author].
Following
passage of Resolution 181 by the General Assembly, Arab countries took
the dais to reiterate their absolute rejection of the recommendation and
intention to render implementation of Resolution 181 a moot question by
the use of force. These examples from the transcript of the General
Assembly plenary meeting on November 29, 1947 speak for themselves:
"Mr.
JAMALI (Iraq): ... We believe that the decision which we have now taken
... undermines peace, justice and democracy. In the name of my
Government, I wish to state that it feels that this decision is
antidemocratic, illegal, impractical and contrary to the Charter ...
Therefore, in the name of my Government, I wish to put on record that
Iraq does not recognize the validity of this decision, will reserve
freedom of action towards its implementation, and holds those who were
influential in passing it against the free conscience of mankind
responsible for the consequences."
"Amir.
ARSLAN [Syria]: ... Gentlemen, the Charter is dead. But it did not die a
natural death; it was murdered, and you all know who is guilty. My
country will never recognize such a decision [Partition]. It will never
agree to be responsible for it. Let the consequences be on the heads of
others, not on ours."
"H.
R. H. Prince Seif El ISLAM ABDULLAH (Yemen): The Yemen delegation has
stated previously that the partition plan is contrary to justice and to
the Charter of the United Nations. Therefore, the Government of Yemen
does not consider itself bound by such a decision ... and will reserve
its freedom of action towards the implementation of this decision."
The
Partition Plan was met not only by verbal rejection on the Arab side
but also by concrete, bellicose steps to block its implementation and
destroy the Jewish polity by force of arms, a goal the Arabs publicly
declared even before Resolution 181 was brought to a vote.
Arabs
not only rejected the compromise and took action to prevent
establishment of a Jewish state but also blocked establishment of an
Arab state under the partition plan not just before the Israel War of
Independence, but also after the war when they themselves controlled the
West Bank (1948-1967).
The
UN itself recognized that Resolution 181 had not been accepted by the
Arab side, rendering it a dead issue: On January 29, 1948, the First
Monthly Progress Report of the UN-appointed Palestine Commission charged
with helping put Resolution 181 into effect was submitted to the
Security Council (A/AC.21/7). Implementation of Resolution 181 hinged
not only on the five member states appointed to represent the UN
[Bolivia, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Panama, Philippines and Great
Britain], but first and foremost on the participation of the two sides
who were invited to appoint representatives.
The
UN Palestine Commission's February 16, 1948 report (A/AC.21/9) to the
Security Council noted that Arab-led hostilities were an effort
"To
prevent the implementation of the [General] Assembly plan of partition,
and to thwart its objectives by threats and acts of violence, including
armed incursions into Palestinian territory."
On
May 17, 1948 - after the invasion began, the Palestine Commission
designed to implement 181 adjourned sine die [Latin: without determining
a date] after the General Assembly appointed a United Nations Mediator
in Palestine, which relieves the United Nations Palestine Commission
from the further exercise of its responsibilities.
Some
thought the Partition Plan could be revived, but by the end of the war,
Resolution 181 had become a moot issue as realities on the ground made
the establishment of an armistice-line [the "Green Line"] - a temporary
ceasefire line expected to be followed by peace treaties - the most
constructive path to solving the conflict.
A July 30, 1949 working paper of the UN Secretariat entitled The Future of Arab Palestine and the Question of Partition noted further that:
"The
Arabs rejected the United Nations Partition Plan so that any comment of
theirs did not specifically concern the status of the Arab section of
Palestine under partition but rather rejected the scheme in its
entirety."
By
the time armistice agreements were reached in 1949 between Israel and
its immediate Arab neighbors (Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Trans-Jordan)
with the assistance of UN Mediator Dr. Ralph Bunche, Resolution 181 had
become irrelevant, and the armistice agreements addressed new realities
created by the war. Over subsequent years, the UN simply abandoned the
recommendations of Resolution 181, as its ideas were drained of all
relevance by subsequent events. Moreover, the Arabs continued to reject
181 after the war when they themselves controlled the West Bank
(1948-1967) which Jordan invaded in the course of the war and annexed
illegally.
Attempts
by Palestinians to roll back the clock and resuscitate Resolution 181
more than six decades after they rejected it as if nothing had happened
are a baseless ploy designed to use Resolution 181 as leverage to bring
about a greater Israeli withdrawal from parts of western Palestine and
to gain a broader base from which to continue to attack an Israel with
even less defendable borders. Both Palestinians and their Arab brethren
in neighboring countries rendered the plan null and void by their own
subsequent aggressive actions.
Professor
Stone, a distinguished authority on the Law of Nations, wrote about
this novelty of resurrection in 1981 when he analyzed a similar attempt
by pro-Palestinian experts at the UN to rewrite the history of the
conflict (their writings were termed "studies"). Stone called it "revival of the dead."
"To attempt to show ... that Resolution 181 'remains' in force in 1981 is thus an undertaking even more miraculous than would be the revival of the dead.
It is an attempt to give life to an entity that the Arab states had
themselves aborted before it came to maturity and birth. To propose that
Resolution 181 can be treated as if it has binding force in 1981, for
the benefit of the same Arab states, who by their aggression destroyed
it ab initio, [In Latin: From the beginning] also violates "general
principles of law," such as those requiring claimants to equity to come
"with clean hands," and forbidding a party who has unlawfully repudiated
a transaction from holding the other party to terms that suit the later
expediencies of the repudiating party." [Italics by author].
Resolution 181 had been tossed into the waste bin of history, along with the Partition Plans that preceded it.
Israel's
independence is not a result of a partial implementation of the
Partition Plan. Resolution 181 has no legal ramifications - that is, it
recognized the Jewish right to statehood, but its validity as a
potentially legal and binding document was never consummated. Like the
proposals that preceded it, Resolution 181's validity hinged on
acceptance by both parties of the General Assembly's recommendation.
Cambridge
Professor, Sir Elihu Lauterpacht, Judge ad hoc of the International
Court of Justice, a renowned expert on international law, clarified that
from a legal standpoint, the 1947 UN Partition Resolution had no
legislative character to vest territorial rights in either Jews or
Arabs. In a monograph relating to one of the most complex aspects of the
territorial issue, the status of Jerusalem, Judge, Sir Lauterpacht
wrote that any binding force the Partition Plan would have had to arise
from the principle pacta sunt servanda
, [In Latin: treaties must be honored - the first principle of
international law] that is, from agreement of the parties at variance to
the proposed plan. In the case of Israel, Judge, Sir Lauterpacht
explains:
"The
coming into existence of Israel does not depend legally upon the
Resolution. The right of a State to exist flows from its factual
existence-especially when that existence is prolonged shows every sign
of continuance and is recognized by the generality of nations."
Reviewing Lauterpacht arguments, Professor Stone added that Israel's "legitimacy" or the
"legal foundation"
for its birth does not reside with the United Nations' Partition Plan,
which as a consequence of Arab actions became a dead issue. Professor
Stone concluded:
"The
State of Israel is thus not legally derived from the partition plan,
but rests (as do most other states in the world) on assertion of
independence by its people and government, on the vindication of that
independence by arms against assault by other states, and on the
establishment of orderly government within territory under its stable
control."
Eli E. Hertz
Source: http://www.mythsandfacts.org/article_view.asp?articleID=135
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Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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