UN partition plan for Palestine
The UN Partition Plan for Palestine was adopted on November 29, 1947 by the UN General Assembly as Resolution 181 (II) . The resolution was intended to resolve the conflict between Arab and Jewish residents of the British Mandate Palestine . The resolution included the termination of the British mandate and provided for Palestine to be divided into a state for Jews and one for Arabs, with Jerusalem (including Bethlehem ) to be placed under international control as a corpus separatum . The two new states should be linked by an economic union and they should receive democratic constitutions. Several factors prevented this partition plan from leading to a peaceful and democratic solution for Palestine. This includes on the one hand the interests of the great powers, on the other hand the refusal of the Arab states to accept a partition of Palestine because they viewed this as illegal and instead demanded independence.
Emergence
Since 1922 the League of Nations had laid down the creation of a national home for Jews (“Jewish National Home”) in Palestine in the League of Nations mandate for Palestine . Various Zionist organizations, including the Jewish Agency , increasingly demanded a state of their own in Palestine after the Second World War and the Holocaust .
Arab interest groups favored a common state that would have had a larger Arab population, or - in the event of a division - securing a portion of the economically interesting area proportional to the population. Because the mandate power Great Britain had not succeeded in finding an acceptable solution for both the Jewish and the Arab population, the British government decided on February 14, 1947 to turn the Palestinian problem over to the United Nations . The United Nations, founded in 1945, took over the search for a political future for the mandate area as the successor to the League of Nations, which had authorized the British mandate over Palestine in 1922. The UNSCOP special commission should seek solutions in discussions with the various political parties in Palestine. It consisted of representatives from various states, but no major powers. This should make neutral decisions possible.
UNSCOP followed two important approaches. The first provided for the establishment of two independent states linked by an economic union, with Jerusalem being placed under international administration. The alternative to this was the formation of a federal state with an Arab and a Jewish sub-state. The following were rejected as not feasible:
- Formation of a single state in which one of the two sections of the population plays a dominant role
- Two-state solution with complete separation
- Cantonization (division at the level of individual cities / municipalities)
The majority accepted the first option, but without taking into account the population's right to self-determination. The Iran , India and Yugoslavia in favor of the second option, and Australia did not want to choose between the two.
Resolution 181 (II)
The UNSCOP report was discussed in various United Nations bodies and finally implemented on November 29, 1947 in Resolution 181 (II), which was passed to the General Assembly for a vote. It essentially contained the proposals of the majority plan for the division of the country. 33 states voted for the resolution, including the USSR , the USA and France . 13 voted against, including the six Arab member states. 10 abstained, including Great Britain and the Republic of China .
The resolution provided for democratic constitutions for both sides that guaranteed universal suffrage , respect for human and civil rights , the protection of the holy places of all religious communities in Palestine and, above all, the protection of national and religious minorities in the Jewish and the Arab world State should contain.
Voting results in detail (33) voted in favor of the plan: Australia , Belgium , Bolivia , Brazil , Costa Rica , Denmark , Dominican Republic , Ecuador , France , Guatemala , Haiti , Iceland , Canada , Liberia , Luxembourg , New Zealand , Nicaragua , the Netherlands , Norway , Panama , Paraguay , Peru , Philippines , Poland , Sweden , Soviet Union , South Africa , Czechoslovakia , Ukraine , Uruguay , Venezuela , United States and Belarus .
The following voted against the plan (13): Afghanistan , Egypt , Greece , India , Iran , Iraq , Yemen , Cuba , Lebanon , Pakistan , Saudi Arabia , Syria and Turkey .
The votes for or against the plan abstained (10): Argentina , Ethiopia , Chile , El Salvador , Honduras , Yugoslavia , Colombia , Mexico , the Republic of China and the United Kingdom .
Thailand stayed away from the vote.
Division plan
- The British mandate for Palestine was to be terminated as soon as possible, but no later than August 1, 1948.
- The armed forces of the Mandate Power were to be gradually withdrawn from Palestine and the withdrawal completed as soon as possible.
- Independent Arab and Jewish states and the international regime for the city district of Jerusalem were to come into existence two months after the end of the withdrawal of mandate power, but in no case later than October 1, 1948.
Territories and population
According to the partition plan, the Jewish state should receive around one third of the small fertile coastal plain with Galilee and around two thirds of the large barren area of the Negev desert, a total of 56.47 percent of the remaining mandate of Palestine excluding Jordan . At that time, the Negev desert could not be used for agriculture, nor could cities be built there. The country that was intended for a Jewish state largely coincided with the country in which there was also a large - though without a majority - Jewish population.
According to the partition plan, the city of Jerusalem (including surrounding communities) should become an international zone under the administration of the United Nations because of the important religious sites as a corpus separatum . The two states, as provided for in the plan, each consisted of three larger parts, which were to be connected to one another by extra-territorial connecting roads. The Jewish state, the coastal plain should Haifa until after Rehovot , the eastern Galilee (also around the Sea of Galilee and the Galilee panhandle ) and the Negev -Wüste, including the southern outpost of Umm Rascharasch (now Eilat included).
Nearly half of the land was dispossessed at the time, especially the regions of the barren Negev desert, which makes up about a third of the country. About 47 percent of the land was owned by the Arabs, and about 6 percent of the land was owned or acquired by the Jews.
The Arab state was to contain Western Galilee with the city of Akko , the mountains of Samaria , the mountains of Judea , the southern coast to the north of Majdal (today Ascalon , which includes today's Gaza Strip ) and a strip of desert along the Egyptian border. The UNSCOP report would have added Jaffa , a city of mainly Arab populations south of Tel Aviv , to the Jewish state, but a change in the plan before it was submitted to the United Nations now made it an enclave as part of an Arab one State. The plan was a compromise paper based on two other plans.
According to the Jewish immigration authorities, the proposed Jewish state would have had a population of 498,000 Jews and 325,000 non-Jews . 807,000 non-Jews and 10,000 Jews lived in the Arab state. 105,000 Gentiles and 100,000 Jews would have lived in the proposed International Zone. However, Palestinian sources put the number of non-Jews far higher.
Economic union
In addition to a customs and currency union , there should be an infrastructure for water, energy , traffic and communication operated jointly by both states .
Reactions
Strong pressure had been exerted by the plan's proponents to get the United Nations to adopt the plan. Most Jews accepted the plan, above all the Jewish Agency , a kind of predecessor government of the State of Israel. The reaction was more subdued among Oriental Jews. Some nationalist groups such as Menachem Begins Irgun or Jitzhak Shamirs Lechi (also known as Stern Gang) rejected the plan - for them it did not go far enough. To this day, November 29th is seen in Israeli history books as the most important day in Israel's efforts to establish a state of its own. Nevertheless, some criticized the fact that the respective areas did not represent a continuity in terms of Jewish statehood.
The Arab UN members rejected the plan. In addition to the general rejection of a Jewish state, this was done on the grounds that the plan violated the rights of the majority population in Palestine, who at the time were mostly non-Jewish religions. They found the plan a disaster. The amount and quality of land allocated to the Jews was criticized. In the period that followed, there were numerous assaults and attacks by irregular Jewish and Arab forces in the mandate area.
The end of the British League of Nations mandate for Palestine on May 14, 1948, a Friday at midnight, led to the meeting of the Jewish National Council in the house of former Mayor Dizengoff in Tel Aviv at 4 p.m., Erev Shabbat . In the Israeli declaration of independence, David Ben Gurion proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel “by virtue of the natural and historical right of the Jewish people and based on the resolution of the UN General Assembly” . A few hours after the proclamation of the State of Israel, the armies of Transjordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt and Syria opened a war against Israel ( Palestine War , in Israel "War of Independence").
See also
literature
- El'ad Ben-Dror: Ralph Bunche and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: Mediation and the UN 1947-1949, . Routledge, 2016, ISBN 978-1-138-78988-3 .
Web links
- Resolution text ( memento from August 21, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
- Resolution text (PDF; 137 kB; German)
- Detailed map of the UN ( Memento from January 15, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
- Report, draft resolutions and statistics of Sub-Committee 2 of the ad hoc committee on the Palestinian Question of the UN General Assembly from autumn 1947
Individual evidence
- ^ Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations: The maps of disappearing Palestine. In: yaacovlozowick.blogspot.de. Retrieved September 7, 2016 .
- ↑ in German at: John Bunzl (Ed.): The Middle East Conflict. Analyzes and documents . Braumüller, Wien & Campus, Frankfurt 1981, ISBN 3-7003-0273-8 , ISBN 3-593-32909-3 , p. 208.