Chapter 2. The United Nations Steps In: UNSCOP and the Partition Resolution

UNSCOP arrives, 1947: Touring Palestine, hostile response from the Arabs

"In general, foreign observers noted the relatively uneven quality of UNSCOP’s composition and the members’ relative unpreparedness for their mission, in terms of prior experience in similar positions, language skills, and knowledge about the Middle East. The brilliant American academic and diplomat Ralph Bunche, a member of UNSCOP’s secretariat, privately remarked that this was “just about the worst group I have ever had to work with. If they do a good job it will be a real miracle.”"

"The AHC announced its intention to boycott UNSCOP and failed completely to prepare for its visit. Palestine’s Arabs greeted UNSCOP with a one-day general strike. The AHC charged that UNSCOP was “pro-Zionist” and accompanied the committee’s deliberations with uncompromising radio broadcasts (“all of Palestine must be Arab”). Opposition figures were warned that they would pay with their lives if they spoke to UNSCOP."

"The committee first toured the country, visiting towns and villages. As had happened with the AAC, the face-to-face encounters in the settlements and villages were persuasive. The members were warmly welcomed by their Jewish hosts, often with flowers and cheering crowds, and the Jewish Agency made sure that they met with settlers who spoke their languages (Swedish, Spanish, Persian, and so on). The Arabs, in contrast, displayed sourness, suspicion, or aggressiveness"

"Everywhere the Arabs refused to answer the committee’s questions: in a school in Beersheba, the teachers continued with their lessons when UNSCOP entered the classrooms, and the pupils were instructed not to look at the visitors; in the Galilee village of Rama, the inhabitants evacuated the village, and UNSCOP was “greeted only by a delegation of children who . . . cursed them.”19 The committee was impressed by the cleanliness and development in the Jewish areas and, conversely, by the dirt and backwardness of the Arab villages and towns. They were particularly horrified at the (common) sight of child labor and exploitation in Arab factories and workshops.20 By contrast, the Jewish settlements struck the committee as “European, modern, dynamic . . . a state in the making”;21 the Jews palpably were making the desert bloom.22 As the Persian member, Entezam, was overheard (by a Persian-speaking HIS agent) telling his deputy: “What asses these Arabs are. The country is so beautiful and, if it were given to the Jews, it could be developed and turned into Europe.”23 UNSCOP’s members may have felt that the Zionists often indulged in overkill, but the message proved effective."

Partition proposal

"Weizmann from the first played the “good cop,” focusing on past Jewish suffering, present Zionist moderation, and the future benefits of Zionism for all the Middle East. He posited partition, with the Jews receiving the Galilee, the Coastal Plain, and the Negev. He seems to have been instrumental in persuading UNSCOP to support this solution."

"On 23 July, at Sofar, the Arab representatives completed their testimony before UNSCOP. Faranjieh, speaking for the Arab League, said that Jews “illegally” in Palestine would be expelled and that the future of many of those “legally” in the country but without Palestine citizenship would need to be resolved “by the future Arab government.” UNSCOP tried to get other Arab representatives to soften or elucidate this answer but got nowhere— which led Mohn to conclude in his memoirs that “there is nothing more extreme than meeting all the representatives of the Arab world in one group . . . when each one tries to show that he is more extreme than the other.”"

"During the first year of independence the inhabitants of each state desiring to move to its neighbor would be free to do so. As it stood, the Jewish state, according to UNSCOP, was to have half a million Jews and 416,000 Arabs, along with some ninety thousand bedouins who were not counted as permanent residents.57 The corpus separatum of Jerusalem-Bethlehem was to have a population of two hundred thousand, half Jewish and half Arab. The Arab state was to have some seven hundred thousand Arabs and eight thousand Jews. The proposed arrangement was described as the “most realistic and practical” possible."

Reaction to the proposal

"The UNSCOP majority arrived at their recommendations mainly because they could see no better alternative.59 The Zionists saw things more positively. They regarded the majority recommendations as a “giant achievement” or, in Ben-Gurion’s words, “the beginning, indeed more than the beginning, of [our] salvation.”60 The Arab reaction was just as predictable: “The blood will flow like rivers in the Middle East,” promised Jamal Husseini. Haj Amin al-Husseini went one better: he denounced also the minority report, which, in his view, legitimized the Jewish foothold in Palestine, a “partition in disguise,” as he put it. The Arab states, too, expressed dismay and negativity concerning the majority recommendations; “No Arab Government,” Lebanese prime minister Riad al-Sulh told a British diplomat, “would dare to accept recommendations of U.N.S.C.O.P. Public opinion was now highly incensed and the Government[s] were forced to take some action . . . or be swept away.”61 According to Musa al-gAlami, the Arab population of Palestine would rise up against both the majority and minority reports."

"It was Subcommittee One that translated the UNSCOP majority recommendations into the proposals that were approved by the General Assembly, as Resolution 181, on 29 November 1947. The prospective minorities in each state posed a major problem. The Zionists feared that the Arab minority would prefer, rather than move to the Arab state, to accept the citizenship of the Jewish state. And “we are interested in less Arabs who will be citizens of the Jewish state,” said Golda Myerson (Meir), acting head of the Jewish Agency Political Department. Yitzhak Gruenbaum, a member of the Jewish Agency Executive and head of its Labor Department, thought that Arabs who remained in the Jewish state but were citizens of the Arab state would constitute “a permanent irredenta.” Ben-Gurion thought that the Arabs remaining in the Jewish state, whether citizens of the Arab or Jewish state, would constitute an irredenta—and in the event of war, they would become a “Fifth Column.” If they are citizens of the Arab state, argued Ben-Gurion, “[we] would be able to expel them,” but if they were citizens of the Jewish state, “we will be able only to jail them. And it is better to expel them than jail them.”"

Negotiations over the Negev

"The British and the State Department made vigorous efforts to consign the Negev—which the UNSCOP majority had earmarked for the Jews—to Arab sovereignty. The personal intervention of Weizmann with Truman, on 19 November, was required—as well, perhaps, as Truman’s perception that the Negev represented for the Jews what “the Frontier” had represented for the Americans a century before78—to save the bulk of the desert for the Jews,79 though they had to give up Beersheba and a strip of territory along the Sinai-Negev border. In addition, Jaffa was removed from the prospective Jewish state and awarded to the Arabs as a sovereign enclave"

Whipping the votes in favour of UN 181: Convincing Washington

"Britain itself decided to abstain117—and indeed, in the final days before the vote instructed its diplomats to refrain from influencing other countries one way or another. But without doubt British diplomats around the globe, and especially in New York, “privately” advised various countries on the best course of action."

"The key, of course, was in Washington. Early on, Zionist officials commented, “Everything depends upon which way they decide to turn it.”124 Or, as AHC representative Jamal Husseini put it: “America is our greatest enemy.”125 But Washington’s behavior, until the final seventy-two hours, was “never satisfactory” and “at times [downright] disheartening,” reported one Zionist official. The Americans had waited weeks before publicly endorsing the UNSCOP majority report and in the Ad Hoc subcommittees “were the delegation most insistent on changes to our detriment.” At the General Assembly, the American refusal to pressure other countries “did us great damage.” The climax of this “policy of indifference” was on 26 November, when Greece, the Philippines, and Haiti, all “completely dependent on Washington—suddenly came out one after another against its declared policy.” It was only then, after frantic Jewish lobbying, that Washington “exerted itself to rally support and the situation improved. . . . It was only in the last 48 hours . . . that we really got the full backing of the United States.”"

"1 Down to 25 November, the Americans declined to twist arms. Part of the explanation is that almost all the relevant State Department officials were either critical of or opposed partition. But it was also a matter of policy. As late as 24 November, Truman instructed Lovett not “to use threats or improper pressure of any kind on other Delegations to vote for the majority report.”1"

"But following the Ad Hoc Committee vote of 25 November, the Zionist officials became desperate. Only a direct order from Truman, it was understood, could move the State Department—its officials in Washington and New York and its diplomats abroad—to exert real pressure. Weizmann, the Zionist big gun, was wheeled out. Twice he cabled Truman that he was beset by “grave anxiety lest [the partition] plan fail” to obtain the two-thirds majority and he reminded the president of his past “assurances” that the United States would “rally necessary support for UN endorsement partition plan.” Specifically, he asked Truman to see what could be done about “France, China, Greece, Turkey, India, Siam, Philippines, Liberia, Ethiopia, Mexico, Cuba, Honduras, Nicaragua, Haiti, Paraguay, Colombia, El Salvador, Ecuador.” Without at least some of these states, the resolution would not pass, he warned.135 Weizmann also appealed directly to Secretary of State Marshall.136 Weizmann’s intervention was probably a major contributor to the lastminute policy switch in Washington. In addition, the White House and various officials were bombarded with “letters, telegrams and telephone calls” from the American public.137 Truman later recalled that he had never been subjected to “as much pressure and propaganda . . . as I had in this instance”;138 it had all left him “very upset.”1"

Arab threats and rejectionism

"But the Arabs had failed to understand the tremendous impact of the Holocaust on the international community—and, in any event, appear to have used the selfsame methods, but with poor results. Wasif Kamal, an AHC official, for example, offered one delegate—perhaps the Russian—a “huge, huge sum of money to vote for the Arabs” (the Russian declined, saying, “You want me to hang myself?”).145 But the Arabs’ main tactic, amounting to blackmail, was the promise or threat of war should the assembly endorse partition. As early as mid-August 1947, Fawzi al-Qawuqji—soon to be named the head of the Arab League’s volunteer army in Palestine, the Arab Liberation Army (ALA)—threatened that, should the vote go the wrong way, “we will have to initiate total war. We will murder, wreck and ruin everything standing in our way, be it English, American or Jewish.”146 It would be a “holy war,” the Arabs suggested, which might even evolve into “World War III.”"

"The League demanded independence for Palestine as a “unitary” state, with an Arab majority and minority rights for the Jews. The AHC went one better and insisted that the proportion of Jews to Arabs in the unitary state should stand at one to six, meaning that only Jews who lived in Palestine before the British Mandate be eligible for citizenship.171"

Arab leaders pressure from the street and conflicting goals of the Arab states

"At Inshas and Bludan, as in the get-togethers that were to follow, the Arab leaders were driven by internal and interstate considerations as well as by a genuine concern for the fate of Palestine. All the regimes, none of them elected, suffered from a sense of illegitimacy and, hence, vulnerability. All the leaders, or almost all (Jordan’s gAbdullah was the sole exception), lived in perpetual fear of the “street,” which could be aroused against them by opposition parties, agitators, or fellow leaders, claiming that they were “selling out” Palestine. As Shertok quoted the Syrian UN delegate Faris al-Khouri as saying in October 1947, the Arab states know they “may be heading for a disaster but they have no choice. They are committed up to the hilt vis-à-vis their own public. The position of all these governments was very weak. They were all tottering; they were all unpopular.” They had no choice but to adopt a “firm, unequivocal, uncompromising attitude” on Palestine.172"

"The interstate feuding was in large measure fuelled by expansionist ambitions and real or imagined fears of others’ expansionist ambitions. Throughout his reign, Prince, later King, gAbdullah had sought to establish a “Greater Syria” (comprising today’s Israel–Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan) under his aegis. The heads of the newborn Republic of Syria also hoped to establish a similarly contoured “Greater Syria”—but ruled from Damascus. The Lebanese Christians lived in perpetual fear of a Muslim, and Syrian, takeover (as, in fact, gradually occurred after summer 1976). gAbdullah (and the Hashemite royal house of Iraq) also harbored a deep-seated grudge, and expansionist ambitions, vis-à-vis King Ibn Sagud, who had supplanted the Hashemites in Hijaz. Moreover, gAbdullah often talked of “uniting” Jordan and Iraq (again, under his tutelage). For their part, the Saudis regarded Jordan covetously, as did the Egyptians Sudan and, occasionally, southern Palestine."

"All the Arab leaders distrusted and, in some cases (notably King gAbdullah), hated AHC leader Haj Amin al-Husseini and opposed the establishment of an al-Husseini-led Palestinian Arab state; al-Husseini was seen as an inveterate liar and schemer. The mufti, for his part, reciprocated gAbdullah’s feelings and distrusted the other Arab leaders, suspecting them of seeking to partition Palestine among themselves."

Arab league decision to accept refugees and encourage fleeing

"In another secret decision, the committee instructed the League’s members “to open the gates . . . to receive children, women and old people [from Palestine] and to support them in the event of disturbances breaking out in Palestine and compelling some of its Arab population to leave the country.”177 The Political Committee’s decisions were then endorsed by the Arab heads of state, meeting as the League Council, at Aley, in Lebanon, in the second week of October. (The idea of a mass evacuation from Palestine may already have been doing the rounds among Arab decision-makers more than a year before. gAzzam reportedly [or mis-reportedly] declared in May 1946 that “Arab circles proposed to evacuate all Arab women and children from Palestine and send them to neighbouring countries, to declare ‘Jehad’ and to consider Palestine a war zone.”)178"

Arab preparations for war

"Meanwhile, the Military Committee, consisting of representatives of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and the AHC, began functioning under the chairmanship of Ismail Safwat...He recommended that the Arab states immediately mobilize, equip, and train volunteers, deploy forces along Palestine’s borders, and set up a “general Arab command” that would control all the Arab military forces inside and around Palestine; supply the Palestinian Arabs, as a first stage, with “no less than 10,000 rifles,” and machine guns and grenades; and give the Military Committee one million pounds and provide it with officers and noncommissioned officers who could train the volunteers. He also recommended that the Arab states purchase additional weapons for the forces that would be engaged in Palestine.180"

Reaction of the Arab street to 181 and views of the Arab leadership

"In some Arab states, the regimes—while issuing inflammatory statements—kept the mobs in check. But where the reins were loosed, or where the police joined the rioters, there was bloody mayhem. In pogroms in British-ruled Aden and the Sheikh Othman refugee camp outside the city, seventy-five Jews were murdered, seventy-eight were wounded, and dozens of homes, shops, and synagogues and two schools were torched during 2–4 December by Arabs and local Yemeni levies before British troops restored order.199 Dozens of Jewish homes and a synagogue were also destroyed or looted, one woman was killed, and sixty-seven Jews were injured in rioting on 2 December in Bahrain.200 In Aleppo, Syria, there was widespread antiJewish rioting on 30 November and 1 December, with dozens of houses, including the town’s synagogues and Jewish schools, being torched. It is unclear how many Jews, if any, were injured or killed;201 three thousand reportedly fled to Beirut.202 In Damascus, Jews were set upon, as were nationals of Western states identified with the UN decision.203 In Egypt, mobs torched the British Institute in Zagazig and attacked the British consulate general and Anglican cathedral in Cairo.204"

"6 The clear-eyed prime minister of Lebanon, Riad al-Sulh, reportedly “very depressed,” told British diplomats that “public opinion in Arab countries was so strong that it would be impossible for any Government to prevent volunteers coming to assist the Arabs [in Palestine] once serious fighting had begun.”207 The Egyptian foreign minister, Khashaba Pasha, said the same—but added, perhaps with a touch of humor, that the “elements who would volunteer [for Palestine] were those among whom excitability was greatest and it was better for the sake of law and order in Egypt that they should be out of the country.”2"

"In the end, the Arab League proved unable to agree on a clear goal for the unofficial war or to define a strategy by which it might be won. Instead, the leaders decided on something more modest. The League vowed, in very general language, “to try to stymie the partition plan and prevent the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine,”"

"British observers commented that although some Arab leaders were eager to avoid conflict, “popular feeling” was such that they were “convinced, probably with considerable justification, that if they accepted [a compromise] solution, their positions, and possibly in some cases their lives, would be most insecure.”"

Chapter 3. The First Stage of the Civil War, November 1947 to March 1948