The Road to Partition
UNSCOP’s report included a partition plan which divided Palestine into two independent states: a Jewish one to include Eastern Galilee, the coastal strip along the Mediterranean (excluding Jaffa and the coastal strip down to Gaza) and the Negev. The Arab State (note that it was not called Palestinian State) included Upper and Western Galilee, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The City of Jerusalem and its environs were to be an international enclave, Corpus Separatum, with autonomous rights for both communities.
The Palestinians were allocated 38% of Mandatory Palestine when they made up 65% of the total population of 1,846,000. The Jewish state was to include 498,000 Jews and 407,000 Palestinians.
Mandatory Palestine was made up of 16 districts, 9 of which were to be allocated to the Jewish state. None of them had either a Jewish majority or land owned by a Jewish majority.This demographic imbalance was to be solved by settling the displaced Jews from Europe in the Jewish part of partitioned Palestine.
The two states were required to eventually conclude a 10-year treaty of economic union as a condition for their promised independence.
Whilst the Jewish Agency decided to exert all its diplomatic energy to assure the acceptance of the partition of Palestine, the Arabs expressed a total rejection. UNSCOP made its recommendation to the Ad Hoc Committee for consideration. As the General Assembly vote was approahing, Britain, the Mandatory power with responsibility over Palestine, decided in a deceitful way, to take a neutral position to abstain from voting.
UN Resolution 181 was set in motion amid shameful lobbying and arm twisting by both the Zionist leadership and the United States of America.
It is important to remember here that Palestinian Arabs numbered at this time 1,203,000 (65% of the total population) and Jews numbered 608,000 (33%) and this number was mainly the result of illegal Jewish immigration into Palestine from Europe.
Equally, Palestinian Arabs owned more land in every single district in the country than Jews. Even in Jaffa were Jews had the highest ownership of land (39%), Palestinians owned 47% of Jaffa district. In the whole country, Palestinians owned 85% of the land and Jews only 7%.
Despite these galring statistics, thousands of miles away in Central Manhattan, NYC, USA, the air was thick with intrigue and conspiratory planning. Members of the UN General Assemply committed a political crime whose consequences still haunt us today.