League, founded with British support just two years earlier, threatened war if the Gen-
eral Assembly adopted either proposal (The Arab League, p. 48).
Amid intense international lobbying and pressure, the General Assembly took up
the proposal for partition on November 29, 1947. The key factor, according to many
historians, was the united stance in favor of the partition resolution by the United
States and the Soviet Union, the two countries that had emerged as the world’s dom-
inant powers after World War II. Resolution 181 passed by a vote of thirty-three to
thirteen, with ten abstentions. The most prominent of the abstainers was the British
government, which by that time had developed second thoughts about relinquishing
Palestine and had decided to oppose any plan for the territory not supported by Arabs
as well as by Jews.
The partition resolution assigned to the Jewish state only a fraction of the terri-
tory that Zionists had long claimed as the rightful Jewish heritage in Palestine. For
this reason, some Zionist leaders—the Revisionist faction, intellectual predecessors to
Israel’s Likud Party—denounced the partition resolution as a betrayal. Even so, the
UN action represented one of the greatest triumphs for the Zionist movement since
the Balfour Declaration, issued almost exactly thirty years earlier. Jews seemed finally
to be assured of their own state, not just a vague “national home” in Palestine, and
one with the imprimatur of international law (Map, p. 57).
The Arabs’ anger grew along with the belief that Jewish money and influence had
swayed world leaders, particularly in the West. Some Arab leaders believed, however,
that they had a trump card in any case: Their combined armies were stronger than
the Jewish forces in Palestine. If partition could not be defeated through international
diplomacy, it assuredly would be defeated by military force, according to this view.
That expectation would repeatedly prove to be faulty in the following decades.
Following is the text of UN General Assembly Resolution 181, adopted on Novem-
ber 29, 1947, calling for the partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish sectors.DOCUMENT
UN General Assembly
Resolution 181 (1947)
NOVEMBER29, 1947The General Assembly,
Having metin special session at the request of the mandatory Power to constitute
and instruct a special committee to prepare for the consideration of the question of
the future government of Palestine at the second regular session;
Having constituteda Special Committee and instructed it to investigate all ques-
tions and issues relevant to the problem of Palestine, and to prepare proposals for the
solution of the problem, and
ARABS AND ISRAELIS 59