Status of Jerusalem
DOCUMENT IN CONTEXT
Until the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, most international diplomacy concerning Palestine
assumed that Jerusalem would come under some form of international control. Such
thinking, in turn, flowed from the assumption that only a disinterested, international
regime could protect the interests of the three major religions—Christianity, Islam,
and Judaism—with historic holy places in or near the city.
UN General Assembly Resolution 181, adopted in November 1947, set out the
most specific proposal for international control of Jerusalem while calling for the par-
tition of Palestine into separate Arab and Jewish states. It proposed making Jerusalem
and its surrounding neighborhoods a “corpus separatum” administered by a trustee-
ship council appointed by the United Nations. A principal task of the council would
be “to ensure that order and peace, and especially religious peace, reign in Jerusalem”
(UN General Assembly Resolution 181, p. 59).
The idealistic rhetoric of that resolution never came into play, however, because
the 1948 war left Jerusalem and its environs split between Israel and Transjordan, nei-
ther of which had the slightest inclination to relinquish its hard-won gains. Israel con-
trolled the western portions of the city, including the recently built-up New City, while
Jordan controlled East Jerusalem and the historic Old City, where most of the impor-
tant religious shrines were located. In a speech to the local Jewish advisory council in
Jerusalem on December 1, 1948, Israel’s first president, Chaim Weizmann, insisted
that “Jerusalem is ours” and called it “utterly inconceivable” that the city could ever
be placed under international control.
In mid-1949, however, the idea of international stewardship of Jerusalem resur-
faced with the deliberations of the Palestine Conciliation Commission, a three-
member body created under UN General Assembly Resolution 194 (passed in De-
cember 1948). In a report issued on September 1, 1949, the commission suggested a
compromise: dividing the city into two zones, one Israeli and one Arab, with each side
in charge of local affairs. A UN commissioner would have authority for protecting the
holy places in both zones and preventing immigration that “might alter the present
demographic equilibrium” of the entire city (UN General Assembly Resolution 194,
p. 74).
Israel and Jordan (Transjordan’s new name as of April 1949) emphatically rejected
the proposal and instead began secret negotiations over practical arrangements for run-
ning a divided Jerusalem. International debate about the city continued at the United
Nations, fostered in part by the Vatican’s sudden endorsement of international control.
On December 5, 1949, just before a planned debate in the General Assembly on
the subject of Jerusalem, Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion told the Knesset,
or parliament, that Israel would never accept international control of Jerusalem because
the city was “an organic and inseparable part of the State of Israel.” Ben-Gurion’s
uncompromising rhetoric failed, however, to deter advocates of internationalization.
On December 9, the General Assembly adopted Resolution 303, calling for Jerusalem
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