were unanimous. Guatemala and Uruguay refused to endorse the majority
recommendation that declared that “any solution for Palestine cannot be
considered as a solution for the Jewish problem in general.”^54 On the
core issue of the future po liti cal status of Palestine, the UNSCOP was
divided. A seven- member majority consisting of Canada, Czech o slo vak i a,
Guatemala, the Netherlands, Peru, Sweden, and Uruguay opted for a
partition of Palestine, while India, Iran, and Yugo slavia put forward a
federal plan. Australia refused to endorse either plan.
The majority plan recommended that Palestine be partitioned into in-
de pen dent Arab and Jewish states with an economic union between the
two. The city of Jerusalem and its environs would be placed under an in-
ternational corpus separatum. Justifying partition, the majority members
argued: “The basic premise underlying the partition proposal is that the
claim to Palestine of the Arabs and Jews, both possessing validity, are ir-
reconcilable, and that among all of the solutions advanced, partition will
provide the most realistic and practical settlement, and is the most likely
to aff ord a workable basis for meeting in part of the claims and national
aspirations of both parties.”^55 Viewing the problem in Palestine as “a
clash between two intense nationalisms,” the plan rejected the maximal-
ist demands of both the Arabs and the Jews. It recognized that any worth-
while, viable, and realistic solution would have to be one of compromise.^56
The partition plan has been too widely discussed, examined, and criti-
cized to be repeated here. Instead, we will look at the federal plan, which
was largely ignored by the international community.
As early as April 23, 1947, when the First Special Session of the UN
General Assembly was in progress, New Delhi felt that any solution to the
Palestine problem “must lie on the lines of the Arab state with the inclu-
sion of an autonomous Jewish area.”^57 This was in tune with the tradi-
tional Congress Party’s position vis-à- vis Palestine, especially since 1939.
The federal plan more or less refl ected this stand. Even though Iran (an
Islamic country) and Yugo slavia (which had a sizable Muslim population)
endorsed it, the federal plan was primarily Indian in origin. Though
hand delivered by Rahman, it was Nehruvian by design.
The principal Indian opposition to the majority plan revolved around
the unworkable nature of partition. Its envoy argued that the plan aimed
at “a union under artifi cial arrangements designed to achieve essential
economic and social unity after fi rst creating po liti cal and geo graph i cal
disunity by partition, [hence the plan was] impractical, unworkable
and could not possibly provide for two reasonably viable states.”^58 In his
98 the partition of palestine