The creation of Israel controversial. On November 29, 1947, the general assembly of the new United Nations Organization (UNO) took a historic vote: the partition of Palestine into two states, one Jewish and the other Arab. But nothing is going to happen as predicted by resolution 181, narrowly adopted with in particular the “for” votes coming from the United States, the USSR and France. Called “sharing Palestine”, what does this resolution that Emmanuel Macron mentioned on Tuesday in the Council of Ministers say?
Britain must leave Palestine
The first part marks the end of Great Britain’s mandate given in 1922 by the international body then called the League of Nations. After the Second World War, the British were no longer able to control the situation in Palestine, where 1.3 million Arabs and 600,000 Jews lived.
The Jewish genocide, the entry of the United States into the Middle East, the creation of the Arab League and the pressure exerted by armed Zionist clandestine groups changed the situation. And the context is increasingly explosive.
The attack on the King David Hotel, which targeted the offices of the British authorities in Jerusalem, left 91 dead on July 22, 1946. It was claimed by the Jewish extremist organization Irgun, which opposed the partition plan, although like the Arab League.
The evacuation of the British “must be completed as soon as possible, and in any case by August 1, 1948, at the latest,” is written in the resolution which also provides for the preservation of the holy places and their total freedom of access.
The partition of the country
The second part of the resolution establishes the borders. Palestine is divided into three independent parts. A Jewish state of 14,000 km² which includes a strip from the northern Galilee to the edge of Lake Tiberias with the central coastline from Haifa to Tel Aviv and the Negev desert.
The Palestinians retain, for their part, three regions which cover 11,500 km²: one in the Western Galilee, the second in the Gaza Strip and the third in the West Bank. In the third part of the resolution (the longest), the status of Jerusalem is discussed. The city and surrounding localities must form a territory under a special international regime, administered by the UN.
The fourth and final part discusses the “capitulations”. This means that states which have, in the past, obtained “privileges” in Palestine are “invited to renounce them” in the Arab State and in the Jewish State “whose creation is envisaged”.
A plan that quickly falls apart
The plan also indicates in detail the measures to be taken for independence in areas such as citizenship, the right of transit or economic union. “The State will provide the minority, Arab or Jewish, with primary and secondary education, in their language, and in accordance with their cultural traditions,” it is written, for example.
Barely had the vote taken place when a civil war broke out. Arab countries are still calling for the creation of a “single, democratic and independent Palestinian state”. Zionist movements also reject this plan which, in their eyes, does not go far enough to establish the Greater Israel of their dreams.
On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the creation of the State of Israel, which remains one of the rare countries in the world without a constitution. He was attacked the next day by the surrounding Arab countries. The first Arab-Israeli conflict breaks out. A conflict called the “war of independence” in Israel. In the end, Israel ended up occupying 78% of Mandatory Palestine, forcing around 760,000 Palestinians to take the road of exodus. An event called “nakba”, great catastrophe, by the Arab world.
In 2002, an Israeli documentary even mentioned a mass massacre in the Arab fishing port of Tantura, on the night of May 22 to 23, 1948, by “the Alexandroni brigade”, based on the work of a history student , Teddy Katz, in the 1990s. Its director, Aaron Schwartz, had to flee Israel, victim of threats, according to the France Palestine Solidarity association. The creation of Israel did not happen by a simple vote.
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