ABSTRACT
On September 25, at the second regular session of the General Assembly, the special (ad hoc) committee established to deal with the Palestine question began its deliberations on the UNSCOP report. When the deliberations began, the Jewish Agency announced its full support for the UNSCOP Majority Report, while the Arab Higher Committee declared its utter rejection of both the Majority and Minority recommendations and its demand for the establishment of an independent Arab state in all of Mandatory Palestine. The key question, however, was what position the Great Powers would take. Great Britain was the first to express its opinion; the very next day it announced that it was steadfast in its decision to terminate the Mandate and withdraw from Palestine as soon as possible. It would not, however, agree to the forcible implementation of any arrangement that was not acceptable to both the Jews and the Arabs. After brief hesitation, the other two major powers stated their positions. On October 11, the United States declared its support for partition; two days later, the Soviet Union did the same.1 The three powers’ clear statements carried decisive weight for the sequence of events from the very start of the General Assembly session. The fact that the Amer icans and Soviets agreed about partition eventually led to the adoption of the plan by the General Assembly. The British decision to leave Palestine without cooperating with the UN’s plan for the country impacted the organization’s ability to implement partition. Because the powers’ positions were critical throughout the period discussed in this study, it is important to examine their roots and look at them closely. The British policy was to follow to the bitter end the line of “without recommendations” with which it had referred the Palestine issue to the UN. It chose not to participate in the revisions of UNSCOP’s plan before the General Assembly vote and abstained in the final vote. The British wanted to minimize their expenditure of blood and resources as they exited Palestine and did not volunteer to pull the UN’s chestnuts out of the fire. In the British government’s internal discussions in advance of the General Assembly session, the assessment was that any plan would provoke fierce opposition (by the Arabs, the Jews, or both); and were the matter to drag on or some new proposal be submitted, the British would have to maintain the Mandate while the situation on the ground continued to
deteriorate. These conclusions led it to decide to evacuate the British forces from Palestine as soon as possible, a decision that, as noted, was announced at the start of the General Assembly session.2 It was not always easy for Britain to adhere to non-involvement and no commitment to any policy whatsoever regarding Palestine, and its firmness on the matter wavered. The United States and the Soviet Union supported the UNSCOP report, but for different motives. In those months, the Soviet Union gave serious thought to the matter and adopted a radical change in its Palestine policy, abandoning its traditional support of the Arabs and endorsing the establishment of a Jewish state. It was motivated by the recognition that of all its options, support for Zionism was the path most conducive to getting the British out of Palestine-the Soviets’ supreme goal in that region. The UNSCOP report and Great Britain’s declaration, when the General Assembly convened, that it would withdraw from Palestine in any case gave retroactive confirmation to the direction the Soviets had gambled upon and led Moscow to support partition.3 From then on, the Soviet Union consistently supported the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. Unlike the vacillations of the British and the acrobatics of the Amer icans, the Soviet position was clear and unwavering; we can jump ahead and state simply that throughout the years surveyed in this book, the Soviet Union was Israel’s strongest supporter at the UN. The United States, the Soviet Union’s rival, also supported the establishment of a Jewish state, but its support was hesitant and forced from the outset. The fierce disagreement among Amer ican policymakers generated overt and behindthe-scenes internal skirmishes and inconsistency in its policies on Palestine. The Amer ican involvement in the Middle East had intensified since the end of the Second World War. The fear of a Soviet penetration of the region led the Americans to assist the British in places where they were under heavy Soviet pressure (the Truman Doctrine). Moreover, the rapid economic growth of the United States led to an increased consumption of petroleum and closer relations with Saudi Arabia. The situation dictated a pro-Arab policy that would make it easier for the United States to realize its objectives. That was the perspective of its diplomats in the Middle East, the directors of its intelligence agencies, and the professional bureaucrats in the State Department.4 Amer ican Jewish pressure groups came together against what seemed to be a solid wall of interests and their faithful guardians. They highlighted the problem of the displaced persons and the Palestine question, which demanded action that might not be in keeping with Amer ican interests. The Zionist lobby focused on the president and his advisors in the White House, creating a tight link between domestic politics and foreign policy. After the Palestine issue was referred to the UN, it became a key concern for U.S. foreign relations. Nevertheless, the Americans dallied in consolidating their positions on the matter, in part because of the friction between the State Department and the president. They exploited the referral of the issue to the UN to take a timeout from their decision-making process. The United States chose to “stay mum” on the Palestine issue throughout UNSCOP’s work.5
