Mandatory Palestine Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ===After the Second World War: Insurgency and the Partition Plan=== {{main|1947 UN Partition Plan|1947β1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine}} The three main Jewish underground forces later united to form the [[Jewish Resistance Movement]] and carry out several attacks and bombings against the British administration. In 1946, the Irgun blew up the [[King David Hotel bombing|King David Hotel]] in Jerusalem, the southern wing of which was the headquarters of the British administration, killing 92 people. Following the bombing, the British Government began interning [[Jews in British camps on Cyprus|illegal Jewish immigrants in Cyprus]]. In 1948, the Lehi assassinated [[Count]] [[Folke Bernadotte|Bernadotte]], the UN mediator, in Jerusalem. [[Yitzak Shamir]], a future [[Prime Minister of Israel]], was one of the conspirators. [[File:UN Partition Plan For Palestine 1947.svg|thumb|upright|The UN Partition Plan]] The negative publicity resulting from the situation in Palestine caused the Mandate to become widely unpopular in Britain itself and caused the [[United States Congress]] to delay granting the British vital loans for reconstruction. The British [[Labour Party (UK)|Labour Party]] had promised before its election in 1945 to allow mass Jewish migration into Palestine but reneged on this promise once in office. Anti-British Jewish militancy increased, and the situation required the presence of over 100,000 British troops in the country. Following the Acre Prison Break and the retaliatory hanging of British sergeants by the Irgun, the British announced their desire to terminate the mandate and to withdraw by no later than the beginning of August 1948.<ref name="auto"/> The [[Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry]] in 1946 was a joint attempt by Britain and the United States to agree on a policy regarding the admission of Jews to Palestine. In April, the Committee reported that its members had arrived at a unanimous decision. The Committee approved the American recommendation of the immediate acceptance of 100,000 Jewish refugees from Europe into Palestine. It also recommended that there be no Arab or Jewish state. The Committee stated that "in order to dispose, once and for all, of the exclusive claims of Jews and Arabs to Palestine, we regard it as essential that a clear statement of principle should be made that Jew shall not dominate Arab and Arab shall not dominate Jew in Palestine". U.S. President [[Harry S. Truman]] angered the British Government by issuing a statement supporting the 100,000 refugees but refusing to acknowledge the rest of the committee's findings. Britain had asked for U.S. assistance in implementing the recommendations. The [[US War Department]] had said earlier that to assist Britain in maintaining order against an Arab revolt, an open-ended US commitment of 300,000 troops would be necessary. The immediate admission of 100,000 new Jewish immigrants would almost certainly have provoked an Arab uprising.<ref>Kenneth Harris, '' Attlee'' (1982) pp 388β400. </ref> These events were the decisive factors that forced Britain to announce their desire to terminate the Palestine Mandate and place the Question of Palestine before the [[United Nations]], the successor to the [[League of Nations]]. The UN created [[UNSCOP]] (the UN Special Committee on Palestine) on 15 May 1947, with representatives from 11 countries. UNSCOP conducted hearings and made a general survey of the situation in Palestine and issued its report on 31 August. Seven members (Canada, [[Czechoslovakia]], Guatemala, Netherlands, Peru, Sweden, and Uruguay) recommended the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states, with Jerusalem to be placed under [[Corpus separatum (Jerusalem)|international administration]]. Three members (India, Iran, and [[Yugoslavia]]) supported the creation of a single federal state containing both Jewish and Arab constituent states. Australia abstained.<ref>Howard Adelman, "UNSCOP and the Partition Recommendation." (Centre for Refugee Studies, York University, 2009) [http://yorkspace.library.yorku.ca/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10315/2669/H+A+UNSCOP+and+the+Partition+Recommendation.PDF?sequence=1 online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191219184223/https://yorkspace.library.yorku.ca/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10315/2669/H+A+UNSCOP+and+the+Partition+Recommendation.PDF?sequence=1 |date=19 December 2019 }}.</ref> {{rquote|It is not hard to understand the Palestinian Arab position. By 1947 the Arabs of Palestine constituted a two-thirds majority with over 1.2 million people, compared to 600,000 Jews in Palestine. Many towns and cities with Palestinian Arab majorities, like [[Haifa]], were allotted to the Jewish state. [[Jaffa]], though nominally part of the Arab state, was an isolated enclave surrounded by the Jewish state. Moreover, Arabs owned 94 percent of the total land area of Palestine and some 80 percent of the arable farmland of the country. Based on these facts, Palestinian Arabs refused to confer on the United Nations the authority to split their country and give half away.|[[Eugene Rogan]], The Arabs: A History<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LILdBDrm-ksC&q=eugene+rogan+history+of+arabs|title=The Arabs: A History β Third Edition|author=Eugene Rogan|page=321|publisher=Penguin|year=2012|isbn=978-0-7181-9683-7 }}}</ref>}} On 29 November 1947, [[United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine|the UN General Assembly, voting 33 to 13, with 10 abstentions, adopted a resolution]] recommending the adoption and implementation of the ''Plan of Partition with Economic Union'' as Resolution 181 (II),<ref>{{cite web|url=http://domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/0/7f0af2bd897689b785256c330061d253 |title=A/RES/181(II) of 29 November 1947 |publisher=United Nations |year=1947 |access-date=11 January 2012 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120524094913/http://domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/0/7f0af2bd897689b785256c330061d253 |archive-date=24 May 2012 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book|author1=Cathy Hartley|author2=Paul Cossali|title=Survey of Arab-Israeli Relations|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KvaNAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA52|year=2004|pages=52β53|publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-135-35527-2}}</ref> while making some adjustments to the boundaries between the two states proposed by it. The division was to take effect on the date of British withdrawal. The partition plan required that the proposed states grant full civil rights to all people within their borders, regardless of race, religion or gender. The UN General Assembly is only granted the power to make recommendations; therefore, UNGAR 181 was not legally binding.<ref>Article 11 of the United Nations Charter</ref> Both the US and the [[Soviet Union]] supported the resolution. Haiti, Liberia, and the Philippines changed their votes at the last moment after concerted pressure from the US and from Zionist organisations.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Roosevelt |first=Kermit |year=1948 |title=The Partition of Palestine: A lesson in pressure politics |journal=Middle East Journal |volume=2 |issue=1 |pages=1β16 |jstor=4321940 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Snetsinger |first=John |year=1974 |title=Truman, the Jewish vote, and the creation of Israel |url=https://archive.org/details/trumanjewishvote0000snet |url-access=registration |publisher=Hoover Institution |pages=[https://archive.org/details/trumanjewishvote0000snet/page/66 66β67]|isbn=978-0-8179-3391-3 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Sarsar |first=Saliba |year=2004 |title=The question of Palestine and United States behavior at the United Nations |journal=International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society |volume=17 |issue=3 |pages=457β470 |doi=10.1023/B:IJPS.0000019613.01593.5e|s2cid=143484109 }}</ref> The five members of the [[Arab League]], who were voting members at the time, voted against the Plan. The Jewish Agency, which was the Jewish state-in-formation, accepted the plan, and nearly all the Jews in Palestine rejoiced at the news. The partition plan was rejected by the Palestinian Arab leadership and by most of the Arab population.{{efn|p. 50, at 1947 "Haj Amin al-Husseini went one better: he denounced also the minority report, which, in his view, legitimized the Jewish foothold in Palestine, a "partition in disguise", as he put it."; p. 66, at 1946 "The League demanded independence for Palestine as a "unitary" state, with an Arab majority and minority rights for the Jews. The AHC went one better and insisted that the proportion of Jews to Arabs in the unitary state should stand at one to six, meaning that only Jews who lived in Palestine before the British Mandate be eligible for citizenship"; p. 67, at 1947 "The League's Political Committee met in Sofar, Lebanon, on 16β19 September, and urged the Palestine Arabs to fight partition, which it called "aggression", "without mercy". The League promised them, in line with Bludan, assistance "in manpower, money and equipment" should the United Nations endorse partition."; p. 72, at Dec 1947 "The League vowed, in very general language, "to try to stymie the partition plan and prevent the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine,"<ref>{{cite book |author=Morris, Benny |title=1948: a history of the first Arab-Israeli war |year=2008 |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=978-0-300-12696-9 |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=J5jtAAAAMAAJ |access-date=24 July 2013}}</ref>}}{{efn|"The Arabs rejected the United Nations Partition Plan so that any comment of theirs did not specifically concern the status of the Arab section of Palestine under partition but rather rejected the scheme in its entirety."<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/4ECBF3578B6149C50525657100507FAB |title=UNITED NATIONS CONCILIATION COMMISSION FOR PALESTINE A/AC.25/W/19 30 July 1949: (Working paper prepared by the Secretariat) |access-date=24 August 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131002103014/http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/4ECBF3578B6149C50525657100507FAB |archive-date=2 October 2013 |url-status=dead}}</ref>}} Meeting in [[Cairo]] on November and December 1947, the Arab League then adopted a series of resolutions endorsing a military solution to the conflict. Britain announced that it would accept the partition plan, but refused to enforce it, arguing it was not accepted by the Arabs. Britain also refused to share the administration of Palestine with the UN Palestine Commission during the transitional period. In September 1947, the British government announced that the Mandate for Palestine would end at midnight on 14 May 1948.<ref name=Britannica>[http://school.eb.com/eb/article-45071 "Palestine"]. EncyclopΓ¦dia Britannica Online School Edition, 2006. 15 May 2006.</ref><ref>{{cite encyclopaedia |author=Stefan Brooks |editor=Spencer C. Tucker |encyclopaedia=The Encyclopedia of the Arab-Israeli Conflict |title=Palestine, British Mandate for |year=2008 |publisher=ABC-CLIO |volume=3 |location=Santa Barbara, California |isbn=978-1-85109-842-2 |page=770}}</ref><ref name=Sherman>{{cite book |title=Mandate Days: British Lives in Palestine, 1918β1948 |publisher=The Johns Hopkins University Press |author=A. J. Sherman |year=2001 |isbn=978-0-8018-6620-3}}</ref> Some Jewish organisations also opposed the proposal. [[Irgun]] leader [[Menachem Begin]] announced, "The partition of the Homeland is illegal. It will never be recognised. The signature by institutions and individuals of the partition agreement is invalid. It will not bind the Jewish people. Jerusalem was and will forever be our capital. Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And for ever."<ref>{{cite web |title=The Revolt |author=Menachem Begin |year=1977 |url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/defense.html#_ednref37}}</ref> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). 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