If ever there was a moment in the entire history of the Palestine issue when a genuine opportunity for conciliation existed, it was now. The obvious course for the organisation at this time was to promote further negotiation between the parties themselves (that is, between the Higher Arab Committee and the Jewish Agency) under UN auspicies, so as to find some middle course between the majority and minority reports. A UN mediator (as over Kashmir) or a UN commission (as over Indonesia) might have been appointed to achieve this. The exact form of a federal relationship, the exact type of autonomy to be enjoyed by the two proposed states, the nature and extent of the links, economic and political, between them, the way in which immigration was to be controlled, the territorial boundaries between the two zones, all these might have been discussed. It is such a course as an impartial majority within the organisation might have been expected to promote. But on this issue no impartial majority existed. Most of the membership was fully committed to one viewpoint or the other.
Only El Salvador proposed a serious attempt to promote negotiation and she was almost wholly disregarded. Far more influential was the proposal of the United States to set up a sub-committee to elaborate in greater detail the proposals of the majority report. This was followed by a demand for a corresponding sub-committee to do the same thing for the minority report. As a result two such sub-committees were set up to reconsider and refine the proposals of the majority and minority reports. Each would consist of members favouring those reports. In other words, instead of an attempt at compromise there were to be two further sets of proposals, one pro-Jewish and the other pro-Arab. It is true that there was also to be a 'conciliation group', consisting of the chairman, vice-chairman and rapporteur ofthe ad hoc committee, which would try to bring the two parties together. But in practice this was largely inactive. It had no power to make compromise proposals of its own. And it never even set in motion negotiations between the parties: its chairman briefly reported later that the efforts of the group 'had not been fruitful'. Most of the activity of the organisation was devoted to drumming up support for one or other of the two rival solutions proposed. Thus, instead of seeking a middle way, the membership was eventually given a straight choice between the Jewish and Arab cases. The chosen solution was then to be imposed On the losing side, regardless of its own views.
The 'minority' sub-committee, consisting mainly of Arab states under the chairmanship of Zafrullah Khan of Pakistan, argued that, under the terms of the mandate, the Assembly had no right to split the territory in two against the wishes of the majority of its population. It called for ajudgement of the International Court on the legality of such a course, in the light of the Covenant of the League and the mandate agreement, and on whether the UN was competent to enforce a solution which was adopted without the consent of the people of Palestine. It also recommended the establishment of a provisional government of Palestine, which should take over authority from the mandatory power. This would prepare elections for a constituent assembly, which would then establish a constitution for a unitary state. There would be guarantees for the rights of minorities, and wide powers for local authorities in the field of education, health and other social services. Hebrew would be the second official language of the state. But there would be no federal system, nor a separate Jewish zone as suggested by the earlier minority report. Thus, though possibly intended as a bargaining position, the proposal represented a partisan statement of the view of one side rather than an attempt at compromise. In any case, perhaps because it was known from the start that such a plan would not receive majority support, it never received any significant attention in the Assembly.
The other sub-committee, consisting entirely of powers which were sympathetic to Jewish aspirations in Palestine, set out proposals for implementing the majority report of the Special Committee. Its proposals were more favourable in many ways to Jewish aspirations than the original. They provided for a timetable that would bring about the establishment of a Jewish state within nine months. British forces would be withdrawn by 1 May 1948 and the new Arab and Jewish state would be set up by 1 July. A new UN Palestine Commission, of three to five members, would be set up to supervise the implementation of the plan almost immediately. This would be composed of Uruguay, Guatemala, Poland, Norway and Iceland (a composition extremely favourable to the Jews and later somewhat modified). Against this, Jaffa, which had a largely Arab population, would be established as an Arab enclave within the Jewish state. After British views on the plan had been taken into account, the timetable was slightly extended to allow for the ending of the mandate and evacuation of British forces by 1 August. The proposed Arab and Jewish states and a special international regime for Jerusalem would then come into existence on 1 October. But provisional councils of government, each controlling its own militia forces, would take over power on 1 April. These would arrange for elections to take place within their own states within two months of British withdrawal.
The British Government gave notice that it could not undertake to be responsible for implementing either of the two rival plans. Since they both represented partisan solutions, likely to be acceptable to one side but not to the other, they could not be put into effect without violence and bloodshed and, though Britain would not necessarily seek to oppose either of them, it could not take on the burden of putting them into effect. This warning did not deter the ad hoc committee from proceeding to decide on an imposed solution. The 'majority' proposals were revised marginally. The Jewish Agency offered to transfer a small part of the Beersheba area and the Negev desert to Arab control. In the last few days before the committee's reports were to be voted on, a few other adjustments were hurriedly made. The membership of the proposed commission for Palestine was changed slightly. A statute for the international zone in Jerusalem-Bethlehem was suggested. The proposed boundaries were altered to give the Arab cities of Jaffa and Beersheba to the Arabs. On Soviet initiative the Security Council was asked to treat any breach of the partition arrangements as a threat to the peace, which it would meet with its enforcement powers if necessary: this might act to protect the embryonic Jewish state from attack from its neighbours.
The Assembly Recommends Partition
