Ghoury, Secretary of the Arab Committee, declared 'the right of Palestine to independence as an independent whole'. There was little disposition to question the proposal to set up a special committee. There were two main questions to be decided: its composition and its terms of reference. On the composition, the main controversy concerned whether the permanent members should be represented, as the Soviet Union (as always) and some others wished, or not. Britain from the start had declared she did not wish to be judge in her own case'. The United States and China also declared that they did not wish to put themselves forward, though they would serve if this was generally wished. The majority felt the permanent members should be excluded. It was finally decided that the Special Committee should consist of Australia, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Guatemala, India, Iran, the N etherlands, Peru, Sweden, Uruguay and Yugoslavia.
On the terms of reference the Arab governments protested strongly that all reference to the goal of independence for Palestine had been omitted. N or was there even a reference, as had been proposed, to the need to consider the interests of all the inhabitants of Palestine. The British proposal, itself vague enough, to consider the 'fu ture government of Palestine' had been replaced by the still vaguer term 'the problem of Palestine'. Finally, they objected to the decision to allow the Special Committee to conduct investigations wherever it wished, on the rather far-fetched grounds that this was intended to enable it to visit camps for refugees in Europe and so mobilise support for increased Jewish immigration to Palestine. For all these reasons the Arab representatives at the Special Assembly reserved their position. The Arab League issued a statement denouncing Zionist influences in the USA for a decision that was inconsistent with the Charter and the mandate. It announced the intention of the Arab governments to raise the demand for independence for Palestine at the Assembly's autumn session. More significant, the Arab Higher Committee, representing the Arabs of Palestine, resolved that Palestinian Arabs should not co-operate in any way with the Special Committee or appear before it.
This was a thoroughly foolish decision and typical of the tendency of the Arab states to cut off their nose to spite their face: to damage their own case by taking an extreme and intransigent position. Whatever they thought of the Committee's terms of reference, Arab interests would obviously have been better served if they were represented there, and so were able to put their own case to it as forcefully as possible. Now, as so often on this issue, Arab governments made the best the enemy of the good. Since they could not have the decision they demanded, they refused to have anything to do with the decision that was actually to be reached. Very different was the reaction of the Jewish Agency and other Jewish organisations. These determined to make use of all their considerable resources to place the Jewish case before the Committee as powerfully as possible. So already there began to emerge, both in the UN and in capitals all over the world, above all in the United States, the effective and high-powered pressure groups that were to serve the Israeli cause so well in subsequent years. The effect on the Committee cannot be accurately judged. But it seems not unlikely that the fact that its ultimate proposals were so favourable to the Jewish cause was not unrelated to the relative efforts made by the two parties to present their case.
The Committee set out at the beginning of June for the Middle East. It visited Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Transjordan. It continued to be boycotted by the Arabs of Palestine, but evidence was given to it by the Arab governments of the region. These made clear that they would oppose, by all means in their power, the establishment of a Jewish state in the area. The Committee subsequently decided (by 6 votes to 4) to send a sub-committee to visit displaced persons' camps in Germany and Austria. The representatives of the Jews of Palestine, Abba Eban and David Horowitz, put theJewish case before the Committee with great force. There is little doubt that in the course of its examination of the problem the sympathies of many members became more favourable towards Jewish aspirations. Certainly all members of the Committee, including even the few who were sympathetic to the Arab position (Yugoslavia, Iran and India), became increasingly sceptical of the possibility of establishing a unified state of Palestine in which Jews and Arabs could live peacefully together. Both groups, therefore, majority and minority alike, turned towards a solution providing for some degree of division between the two peoples. The difference between them consisted mainly in the nature and extent of the links between the two parts which they proposed.
The majority report in effect accepted the case for aJewish state. It concluded that immigration had already taken place on such a scale that the Jewish population was too great to be easily assimilated in an Arab-dominated state. There were substantial and clearly defined areas in which the Jews were in a majority. Socially, politically and even economically the two populations had remained largely separate. They therefore recommended the establishment of a Jewish territory that would include eastern Galilee, the central plain from south of Acre to just north of of Isdud, and the Negev desert. The Arabs would get western Galilee, central Palestine and the coastal areas to north and south. Jewish immigration would continue at the rate of 75,000 a year for the first two years and 60,000 after that. The Jerusalem- Bethlehem area would be an international zone under UN trusteeship. An economic union would be established between the two territories, and a ten-year Arab-Jewish treaty drawn up. There would be a two-year probationary period during which the states would come into existence under British supervision.
The Palestinian Cause and New Agenda for the United Nations
