The Jewish Agency and the Jewish National Council had already, in January, agreed on the formation of a provisional government which would take power in the proposed Jewish state as soon as the mandate was ended. Soon afterwards it was announced that registration had been completed for the recruitment of 15,000 Jewish men and women for full-time military service. Arms were being bought from abroad. On the Arab side, bands of guerrillas had increasingly infiltrated from neighbouring countries. As the end of the mandate approached, neighbouring Arab states threatened military intervention if partition went ahead. In April, Arab governments, under the leadership of King Abdullah of Transjordan, announced plans for military action in Palestine, to 'maintain the Arab character of Palestine', when the mandate expired. The Arab League announced that it would accept the idea of trusteeship in Palestine for a few months, but only as a prelude to independence for a united Palestine.
In the Special Assembly, the United States once more presented its proposals for a period of UN trusteeship. This would be for an indefinite time, but would end as soon as Arabs and Jews agreed on the future government of their country. The UN Trusteeship Council would appoint a governor-general, responsible to the Council, to head a government that would eventually include a cabinet and a democratically elected legislature. Meanwhile the governorgeneral would legislate by decree. The government which he finally established would take over responsibility for maintaining law and order through locally recruited police and a volunteer UN force: and he could if necessary call on certain member states to assist him in maintaining law and order. The trusteeship agreement would include provisions governing immigration, the sale of land, and the protection of the holy places. The United States would if necessary provide police forces to help implement the plan.
Most governments accepted that, with the mandate due to end in a month, it was now far too late for any such plan. The proposal was thus not warmly received in the Assembly. The representative of the Jewish Agency denied that it had yet been proved that partition could not be implemented peacefully: the Security Council had merely capitulated before Arab threats of violence. The representative of the Arab Higher Committee said that the Arabs of Palestine would accept a temporary arrangement for Palestine of the type proposed, on the clear understanding that this would lead to a united independent Palestine: otherwise they would continue to defend their land, by force, if necessary, and seek to establish an independent Palestinian government in accordance with the mandate and the Covenant of the League. The British representative pointed out that his government had always warned of the difficulties in implementing partition. It would, as before, co-operate in any new policy which the Assembly decided upon, but it could not share its authority so long as British responsibility remained, nor could it rescind its decision to withdraw. The Soviet Union, Australia, New Zealand and a number of Latin American countries declared that the UN was already committed to the partition plan, which was the fairest solution of the Palestine problem and should not now be abandoned. No more force would be needed to implement partition than would be needed to implement the trusteeship proposal now being put forward by the United States.
The Special Committee on Palestine: Resistance Axis in UN
