DID THE UNITED NATIONS CREATE
THE
United Nations General Assembly Resolution no. 181 (II) of 1947 (commonly known as the “Palestine Partition Plan”) recommended the creation from the territory of the western portion of Mandatory Palestine (i.e., that portion of the Land of Israel situated west of the Jordan River, and comprising 22% of original Mandatory Palestine) a Jewish state (comprising slightly less than 11% of the Land), an Arab state (comprising slightly less than 11% of the Land) and an internationally-administered greater Jerusalem.
It is often asserted that the modern State of Israel was created by
this Resolution as a byproduct of
Although widely accepted as an unassailable truism, this assertion is quite false.
The Mandate for
MANDATE FOR
The Council of the
Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have agreed, for the purpose of
giving effect to the provisions of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of
Nations, to entrust to a Mandatory selected by the said Powers the
administration of the territory of Palestine, which formerly belonged to the
Turkish Empire, within such boundaries as may be fixed by them; and
Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory
should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made
on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted
by the said Powers, in favour of the establishment in
Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood
that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious
rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political
status enjoyed by Jews in any other country; and
Whereas recognition has thereby been given to the historical connexion of the Jewish people with
Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have selected His Britannic Majesty
as the Mandatory for
Whereas the mandate in respect of
Whereas His Britannic Majesty has accepted the mandate in respect of
Palestine and undertaken to exercise it on behalf of the League of Nations in
conformity with the following provisions; and
Whereas by the aforementioned Article 22 (paragraph 8), it is provided
that the degree of authority, control or administration to be exercised by the
Mandatory, not having been previously agreed upon by the Members of the League,
shall be explicitly defined by the Council of the League Of
Nations;
Confirming the said Mandate, defines its terms as follows:
ARTICLE 1 The Mandatory shall
have full powers of legislation and of administration, save as they may be
limited by the terms of this Mandate.
ARTICLE 2 The Mandatory shall
be responsible for placing the country under such political, administrative and
economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national
home, as laid down in the Preamble, and the development of self-governing institutions,
and also for safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants
of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion.
ARTICLE 3 The Mandatory shall,
so far as circumstances permit, encourage local autonomy.
ARTICLE 4 An appropriate Jewish
agency shall be recognized as a public body for the purpose of advising and
cooperating with the Administration of Palestine in such economic, social and
other matters as may affect the establishment of the Jewish national home and the
interests of the Jewish population in Palestine, and, subject always to the
control of the Administration, to assist and take part in the development of
the country.
The Zionist Organization, so long as its organization and constitution
are, in the opinion of the Mandatory, appropriate, shall be recognized as such
agency. It shall take steps in consultation with His Britannic Majesty's
Government to secure the cooperation of all Jews who are willing to assist in
the establishment of the Jewish national home.
ARTICLE 5 The Mandatory shall
be responsible for seeing that no
ARTICLE 6 The Administration of
Palestine, while ensuring that the rights and position of other sections of the
population are not prejudiced, shall facilitate Jewish immigration under
suitable conditions and shall encourage, in cooperation with the Jewish agency
referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the Land, including State
lands and waste lands not required for public purposes.
ARTICLE 7 The Administration of
. . .
Since the Jewish people’s right to reestablish their commonwealth in the biblical Land of Israel became a pillar of international law decades before the advent of the Holocaust, and since this aspect of international law was merely a formal acknowledgment of the 4,000-year-old aboriginal Jewish right to the Land, it is a gross misrepresentation of History to claim that the State of Israel instead emerged from the womb of the United Nations, impregnated by alleged European remorse over the Holocaust.
Moreover, while the Holocaust did not create the
State of Israel, the absence of the State of Israel did create
the Holocaust. For, had the Jewish State already existed when Nazi Germany
arose from the ashes of World War I, virtually all of those who perished in the
Holocaust would, instead, have been forcibly expelled by Nazi Germany to
a welcoming
Furthermore, if genuine European remorse over the Holocaust had really existed in 1947, then the United Nations General Assembly would never have issued its niggardly Palestine Partition Plan -- as this recommendation followed the severance in 1922 from Mandatory Palestine of virtually all its territory east of the Jordan River, representing 77% of original Mandatory Palestine, and the severance in 1923 of the Golan Heights, comprising 1% of original Mandatory Palestine. Those severed territories later became, respectively, Transjordan and a portion of the Mandatory Syria. This severance left the Jewish people with less than 11% of that which the League of Nations had originally allocated to them under the Mandate for Palestine, deprived them of any sovereignty over Jerusalem, and saddled them with a demographic and sectarian time bomb in the form of a population that was 45% Arab, virtually all of whom were hostile to the creation of a Jewish State. Rather -- especially in light of the blunt language of Article 5 of the Mandate for Palestine -- a penitent U.N., acting through its Security Council, would have issued at that time a resolution under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter (which, unlike Chapter VI of the U.N. Charter, authorizes coercive enforcement measures) that:
(1) affirmed the continuing primacy of the Mandate for Palestine as the legal foundation for the establishment of a Jewish State,
(2) recognized full Jewish sovereignty over the entire western portion of Mandatory Palestine, including Jerusalem, which constituted the remaining 22% of original Mandatory Palestine, and
(3) acknowledged that the Jewish people had the right to repatriate to their countries of origin the many hundreds of thousands of hostile Arabs who, from 1920 onward, had been permitted by Britain, as Mandatory trustee, to inundate the western portion of Mandatory Palestine in rank violation of its fiduciary obligations to the Jewish people under the Mandate for Palestine.
Clearly, Israel exists neither due to Europe's alleged guilty conscience nor due to the issuance of the meager Palestine Partition Plan, but due only to the fact that the renascent Jewish State militarily defeated the seven Arab states (namely, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan fka Transjordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Yemen) which, together with the Arab League’s “Arab Liberation Army” and local “Palestinian” militias drawn from Arab population centers throughout the western portion of Mandatory Palestine, had sought to annihilate the Jewish State, thereby igniting Israel's War of Independence.
Those who assert that Israel was created, rather than diminished, by the Palestine Partition Plan knowingly reverse Cause and Effect, as U.N. General Assembly Resolution no. 181(II) was the result -- rather than the determinant -- of Britain’s decision to quit western Mandatory Palestine. This is because, in February 1947, Britain had already announced its intention to completely withdraw from western Mandatory Palestine no later than August 1, 1948, which announcement was explicitly cited in the Resolution, to wit:
Takes note of the
declaration by the mandatory Power that it plans to complete its evacuation
of Palestine by l August 1948
(Resolution, fifth preambular paragraph)
Since Britain’s withdrawal announcement was made approximately 9 months prior to -- and served as the direct impetus for -- the United Nations’ issuance of its Palestine Partition Plan, it is clear that the subsequent British withdrawal from western Mandatory Palestine in May 1948, the consequent pan-Arab war of annihilation against the Jewish population centers thereof (in rank violation of the Palestine Partition Plan) and the ensuing emergence of the State of Israel intact therefrom all would have occurred regardless of the existence or nonexistence of the Palestine Partition Plan.
Conversely, had the Jewish population centers of western Mandatory Palestine been destroyed by the Arabs, and had Israel thereby lost its War of Independence, then neither United Nations’ resolutions nor supranational remorse would have sufficed to reverse such a catastrophic denouement.
Clearly, there is an enormous difference between endorsement and creation. While the United Nations certainly endorsed the establishment of modern Israel (at least within the U.N.’s tiny Partition Plan lines), that feckless endorsement (which was so violently rejected by the entire Arab World) had no operative effect on the creation of the Jewish State precisely because that endorsement was stillborn.
Nonetheless, that endorsement did bestow upon Israel a unique international legal status, namely, that of being the only nation in the World whose establishment was officially endorsed by both the League of Nations and the United Nations.
However, delving deeper into the realm of Cause and Effect, it may be cogently argued that the State of Israel presently exists in the biblical Land of Israel as a demographically-dominant Jewish commonwealth within defensible borders due only to a combination of the belligerence and the impatience of the Arabs. This denouement was portended by the prescient declaration of the biblical Joseph to his brothers:
“‘Although you meant [to inflict] Evil upon me, God meant it for Good, in order to accomplish -- it is as [clear as] this Day -- that a vast people be kept alive.’” (Genesis 50:20).
In the absence of this belligerence and impatience, approximately 45% of the citizenry to be encompassed within the modern State of Israel (as defined by the U.N.’s Partition Plan lines) would have been Arab. This would have planted a demographic time bomb within the renascent Jewish commonwealth.
Now, let us hypothetically assume that neither the Arabs residing within the proposed Jewish State, nor the Arabs residing within the proposed Arab State, nor the Arab League’s “Arab Liberation Army”, nor the surrounding Arab States had initiated a war of annihilation against the Jewish population centers of western Mandatory Palestine, but that they had instead simply acquiesced to the creation of modern Israel within the Partition Plan lines recommended by U.N. General Assembly Resolution no. 181 (II).
In these circumstances, the State of Israel would have included a huge law-abiding Arab electorate, which, never having warred against Israel, would have remained in place from the outset and, although still constituting a voting minority, would nonetheless have amassed decisive parliamentary power. In such circumstances, Israel’s parliament would not have been able to enact the exclusionist but morally imperative “Law of Return” (which, in implementation of Articles 6 & 7 of the Mandate for Palestine, grants automatic residency and appurtenant citizenship rights to any Jew in the World). For, it is this Law, coupled with the departure of approximately 600,000 Arab belligerents during Israel’s War of Independence and an increasing Jewish birthrate has allowed the Jewish population of Israel to maintain its overwhelming demographic dominance and, consequently, electoral dominance over the extant Arab population thereof. In this context, it is noteworthy that numerous other nations (including such liberal democracies as Ireland, Greece, France, Italy, and Germany) have similar laws based upon the principle of ethnic repatriation known as “Jus Sanguinis” (meaning: “Right of Blood”).
Also, in these circumstances, a miniscule Israel that was never invaded by the Arabs of the proposed Arab State or by the surrounding Arab States would not have fought any War of Independence. Consequently, that version of Israel would not have expanded from its 1947 Partition Plan lines to its 1949 armistice demarcation lines -- let alone to its post-1967 borders.
Moreover, it is likely that such a demographically-challenged Israel (i.e., a country hosting such a large and growing Arab population) would have quietly ceased to exist as a Jewish State several generations ago.
That the impatiently-belligerent Arabs are themselves principally responsible for the State of Israel’s present entrenchment in the biblical Land of Israel as a Jewish nation-state within defensible borders is not only ironic but -- more importantly -- also constitutes a grand historic replay of the circumstances under which the Jewish people’s forebears, under the leadership of Joshua, originally returned to and thereafter conquered the Land of Israel. As is related in the Hebrew Bible:
“Joshua waged war with all of these [Canaanite] kings for a long time. There was not a city that made peace with the Children of Israel except for the Hivvite inhabitants of Gibeon; they [the Hebrews] took everything in battle. For it was from HaShem, to harden their [the Canaanite nations'] hearts towards battle against Israel, in order to destroy them [the Canaanite nations] -- that they not find favor [with the Hebrews] -- so that they would be extirpated [by the Hebrews], as HaShem had commanded Moses.” (Joshua 11:18-20).
In sum, modern Israel may credit its legal creation to the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, and its de facto existence to the impatient belligerence of its enemies and the consequent resolve of its Jewish population to survive.
© Mark Rosenblit