Global Chaos and International Integrity

Just as on cold-war issues a majority of members, led by the United States, felt that the main role of the UN was to pass majority judgements on the merits of such issues (so demonstrating overwhelming support for Western positions), so on this issue a majority, again led by the United States, felt that the future of this territory, for which international responsibility was generally recognised, should be simply determined according to the majority views of the member states, however remote their own concern or knowledge of the area (and so, in this case too, to endorse and support the solution supported by the United States). Ironically enough, this was precisely the method which was later to be so often denounced and decried by Israel after that state came into being. Certainly the record of the UN's actions in this case hardly provided a high recommendation for that procedure as a means for securing peaceful settlement.

Because it was from the start intent on that procedure, the UN never made any serious attempt to explore the possibilities of a compromise middle course between those favoured by the two main interested parties. Nor did it at any point even seriously promote negotiations between those parties. From the beginning it was intent on discovering some 'ideal' solution (which turned out to be close to the one favoured by the Jewish side), which it then determined to impose on both parties.

Even the procedures employed by the UN worked in this direction. They all the time implied a choice between two rival solutions, rather than any attempt to discuss or attempt a compromise between them. The appointment of the Special Committee on Palestine, most of whose members were firmly committed to one side or the other, the decision of this to produce majority and minority reports each favouring a different side, rather than to seek generally agreed recommendations, the decision of the subsequent Special Assembly to eatablish separate sub-committees to refine the two rival viewpoints rather than to reconcile them, to promote negotiations or to discuss meeting-points - all had the effect of compelling the Assembly as a whole to reach a simple choice between two courses, rather than to seek to find an acceptable middle way. The effect was that the losers, the Arabs, inevitably had the sense of having a solution imposed on them against their will, rather than of having been given a real chance of influencing the outcome. A compromise would admittedly have been difficult, if not impossible, to achieve, given the attitude of both parties at the time. But at the very least the attempt should have been made; and it should have been the UN's chief role to make that attempt.

When the issue first came to the UN in the spring of 1947, the majority of members probably had little idea what solution might be possible in Palestine. For a time there were probably a number who felt that the establishment of a single binational independent state in which the two communities could live peacefully together was the optimum outcome. But to the Jewish Agency, and to those states which strongly supported the Jewish cause, including the United States and the Soviet Union, the only acceptable settlement was one which would produce a Jewish state in control of its own immigration policy: in other words, partition. This solution also appealed to many other governments, especially in Europe and Latin America, partly because of the difficulty of creating a viable state including both the two warring peoples, but above all because it could help to atone for the unimaginable wrong done to the Jews over the previous decade in Germany, and, less dramatically, over the previous millennium in Europe as a whole.

To the Arabs, this solution, however convenient to the consciences of Europe and the Western world, represented the alienation of a primarily Arab land to suit the interests of a Western people who for a thousand years had had little contact with the region, and of their previous oppressors in Europe. The only logical aim for Palestine, in their eyes, was the same as for any other non-self-governing territory: independence for the entire area under majority rule. Thus the only point for discussion was the date of independence, the type of government to be established, and perhaps the arrangements to be made for the protection of minority rights.

The Second Special Assembly on Palestine