Genocide, Variations on a Theme #I
Part Eleven, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine #3
On the 2nd of April, 1947, the United Kingdom submitted a letter to the UN requesting the Secretary General “to place the question of Palestine on the Agenda of the General Assembly at its next regular Annual Session”, and requesting the Assembly “to make recommendations, under Article 10 of the Charter, concerning the future government of Palestine.”
On the 15th of May, the General Assembly adopted Resolution 106, which established the UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) to investigate “the question of Palestine”, to “prepare a report to the General Assembly” based upon its findings, and to “submit such proposals as it may consider appropriate for the solution of the problem of Palestine”.
UNSCOP was far from impartial and included Christian Zionists such as John Stanley Grauel and William Lovell Hull. It was also brilliantly manipulated by Jewish Zionists, who sent the “Exodus” to Palestine to coincide with their visit, a masterstroke of propaganda.
It wasn’t difficult to persuade many members of the committee, who hadn’t the slightest idea about the question, to favor Zionism. The members were even persuaded to visit Europe: “The Committee was divided on the question of principle involved in such a visit. Some members expressed the view that the visit was unnecessary. It was common knowledge that the people in the camps wanted to go to Palestine, and the Committee could add no new facts. Others felt that the Committee should inspect the camps because it was obliged by its terms of reference to do so. The view was expressed by two members that it was improper to connect the displaced persons, and the Jewish problem as a whole, with the problem of Palestine; a third felt that the Committee’s work had not yet reached a stage in which this relationship had become clear. A number of members indicated that they would not oppose a visit. After this discussion the Committee voted (six in favor, four against, with one abstention) that a visit should be made to displaced persons camps.” Again, in the camps, the delegates were brilliantly manipulated: 98% interviewed said they wanted to go to Palestine.
On the 29th of September the Arab Higher Committee issued a statement reiterating that: “...the Arabs of Palestine were determined to oppose with all the means at their disposal, any scheme that provided for segregation or partition, or that would give to a minority special and preferential status”.
It instead advocated freedom and independence for an Arab State in the whole of Palestine, which would respect human rights, fundamental freedoms and equality of all persons before the law and would protect the legitimate rights and interests of all minorities whilst guaranteeing freedom of worship and access to the Holy Places. This was simply in keeping with what the British, under their Mandate, should have done.
According to Pappé: “By accepting the Partition Resolution, the UN totally ignored the ethnic composition of the country’s population. Had the UN decided to make the territory the Jews had settled on in Palestine correspond with the size of their future state, they would have entitled them to no more than ten per cent of the land.”
The view of those opposed to the Zionist project was, Pappé stated, relatively simple: “Walid Khalidi succinctly articulated the Palestinian position as follows: ‘The native people of Palestine, like the native people of every other country in the Arab world, Asia, Africa, America and Europe, refused to divide the land with a settler community.’”
“Within a few weeks of UNSCOP starting its work, the Palestinians realized the cards were stacked against them: the final result of the process would be a UN resolution on partitioning the country between the Palestinians, as the indigenous population, and a settler colony of newcomers, many of whom had arrived only recently.”
“When Resolution 181 was adopted in November, their worst nightmare began to unfold in front of their eyes. Several leading Palestinians at the time demanded that its legality be tested in the international Court of Justice (founded in 1946), but this was never to happen.”
“Other aspects that undermined the legal and moral credibility of the resolution quickly emerged. The Partition Resolution incorporated the most fertile land in the proposed Jewish state as well as almost all the Jewish urban and rural space in Palestine. But it also included 400 (out of more than 1000) Palestinian villages within the designated Jewish state. On forty- two per cent of the land, 818,000 Palestinians were to have a state that included 10,000 Jews, while the state for the Jews was to stretch over almost fifty-six per cent of the land, which 499,000 Jews were to share with 438,000 Palestinians. The third part was a small enclave around the city of Jerusalem, which was to be internationally governed and whose population was 200,000 was equally divided between Palestinians and Jews.”
What the map proposed in November 1947 did was help cause a tragedy. As Pappé puts it: “By drawing the map as they did, the UN members who voted in favor of the Partition Resolution contributed directly to the crime that was about to take place.”
Of course, the question of how to vote involved power politics, bribes, threats and intrigues. The dramatic volte-face by the Soviets had more to do with a desire to see an end to a British presence in Palestine than anything else. It was also a result of long and arduous cultivation of the Soviets by the Zionists, who emphasized their left-wing credentials and vehemently denied ever having had anything to do with the Nazis.
The decision to arm the Zionists, via the Communist Party, must be seen in the context of the Soviet competition with Britain and America.
The diplomatic maneuvering by the Soviets aroused American ire. Dean Rusk, warned the Jewish Agency to “...avoid any appearance of a tie-up with Russia. People were puzzled by Russia’s stand in favor of partition; by the novelty of what seemed to be a pro-Zionist policy.” On the ground the Zionists often fought with Communist arms, without which they might not have won their war.
When it came to a vote not only Truman, who complained of the “political threats” of “the extreme Zionist leaders”, was put under pressure. Zionists threatened Nehru’s sister: Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, France and Liberia were both told they’d lose their American aid, Haiti was bribed, and the Philippines pressurized. Resolution 181 was passed very much in a climate of terror.