Truman, Palestine and the cold war

Abstract

There are certain difficulties in this reconstruction of Truman's policy on Palestine in the months leading up to Israeli independence. For one thing, it fails to take proper account of the Cold War setting in which the policy was first framed and then re-shaped. Although Truman had long favored increased Jewish immigration to Palestine while the region was under the British mandate, he had been careful to subordinate demands for statehood to geopolitical considerations extending far beyond Palestine's borders.4 The United States was slow to embrace Whitehall's call for a United Nations' finding on Palestine for fear such consideration would greatly complicate the administration's aid program to Greece and Turkey.5 The administration's reticence continued throughout the summer of 1947. While the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine considered the future status of the region, Truman scrupulously avoided advocating partition fearing that it would lead to Soviet gains in the Eastern Mediterranean.6 Even after the United States announced its support for a partition plan approved by a two-thirds majority in the United Nations, the Truman administration abandoned the scheme when it appeared that enforcement would introduce Soviet troops to the region.7 If Truman had been the pawn of Jewish political pressure in advance of the UN's 29 November 1947 vote