UN Partition Research Articles

The formation of the Arab Liberation Army (ALA) for the 1948 Palestine war

ABSTRACT This article discusses the political background of the formation of the Arab Liberation Army (ALA) as a corollary of the Arab League’s inability to adopt a unified response to the November 1947 UN Partition Resolution. From its inception, ALA was never intended to help the Palestinian Arabs but to serve the goals of the Arab leaders, especially those of Syrian President Shukri Quwatli who sought to thwart Transjordan’s King Abdullah’s ‘Greater Syria’ scheme. This was the reason why the Arab leaders failed to involve the Palestinian Arabs in ALA’s formation and war operations, or to consult their leader, the former Jerusalem Mufti Hajj Amin Husseini, when deciding upon the appointment of ALA commander.

The Social, Economic, and International Relations Impact of the 2023 Israel-Hamas War

Hamas's attack on Israel on October 7th, 2023, is not the first of its type. The Israeli-Palestine tension can be traced back to 1947 following the UN Partition Plan that divided the British Mandate of Palestine into Jewish and Arab Nations. Following Britain’s withdrawal from the Peninsula, the Jewish leaders declared the State of Israel, sparking the first Arab-Israeli conflict and this tension has worsened over the years. We use Thomas Hobbes's Social Contract to explain the tension between both parties. According to Hobbes, man lives in a State of Nature which is characterized by war and the continuous fear of death. This fear of death is the reason why man enters into a contract (Social Contract). There have been diverse schools of thought as to the origin of the Israeli-Palestine tension. Some believe it is the 1947 UN Partition Plan, others believe it is the June 1967 war, while others believe it is religion. Regardless of the original cause, it is evident that both parties have retained severe casualties over the years. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to review the economic, social, and international relations consequences of the 2023 Israel-Hamas war. The current war has had several social consequences: refugee migrations, lack of basic survival necessities, withdrawal of medical aid groups, starving refugees, desolated cities, and allegations of rape and sexual torture. Economically, the war has led to the loss of income from economic activities, an increase in oil prices, reignited inflation, high-interest rates, increased government expenditures, and exchange rates. It has also impacted international relations among nations due to a split in support between Israel and Palestine. Nevertheless, there is an allowance for further study because this paper is limited only to the social, economic, and international relations impact of the war.

A long-distance affair: an overview of Australian-Israeli relations

ABSTRACT Australia played an important role in the acceptance of the November 1947 UN Partition Resolution underpinning the establishment of the State of Israel, recognising the nascent Jewish state in January 1949 and presiding over its admission to the UN four months later. In subsequent decades, the two states have developed a close and warm relationship (albeit not without the odd political disagreement) and multifaceted political, economic, technological, and strategic collaboration. This article explores the nature and characteristics of this relationship as it evolved the past seven decades in an attempt to determine its underlying causes and most important driving forces.

How do international borders affect conflict processes? Evidence from the end of Mandate Palestine

Rebels can comply with international law during a conflict by not violating international borders, yet strategic goals may incentivize rebels to violate these borders. When do international borders affect the spatial and temporal distribution of rebel activity in a conflict setting? I theorize rebels have an incentive to refrain from violating borders when doing so will reduce their international legitimacy. When international legitimacy is a less important goal, rebels will be more likely to violate borders. I test this claim in the context of the 1948 War in Mandate Palestine by exploiting a quasi-natural experiment in how the 1947 UN partition line was drawn. Using an original dataset on over 1,000 Palestinian villages from British colonial documents and an atlas of aerial photographs of Palestine, I use a geographic regression discontinuity design to see how the UN partition line affected the location and timing of depopulated villages during the war. The results show that villages in areas that the UN assigned to the future Israeli state as part of the 1947 partition plan were more likely to be conquered before Israel received recognition. These findings have important implications for understanding where and when rebels target areas and shed new light on important dynamics of the 1948 War in Palestine.

Egyptian communist voices of peace (1947–1958)

ABSTRACT This article sets out to closely scrutinise the main phases of the campaign for peace (1947–58) undertaken by left-wing Egyptian groups. Based on exclusive first-hand Egyptian communist primary sources – archival and others, it shows that although the communists were the only Egyptian political groups to support the November 1947 UN partition resolution on Palestine, President Gamal Abdel Nasser later, during the Bandung Conference (1955), followed suit yet no concrete official actions were taken by neither the Egyptian nor the Israeli political elites before the 1956 Suez War. Following that war, the prospects for an Egyptian–Israeli peace settlement were shut off for nearly two decades.

Palestinian citizenship: past, present, future

INTRODUCTION. The article deals with the evolution of the Palestinian citizenship and the possibility of its development under the occupation of the Palestinian territories. Citizenship is a classic institution of public law and is perceived in a similar way in various legal systems. In this case, however, there is a very special phenomenon, the content of which is due to a number of historical, political and international legal factors.MATERIALS AND METHODS. The research is based on the analysis of Balfour Declaration 1917, UN Partition Plan for Palestine 1947, Agreement Oslo II 1995, Articles on Nationality of Natural Persons in relation to the Succession of States (ILC, 1999), Articles on Diplomatic Protection (ILC, 2006), Israeli law governing the status of Palestinians, nationality laws of the Arab states, political and regulatory acts of Palestinian institutions. The research methods include historical method, methods of formal logic, comparative method and various methods of interpretation. A significant part of the research is a comparison of positions of Israeli and Palestinian lawyers, as well as an analysis of various options for the development of the Palestinian citizenship.RESEARCH RESULTS. Currently, the status of residents of the occupied territories is determined by the Oslo II Agreement of 1995: the administrative powers are delegated to the Palestinian Authority; Israel retains the right of control. The resident status is not equivalent to the status of a citizen and is sui generis. This status implies a number of Israel’s obligations: to end it and provide a citizenship to Palestinians; recognize its international elements; transfer more powers to Palestinian institutions. The lack of regular citizenship makes it difficult for Palestinians to enjoy diplomatic protection from Palestinian institutions.DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS. Presently, there are conditions for the establishment (declaration) of the Palestinian citizenship, which would fix a political connection sui generis, implying the rights of Palestinians to participate in administration of the occupied territories, their membership in a nation striving for self-determination, the right of Palestinian institutions to provide diplomatic and other protection, etc. This citizenship should be provided automatically, since it involves not naturalization, but consideration of existing social and vital ties of Palestinians to their people. The solution of the problem of diplomatic protection may consist in the development of customary law and the search for new tools, for example, protection on the part of international organizations.

From Cairo to Jerusalem: Law, Labour, Time and Catastrophe

Following the eclectic itineraries of ‘Near East’ expert, R. M. Graves, this article tells a story of an ongoing Nakba (catastrophe) of small and large legal decisions. Without reducing the human catastrophe of the event of the Nakba (the 1948 Palestinian forced exodus), it engages with it as a legal event that crosses (in this story at least) from Cairo to Jerusalem, from the League of Nations’ era (1920–1946) to the United Nations’ era (1945–), from the governance of labour and gender, to labour partition, and finally to the governance of municipalities through law and expertise. Graves’ relationship to both Cairo and Jerusalem was materialized through different forms of affective legal governance. Graves, who in his own dichotomous words was ‘neither a Zionist nor an anti-Semite’, managed Jerusalem across national lines in the wake of the UN Partition Plan (1947), and as the old empire was withdrawing right before Jerusalem itself became a site of the catastrophe—right before the Nakba.

Transjordan’s occupation of Jerusalem in the 1948 war

ABSTRACTThis article describes the road to Transjordan’s occupation of Jerusalem during the 1948 Palestine war. While King Abdullah wanted to invade and occupy the city as part of his grand political ambitions, his British military chief-of-staff, Glubb Pasha, objected to this move due to his fear that Transjordan’s army (the Arab Legion) was not up to the task and that the occupation of Jerusalem, internationalised by the November 1947 UN partition resolution, would spark international outrage. Indeed, London responded to the move by joining the UN arms embargo and suspending military aid to Transjordan. This led to the kingdom’s effective departure from the war with Israel in July 1948, only two months after it had begun.

Argentina, the Arab World, and the Partition of Palestine, 1946–1947

Argentine president Juan Peron’s Third Position policy sought increased cooperation with Global South nations in the Middle East in the hope of counteracting Cold War alignment. The presence of Arab and Jewish immigrant communities in Argentina heightened the government’s interest in the Arab World and attracted the attention of foreign political operatives who hoped to use those expatriate communities to garner support for their side of the upcoming vote on the partition of Palestine at the United Nations. As a result, Argentina became one of the few Latin American nations to affirm the Arab position in the UN partition debates by abstaining from the momentous vote—a strategy often misinterpreted as Argentine neutrality on the Palestine issue. President Peron’s exercise in global autonomy began a legacy of sustained interaction between Argentina and the Arab World and served as a precursor to the future non-aligned movement, all amid the internationalization of the Arab-Israeliconflict and an escalation in Cold War competition.

Occupation

Occupation Efraim Karsh (bio) No term has dominated the discourse of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict more than "occupation". For decades now, hardly a day has passed without some mention in the international media of Israel's supposedly illegitimate presence on "Palestinian lands." Yet while for international observers the term "occupation" denotes Israel's control of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, areas that it captured during the June 1967 War, Palestinians and Arabs view it as applying to Israel's very creation on "stolen" land. As Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas put it in March 2016: "We have been under occupation for 67 or 68 years [i.e., since Israel's establishment]. Others would have sunk into despair and frustration. However, we are determined to reach our goal because our people stand behind us." Hence the routine insistence on a Palestinian "right of return" that is meant to reverse the effects of the "1948 occupation"—i.e., the establishment of the state of Israel itself. This historical narrative is not only completely unfounded but the inverse of the truth. In 1948, no Palestinian state was "occupied" or destroyed to make way for the establishment of Israel. From biblical times, when this territory was the state of the Jews, to its occupation by the British army at the end of World War I, Palestine had never existed as a distinct political entity but was rather part of one empire after another, from the Romans, to the Arabs, to the Ottomans. When the British arrived in 1917, the immediate loyalties of the area's inhabitants were parochial—to clan, tribe, village, town, or religious sect—and coexisted with their fealty to the Ottoman sultan-caliph as the religious and temporal head of the world Muslim community. Under a League of Nations mandate explicitly meant to pave the way for the creation of a Jewish national home, the British established the notion of an independent Palestine for the first time and delineated its boundaries. In 1947, confronted with a determined Jewish struggle for independence, Britain returned the mandate to the League's successor, the [End Page 45] United Nations, which in turn decided on 29 November 1947 to partition mandatory Palestine into two states: one Jewish, the other Arab. The State of Israel was thus created by an internationally recognized act of national self-determination—an act, moreover, undertaken by an ancient people in its ancestral homeland. In accordance with common democratic practice, the Arab population in the new state's midst was immediately recognized as a legitimate ethnic and religious minority. As for the prospective Arab state, its designated territory was slated to include, among other areas, the two regions under contest today—namely, Gaza and the West Bank (with the exception of Jerusalem, which was to be placed under international control). As is well-known, the implementation of the UN's partition plan was aborted by the effort of the Palestinians and of the surrounding Arab states to destroy the Jewish state at birth. What is less well-known is that even if the Jews had lost the war, their territory would not have been handed over to the Palestinians. Rather, it would have been divided among the invading Arab forces, for the simple reason that none of the region's Arab regimes viewed the Palestinians as a distinct nation. As the eminent Arab-American historian Philip Hitti described the common Arab view to an Anglo-American commission of inquiry in 1946, "There is no such thing as Palestine in history, absolutely not." In March 1948, as the Arab states were gearing for an attack on the Jewish state that would be proclaimed upon the end of the British mandate on 14 May, Arab League Secretary-General Abdel Rahman Azzam disclosed the envisaged partition of Palestine among the invading states: [Transjordan's King] Abdullah was to swallow up the central hill regions of Palestine, with access to the Mediterranean at Gaza. The Egyptians would get the Negev. [The] Galilee would go to Syria, except that the coastal part as far as Acre would be added to the Lebanon if its inhabitants opted for it by a referendum...

The “Right to Have Rights”: Partition and Palestinian Self-Determination

This paper reexamines the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and the extent to which a viable two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was ever truly possible. Such a reexamination seems all the more pertinent today on the hundredth anniversary of the Balfour Declaration. It is also seventy years since the UN partition plan to divide historic Palestine and fifty years since UN Security Council Resolution 242, which has been the basis for every peace agreement between Israel and its neighbors but makes no mention of or reference to the Palestinian people. The paper argues that the history of the past fifty years reinforces the claim that a State is central to any attempt to fight Palestinian erasure and ensure “the right to have rights,” as Hannah Arendt put it, but it argues that such an entity needs to be elevated above the nation, rather than made subservient to it if it is to protect the rights of Palestinians and all those living on the land of Palestine.

A ruling party in the making: Mapai in the 1948 war

The article discusses the transformation of Mapai, the main political party in Israel’s pre-state years, into the ruling party of a sovereign state. By way of doing so Mapai went through three distinct stages, from striving to build a working class of rural and urban labourers, to seeking immediate statehood via rapid mass immigration and partition, to acting as an effective ruling party, or the ‘party of the state’ as it called itself, following the November 1947 UN partition resolution. It was in charge of creating the machinery of government during a time of war, and this fostered hierarchical patterns characteristic of a sovereign rule, notably the independence of the government vis-à-vis the political parties, including Mapai itself.

Book Review: The Idea of Israel: A History of Power and Knowledge by Ilan Pappe

This book review examines The Idea of Israel: A History of Power and Knowledge by Ilan Pappe. As a “new historian” Pappe challenges traditional versions of Israeli history. He illustrates Israel’s creation as a colonial conquest rather than the prevailing national liberation movement. In particular, he examines the role that Zionism has played in shaping dominant political ideology in Israel. Pappe critically evaluates the evolution of Zionism narratives from classical, post-Zionism to neo-Zionism. He successfully illustrates the importance Zionism has played throughout the genesis of Israel by highlighting examples such as the 1947 UN partition resolution, the Holocaust, it’s role in furthering cultural tensions between Israelis and Arabs inhabitants, and presence in the media.

The Arab Legion and the 1948 War: The Conduct of ‘Collusion’?

The partition of Palestine and the 1948 Arab-Israeli War proved to be one of the defining moments of the twentieth century and its continued contemporary resonance has helped maintain a lively historiography. One of the key contentions remains the question of ‘collusion’ between the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan and the Zionists, with the approval of Britain, to partition Palestine in contravention of the UN partition plan. Based on unprecedented access to the unofficial archive of the strongest of the Arab armies—Transjordan’s Arab Legion—this article seeks to further the debate by examining the conduct of the Arab Legion, during the first half of 1948. This new material has enabled a more thorough assessment of the Arab Legion’s aims and actions than ever before. In so doing, this article dampens the revisionist notion of a firm or even tacit Hashemite–Zionist agreement, but nonetheless supports the revisionist argument that negotiations between the parties helped to shape the 1948 war. It reveals that the Arab Legion was used to establish Hashemite–Zionist partition by occupying the Arab areas of Palestine when the mandate ended and acquiescing in the establishment of Israel. Moreover, this article illustrates a significant nuance, concerning the intense fighting that took place, particularly in Jerusalem, after the end of the mandate, differentiating between the influence of King Abdullah of Transjordan and the British commander of his army, Glubb Pasha, in dictating the Arab Legion’s conduct.

Jerusalem Unbound

Jerusalem represents the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The everchangingevents there have perplexed and compelled analysts, political scientists,academics, and activists to devise countless solutions, especially since1948. Moreover, the last decade has witnessed a substantial change in its demographydue to the Separation Wall and the ongoing Jewish settlement inEast Jerusalem, both of which violate international law and agreements. Thephysical barrier is itself a grim reminder of Israel’s harsh unilateral and discriminatorymeasures that seriously impact for the bilateral peace process.Michael Dumper (professor of Middle East politics, University of Exeter)has written extensively on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In this book, he exploresand illustrates how, despite the wall (hard border), people on the bothsides have managed to create and retain various trans-wall spheres of influence(soft borders) by taking advantage of its porous nature to breach it by variousways. This reality, which renders Jerusalem a “many-bordered” or unboundcity, is primarily attributable to its rich, complex, and intersecting religiousand political interests that are sought and contested by many actors (p. 5).The city’s physical boundaries, discussed in chapter 1, shifted continuouslyfrom 1947 to 2003; the Separation Wall actually runs right through it. Accordingto Dumper, three major events have had long-term ramifications on thisconflict: the 1947 UN Partition Plan; the 1949 partition of East and West Jerusalembetween Jordan and Israel, respectively; and the ongoing illegal Israeli ...

Book Reviews

Books reviewed in this issueThe Black War: Fear, Sex and Resistance in Tasmania. By Nicholas ClementsBefore the Anzac Dawn: A Military History of Australia to 1915. Edited by Craig Stockings and John ConnorAnzac Day Origins: Canon D.J. Garland and Trans‐Tasman Commemoration. By John A. Moses and George F. DavisUndesirable: Captain Zuzenko and the Workers of Australia and the World. By Kevin WindleChequered Lives: John Barton Hack and Stephen Hack and the Early Days of South Australia. By Iola Hack Mathews with Chris DurrantThe Whitlam Legacy. Edited by Troy BramstonAustralia and the Vietnam War. By Peter EdwardsEco‐Logical Lives: The Philosophical Lives of Richard Routley/Sylvan and Val Routley/Plumwood. By Dominic HydeThe Market in Babies: Stories of Australian Adoption, By Marian Quartly, Shurlee Swain and Denise Cuthbert with Kay Dreyfus and Margaret TaftProtest, Land Rights and Riots: Postcolonial Struggles in Australia in the 1980s. By Barry MorrisFour Degrees of Global Warming: Australia in a Hot World. Edited by Peter ChristoffRefuge New Zealand. A Nation's Response to Refugees and Asylum Seekers. By Ann BeagleholeEncountering the Pacific in the Age of Enlightenment. By John GascoigneThe Kanak Awakening: The Rise of Nationalism in New Caledonia. By David ChappellThe Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century. By Jürgen Osterhammel, translated by Patrick CamillerA Social History of Twentieth‐Century Europe. By Béla TomkaThe Intellectual World of C.S. Lewis. By Alister E. McGrathThe Postwar Legacy of Appeasement: British Foreign Policy since 1945. By R. Gerald HughesThe Europe Dilemma: Britain and the Drama of EU Integration. By Roger LiddleRethinking the Weimar Republic. Authority and Authoritarianism, 1916–1936. By Anthony McElligottWeimar Thought. A Contested Legacy. Edited by Peter E. Gordon and John R. McCormickBelieve and Destroy: Intellectuals in the SS War Machine. By Christian IngraoThe Holocaust and Historical Methodology. Edited by Dan StoneTrotsky in Norway. Exile, 1935–1937. By Oddvar K. HoidalRemembering the Civil War: Reunion and the Limits of Reconciliation. By Caroline E. JanneyConstructing Neoliberalism: Economic Transformation in Anglo‐American Democracies. By Jonathan SwartsThe Two‐State Solution: The UN Partition Resolution of Mandatory Palestine—Analysis and Sources. Edited by Ruth Gavison, translated from Hebrew by Gadi WeberThe Ruling Elite of Singapore: Networks of Power and Influence. By Michael BarrImperial Eclipse: Japan's Strategic Thinking about Continental Asia before August 1945. By Yukiko KoshiroThe Politics of Sex Trafficking: A Moral Geography. By Erin O'Brien, Sharon Hayes and Belinda CarpenterIn the Interest of Others: Organizations and Social Activism. By John S. Ahlquist and Margaret LeviTheories of Multiculturalism: An Introduction. By George CrowderScience in the Twentieth Century and Beyond. By Jon Agar

Civil alliances – Palestine, 1947–1948

Between November 1947 (The UN Partition Plan for Palestine) and May 1948 (The creation of the state of Israel), many Jewish and Arab communities who cared for their country intensified the negotiations between themselves and initiated urgent encounters, some short and spontaneous, others planned meticulously to the last detail, during which the participants raised demands, sought compromises, set rules, formulated agreements, made promises, sought forgiveness, and made efforts to compensate and reconcile. Their shared purpose was to prevent the rising violence in the area from taking over their lives. They sought to protect the common world of their life in Palestine and to salvage it from those who wished to destroy it. In over 100 documented encounters – and probably many more whose records have yet to be found – they promised themselves and each other the continuation of their shared lives. In 2012 I directed a film based on archival documents depicting these events. This essay, followed by the transcript of those events, reflects upon the importance of this chapter for a potential history of Palestine, as well as on her cinematic decisions to film the movie around a map of Mandatory Palestine (from 1947) with the participation of 25 Arabs and Jews of varying ages speaking in Hebrew and in Arabic.

Communists and the 1948 War: PCP, Maki, and the National Liberation League

This paper analyzes the way in which Palestine's Jewish and Arab communist parties, the PCP-Maki and the National Liberation League, acted during the 1948 war. Both groups made separate and different efforts to make the two-state solution a reality as originally conceived in the UN partition plan. Ironically, the decisive Jewish victory in the war resulted in an asymmetry between the Jewish Communists the Palestinian Communists when they were unified toward the end of the 1948 war. Despite Maki's labors for an Israeli victory, its standing in the nascent Israeli political system toward the end of the war remained marginal. The concept of Jewish–Arab cooperation under the aegis of the USSR was seen by the Zionist establishment as dangerous and subversive.

Stateless citizenship: the Palestinian-Arab citizens of Israel

List of Figures Preface Acknowledgements Introduction 1. Liberal Citizenship: Ambiguities and Inconsistencies Framing citizenship Theorizing citizenship Citizenship beyond the state Problematizing legal categorizations Racial state, racialized citizenship 2. The Israeli Incorporation Regime Colonizing the land of milk and honey A multifaceted discrimination Legislative level Formal and declarative levels Structural and institutional levels Mass protests of October 2000 Acre Riots of 2008 The 2008-2009 War on Gaza Criminalizing Arab Political Participation and Discourse Targeting Arab MKs: From Bishara to Zoabi Arab civil society: A non-state alternative Response to the rise of Arab civil society: The case of Ameer Makhoul Operative and budgetary level Israeli apartheid: Beyond South Africa 3. Israeli Hostipitality From hospitality to Derridean 'hostipitality' Oscillating between host and guest Israeli 'hostipitality' 4. Liberal Pretence of a Jewish State The UN Partition Plan of 1947 The principle of 'two states for two peoples' Israel as a 'state for all of its citizens' Rashid Bey: The de-Palestinianized Arab Zionist democracy in a comparative context Israeli demographobia Liberal rubber stamp for Israeli crimes 5. From Citizenship to Stateless Citizenship 'Israeli' and 'Palestinian' as incomplete identities Defining the 'Israeli' nation Research on Palestinians in Israel: An Overview Formulating Palestinian citizenship - Stateless citizenship 6. The Anatomy of Stateless Citizenship Knowing the terrain: From the exception to the example An exclusive inclusion A perpetual state of emergency Coexistence without existence Conclusion Appendix I: Selections from The Democratic Constitution by Adalah: Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel (20 March 2007) Appendix II: Selections from The Haifa Declaration by Mada al-Carmel: The Arab Center for Applied Social Research (15 May 2007) References Index

The success of the Zionist strategy vis-à-vis UNSCOP

The article examines the successful political strategies employed by Zionist diplomacy in the summer of 1947 vis-à-vis UNSCOP (the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine). The committee's recommendation of partition and the creation of a Jewish state on the majority of the territory between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River served as the basis for the UN partition resolution of 29 November 1947.The Zionist leaders made UNSCOP aware of their willingness to accept partition, but conditioned this on enlarging the territory of the future state. In this regard, the climax of their campaign, recounted in the article, was a secret and informal meeting between the senior echelons of the Jewish Agency and most members of UNSCOP on 14 July, an event that has been missed by historical research. The article describes the crucial influence of the Zionist message when UNSCOP came to formulate its conclusions and contributes to a better understanding of the process that led UNSCOP to its final recommendations.