Seventy-five years ago, the UN Partition Plan for Palestine was intended to bring about peace between Arabs and Jews. The necessary conditions for this peace have still not been met.
On November 29, 1947, the moment arrived: Jews in Palestine feverishly followed the radio broadcast of the UN vote on the partition plan. In February, the British had relinquished their mandate for Palestine to the United Nations. A commission then recommended the partition plan to the General Assembly as a solution to the conflict between Jews and Arabs. In the end, 33 countries voted for Resolution 181, 13 against, and ten abstained, including Great Britain. Thus, it was decided: A Jewish and an Arab state would be established west of the Jordan River, and Jerusalem would be placed under international supervision.
Most Jews rejoiced at the decision. But not everyone was happy. Revisionists like Menachem Begin (1913–1992) envisioned a state stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates. But the mainstream of the Zionist movement accepted the plan—out of pragmatism. Everyone knew it was largely flawed: the borders were indefensible, and Jews would only be a slim majority in the Jewish state.
The Arabs made a tactical error in their rejection, as the Israeli historian Tom Segev observes: they were unprepared for an anticipated war and could have bought themselves time by accepting the plan. Nevertheless, it was they who declared war on the state of Israel, founded just a few months later. In the course of the war, they lost parts of the territory allocated to them, including the desert city of Beersheba.
The Arabs had displayed a similar stance of refusal ten years earlier, with similar consequences: in 1937, the British Peel Commission also proposed a partition. The territory designated for Jews was only half the size of the one proposed by the UN in 1947.
As early as 1922, the British had carried out a partition: At that time, the land east of the Jordan River, 77 percent of the Mandate territory, where the British were supposed to create a "homeland" for the Jews, went to Abdullah Bin Hussein. It was intended as a reward for the loyalty of his family, the Hashemites, to the Empire. Today it is known as Jordan.
One plan among others
Whether the General Assembly would approve the latest partition plan remained uncertain until the very end. And the idea of partition itself was by no means set in stone. Several proposals were put forward, and as late as 1936 the British considered dividing the country into cantons, modeled on the Swiss system, which would then unite in a federation. The Zionist leader and later president, Chaim Weizmann (1874–1952), also considered "cantonization" as a possible means of achieving the Zionist goal, at least from 1919 onwards and well into the 1930s.
The British quickly realized, however, that this solution was impractical, not least because of the organizational effort involved. And so, partition once again came more sharply into focus. The Peel Commission, however, knew that its proposal was not an ideal solution. It emphasized that it was only a radical and final step. To describe it, it used medical terminology: it was like performing surgery on the ailing patient, Palestine.
Palestine was considered "sick" by the British because, at least since the 1929 massacre, violence had become commonplace: Arabs against Britons, Arabs against Jews, eventually Jews against Britons – and then the Jewish paramilitary groups also played out their rivalries. Faced with this situation, the British grew weary of their mandate. Especially after the Arab Revolt of 1936–39, they longed for a departure, which was delayed by the Second World War and finally occurred in 1948.
Unresolved conflict
Today, 75 years after the partition plan, the question of how Arabs and Jews can live together peacefully in the long term remains unanswered. A "two-state solution," which now includes the possibility of a "Palestinian" state, is considered fashionable, especially in the West. Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid (Yesh Atid) also advocated for this in September at the UN General Assembly. However, he stipulated that a Palestinian state must be "peace-loving"—without specifying how realistic he considered this to be. In his speech, he lamented that, following the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, the Palestinians had been more interested in firing rockets at Israel than in building their own economy.
The alternative of a "one-state solution" also appears impractical under current circumstances. Legal and security expert Pnina Scharvit Baruch examined four variations of this model in December 2021: federation, confederation, a state with Palestinian autonomy, and a state without it. She considers none of these options viable. A key reason she cites is the freedom of movement associated with such a state, which would significantly hinder the containment of violence. Despite all its drawbacks, she believes a separation from the Palestinians, i.e., a "two-state solution," is more feasible.
Regardless of which solution one favors, given the history of the partition plan and its proposed solutions, calling for a "two-state solution" without considering the necessary prerequisites seems far too simplistic. According to current statistics, the number of Jews and Arabs in the country west of the Jordan River is roughly equal. Those peace-loving among them deserve more sophisticated approaches than the constant repetition of this label.
