Abstract
On 29 November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly voted to partition Palestine into two independent states, Jewish and Arab, with Jerusalem as a corpus separatum under international control. The General Assembly then established the United Nations Palestine Commission to implement partition. Amongst other things, the Commission was to establish "armed militias" under UN supervision to help realise the plan. The analysis examines various aspects of the sequence of events related to this idea, from its conception in the General Assembly to its death in February 1948. It demonstrates that under the militia clause, the United Nations intended to rely on the Jews' main military organisation - the Haganah - to establish the Jewish state and shows how and why this plan went awry despite the converging interests of the Jews and the United Nations.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 559-578 |
| Number of pages | 20 |
| Journal | Diplomacy and Statecraft |
| Volume | 24 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 2013 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Dr. Elad Ben-Dror is a lecturer in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies, Bar-Ilan University, Israel. His book, The Mediator: Ralph Bunche and the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1947–1949 (Ben-Gurion Research Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism Heritage Center, 2012) (in Hebrew), is based on research sponsored by the Institute for Diplomacy and Regional Cooperation at Tel Aviv University.