111. 70 Years to the UN vote on Partition: Looking back, looking ahead
- Author:
- Emmanuel Navon
- Publication Date:
- 11-2017
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security (JISS)
- Abstract:
- The 70th anniversary of the UN resolution on the partition of British Palestine is an opportunity to debunk a myth about this resolution, and to rethink Israel’s policy toward the United Nations. The General Assembly (GA) vote on 29 November 1947 was a recommendation and not a binding decision (like all GA resolutions). It became moot the moment it was rejected by the Arab League. The Security Council did not act to implement the GA resolution, even though it knew that the Arab League opposed the resolution and that it was preparing for war. Israel would not have become independent had the Jews not built a society and an economy for decades, and had they not won the war imposed on them by the Arab League. In 1947, Israel got lucky at the UN: Stalin wanted to end Britain’s presence in Palestine (to him, any British and Western retreat was a victory); Truman was determined to override the State Department (“Dealing with them was as rough as a cob” he said); and France was eager to give Britain a taste of its own medicine (the French blamed the British for the independence of Syria and Lebanon in 1944). There were very few independent Arab and Muslim states back then (Africa, the Middle-East, and Southeast Asia were mostly under European colonial rule). Decolonization and the Cold War changed this configuration to Israel’s disadvantage. The number of Arab and Muslim states rocketed, and the Soviet Union successfully recruited them to fight “imperialism” (Soviet foreign policy became openly pro-Arab in 1953, and Egypt became a Soviet ally in 1955). After the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the Arab world used not only the oil blackmail but also its “automatic majority” at the UN to isolate Israel. This diplomatic warfare culminated in the November 1975 GA resolution that condemned Zionism as a form of racism. Despite the end of the Cold War and peace agreements between Israel, Egypt, and Jordan, the political hijacking of the UN never abated. The 2001 UN Conference against Racism in Durban turned into an anti-Israel festival, and the replacement of the Human Rights Commission by the Human Rights Council (HRC) in 2006 only made things worse for Israel (and for human rights). Special UN agencies such as UNESCO are still manipulated by the Palestinians and the Arab states to gang-up against Israel. Yet Israel is not helpless, and there are ways of taming the hijacking of the UN.
- Topic:
- International Cooperation, United Nations, Territorial Disputes, Conflict, and Decolonization
- Political Geography:
- Middle East and Israel