In the third excerpt from Benny Morris's new book on Israel's founding, the author recounts the historic 1947 UN vote that led to the British Mandate's partition.

On the afternoon of Nov. 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly presidium at last put draft Resolution 181 -- the Partition Plan for Palestine -- to the vote. The hall was packed. In alphabetical order, each country was asked "yes," "no" or "abstains." The procedure was broadcast live on radio around the world. When the tally was complete, 33 states had votes "yes," 13 "no," with 10 abstentions. Partition had narrowly passed with a two-thirds majority.

The "nays" consisted of the Arab and Muslim states, Greece, Cuba and India; the "ayes" of the United States, the Dominions (including Canada), Western Europe, the Soviet Bloc and most of Latin America. Among the abstainers had been Britain, Chile and China.

Resolution 181 called for the partition of Palestine into two sovereign states, one Jewish, the other Arab. The British Mandate was to terminate and the British pullout to be completed "not later than 1 August 1948." The two newly formed countries were to be bound in an economic "union." The Jewish state, on about 55% of Palestine's territory, was to consist of the bulk of the Negev in the south, the central and northern coastal plain between Rehovot and Haifa and the Jezreel and Jordan Valleys, including the Galilee Panhandle. The Arab state, on about 42% of Palestine, was to consist of the northwestern corner of the Negev and the southern coastal plain around Gaza, the hill country of Samaria and Judea as far south as Beersheba and central and western Galilee. The Jerusalem area -- including the city itself, outlying villages and Bethlehem -- was designated a corpus separatum, to be governed by the UN Trusteeship Council. The borders were set out in ad-joining maps.

The resolution provided for the establishment of a five-member "Commission," which, under "the guidance of the Security Council," would "take over and administer" the areas progressively evacuated by the British authorities. The British were specifically enjoined not to "prevent, obstruct or delay" the commission's work. The commission was to delineate and finalize the borders and help in the establishment of the two provisional governments, which would transitionally operate under the commission's supervision. The commission was also to oversee elections in the two states. The resolution assured all of access to religious sites and provided for the fair treatment of minorities.

The Zionists and their supporters rejoiced; the Arab delegations walked out of the plenum after declaring the resolution invalid. The Arabs failed to understand why the international community was awarding the Jews any part of Palestine. Further, as one Palestinian historian later put it, they could not fathom why 37% of the population had been given 55% of the land. Moreover, the Jews had been given the best agricultural lands while the Arabs had received the "bare and hilly" parts, as one Palestinian politician told a Zionist agent. More generally, "the Palestinians failed to see why they should be made to pay for the Holocaust." On Dec. 2, the gulema, or council of doctors of theology and sacred law, of Al-Azhar University in Cairo -- one of Islam's supreme authorities -- proclaimed a "worldwide jihad in defense of Arab Palestine."

The Arab UN delegates denounced the resolution and declared that any attempt to implement it would lead to war. British foreign secretary Ernest Bevin described the Arab reactions to the vote as "even worse than we had expected." A particular worry of Bevin's was the safety of the hundreds of thousands Jews scattered around the Arab world, and particularly the hundred thousand Jews of Baghdad, who were at "risk of having their throats cut."

David Ben-Gurion, too, believed that war would ensue. But still, he argued: "I know of no greater achievement by the Jewish people ? in its long history since it became a people."

Though the Arabs could not, or refused to, see it, Resolution 181, besides geopolitically redesigning a sliver of eastern Mediterranean coastline, was an emphatic ethical statement, one of those cross-roads in history where morality and realism come together. Or as one Jewish

historian later put it: "[It was] Western civilization's gesture of repentance for the Holocaust ? the repayment of a debt owed by those nations that realized that they might have done more to prevent or at least limit the scale of Jewish tragedy during World War II."

Viewed in the longer span, the vote represented humanity's amends for 2,000 years of humiliation and persecution -- both by the Christian and Islamic worlds -- of the Jews, the world's eternally stateless people, the world's eternal minority. This was the point made by the Jews of Rome when they celebrated the UN decision on Dec. 1 beside Titus's Arch, "the symbol of our destruction 1,877 years ago."

The Zionists had managed to obtain an international warrant for a small piece of earth for the Jewish people; it remained to translate the warrant into statehood.

-Excerpted, with permission, from 1948: The First Arab- Israeli War, by Benny Morris, published by Yale University Press. © 2008 Benny Morris.

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