The day that never ended - On November 29, 1947, United Nations delegates voted to partition Palestine. Sixty-five years later, they’re still voting
One day in 1947, the members of a new
organization convened in a building that had once been a skating rink
and changed the world by holding a vote.
Precisely 65 years later, members of the same
organization, the United Nations, will hold another vote very much
linked to the first. Less is at stake this time. But Thursday’s vote on
upgrading the Palestinians to observer state status — a small but
significant alteration of their international standing — demonstrates to
what extent Saturday, November 29, 1947, is a day that has never really
ended.
Witness accounts of the momentous vote in 1947
describe the delegates’ cars pulling up outside the gray building at
Flushing Meadow, outside New York, on a cold November afternoon, the
crowds gathered outside, an electric excitement inside. People all over
the world listened to a live radio broadcast.
The vote was to decide whether to partition
the British Mandate territory of Palestine into two states, one for Jews
and one for Arabs. To pass, the motion needed a two-thirds majority.
The Jews were in favor, the Arabs opposed. Feverish international
lobbying by both sides had preceded the vote.
A Brazilian diplomat, Oswaldo Aranha, presided
over the meeting from a high table. Next to him was the secretary
general, the Norwegian Trygve Lie. In front of them stood a glass water
pitcher and microphones that looked like metallic hard-boiled
eggs. Behind them was an enormous painting of the globe.
‘As he spoke, a feeling that grips a man but once in his lifetime came over us. High above us we seemed to hear the beating of the wings of history’
The two men faced a “wide semicircle of
delegations with table signs, and the packed galleries,” according to an
account written by the Zionist delegate David Horowitz.
Footage of the vote, and the discussions that preceded it,
was preserved by the Spielberg Jewish Film Archive and is available
online. The grainy film still conveys the remarkable drama of that day.
A roll call began. Each country’s delegate shouted from the floor, “Yes,” “No,” or “Abstention.”
When it was France’s turn, the auditorium held
its breath; most expected the French to abstain. When their delegate
said “Yes,” the Zionist supporters who filled the galleries erupted into
cheers.
“Excitement,” Horowitz wrote, “became a physical pain.”
“The president rapped sharply for order and warned the public against demonstrations.” Voting resumed.
When it was over, the president rapped his
gavel again and read out the tally: Thirty-three in favor, thirteen
against, eleven abstentions. The motion had passed.
“As he spoke,” wrote Horowitz, “a feeling that
grips a man but once in his lifetime came over us. High above us we
seemed to hear the beating of the wings of history.”
The Arab states were shocked and furious. The
representatives of Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Egypt,
wrote Lie, the secretary-general, immediately “rose and filed out of the
Assembly hall.”
The Arab Higher Committee subsequently wrote
to inform Lie that the Arabs of Palestine “will never submit or yield to
any Power going to Palestine to enforce partition. The only way to
establish partition is first to wipe them out — man, woman and child.”
The clerics of the Al-Azhar Islamic seminary in Cairo called for a
“worldwide jihad in defense of Arab Palestine.”
Violence erupted in Palestine the next
morning, the first shots in what would eventually become known as
Israel’s War of Independence or, to the Arab world, as the “Nakba” — the
catastrophe.
The results of the vote, however, were not
perhaps as final as they might have seemed. In 2012, increasingly
powerful segments in both Palestinian and Israeli society do not accept
what the United Nations accepted that day.
The most important player among Palestinians
is now Hamas, which has always rejected the idea of partition as a
betrayal of Islam. The land of Palestine is an Islamic trust, according
to the group’s 1988 charter,
and “no one can renounce it or part of it, or abandon it or part of
it.” Hamas’s popularity is on the rise because it is seen to be brave in
confronting Israel militarily, as it did in the most recent round of
fighting triggered by Palestinian rocket fire from Gaza.
Under the pragmatic leadership of David
Ben-Gurion, the Zionist movement embraced partition as the realization
of a 2,000-year dream of a national revival in the Jews’ historic
homeland. Revionist Zionists, led at the time by Menachem Begin, opposed
the compromise. But Begin’s political heir, Likud party leader and
current prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has said in recent years that
he now accepts it.
This week, however, Likud members elected a
new slate for Israel’s ruling party dominated by candidates who reject
the idea of partition. Instead, these present and future lawmakers —
Moshe Feiglin, Danny Danon, Ze’ev Elkin and others — advocate Jewish
control of the entire land from the Mediterranean to the Jordan,
including millions of Arab residents who are not Israeli citizens.
Polls show the party winning the upcoming January election.
The 1967 war and Israel’s capture of Gaza and
the West Bank reopened the partition question in Israeli society,
said Israeli political scientist Shlomo Avineri.
“Until 1967 it seemed the argument over
partition had ended. Even Begin did not demand to liberate Rachel’s
Tomb. But once you gain control, the situation changes,” Avineri told
Times of Israel reporter Mitch Ginsburg.
“The occupation reignited the argument,” he said.
Thursday’s vote, on a date chosen at least
partly for its historical significance, might well see a Palestinian
success. But the modesty of what will have been achieved punctuates the
ongoing failure of the Palestinian national movement 65 years after it
rejected a state significantly larger than the one currently under
discussion — a decision that certainly ranks with the greatest
miscalculations of the last century.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas
told an Israeli TV station last year that rejecting the partition plan
had been a “mistake.” The Palestinian Authority opposes violence and
says it seeks a two-state solution to the conflict — an agreement,
belatedly, to partition — but did not accept Israeli partition offers in
2000, 2001 and 2008, and fatally undermined the pro-partition forces in
Israeli society.
Israel’s attempt to rally opposition to Abbas’
UN bid has largely failed, showing the erosion of Israel’s
international standing. France, which surprised onlookers in 1947 with
its last-moment decision to support Israel’s creation, has announced
that this time it will be siding with the Palestinians. The Soviet Union
cast a key vote in favor of partition in 1947, but Russia will also be
voting for the Palestinian motion Thursday. The same goes for Norway and
Denmark.
After the 1947 vote ended at Flushing Meadow,
“Jewish Agency delegates, friends, press correspondents, and a great
throng of reveling Jews milled in the halls and corridors,” Horowitz
wrote. “There was dancing and merrymaking in the streets.” In Jerusalem,
the staff of a local winery rolled a barrel into the middle of a
downtown street and gave out free drinks. The Zionist leader Golda
Meyerson — later to be Prime Minister Golda Meir — addressed the crowds
from the balcony of the Jewish Agency building.
“For two thousand years we have waited for our
deliverance. Now that it is here it is so great and wonderful that it
surpasses human words. Jews,” she cried, “Mazel tov!”
Six and a half decades have passed since that
night. The partition of Palestine remains on the table, the final
results of the voting still unclear.
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