Partition

A General Assembly Special Committee drew up a resolution (the 'partition resolution.) which divided Palestine into 6 principal parts. 3 of these parts (56% total area and most fertile land) were reserved for a Jewish state, the other 3 (43%) for an Arab state, with Jerusalem to be an international zone.

The Arabs (2/3 majority of country) rejected the partition on the grounds that it violated the provisions of the UN charter which gives a people the right to decide its own destiny. Zionists placed enormous pressures on member states opposed to partition. For instance, a Liberian delegate reported to the US State Department that the manner in which he had been approached to support partition amounted to "attempted intimidation."

On November 29, 1947 the General Assembly adopted the plan of partition (33 - 13, 10 abstentions), and violent demonstrations broke out throughout Palestine. The UN met to consider suspending the partition plan and the Zionists decided to take the law into their own hands. Violence increased and the Irgun led by Begin, attacked the village of Deir Yassin; 254 men, women and children were massacred. In six months the Zionists drove 400,000 Palestinian arabs from their homes. Refugees poured across the borders into adjacent arab countries and to protect the Palestinian Arabs, arab armies entered Palestine.

In May 1948 the 'State of Israel' was declared; by the time armistices were concluded in early 1949 Israel controlled ¾ of the total land area of Palestine. As Moshe Dayan has said (Maariv 16-2-73)"to have a Jewish state one sovereignty must take the place of another, and Jews must take the place of arabs." The Zionists took the unusual step of not declaring the boundaries of the state and David Ben Gurion, the 1st Prime Minister of Israel, later stated that they extended "from the Nile to the Euphrates". It was obvious Israel's expansionism was not at an end.

The period from the signing of the armistice agreements in 1948-49 until the June war of 1967 was characterised by bloody incidents across the armistice demarcation lines - Israeli occupation of demilitarized zones, disregard by Israel of UN resolutions relating to the refugees and to Jerusalem and the 1956 attack on the Suez canal by Israel and her allies.

In 1956 David Ben Gurion declared "The Armistice with Egypt is dead, as are the armistice lines and no wizards or magicians can resurrect these lines." Israel's leaders continued to state their expansionist aims, foreign 'aid' poured into Israel and the growth of her military continued apace.