KEY POINTS
In 1923, the land of Palestine, previously under the control of the Ottoman Empire, was made a British Mandate by the League of Nations.
During WWI, the British made conflicting promises to the Arab and Jewish populations of Palestine.
In 1937, following a six-month-long Arab General Strike, the British established the Peel Commission, which concluded that the Mandate was not working and proposed a partition of Palestine into independent Jewish and Arab States. The proposal was rejected by the Palestinians.
At the beginning of WWII, in 1939, the British put a limit on the immigration of Jews into Palestine.
After World War II, in August 1945 President Truman asked for the admission of 100,000 Holocaust survivors into Palestine, but the British maintained limits on Jewish immigration, which led to a new inquiry into partitioning Palestine.
By 1947, the British announced their desire to terminate the Palestine Mandate and placed the Question of Palestine before the United Nations, which developed a non-binding recommendation for independent Arab and Jewish states.
The proposal was rejected by the Palestinians and civil war broke out.
On November 29, the UN General Assembly voted 33 to 13, with 10 abstentions, to adopt a resolution recommending the adoption and implementation of the Plan of Partition. The division was to take effect on the date of British withdrawal. The partition plan required that the proposed states grant full civil rights to all people within their borders regardless of race, religion, or gender. Both the United States and Soviet Union supported the resolution. The five members of the Arab League, who were voting members at the time, voted against the Plan.
The Jewish Agency, the Jewish state-in-formation, accepted the plan, and nearly all Jews in Palestine rejoiced at the news.
The partition plan was rejected out of hand by Palestinian Arab leadership and by most of the Arab population. Meeting in Cairo on November and December 1947, the Arab League adopted a series of resolutions endorsing a military solution to the conflict.
Britain announced that it would accept the partition plan, but refused to enforce it, arguing it was not accepted by the Arabs. Britain also refused to share the administration of Palestine with the UN Palestine Commission during the transitional period. In September 1947, the British government announced that the Mandate for Palestine would end at midnight on May 14, 1948
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