![]() ![]() On November 29, 1947, the UN passed the partition plan. ![]() Yet to have a Jewish state in only Jewish majority areas would have led to a tiny, probably unsustainable, new nation. Almost a third of people in the Jaffa-Tel Aviv conurbation were Arab most people in Jaffa itself were Arab. But areas in the Jewish zone were often more mixed. Gaza, which was 98 per cent Arab, was a no-brainer to be part of an Arab state. Jerusalem is fully under Israeli control. The West Bank (green) is partly governed by the PA. Gaza (green area on the coast) is governed by Hamas. Jerusalem, with its many different religious communities, would become an "international city" governed separately. The Arab state would govern the Gaza Strip and an area including the West Bank and beyond. The Jewish state would include a long but thin strip of coastal Palestine as well as the Negev desert and parts of the north. A map (below) showed how those two states would exist, separate but geographically intertwined. The organisation came up with UN General Assembly Resolution 181 (II) which proposed an Arab and a Jewish state, the latter deemed essential after the horrors inflicted on Jews by Nazi German in World War II. Unable to square the circle of how to divide up the territory that pleased everyone, Britain passed the responsibility to the UN. But it also wanted to placate Arab desires in the hope of keeping Arab states on side in any looming wars.īy the late 1930s, the UK wanted out of the restive region. English, Arabic and Hebrew were the territory's three official languages but it was Arabs who were in the majority.Īs early as 1917, Britain had promised to create a "national home" for the Jewish people within Palestine. The heart of the Holy Land, it contained a wealth of different people and religions. Some of the seeds for today's anger was sown a century ago when Britain began its rule over what was then known as "Mandatory Palestine" in 1920. 14 May 12:41 AM Map from 1947 sought to create two separate states ![]()
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