Read Palestine

Soviet Union

Properties2
tags
aliasesUSSR

3 min read

Summary

In Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, the Soviet Union is the one Power that stayed consistent on the Partition Resolution: it voted for partition in 1947, was the first to recognize Israel officially, underwrote the Eastern-bloc support on which Israel relied in 1948 — including the Czechoslovak arms deal — and fell out with Israel, the book argues, not because its own position changed but because Israel forsook partition for the status quo (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.102, 116-118).

Details

  • The USSR and the USA voted together for the first time after the Second World War in the Partition vote, which the book gives as 33 in favour against 13 opposed, with 10 abstentions (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.28).
  • Of the Powers that had supported the November 1947 decision, Weizmann writes, “only the Soviet Union still insisted on the assertion of the United Nations authority” in the spring of 1948; Molotov was the first foreign minister to recognize Israel officially, Truman recognizing it only as a fait accompli (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.102).
  • Israel’s reliance on the Eastern bloc in 1948 was practical as well as political: Zizling records that rejection of the Line 31 ultimatum was possible because the Provisional Government depended in practice on the USSR in the UN and on support from Poland and Czechia, and expected a Soviet veto if the 29 November 1947 resolutions were threatened with annulment (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.105-106).
  • The Soviet Union remained consistent in its support for the partition plan after 1949: it supported the December 1949 resolution on the internationalization of Jerusalem as part of that plan, and its UN representative Tzarefkin called for the creation of an independent Arab state in the other part of Palestine in conformity with the partition resolution (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.116-117).
  • Sharett explained the Soviet position in the Knesset (4/1/50): the Soviet Union supported the 29 November resolution not out of friendship for the Jewish people but out of its own interest — to uproot the British regime from the country — and its support had positive value for Israel precisely because it was given in its own interest; it did not invent the partition solution but accepted it as the sole path under the existing circumstances and thus the shortest path to independence, that is, to the removal of the British regime (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.117-118).
  • The book’s verdict is that “it was none other than Israel that changed its position”: the collusion with Abdullah forced Israel to forsake the principle of partition for conserving the status quo and to replace the UN with the governments of the USA, Britain and France, enlisting it in the Cold War against the Soviet Union (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.118). Israel’s Korea vote at the end of January 1951 lost it, in Gelblum’s words, the prestige and esteem it had enjoyed from the Soviet bloc and strengthened the Arab claim that the Israelis were foreigners in the East (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.119).

Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, Britain, United States, Czechoslovak arms deal, Line 31 ultimatum, Non-alignment, UN General Assembly Resolution 181

Graph View

Backlinks