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Resolution 181 (II): Future government of Palestine

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aliasesResolution 181, Resolution 181 (II), Partition Resolution

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Summary

The General Assembly’s resolution of 29 November 1947 recommending the Plan of Partition with Economic Union for the future government of Palestine: the Mandate to terminate and British forces to withdraw by 1 August 1948, independent Arab and Jewish States to come into existence by 1 October 1948, and the City of Jerusalem to be established as a corpus separatum under a special international regime administered by the United Nations through the Trusteeship Council, its Statute to come into force not later than 1 October 1948 and to remain in force in the first instance for ten years, after which the whole scheme is subject to re-examination and the City’s residents may express their wishes by referendum. The Plan closes with Part IV, inviting States whose nationals formerly enjoyed capitulation privileges in Palestine to renounce any right to their re-establishment in the proposed States and the City, and with two annex maps of the partition boundaries and of the City (Resolution 181 (II): Future government of Palestine, PDF p.1-22).

What the file is

The resolution as printed in the General Assembly’s Official Records, section XVII (resolution adopted on the report of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Palestinian Question), printed p.131-152 (PDF p.1-22). The text is printed in two columns, English and French in parallel; the English text is the text followed here. 22 PDF pages, about 20,404 words in the text copy counting both languages. The text copy’s OCR is heavily garbled in places (broken and substituted letters throughout); wording was checked against the original at the places noted in the reading notes, including the request lettering in Resolution A (clause (c), not the text copy’s reading), Chapter 2’s footnotes, Section E on assets, and boundary names at PDF p.13-16. The plan’s maps are at PDF p.21-22: Annex A, the partition map of the whole country (Map No. 103 (b), UN Presentation 599 (b), November 1947, base map Survey of Palestine, April 1946, modified), and Annex B, the sketch-map of the proposed boundaries of the City of Jerusalem; both were read in the original, the text copy’s rendering of them being almost wholly garbled.

Section by section

  • Resolution A (PDF p.1-2 / printed p.131-132). The preamble records the special session held at the mandatory Power’s request, the constitution of the Special Committee (UNSCOP) and its report (document A/364), with its unanimous recommendations and its majority plan of partition with economic union, and the mandatory Power’s declaration that it plans to complete its evacuation by 1 August 1948. The Assembly recommends adoption and implementation of the Plan of Partition with Economic Union; requests the Security Council to take the measures provided for in the plan, to consider whether the situation constitutes a threat to the peace and, if so, to supplement the Assembly’s authorization under Articles 39 and 41 of the Charter so as to empower the United Nations Commission to exercise its functions, and to determine any attempt to alter the settlement by force as a threat to the peace under Article 39; requests that the Trusteeship Council be informed of its responsibilities under the plan; calls upon the inhabitants of Palestine to take the steps necessary to put the plan into effect; appeals to all Governments and peoples to refrain from action hampering the recommendations; and authorizes the Secretary-General to reimburse the Commission members’ expenses and provide its staff.
  • Resolution B and the election of the Commission (PDF p.2). Resolution B (adopted without reference to a Committee, as its footnote states) authorizes the Secretary-General to draw up to $2,000,000 from the Working Capital Fund for those purposes. At the same hundred and twenty-eighth plenary meeting, 29 November 1947, the Assembly elected Bolivia, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Panama and Philippines to the United Nations Commission on Palestine.
  • Part I, Section A — Termination of Mandate, partition and independence (PDF p.2-3). The Mandate shall terminate as soon as possible but not later than 1 August 1948; the mandatory Power’s armed forces shall be progressively withdrawn by the same date, and an area in the territory of the Jewish State, including a seaport and hinterland adequate for a substantial immigration, shall be evacuated by 1 February 1948. The independent Arab and Jewish States and the Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem shall come into existence two months after the evacuation is completed but not later than 1 October 1948. The intervening period is a transitional period.
  • Part I, Section B — Steps preparatory to independence (PDF p.3-6). Administration passes progressively to the Commission as the mandatory Power withdraws; the Commission fixes the frontiers on the plan’s general lines, modifying them so that village areas as a rule are not divided; it selects a Provisional Council of Government in each State after consulting the democratic parties and other public organizations, with a report to the Security Council if no council can be selected or function by 1 April 1948; the Provisional Councils hold full authority under the Commission, including over immigration and land regulation, recruit an armed militia under the Commission’s general political and military control, and hold Constituent Assembly elections within two months of the withdrawal, for voters over eighteen who are Palestinian citizens resident in the State or Arabs and Jews resident there who have signed a notice of intention to become citizens, with Jerusalem residents who have signed such a notice voting in the respective States and women entitled to vote and be elected. During the transitional period no Jew may establish residence in the proposed Arab State and no Arab in the proposed Jewish State except by the Commission’s special leave. The Constituent Assemblies draft democratic constitutions embodying Chapters 1 and 2 of the Declaration and providing for a legislature elected by universal suffrage, secret ballot and proportional representation, peaceful settlement of disputes, renunciation of the threat or use of force, equal and non-discriminatory rights and fundamental freedoms, and freedom of transit and visit between the States and the City. The Commission appoints a three-member preparatory economic commission, assists the mandatory Power and receives a progressive transfer of all government functions, is guided by the Assembly and any Security Council instructions, reports monthly to the Security Council, and makes its final report to the next regular session of the Assembly and the Security Council simultaneously.
  • Part I, Section C — Declaration (PDF p.6-9). Before independence each provisional government makes a declaration to the United Nations whose stipulations are recognized as fundamental laws of the State, prevailing over any conflicting law, regulation or official action. Chapter 1 protects existing rights in Holy Places and religious buildings and sites, guarantees access, visit, transit and worship, requires their preservation and repair, and preserves their tax exemptions; the Governor of the City of Jerusalem may determine whether the State’s constitutional provisions on Holy Places are being properly applied and decide disputes between religious communities on the basis of existing rights. Chapter 2 guarantees freedom of conscience and worship, bars discrimination on the ground of race, religion, language or sex, guarantees equal protection of the laws, respect for minorities’ family law, personal status and endowments, non-interference with religious and charitable bodies, minority primary and secondary education in its own language and cultural traditions and each community’s own schools, unrestricted use of any language, and — by its footnotes — adequate facilities for Arabic-speaking citizens in the Jewish State to use their language in the legislature, before the Courts and in the administration; it bars expropriation of land owned by an Arab in the Jewish State (by a Jew in the Arab State) except for public purposes, with full compensation as fixed by the Supreme Court paid before dispossession. Chapter 3 makes residents citizens of the State in which they reside on independence, with full civil and political rights and a one-year right of option that does not run from the Arab State to the Jewish State for Arabs, or the reverse for Jews; binds the State to Palestine’s international agreements, with disputes over their applicability referred to the International Court of Justice; and requires the State to fulfil the mandatory Power’s financial obligations on Palestine’s behalf, through the Joint Economic Board for obligations applicable to Palestine as a whole, with a Court of Claims for unrecognized claims against the United Kingdom and pre-adoption commercial concessions continuing on their terms. Chapter 4 puts Chapters 1 and 2 under the guarantee of the United Nations, unmodifiable without the General Assembly’s assent, and refers disputes over the declaration to the International Court of Justice unless the parties agree on another settlement.
  • Part I, Section D — Economic Union and Transit (PDF p.9-11). Each Provisional Council enters into an undertaking on Economic Union and Transit drafted by the Commission, put into force by the Commission itself if not entered into by 1 April 1948. The Economic Union’s objectives are a customs union, a joint currency system with a single foreign exchange rate, common-interest non-discriminatory operation of railways, inter-State highways, postal, telephone and telegraphic services and ports and airports in international trade, joint economic development (especially irrigation, land reclamation and soil conservation), and non-discriminatory access to water and power. The Joint Economic Board — three representatives of each State and three foreign members appointed by the Economic and Social Council, the foreign members serving three years as individuals — implements the Union, the States binding themselves to put its majority decisions into effect, with withholding of customs revenue and further sanctions for a non-co-operating State; it is the sole currency-issuing authority, while each State may run its own central bank and fiscal, credit and import-licence policy, and for the first two years the Board must secure each State imported goods and services equivalent to its consumption in the twelve months ending 31 December 1947, so far as total foreign-exchange revenues permit. There is a common customs tariff with complete freedom of trade between the States and the City, drawn up by a Tariff Commission subject to the Board’s approval and arbitration. The first charges on common revenue are the customs and joint services, the Board’s expenses, the outstanding public debt and superannuation benefits; the surplus then goes 5 to 10 per cent to the City of Jerusalem, the residue allocated equitably to the States, neither State’s share to exceed its contribution by more than approximately four million pounds in any year, the distribution principles revisable after five years. The undertaking preserves freedom of transit and visit across both States and the City, lasts ten years and then until two years’ notice of termination, is modifiable in that period only with both parties’ consent and the Assembly’s approval, and its disputes go to the International Court of Justice.
  • Part I, Sections E-F (PDF p.12). The Administration of Palestine’s movable assets are allocated equitably among the two States and the City by the Commission, immovable assets passing to the government of the territory where they are situated; between the Commission’s appointment and the Mandate’s termination the mandatory Power shall, except for ordinary operations, consult the Commission on any liquidation, disposal or encumbering of Palestine Government assets. Once either State’s independence is effective and it has signed the declaration and undertaking, sympathetic consideration should be given to its application for United Nations membership under Article 4 of the Charter.
  • Part II — Boundaries (PDF p.12-16). The Arab State’s boundaries are described segment by segment: Western Galilee from Ras en Naqura down the village and sub-district boundaries of the Acre, Safad and Tiberias area, bulging west to include the eastern plain of Battuf land needed for the reservoir proposed by the Jewish Agency, and including the sources of the Nazareth water supply in Yafa; the hill country of Samaria and Judea from the Wadi Malih on the Jordan west and south past Beisan, Jenin, Tulkarm, Lydda airport (with direct access from the Arab State to the airport), Ramle and Hulda to the southern point of intersection midway between Yasur and Batani Sharqi; from there one line north-west to the sea between Nabi Yunis and Minat el Qila and another south-east and south past Qastina, Ibdis, Beit ‘Affa and El Faluja, around Beersheba town (two kilometres north-west of it at the closest named point), and east along the Beersheba-Hebron boundary, turning north to exclude a Dead Sea coastal strip not more than seven kilometres deep as far as Ein Geddi; the Arab section of the coastal plain south past Beit Daras, Julis, Beit Hanun and Kh. el Ruheiba to Wadi Lassan on the Egyptian frontier; and the Arab enclave of Jaffa, west of the Jewish quarters south of Tel-Aviv, with the question of Karton quarter left to the Boundary Commission on the stated criterion of including the smallest possible number of its Arab inhabitants and the largest possible number of its Jewish inhabitants in the Jewish State. The Jewish State is then defined by the same boundary: Eastern Galilee including the whole Hula Basin, Lake Tiberias and the whole Beisan sub-district to the crest of the Gilboa and the Wadi Malih; the coastal plain from between Minat el Qila and Nabi Yunis including Haifa and Tel-Aviv, leaving Jaffa an Arab enclave; and the Beersheba area — the whole Beersheba sub-district including the Negeb and the eastern Gaza sub-district, excluding the town of Beersheba and the areas described for the Arab State, plus the Dead Sea strip to Ein Geddi. The City of Jerusalem’s boundaries are those of Part III, Section B. A footnote states that the boundary lines are indicated in Annex A and that the base map is “Palestine 1:250,000” published by the Survey of Palestine, 1946.
  • Part III — City of Jerusalem (PDF p.16-19). Section A establishes the City as a corpus separatum under a special international regime administered by the United Nations, the Trusteeship Council designated as Administering Authority. Section B gives the City as the present municipality plus the surrounding villages and towns — Abu Dis the most eastern, Bethlehem the most southern, Ein Karim (with Motsa) the most western and Shu’fat the most northern — as on the Annex B sketch-map. Section C requires the Trusteeship Council, within five months of the plan’s approval, to elaborate and approve a detailed Statute containing, among other things: the special objectives of protecting the unique spiritual and religious interests of the three great monotheistic faiths, Christian, Jewish and Moslem, and of fostering co-operation among the inhabitants and the peaceful development of relations between the two Palestinian peoples; a Governor appointed by and responsible to the Trusteeship Council, chosen on special qualifications without regard to nationality but not a citizen of either State in Palestine, representing the United Nations with all powers of administration including external affairs, assisted by international staff; wide local autonomy for the existing villages, townships and municipalities and a plan for special town units for the Jewish and Arab sections of new Jerusalem; demilitarization and preserved neutrality of the City, the Governor empowered to act if non-co-operation obstructs the administration and to organize a special police force recruited outside Palestine, especially for the protection of the Holy Places; a Legislative Council elected by adult residents irrespective of nationality by universal and secret suffrage and proportional representation, with powers of legislation and taxation subject to the Statute, the Governor holding a veto and power to promulgate temporary ordinances; an independent judiciary including a court of appeal; inclusion of the City in the Economic Union, the Economic Board’s headquarters to be in the City; freedom of entry and residence for residents and citizens of both States, other immigration controlled by the Governor; accreditation of both States’ representatives to the Governor; Arabic and Hebrew as official languages; citizenship of the City for all residents ipso facto unless they opt as provided, with consular protection arranged by the Trusteeship Council; the freedoms of citizens — human rights and fundamental freedoms, no discrimination on the grounds of race, religion, language or sex, equal protection of the laws, respect for family law, personal status and endowments, non-interference with religious and charitable bodies, and minority education and free use of any language on the same terms as the Declaration’s Chapter 2; and, at clause 13, protection of Holy Places on the same terms as the Declaration’s Chapter 1 — existing rights not to be denied or impaired, free access and worship, preservation and repair, and preservation of tax exemptions.
  • Part III, Section C, clauses 13(d)-14, and Section D (PDF p.20 / printed p.150). Clause 13(d) completes the tax provision: no change in the incidence of taxation on an exempt Holy Place, religious building or site shall discriminate between its owners or occupiers or place them in a position less favourable in relation to the general incidence of taxation than existed at the adoption of the Assembly’s recommendations. Clause 14 gives the Governor special powers over the Holy Places, religious buildings and sites in the City and in any part of Palestine: their protection in the City is his special concern; outside the City he determines, on the ground of powers granted by both States’ Constitutions, whether those Constitutions’ provisions on them and the religious rights appertaining are being properly applied and respected; and he decides disputes between religious communities, or the rites of one community, on the basis of existing rights, assisted if he wishes by a consultative council of representatives of different denominations acting in an advisory capacity. Section D fixes the duration of the special regime: the Statute comes into force not later than 1 October 1948, remains in force in the first instance for ten years unless the Trusteeship Council re-examines it earlier, and after that period the whole scheme is subject to re-examination by the Council in the light of experience, the City’s residents then being free to express by referendum their wishes as to possible modifications of the regime.
  • Part IV — Capitulations (PDF p.20). States whose nationals have in the past enjoyed in Palestine the privileges and immunities of foreigners, including the benefits of consular jurisdiction and protection, as formerly enjoyed by capitulation or usage in the Ottoman Empire, are invited to renounce any right pertaining to them to the re-establishment of such privileges and immunities in the proposed Arab and Jewish States and the City of Jerusalem.
  • Annex A (PDF p.21). The partition map of the whole of Palestine, titled Plan of Partition with Economic Union proposed by the Ad Hoc Committee on the Palestinian Question, with a legend distinguishing the Arab State, the Jewish State and the City of Jerusalem, district and sub-district boundaries, roads and railways, and the Arab enclave of Jaffa shown in an inset box off Tel-Aviv.
  • Annex B (PDF p.22). The sketch-map City of Jerusalem: Boundaries Proposed by the Ad Hoc Committee on the Palestinian Question, showing the proposed boundary enclosing Jerusalem and the places named in Part III, Section B and around it — Shu’fat to the north, Abu Dis to the east, Bethlehem to the south and ‘Ein Karim and Motsa to the west, with Lifta, Deir Yasin, El Maliha, Sharafat, Beit Safafa, Ramat Rahel, Umm Tuba, Sur Bahir, Silwan, Et Tur, El ‘Eizariya and ‘Isawiya also labelled — with main roads and the railroad marked.

Key passages

Evidence the work relies on

  • The resolution presents itself as acting on the report of the Special Committee (document A/364), whose unanimous recommendations and majority plan of partition with economic union the preamble recites, and on the mandatory Power’s declaration that it plans to complete its evacuation of Palestine by 1 August 1948 (PDF p.1). It cites the Charter of the United Nations (Articles 39 and 41 in Resolution A, Article 4 in Part I, Section F, Article 100 in Part III, Section C) and, for the boundaries in Part II, the Survey of Palestine’s “Palestine 1:250,000” map of 1946, with the lines indicated in Annex A (PDF p.12, footnote). The Annex A map itself states its base as the Survey of Palestine map of April 1946, modified (PDF p.21).

Analysis

The resolution is a recommendation with an implementation machinery, not a narrative: its operative verbs are “Recommends”, “Requests”, “Calls upon” and “Appeals”, addressed to the United Kingdom, the Security Council, the Trusteeship Council, the inhabitants of Palestine and all Governments and peoples, while the Plan’s own provisions are stated as obligations of the bodies it creates (the Commission, the Provisional Councils, the Joint Economic Board and the Governor of Jerusalem). Its internal safeguards are stated in the text itself: the Declaration’s first two chapters are made fundamental law under a United Nations guarantee, the Economic Union undertaking cannot be modified in its first ten years without both parties’ consent and the Assembly’s approval, and disputes under the Declaration, the undertaking and the international-conventions clause are referred to the International Court of Justice. Its closing provisions are time-limited and revisable in the same pattern: the Economic Union undertaking runs ten years and then until two years’ notice, and the Jerusalem Statute runs ten years in the first instance, after which re-examination follows and the City’s residents may express their wishes by referendum. Part IV, by contrast, imposes nothing: the States holding capitulation privileges are only “invited” to renounce them. The text gives no vote figures for its own adoption, no population or land figures for the territories it defines (its boundaries are described by lines and places, and its maps carry no figures), and no enforcement provision beyond the requests addressed to the Security Council in Resolution A.

People, organizations, places and events

UNSCOP, United Nations Commission on Palestine, UN Security Council, Trusteeship Council, Economic and Social Council, Britain, City of Jerusalem, Jaffa, Joint Economic Board, UN General Assembly Resolution 181, International Court of Justice, Jewish Agency

Concepts

Partition, Corpus separatum, Customs union, Holy Places, Capitulations

How it relates to other sources

  • The resolution adopts the majority plan of Report to the General Assembly (UNSCOP): its preamble recites that report (A/364) and the majority’s plan of partition with economic union, and its Plan reproduces that scheme’s architecture — two States, an Economic Union run by a Joint Economic Board, and Jerusalem as a corpus separatum. The texts differ in particulars recorded on the pages concerned: on the division of the customs surplus, the UNSCOP majority plan as summarized in Partition provides an equal division between the two States with review after three years, while this resolution provides an equitable allocation capped at approximately four million pounds above a State’s contribution, with revision of the principles after five years (PDF p.11).
  • Part IV carries into the Plan Report to the General Assembly (UNSCOP)‘s unanimous Recommendation X on the Capitulations: UNSCOP’s recommendation invited renunciation of any right to re-establishment of the capitulation privileges in an independent Palestine; the resolution’s invitation is addressed to the same States and extends to the proposed Arab and Jewish States and the City of Jerusalem (PDF p.20).
  • Later sources in the wiki read this resolution back: The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine’s account of its map and its verdicts, and Rethinking Statehood in Palestine’s reading of it as a recommendation whose constitutions were to guarantee equal rights, are held on UN General Assembly Resolution 181 alongside the primary text now ingested here.

Open questions

  • The resolution’s own text gives no vote figures for its adoption; the figures given by other ingested sources are recorded on UN General Assembly Resolution 181 from those sources.
  • In Part I, Section D, paragraph 13, the third first charge is lettered (c) in the original (verified at PDF p.11), as is clause 14(c) of Part III, Section C (verified at PDF p.20); the text copy’s OCR renders both as (e), and renders several letters and words garbled throughout. Place-name spellings in the boundary description were verified in the original only at PDF p.13-16 for the names flagged in the reading notes.
  • The Annex B map’s footer is partly cut off in the scan; its map and presentation numbers are read as Map No. 104 (b) and UN Presentation 600 (b), reading uncertain.

Coverage

PDF p.1-22 of 22, read in full in parts 1-2.

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