By April 23, 2008 Read More →

Small Powers May Insist U.N. Back Partition, NY Herald Tribune, Apr. 19, 1948.

1947 Partition PlanBy Virginia Clemmer

A strategically important group of small powers, determined to block any Palestine trusteeship plan not providing for ultimate partition of the Holy Land, prepared yesterday to demand United Nations reaffirmation of the partition principle.

The demand for reaffirmation is expected to emerge today when the special session of the U.N. General Assembly reconvenes at Flushing Meadow Park, Queens, to resume discussion of the Palestine problem.

The Assembly has not yet adopted its agenda and it is during debate on this question that the small powers, including Australia, a number of Latin-American states and reportedly the Scandinavian nations, will begin their fight.

One small power representative said yesterday that the demand for reaffirmation of partition as the eventual Palestine solution would not necessarily exclude an interim U. N. trusteeship for the Holy Land. This delegate expressed the opinion that a mere reaffirmation of a previous Assembly decision would require only majority support and not a two-thirds vote as would a new trusteeship plan.
May Block U. S. Plan

Still another partition proponent declared that the reaffirmation group has enough support to prevent approval by the Assembly of a trusteeship plan such as is at present outlined in an American working paper that has been circulated among Security Council members.

This working paper is an adaptation of the draft statutes for an internationalized Jerusalem which could be applied to the whole of Palestine.

An American source revealed that the paper was circulated last Friday as a sample of the trusteeship drafting that the Assembly would have to do, but emphasized that it was merely an elaboration of the fifteen-point trusteeship suggestions vaguely outlined to Council members two weeks ago and does not commit the United States to any specific plan.

Members of the American delegation insisted that they knew nothing of a second paper, reportedly the draft of a protocol under which certain specified states would undertake responsibility of assisting in security maintenance under the trusteeship plan. However, it was admitted that discussions on a protocol are probably going on at a government level between Washington and major U. N. capitals.
Volunteer Army Proposal

The protocol draft about which the American delegation says it has no knowledge is said to provide for a small-country mercenary volunteer army recruited in such countries as Belgium, Holland, the Scandinavian nations and some Latin-American states.

An American U. N. official insisted that the American position is that other countries must bear their part of any Palestine solution. The United States is trying, he said, to get agreement on a joint approach to the trusteeship problem. It doesn’t want to carry the ball all by itself, he added.

The United States, it was said, does not have a specific trusteeship plan of its own to put before the Assembly and there was no confirmation from either the United States or Canada of a report that the Canadian delegation will put in a proposal embodying the American ideas.

The absence of a concrete American plan for a Holy Land trusteeship adds a further Alice-in-Wonderland touch to the current special Assembly session, which was called by the Security Council at the request of the United States after the Americans had indicated they were prepared to put a definite proposal before the fifty-seven-nation gathering.

Many delegations are asking why the session was called and a number of pro-partition countries have indicated that they will base their fight for a reaffirmation of Palestine partition on the total absence of any definite alternative proposal.

One representative pointed out yesterday that unless some plan is put forward soon even a reaffirmation vote would be unnecessary and partition would stand.

Delegates were still gloomy about the truce demanded of Arabs and Jews by the Security Council early Saturday. Palestine fighting and bloodshed continued and there were new reports that King Abdullah’s Trans-Jordan Arab Legion was preparing to march on the Holy Land as the result of a deal with the Arab League.

The Jewish Agency made public a cablegram to Secretary General Trygve Lie and Karel Lisicky, chairman of the U. N. Palestine Commission, from Chaim Salomon, president of the Jewish Community Council in Jerusalem.

The cable charged that the Arab attack on doctors and nurses in a Jewish convoy bound for Hadassah Hospital last Tuesday “took place within 100 yards of a British Army post and continued for six hours under the very eyes of British military personnel, who failed to take effective steps to intervene and actually prevented Haganah forces from coming to the rescue.”

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