When the United Nations was founded on 24 October 1945,
the territory of Palestine was still administered by the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland under a
Mandate received in 1922 from the League of Nations.
Among the issues that had to be dealt with by the Mandatory
Power was the question of a Jewish home in Palestine.
Increasing Jewish immigration to Palestine following the
Second World War was strongly opposed by the Arab inhabitants,
who in the mid-1940s comprised about two thirds of the
territory�s population of 2 million. Faced with escalating violence,
the United Kingdom decided, in February 1947, to bring
the question of Palestine before the United Nations.
Drawing attention to �the desirability of an early settlement
in Palestine�, the British Government asked that a special session
of the General Assembly be called immediately in order to
constitute and instruct a special committee to prepare a preliminary
study on the question of Palestine for consideration by the
Assembly at its next regular session.
First special session of the General Assembly, 1947
At the first special session of the General Assembly, which
began on 28 April 1947, a special committee on Palestine was
established. Five Arab countries�Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi
Arabia and Syria�tried unsuccessfully to include in the agenda
of the special session an item that would address �the termination
of the Mandate over Palestine and the declaration of its
independence�. The Jewish case was presented by the Jewish
Agency for Palestine, while the Arab Higher Committee spoke
for the Palestinian Arabs.
Creation of UNSCOP
At the special session, the Assembly established the United
Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), made up
of 11 Member States, to investigate all questions relevant to the
problem of Palestine and to recommend solutions to be conside
red by the General Assembly at the regular session in
September 1947. During the course of its two-and-a-half-month
investigation, the Special Committee went to Palestine,
Lebanon, Syria and Trans-Jordan, and also visited the displacedpersons
camps in Austria and Germany, which had been ravaged
by the Second World War and had experienced the tragedy
of the European Jews under Nazism.
While Jewish organizations cooperated with UNSCOP in its
deliberations, the Palestinian leadership in the Arab Higher
Committee decided not to participate, on the grounds that the
United Nations had refused to address the question of independence
and had failed to separate the issue of Jewish refugees from
Europe from the question of Palestine. The natural rights of the
Palestinian Arabs were self-evident and should be recognized, it
said, and could not continue to be subject to investigation.
The Jewish leadership maintained before UNSCOP that the
issues of a Jewish State in Palestine and unrestricted immigration
were inextricably interwoven. The Arabs, represented by
the League of Arab States, sought the immediate creation of an
independent Palestine west of the Jordan River.
UNSCOP completed its work on 31 August 1947, with the
members agreeing on the question of terminating the Mandate,
the principle of independence and the role of the United
Nations. There was no consensus, however, on a settlement of
the question of Palestine. The majority of the members of the
Committee recommended that Palestine be partitioned into an
Arab State and a Jewish State, with a special international status
for the city of Jerusalem under the administrative authority of the
United Nations. The three entities were to be linked in an economic
union. The minority plan called for an independent federal
structure comprising an Arab State and a Jewish State, with
Jerusalem as the capital of the federation. Australia abstained
from voting on either plan because it maintained that there commendations
exceeded the Committee�s terms of reference.