The UN Partition Resolution

For the first time in nineteen hundred years the world resolved that the Jews should have a state. On 29 November 1947, 16 Kislev 5708, in the former World's Fair pavilion at Flushing Meadows, Queens, New York, the General Assembly held a roll-call vote on Resolution 181 to partition Mandatory Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state, with Jerusalem under international administration. A two-thirds majority was required. Radios were on across the country and people tallied the votes with pencils. The result: 33 in favour, 13 against, 10 abstentions. Both the United States and the Soviet Union voted yes—a rare alignment at the opening of the Cold War.

In Tel Aviv and Jerusalem crowds poured into the streets and danced until morning; British soldiers danced with them. Golda Meir spoke a few words from the balcony of the Jewish Agency. The next morning the Arab states announced they would not accept the decision, and that same day a bus on the Jerusalem road was ambushed—the first dead of the new war.

Behind the vote lay years of work: the UNSCOP report, the testimony of Shoah survivors, and the illegal immigration ships such as the Exodus, which the British sent back to Germany in the summer of 5707. The resolution did not grant a state; it granted the right to declare one.