In the first place the UN without the consent of the majority of the people of Palestine
did not have the right to decide to partition Palestine or assign any part of its territory to a minority of alien immigrants in order for them to establish a state of their own.
Despite that, by the narrowest of margins, and only after a rigged vote, the UN General Assembly did pass a resolution to partition Palestine and create two states, one Arab, one Jewish, with Jerusalem not part of either. But the General Assembly resolution was only a
non-binding proposal – meaning that it could have no effect, would not become binding, until and unless it was approved by the Security Council.
The truth is that the General Assembly’s partition proposal
never went to the Security Council for consideration. Why not? Because the US knew that, if approved, and because of Arab and other Muslim opposition, it could only be implemented by force; and President Truman was not prepared to use force to partition Palestine.
So the partition plan was
vitiated (became invalid) and the question of what the hell to do about Palestine – after Britain had made a mess of it and walked away – was taken back to the General Assembly for more discussion. The option favoured and proposed by the US was temporary UN Trusteeship. It was while the General Assembly was debating what do
that Israel unilaterally declared itself to be in existence - actually in defiance of the will of the organised international community, including the Truman administration.
The truth of the time was that Israel, which came into being mainly as a consequence of Zionist terrorism and pre-planned ethnic cleansing,
had no right to exist and, more to the point, could have no right to exist unless ….. Unless it was recognised and
legitimized by those who were dispossessed of their land and their rights during the creation of the Zionist state
. In international law
only the Palestinians could give Israel the legitimacy it craved.
As it was put to me many years ago by Khalad al-Hassan, Fatah’s intellectual giant on the right, that legitimacy was “the only thing the Zionists could not take from us by force.”
The truth of history as summarised briefly above is the explanation of why, really, Zionism has always insisted that its absolute pre-condition for negotiations with more than a snowball’s chance in hell of a successful outcome (an acceptable measure of justice for the Palestinians and peace for all) is recognition of Israel’s right to exist. A right, it knows, it does not have and will never have unless the Palestinians grant it.
NEWS-ON-A-WIRE - 1948