“The Arabs rejected the UN partition plan in 1947, so they forfeited their rights”

Start with what the plan actually proposed. The UN Special Committee on Palestine counted, in 1947, “some 650,000 Jews and some 1,200,000 Arabs” in the country, and the Mandate’s Village Statistics, 1945 recorded Jewish ownership at 5.67 per cent of the land (the UN’s own study says 6.2 per cent by 1947). Resolution 181 (II) of 29 November 1947 nevertheless assigned the proposed Jewish state about 56 per cent of the territory, including the fertile coastal plain and the Negev. The UN’s historical study states it plainly: the partition resolution “awarded 56 per cent of the territory of Palestine to 32 per cent of its population.” Inside the proposed Jewish state itself, UNSCOP estimated there would be 498,000 Jews and 497,000 Arabs — a state whose population would have been roughly half Arab.

The plan was also not the only option on the table. A minority of UNSCOP — India, Iran and Yugoslavia — proposed instead a single independent federal state for the whole country, warning that partition was “impracticable, unworkable, and could not possibly provide for two reasonably viable States.” The majority recommendation passed the General Assembly with 33 votes to 13, and, as a General Assembly resolution, it was legally a recommendation, not a binding decision; the Assembly itself declined requests to seek an International Court of Justice advisory opinion on whether it was even competent to partition a country against the wishes of its majority.

The rejection was therefore not a refusal of peace but of terms no political community on earth has ever been asked to accept: that a two-thirds majority owning over nine-tenths of the land should hand over more than half its country. In the war that followed, Israel expanded beyond the partition borders to 77 per cent of Palestine, and 726,000 Palestinians became refugees. A “rejection” of an inequitable proposal does not forfeit a people’s right to self-determination — a right the UN has reaffirmed ever since, including in Resolution 3236 (XXIX) of 1974.

Sources

• The Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem, Part II: 1947–1977 — United Nations
• Village Statistics, 1945 (Sami Hadawi) — full scan, Internet Archive
• The Right of Return of the Palestinian People — United Nations study, on the plan’s population projections and the status of GA resolutions
• UN General Assembly Resolution 181 (II), 29 November 1947 — official text