The UN Partition Plan
The UN General Assembly votes to partition Palestine into two states, assigning the majority of the land to a Jewish state at a time when Jews were a third of the population.
On 29 November 1947, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 181 (II), recommending the partition of Mandatory Palestine into an Arab state and a Jewish state, with Jerusalem placed under international administration. The vote passed with 33 in favor, 13 against, and 10 abstentions.
The plan allotted roughly 55 percent of the territory to the Jewish state, even though Jews constituted about a third of the population and owned a small fraction of the land. The proposed Jewish state would have contained a population that was nearly half Arab.
The Zionist leadership accepted the plan as a basis for statehood. Palestinian and Arab leaders rejected it as a violation of the principle of self-determination, arguing that the UN had no authority to partition a country against the wishes of its majority. Civil war between the two communities began almost immediately, and the plan was never implemented as written.
Cited works
2- un.org — auto insert 208958(opens in a new tab)https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-208958/
- britannica.com — United Nations Resolution 181(opens in a new tab)https://www.britannica.com/topic/United-Nations-Resolution-181
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- Palestine Becomes a UN Observer State
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: On 29 November 2012 — the sixty-fifth anniversary of General Assembly Resolution 181, the partition plan — the Assembly adopted Resolution 67/19, "Status of Palestine in the United Nations," according Palestine non-member observer state status.
- The Arabs rejected the UN partition plan in 1947, so they forfeited their rights
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: 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.
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- Chicago
“The UN Partition Plan.” Timeline, FALASTEEN.AI. Accessed 22 August 2026. https://falasteen.ai/timeline/un-partition-plan.- MLA
“The UN Partition Plan.” Timeline, FALASTEEN.AI, 2026, https://falasteen.ai/timeline/un-partition-plan. Accessed 22 August 2026.- BibTeX
@misc{falasteen-un-partition-plan, title = {The UN Partition Plan}, howpublished = {\url{https://falasteen.ai/timeline/un-partition-plan}}, organization = {FALASTEEN.AI — A Living Archive for Palestine}, year = {2026}, note = {Accessed 2026-08-22} }