Jewish Agency Accepts Partition Plan

October 2, 1947

David Ben-Gurion, the chairman of the Executive of the Jewish Agency since 1935, formally accepts the partition plan proposed by the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP). The committee, created May 15, 1947, in response to a request by the British government, released its report recommending the division of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states a month earlier.

“Political developments have swept us on to a momentous parting of the ways, from mandate to independence,” Ben-Gurion tells the assembly of the Yishuv, the Jewish area of settlement, in a speech accepting the partition plan. He says the three priorities of Palestine’s Jews are defense, a Jewish state and a resolution with the Arabs, in that order.

The U.N. General Assembly approves the partition plan Nov. 29, 1947.

By 1946, the partition of Palestine was the avowed policy of the Jewish Agency. As head of the Jewish Agency, Ben-Gurion made it clear in his testimony to UNSCOP that an independent Jewish state was the only political outcome acceptable to the Zionists. Ben-Gurion’s testimony was a brilliant expose of the Zionist cause and its recent history. The Zionist map presented to UNSCOP was essentially the map proposed in 1937 to the British Peel Commission, which proposed partition in that same year. However, the map offered to UNSCOP adds the Galilee, the Negev and West Jerusalem. The mountain ridge of Judea and Samaria (what becomes most of the West Bank) remains outside the boundaries of the Jewish state.

The day after Resolution 181 passes, Arabs attack Jewish property in Palestine, while riots break out against Jewish communities in Damascus, Aleppo, Cairo, Beirut and Aden, where in some cases synagogues are destroyed. A holy war is declared by the leaders of Al-Azhar University in Cairo. The first phase of Israel’s independence war begins.