6
1947: UN Adopts Partition
Neither the British
government
nor the Zionist
leadership itself
expected significant
Arab opposition to
the implementation
of the Balfour
Declaration.
During the war the
British had reached
UN General Assembly Votes on Partition of Palestine,
November 29, 1947.
an agreement with
Sherif Hussein,
then in control of Mecca, to lead an Arab revolt against the Ottomans in return
for the promise of Arab independence afterwards. Although later critics would
charge that the Balfour Declaration contradicted the pledge to Hussein, that
pledge did not mention Palestine as part of the proposed Arab state, and in any
case the planned Arab revolt never took place.
“Immediate Arab reaction to the Balfour Declaration,” writes the eminent
historian Walter Laqueur, “was not one of unmitigated hostility.”4 Arab speakers
participated in events celebrating the declaration, and some newspapers
in the Arab world suggested that the native population had much to gain
from cooperation with the Zionist enterprise. Hussein’s son Faisal, eager to
attract British backing for his claim to the kingship of Syria, met with Chaim
Weizmann in 1918, and the two signed a document in January 1919 that
recognized the legitimacy of both Arab and Jewish nationalisms, and specified
that the Arab state would not include Palestine (Faisal would later disavow this).
Anti-Jewish riots in Palestine during 1920-21 suggested that Faisal’s views did
not necessarily represent those of ordinary Arabs there, who feared the effects
of Jewish land purchases and the eagerness of the Zionists to promote “Jewish
labor,” potentially endangering their jobs. Far more serious violence broke out
4
Walter Laqueur, A History of Zionism (New York, 1972), p. 236.