Mideast Peace Under Arabs? Control

On this date 44 years ago, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution
181, the Partition Plan for Palestine. The plan’s failure affects the thinking
of the parties to the Arab-Israeli conflict to this day.

Resolution 181 proposed dividing between Jews and Arabs the land then remaining
under the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine. Twenty-five years before,
Britain — which was made trustee under the Mandate in 1920 — converted the
eastern three-quarters of Palestine into the Emirate of Transjordan. That land,
defined by the Mandate as "the territories lying between the Jordan {River}
and the eastern boundary of Palestine," Britain gave to its client, the
grandfather of the present King Hussein of Jordan, under the supervision of
the British High Commissioner for Palestine. Britain granted independence to
the eastern part of Mandate Palestine (now Jordan) in 1946.

Resolution 181 recommended terminating the Palestine Mandate for the western
part of Palestine through establishment there of a Jewish state and an Arab
state, joined by an economic union, and internationalization of Jerusalem.

The Arab state would have included not only what Resolution 181 referred to
as "the Gaza District" and "the hill country of Samaria and Judea,"
but also such other territories as the western Galilee. The plan’s Jewish state
would have been much smaller than the Israel that emerged from the 1948-49 Independence
War. The Palestinian Jewish authorities, despite fears that the recommended
boundaries would not be secure, consented to the plan anyway, stating their
hope that the compromise would produce peace.

Every Arab state in the U.N. voted against Resolution 181. A few days later,
the Arab League, deploring "the injustice of Zionism," resolved to
oppose partition. A few months after that, in May 1948, upon the British administration’s
final departure from Palestine, six Arab armies invaded with the avowed purpose
of destroying the newly declared state of Israel.

A secret 1949 State Department memorandum observed that during U.N. consideration
of the 1947 partition plan "there was unanimous agreement among the Arabs
states . . . as well as the {Palestinian} Arab Higher Committee that Palestine
should become a unitary Arab state. . . . Their opposition to the Partition
of Palestine was based on historical, legal, ethnic and other grounds. . . .
The policy of the Arab Governments regarding a Palestine settlement was frequently
characterized by a stubborn unwillingness to yield on points which might have
created a more suitable solution from the Arab point of view {than} the situation
which developed after their unwillingness to yield."

Over the years, this phenomenon recurred. When Israel defeated the 1948 invasion,
Arab diplomats protested Israel’s retention of territories beyond the lines
of the rejected 1947 Partition Plan. When Israel defeated the Arab armies in
1967, Arab diplomats protested Israel’s retention of territories beyond the
1949 Armistice Lines, which at the Arab side’s insistence had never become legal
borders.

Israel now, looking back on numerous wars and terrorist attacks against it
since the 1947 plan, knows that its enemies find themselves checked (at least
for the time being) militarily. And Arab diplomatic inflexibility has given
Israel time to enhance through Jewish settlement its claims for retention of
strategically valuable territories it acquired in the 1967 war. Such exasperating
realities have compelled Israel’s opponents to adopt new tactics.

And so, 44 years after Resolution 181, the Arabs have decided to embrace the
slogan "land for peace." The Israeli government is skeptical. If Arab
leaders actually intend peace, they undoubtedly feel frustrated by Israeli wariness,
but this is an obstacle that a true Arab peacemaker can overcome with a declaration
like this:
"Our efforts to destroy Israel have been catastrophic for both the Jewish
and the Arab peoples. We now abandon them forever. We no longer challenge the
Jews’ right to a state in Palestine, even though we too can make claims to the
land.

"Because demands for land from Israel at present, in light of the conflict’s
history, cast doubt on our good faith and will be taken as a device to dismantle
Israel in stages, we shall defer the issue of territory, but we agree to make
peace immediately. But, after a reasonable period, perhaps one generation, we
must negotiate together to fix reasonable, permanent borders. We shall then
put forward the land claims that we today reserve."

Can an Arab leader make such a declaration and still preserve his or her life
and authority? If so, diplomacy has promise. The current "land for peace"
slogan, on the other hand, holds out no promise, for it creates unrealistic
expectations among Arabs and well-grounded suspicion among Israelis. It is a
throwback to the 1947 partition plan, which decades of hostility and war have
swept off the negotiating table. If Israel’s Arab neighbors want peace, they
know the words to get it.