Published: 20 November 2017
Last updated: 4 March 2024
Was the partition vote crucial to Israel’s emergence? I’m not so sure. It was certainly important to Israel’s swift acceptance among the comity of nations during the ensuing decade, and to its future diplomatic well-being and foreign relations. But its birth and existence? The simple answer is probably “no.”
In all likelihood, the state would have arisen, in 1948 or a year or two later, whatever the UN had decided or failed to decide in November 1947. It arose because the yishuv had, for decades, prepared itself, psychologically and institutionally, for that day.
Photo: A man carries bricks in Tel Aviv in the 1920s (Library of Congress)
FULL STORY The UN partition vote in November 1947 was important, but not crucial (Mosaic)
