Arabs rejected U.N. Partition of Palestine Plan 75-years ago - which would have given them a state as Israel has. Can Abbas go back on it?

UN voted to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states

What happened to the 1947 UN Partition Plan?

Mahmoud Abbas is clinging to a dead letter. by IDF Lt. Col. (res.) Maurice Hirsch -- Director of Legal Strategies at Palestinian Media Watch.

November 29 is the 75th anniversary of the 1947 U.N. Partition Plan—General Assembly Resolution 181—which divided the geographical area west of the Jordan River into two states: a Jewish state and an Arab state. In its essence, the Partition Plan was a fundamental breach of the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, which placed that entire area under the governance of Great Britain for the sole purpose of creating a Jewish state on all of the land.

How the 1947 UN Partition Plan set the rebirth of Israel into motion - excerpts from a World Jewish Congress documentary at the Museum of Tolerance: 

Assessing the UN on 75th anniv of Partition Plan for Palestine, Israeli Consul Gen Hillel Newman L.A.

The 1922 Mandate for Palestine had already taken the entire geographical area then referred to as “Palestine” and divided it in two: The eastern part of Palestine—the Arab state—was placed under the rule of the Hashemite family and became Trans-Jordan. The western part of Palestine was to become the Jewish state.

Despite the breach of the Mandate, the Jewish leadership of the day, represented by David Ben Gurion, accepted the plan. The Arab countries, on the other hand, rejected the plan and immediately started planning to eradicate the Jewish state before it even came into existence.

Prof. Judea (dad of Daniel) Pearl: Nov 29th marks what seminal event in modern Jewish history?

Now, 75 years later, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has told the U.N. that he has decided to accept the plan and even demand its implementation: “Therefore, I present today to this U.N. organization, the title of international legitimacy in this world, with a formal request to implement General Assembly Resolution 181, which formed the basis for the two-state solution in 1947.” 

Resolutions of the U.N. General Assembly—such as the Partition Plan—are not legally binding and do not have the authority to recognize a new state. As Palestinian Media Watch noted before Abbas made his demand to implement the Partition Plan, such a move would contravene international law and necessitate a positive recommendation from all five of the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, which would have to be followed by the approval of two-thirds of the General Assembly. 

Today's date in Israeli history: UN Partition Plan for Palestine, Dr Hillel Newman, Consul Gen to L.A.

Daniel Pearl's dad, Prof Judea Pearl: What 75-yrs ago today was most seminal in modern Jewish history

At the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance on November 29, 1947, Mike Burstyn recites the UN-approved recommendation to separate the British Mandate territory of Palestine into two states – one Jewish and one Arab – with the city of Jerusalem to be governed by a special international regime.  

Mike Burstyn, Israeli actor narrates the UN Palestine Partition Plan at commemorative, Simon Wiesenthal Center ceremony

As the Arab world categorically rejected it and launched a war of annihilation against the Jewish state, UN General Assembly Resolution 181, also known as the Partition Plan for Palestine, was unsuccessful in creating two states. Why do we commemorate it?

Excerpted from "Why the 1947 UN Partition Resolution Must Be Celebrated" by Martin Kramer, Nov 27, 2017

The 1947 UN resolution explicitly recommended both a Jewish state and an Arab state, but the Arabs rejected it. And because they did, preferring war, they cannot escape their share of responsibility for the war's consequences: their "catastrophe," or Nakba. Prior to the vote, the General Assembly empowered UNSCOP, comprising representatives of eleven uninvolved member-states, to investigate the situation and make recommendations to the General Assembly. The Palestinian Arab leaders boycotted UNSCOP, which was eager to meet with them. There was no UNSCOP "failure to consult the people," there was a Palestinian failure to engage UNSCOP. 

Not only did the Arab Higher Committee then reject the majority report of UNSCOP, which recommended the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states; it also rejected the minority report, which recommended a federated, binational state. In the Arab view, the Jews had no right to anything -- not a single immigrant, not a shred of self-government. Why? Because they thought that once the British left, they would defeat the Jews. Why concede anything to a motley mob of cowardly Jews?

Instead the Palestinians went down to an ignominious defeat, dragging the Arab states with them. Indeed, their conduct in the war conformed almost precisely to the conduct they had expected of the Jews, making them contemptible in their own eyes and in the eyes of other Arabs.

The Partition Plan victory isn't just a reminder of Israel's legitimacy; it's a reminder of Arab responsibility for rejecting the state that it would have given them, opting to gamble on warfare. Zionism wasn't colonialism (or socialism, for that matter), but a Jewish adaptation of 19th-century European nationalism. The Zionists were up to the same thing as other fresh converts to nationalism on Europe's borderlands, and later in all of Asia and Africa.

Any doubts about Zionism's nationalist DNA were put to rest in 1905, when the Zionist Congress rejected a proposal for a Jewish homeland in East Africa. Zionists didn't seek a place to exploit economically, or even a refuge for endangered Jews. They wanted back their native land, upon which the Jews once had lived as an independent nation -- a land which, unlike Africa, could nurture the Jewish people back to nationhood.

In October 1947, Chaim Weizmann put his finger on the most salient truth at the United Nations: "The main point is the positive attitude both of America and of Russia, and it is almost tantamount to a miracle that these two countries should have agreed on our problem."

"Freakish" or "miraculous" Soviet support for the birth of Israel was a crucial link in the chain of events that produced the Jewish state. And there is circumstantial evidence that it was a forced miracle: the result of tireless work by the founders of Israel.

Resolutions of the U.N. General Assembly—such as the Partition Plan—are not legally binding and do not have the authority to recognize a new state.

As Palestinian Media Watch noted before Abbas made his demand to implement the Partition Plan, such a move would contravene international law and necessitate a positive recommendation from all five of the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, which would have to be followed by the approval of two-thirds of the General Assembly.