The fate of Palestine would soon be in the hands of the U.N. General Assembly, where the delegates would consider the UNSCOP’s reports. As New York Times reporter Clifton Daniel wrote, the expectation was that the Arabs would “fight to the last diplomatic ditch to prevent the implementation of the United Nations committee proposals for partitioning the country into Jewish and Arab states.” The Arabs were taking no chances, he wrote from Jerusalem, and were sending their most forceful personalities to represent them at the U.N. General Assembly to make their case.1 Among them were the strident Jamal Husseini, representing the Palestinian Arabs for the Arab Higher Committee, and the Arab League’s Faris al-Khouri of Syria.2 On September 8, when the text of the reports was released, the Arab Higher Committee attacked both the majority and minority proposals, proclaiming them “absurd, impractical and unjust.” The Arabs, its representative said, “would never allow a Jewish state to be established in one inch of Palestine,” and he warned that attempts “to impose any solution contrary to the Arabs’ birthright will only lead to trouble and bloodshed and probably to a third World War.”3
Soon after, the Political Committee of the Arab League Council unanimously approved a statement denouncing partition and Zionism as totally illegitimate. Samir Rifai, the minister for foreign affairs for Trans-Jordan, further elaborated the Arabs’ position in a letter he sent to Bevin and to British representatives in Arab countries. In their eyes, wrote Rifai, once the League of Nations was dissolved, everything that the Great Powers had accepted, including the Balfour Declaration, was null and void. UNSCOP’s majority report, he wrote to Bevin, would “destroy the independence of Palestine as an Arab state.” If it were instituted, he threatened, “the whole of the Middle East [would] flare up in disastrous and widespread disturbances.” The Arabs would never accept partition and would take up arms in defense of their country with the support of the entire Arab world. In addition to supplying arms and money, he predicted, the Arab governments themselves would take action.4
In contrast to the Arabs, the Jewish Agency, the U.S. consul in Jerusalem, Robert Macatee, reported to Marshall, seemed “very satisfied,” although some officials thought the report had two serious drawbacks, the inclusion of Jerusalem in the Free Zone and the failure to include western Galilee in the Jewish state. Nevertheless, a Zionist correspondent of a large American newspaper had confided to him, “To say the Jews are pleased with the report is an understatement, they are elated.”5 Golda Meyerson, head of the Political Department of the Jewish Agency and the only authorized Zionist spokesperson left in Palestine, the others being at the United Nations, told the press that the agency was relieved but also skeptical because there had been so many commissions and nothing had come of them. It was also aware that a combination of the British, Soviet, and Arab blocs might prevent the two-thirds General Assembly majority necessary to adopt partition. She was troubled as well by the proposed internationalization of Jerusalem, the exclusion of western Galilee from the proposed Jewish state, and the indefiniteness of the transition period. To Meyerson, “The words Palestine and Jerusalem were almost synonymous to Jews…we can hardly imagine a Jewish state without Jerusalem.”6
But not all of Jewish Palestine was happy with the partition plan. Newspapers of the left-wing Socialist Party and Orthodox and Revisionist parties proclaimed their dismay; the Holy Land in its entirety belonged to the Jews; it was their partrimony and should not be divided. Clashes between the Haganah and the Irgun and Stern Gang intensified as the Haganah tried to maintain the peace during the U.N. deliberations, even to the extent of protecting British installations against attacks. On September 7, the Irgun made a secret broadcast that partition would be “a national disaster.” Denouncing the campaign of the Haganah to clamp down on them, it stated, “We shall give the terrorists in the camp of the defeatists their due. We shall repulse their attacks by continuing to fight the Nazi-British enemy.”7
By all indications, however, the majority of American and Palestinian Jews supported the UNSCOP partition plan. Now their leaders were focused on how to get it implemented. To this end, Emanuel Neumann, Nahum Goldmann, and David Horowitz approached the U.S. Embassy in Britain asking to set up meetings. The chargé d’affaires at the embassy reported to Marshall that their primary concern was the implementation of the UNSCOP report. All seemed to take it for granted that the General Assembly would approve the majority plan since it had been created by an impartial group appointed by the General Assembly itself. And even though they considered Bevin to be the “number one enemy of Zionism,” the Jewish leaders believed that the British government would either stand aside or accept the final decision of the General Assembly. That being the case, the Jewish leaders believed that the success or failure of the UNSCOP majority plan would depend on the position taken by the U.S. government. Therefore, the Jewish Agency was going to mount an intensive campaign in the United States in favor of the majority plan until the final vote in the General Assembly took place.8
In the United States, the Zionists had not only public opinion on their side but important leaders of liberal and progressive thought. Observing the scene, David Horowitz thought that the cultural, economic, and intellectual centers of America backed partition and had thrown the full weight of their influence on its behalf. The entire Jewish and liberal community, Horowitz wrote, “from coast to coast, was aflame with zeal and ardor of the battle; its heart beat in unison with ours.”9 Horowitz’s estimate was reinforced by Chaim Weizmann, who was happy to find support for partition coming from Joseph Proskauer of the American Jewish Committee, who had once been an anti-Zionist foe; the banker Bernard Baruch; and the business leader Herbert Bayard Swope. Within the administration, he was pleased to find support from Henry Morgenthau and others.10
Arthur Lourie of the Agency quickly went to work lining up congressional support. First he got in touch with Congressman Emanuel Celler. Could he organize members of both the House and Senate to write Truman in support of partition? Enclosed were three sample letters that Lourie had prepared, each with a slightly different slant. They were worded so as to not offend Truman, who was already angry at the immense lobbying and pressure. One of the drafts, for example, would say to Truman that he must have read the majority report “with great satisfaction, for they completely vindicate your judgment in the matter, both in respect of the admission of Jewish refugees to Palestine and the establishment of a viable Jewish state in an adequate area of Palestine.” Noting that the report was supported by the American press, Lourie’s draft went on to say, “there is every likelihood of a solution along the lines you have indicated in the past.”11 Whether or not the president would bite, however, was not at all certain. He was still smarting at his inability to achieve a solution to the Palestine issue, for which, in part, he blamed the Jews as well as the British and the Arabs. Sympathetic congressmen immediately sent letters to the president.
The Nation Associates then went into action organizing a mid-October dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel on “The Palestine Solution and its Relationship to World Peace.” Pointing out suspected State Department plans to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state, The Nation publisher Freda Kirchwey wrote the invitation letter, signed by the Nation Associates, warning their constituency that “there is a gigantic double-cross in the offing at the United Nations.” Not only was that an actual possibility, Kirchwey argued, but “President Truman is reported as capitulating to the Arabs,” which meant that “there will be no hope for settling the Jews of Europe in Palestine.” The letter announced that the scheduled dinner would feature some of the most prominent American and world figures who supported a Jewish state, including two members of the Anglo-American Committee, Bartley Crum and Richard Crossman; former Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles; and Kirchwey herself. The dinner would be a “public demonstration” timed for precisely when the United Nations would be dealing with Palestine and could “play a decisive role in making clear to the United States delegates that American public opinion will not accept the planned betrayal.”12 Eleanor Roosevelt, who was one of the U.S. delegates, took the letter as an insult. She promptly withdrew as cochairperson of the dinner, asked that her name be removed from the letterhead, and resigned from the Nation Associates. “I do not feel I can be affiliated with a group which does such irresponsible things,” she said.13
Before the dinner took place, the Nation Associates submitted another detailed report to the U.N. General Assembly, “Could the Arabs Stage an Armed Revolt Against the United Nations?” The seventy-seven-page report argued that the Arabs were ill trained, ill equipped, ill disciplined, and undernourished. Their armies had few modern weapons, hardly any air force, and no navy. The only decently trained forces were those of the Trans-Jordan Arab Legion of 24,000 men, which was in effect controlled by Britain. If they nonetheless chose to attack, the report predicted, the Jewish resistance would amount to a force they “could not overcome.” The Jewish community’s forces of the Haganah consisted of almost 70,000 troops, who were well trained, disciplined, and led by experienced officers.14
The report was based on material gathered in Palestine by the Nation Associates’ director, Lillie Shultz, and the writer Saul K. Padover, and was, as they called it, “the first factual presentation of the social, economic, political and military aspects of life in the Arab countries,” which, its editors thought, “exposed the inability of the Arabs to wage a military war or to stage any long-term revolt.” They believed their report influenced the delegates. The report, along with the magazine’s special October 4 issue, was “the only comprehensive documents coming from any non-Jewish source and presented to the U.N.” As the magazine noted, its reports and future ones—including one called “Police State: Nazi Model”—were distributed not only to the U.N. delegates and Secretariat but to the Democratic National Committee and major American intellectual and cultural figures. It was also sent to liberal senators and congressmen, to every governor, and to all college and university presidents, union leaders, and other organizations.15
Most important, Shultz believed that the magazine had direct access to the ear of the president through David Niles and other advisers. It also was now, she thought, “the only direct line to the Democratic Party and the Administration” because Truman refused to meet with officials of American Zionist groups, especially Rabbi Silver, who had become persona non grata at the White House. Shultz thought that this left the Nation Associates as one of the few pro-Zionist organizations that could present the Zionist case to the administration without receiving a hostile response.
At the United Nations, Truman appointed Senator Warren R. Austin of Vermont to lead the U.S. delegation, with Herschel V. Johnson, the former minister to Sweden, as his deputy. The U.S. delegation included some of the most prominent Americans: John Foster Dulles, Eleanor Roosevelt, Major General Matthew B. Ridgway, Philip Jessup, and General John Hilldring, who was recommended by David Niles to be a liaison with the White House.16 The group would regularly be in touch with Secretary of State Marshall, working through the undersecretary of state, Robert Lovett. At times Lovett would give the delegates direct instructions; at other time he would travel to New York to meet with them in person. Truman would then consult with both Marshall and Lovett.
To deal with the Palestine issue, U.N. Secretary-General Trygve Lie recommended that an ad hoc Palestine committee be set up, with a representative from each of the member states in the General Assembly to study the majority and minority proposals. Herschel Johnson was appointed the chief U.S. member of the committee, and General Hilldring was appointed to assist him. Diplomats George Wadsworth and Paul Alling were made consultants to the committee, which was charged with considering the minority and majority proposals of UNSCOP and presenting its conclusions to the General Assembly, which would then vote on it.17
A key to the U.S. position was the question of what stance Secretary of State Marshall would take on Palestine. Eleanor Roosevelt, a supporter of partition, said that Marshall at first had thought that America was obligated to support the establishment of a Jewish state as a matter of principle. But after the General Assembly began, the State Department people told him he was wrong and, according to Mrs. Roosevelt, put it in such a way that “to stand by his support of the UNSCOP recommendations [would be] to go against the advice of all the qualified experts in the Department.”18
The influence of the department’s qualified experts was apparent when, on September 15, Marshall met with the U.S. delegates to discuss the U.S. position and what he would say in his upcoming speech at the United Nations. Marshall first wanted to know the delegates’ views—should they take a stand in favor of partition and back the UNSCOP majority report? In a statement Loy Henderson and Undersecretary Lovett had prepared for him to consider using as the text for his speech to the General Assembly, they advised stressing that not all UNSCOP members supported partition, and they hoped that the General Assembly would study the report and then reach a general agreement.
Hilldring immediately answered that such a statement by the secretary “would certainly be a disappointment to American Jews and Jews everywhere, who hoped the United States would take a favorable position on Palestine…in favor of the majority report.” He thought they should accept the UNSCOP majority report, while telling the General Assembly that the United States would be willing to amend it as a result of General Assembly debate. Marshall said that the Zionists were pressing him for a decision on Palestine, but he was concerned that if they adopted the majority report it would provoke a violent Arab reaction. He thought the United States should avoid “arousing the Arabs and precipitating their rapprochement with the Soviet Union in the first week or ten days of the General Assembly.” This, he thought, would happen if the delegation took a clear stand in favor of partition when he delivered his speech. But then again, if he didn’t take a clear stand, he would be accused of “pussyfooting.” At this point Mrs. Roosevelt interrupted and asked if their concern shouldn’t be more about the effect on the United Nations if the United States did not back the majority report.
Henderson then spoke up and warned that if partition were accepted, it would have to be implemented by force. The United States would be fighting Jewish terrorists at the same time as Arab terrorists. UNSCOP said it was impartial, but, as Henderson saw things, although the United States could use force on behalf of principle, it shouldn’t do so when there was no principle but “only expediency,” which he thought was the case here. Austin added that the delegation had to decide whether to take a position at present or “wait until the row got hot.” He was having a hard time seeing how partition could work because Palestine was “already too small for a still smaller state.” Each side would have to defend itself with “bayonets forever, until extinguished in blood.” That meant if the United States supported partition, it would also have to agree to defend it with American troops.19
Two days after this meeting, Marshall gave his speech to the General Assembly. Trying to take a middle course, he told the anxious delegates, “while the final decision of this Assembly must properly await the detailed consideration of the report, the Government of the United States gives great weight not only to the recommendations which have met with the unanimous approval of the Special Committee, but also to those which have been approved by the majority of that Committee.” This noncommittal statement did not make anyone happy. The Zionists were disappointed by the lack of outright support for partition, while the Arabs took it to mean that the United States intended to support it.20
Meanwhile, Henderson was disturbed by the drift of the September 15 meeting and by his unpersuasive performance. He knew he could have made a stronger case. He felt sideswiped; he had thought he was going to be meeting with Marshall alone and had been surprised to find the delegates there. When he got back to his office, he prepared a lengthy memo for Marshall.21
In the memorandum, Henderson let out all the stops. He told the secretary that he felt it was his duty to tell him that “it would not be in the national interest of the United States for it to advocate any kind of a plan at this time for the partitioning of Palestine or for the setting up of a Jewish State in Palestine.” He thought the best course of action for the United States to take during the U.N. debates was to remain “strictly impartial.”
To back up his rejection of partition, Henderson argued several points, most of them familiar: support would undermine U.S. relations with the Arab world, causing the Arab nations to join with the Soviet Union against the United States; the United States would be expected to carry the major burden in providing force, materials, and money for the implementation of partition. He then offered the tactics he thought the United States should follow at the General Assembly. The United States should say publicly that it would give “due weight” to the views of other nations and all other interested parties. Then there must be discussion and agreement among moderate Jews and moderate Arabs, not by an outside international organization. The goal should be to get the moderates on both sides to “enable the setting up of a trusteeship” that would function “in a neutral manner so as not to favor either partition or a single state.” That meant, in effect, continuation of the status quo, with control falling either to one of the big powers or to the United Nations itself.22
After Marshall received the memo and obviously had given it to Truman, Henderson was summoned to the White House by Truman’s counsel, Clark Clifford. Clifford, who had grown up in St. Louis, had attended both college and law school at Washington University. He had come to Washington as an assistant to James K. Vardaman, who had been appointed by his friend Harry Truman to be his naval aide, a largely ceremonial position. Samuel Rosenman, noticing that Clifford had little to do, had asked the young attorney if he wanted to work with him. During the time they spent together, Rosenman and Clifford had discussed the situation of the Jews and their need for a homeland. “I learned a good deal from Judge Rosenman,” Clifford later wrote; “…he felt strongly about it.” By the time Truman consulted with Clifford on the issue, Clifford wrote, “I was sympathetic” and had become “an advocate of the Jewish State.”23
When Rosenman left, Truman did not think he would fill the position. But now there was no one to handle the speeches, to act as a liaison with the cabinet, or to work with the Justice Department. He reconsidered, and Clifford was officially brought on board as his special counsel on June 27, 1946. He would handle these tasks, which evolved, as Clifford put it, into a “forerunner of a National Security Assistant.” His other responsibilities included acting as a liaison with State and Defense and serving as one of Truman’s chief political advisers.24 “Tall, handsome and friendly,” Clifford was immediately popular. Truman also found him “energetic and highly capable.”25
Clifford’s attitude was apparent when Loy Henderson arrived at the White House to discuss his memorandum. When he got there, he found Truman with Clifford, David Niles, and a few other White House personnel. Clifford, according to Henderson, “took the lead in the conversation.” It was the president’s understanding that Henderson “was opposed to the United States adopting a position of supporting the establishment of Jewish State in Palestine.” What, Clifford asked, were the sources of his views? Responding by reiterating his arguments, Henderson proceeded to endure what he saw as a cross-examination. “Were they merely my opinions” or were they “based on prejudice or bias?” “Did I think that my judgment and that of members of my office were superior to that of the intelligent group that the United Nations had selected to study and report on the Palestine problem?”
Henderson thought “the group was trying to humiliate and break me down in the presence of the President.” Trying as best as he could to hold his own ground, he replied that the views he expressed were not only his but those of the U.S. legations and consular officials in the Middle East, as well as the views of those in the State Department who had responsibility for the region. Henderson and the Office of Near Eastern and African Affairs were doing their job, which was to acquaint the secretary of state with their conclusions, which he would pass on to Truman. In particular, they had the responsibility of letting the president know the ramifications of what support of a Jewish state would mean to the United States’ international position and interests.
As the questioning became “more and more rough,” Truman got up and muttered, “Oh hell. I’m leaving.” Henderson took this to mean that despite the late date, Truman had not as yet “made the final and definite decision to go all out for the establishment of the Jewish State.” He conjectured that Truman was desperately hoping “that the Department of State would tell him that the setting up in Palestine of Arab and Jewish states…would be in the interest of the United States,” something Henderson and the Division of Near Eastern Affairs would never do.26
Despite Henderson’s efforts, Truman and Secretary of State Marshall did not accept the policy proposals of the Division of Near Eastern Affairs. On September 24, Marshall met with Eleanor Roosevelt, Dean Rusk, Charles Bohlen, and General John Hilldring. They agreed that U.S. Representative to the United Nations Warren Austin would not make an opening statement at the start of the Ad Hoc Committee on Palestine but would call for a discussion of the Palestine question among the British government, the Arab Higher Committee, and the Jewish Agency, after which Herschel Johnson would present the U.S. view for the first time. The U.S. position would take into account previous American commitments and the UNSCOP majority report, as well as the U.N. delegates’ views. The United States would also reserve the right to make amendments to the reports. Most important, it would make it clear that it would retain “in the plan the provisions for partition and large-scale immigration.”
However, if two thirds of the General Assembly failed to give it their support, the U.S. delegation would consider two options: to force a vote in the Ad Hoc Committee to reveal that the U.N. majority did not back the UNSCOP majority report’s conclusion, even though it had been prepared by the United Nations’ own committee; or decide to propose an alternate solution that would be able to gain a two-thirds majority. The group then pledged itself to “utmost secrecy” about the U.S. position until the time for it to be made public.27
A week later, the State Department prepared a memorandum with suggestions for fleshing out the general outlines of a U.S. plan, which began (to their chagrin) to be referred as the “American Plan.” A lengthy working paper, the memorandum was meant to offer the U.S. delegation a series of goals and recommendations. Its working premise was that the United States “should give support to the majority plan in principle with a view to perfecting the plan in certain of its features.” The “perfection” would lie in its making it more palatable to the Arabs by giving them more land. Its recommendations included giving Jaffa—a city with 70,000 Arab residents and only 10,000 Jewish ones—to the Arab state as an enclave and not to the Jewish state, as suggested by the UNSCOP majority report. The eastern boundary of western Galilee should go to the Arab state as well and redrawn to include Safad, whose population was 9,500 Arabs and 2,500 Jews. This meant that the “southern portion of the Negev, allocated to the Jewish State by the majority plan, should be included in the Arab State.” An area useful only for seasonal grazing, the memorandum argued, it was inhabited by 60,000 Arabs and had no Jewish settlements. This last point is one that would be of most concern to the Jewish Agency. The largely unsettled area was deemed necessary for a Jewish state, since it could provide space for new immigrants and only the Jews would have the incentive and resources to develop its economic potential. Despite these proposed changes benefiting the Arabs, the memorandum acknowledged that the Arab states would most likely reject any U.N.-imposed solution, outside of all of Palestine becoming an Arab state. “It is difficult,” the memorandum put it, “to predict whether any solution short of immediate independence would obtain even the reluctant acquiescence of the Arab States.”28
Herbert Vere Evatt, the Australian minister for external affairs, headed up the Ad Hoc Committee on Palestine, which began its proceedings on September 27. Evatt had only a few weeks to make the committee’s recommendations to the General Assembly. He decided to deal with the majority and minority reports by setting up two subcommittees to consider each of them, placing proponents of each plan on each committee. For Subcommittee 1, representing partition, he chose Canada, Czechoslovakia, Guatemala, Poland, South Africa, the United States, the Soviet Union, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Subcommittee 2, representing the unitary government minority proposal, was made up of Afghanistan, Colombia (which dropped out), Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Yemen. The committees had until October 29 to prepare and present their reports with recommendations.29
Evatt also suggested that the Jews and the Arabs be given a hearing. Consequently, Jamal Husseini gave an 8,000-word statement announcing that the Arab Higher Committee would not accept either UNSCOP’s majority or minority report. Instead, it promised to drench the soil of the Holy Land “with the last drop of our blood in the lawful defense of all and every inch of it.” There were three simple points to Arab policy: “no partition, no further Jewish immigration and no Jewish State.” It would accept only an “independent, democratic Arab state, embracing all of Palestine.”
Husseini said the Arabs’ case was “simple and self-evident,” based on international justice: “It is that of a people who desire to live in undisturbed possession of their country, in which they have continually existed and with which they have become inextricably interwoven.” Going back to ancient history, Husseini claimed that the European Jews were not descendants of Palestine’s ancient inhabitants; he also said that that the Balfour Declaration violated the League of Nations Covenant and was illegitimate, and that the Zionists were preparing a Jewish invasion “to take Palestine from the Arab inhabitants.”30
Testifying for the Zionists were Rabbi Silver and Moshe Shertok. Silver addressed the Jews’ historical claims to Palestine and disputed those of the Arabs. In 1917, when the Allies had liberated Palestine along with other provinces of the Ottoman Empire, Silver argued, Palestine had been just a “segment of a Turkish province…. There was no politically or culturally distinct or distinguishable Arab nation in that province.” When the Arabs had conquered Palestine in A.D. 634, the country had contained a heterogeneous population, and then after A.D. 1071 it had been conquered by various non-Arab peoples, including the Kurds, the Crusaders, and finally the Ottoman Turks. Most important, by the time the Arabs had conquered Palestine in A.D. 634, Silver continued, the Jews had “already completed nearly 2,000 years of national history in that country during which they created a civilization which decidedly influenced the course of mankind.” When the Palestinian Mandate recognized the historical connection between the Jewish people and Palestine, it was, according to Silver, “only stating a fact that was universally acknowledged through the ages.”
Silver also finally lay to rest the Biltmore Declaration calling for a Jewish state in all of Palestine and publicly affirmed his support for partition. The Jewish Agency, he told the delegates, would “assume this burden as one of the sacrifices designed to find a way out of the present intolerable impasse.” This was not an easy thing for Silver to support; it was done, he said, “in sadness, and most reluctantly.” It was a “sacrifice.” Silver also voiced the American Zionists’ opposition to the minority plan, which, he said, would bring “all the disadvantages of partition—and a very bad partition geographically—without the compensating advantages of a real partition: statehood, independence and free immigration.”31
During the proceedings, Weizmann was also called upon to give a statement. He asked Aubrey Eban to help him prepare a draft. Weizmann decided to put in a little humor to deal with the Arabs’ arguments that the Jews were not descendants of the ancient Hebrews but came from the Khazar tribes of southern Russia. Apparently, it went over well with the audience, who thought it was hilarious when the aging and most eminent of Zionist leaders said, “It is strange, very strange, but all my life I have been a Jew. I have felt like a Jew. I have suffered like a Jew. So now it is fascinating to learn that I am a Khazar!” Weizmann wanted a biblical verse for the ending. Searching the room, Eban and Weizmann found a Bible in the hotel table and spent a half hour looking for an appropriate “Return to Zion” passage. They found one in Isaiah. “Well, this is it,” said Weizmann, “over the top for the last time.” He ended his speech with words appropriate to the occasion: “The Lord shall set his hand the second time to recover the remnants of his people. And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcast of Israel and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.”32
Kirchwey’s predictions of an impending double-cross were not off the mark when, on October 3, the American delegates met in Marshall’s Washington office, along with Dean Rusk, Charles Bohlen, Ambassador Alling, and others. Marshall told them that although the U.S. position in principle was to support the UNSCOP majority report, they now favored “certain modifications” that would be proposed as amendments. These were candidly, Marshall told them, “modifications…of a pro-Arab nature,” concerning boundary issues and the plans for an economic union of Jewish and Arab states. Moreover, Marshall predicted that at present the majority report would probably not get a two-thirds majority of the General Assembly. Should that occur, Marshall continued, “some form of Trusteeship for Palestine might be desirable.” And, he emphasized, although the United States was committed to Jewish immigration into Palestine, it was “not committed to support the creation of a Sovereign Jewish State” (our emphasis). And, finally, Marshall told them that the United States “should not attempt to persuade members of the General Assembly to vote for the majority plan.”33
Pressures were now mounting on Truman to come out in favor of partition. Eddie Jacobson wrote to him, “Again I am appealing to you on behalf of my People.” He continued:
The future of one and one-half million Jews in Europe depends on what happens at the present meeting of the United Nations. With winter coming on with its attendant hardships, time is short for action by this meeting to alleviate further suffering by these helpless people.
How they will be able to survive another winter in concentration camps and the hell holes in which they live, is beyond my imagination. In all this World, there is only one place where they can go—and that is Palestine. You and I know only too well this is the only answer.
I have read Secretary Marshall’s recent statement that the U.S. would give great weight to UNSOP’s [sic] recommendation; that was a great deal to be thankful for. Now, if it were possible for you, as leader and spokesman for our country, to express your support of this action, I think we can accomplish our aims before the United Nations Assembly.
Continuing, Jacobson told his friend that he trusted “to God that he give you strength and guidance to act immediately.” He concluded:
I think I am one of a few who actually knows and realizes what terrible heavy burdens you are carrying on your shoulders during these hectic days. I should, therefore, be the last man to add to them; but I feel you will forgive me for doing so, because tens of thousands of lives depend on words from your mouth and heart. Harry, my people need help and I am appealing to you to help them.34
Asking that he not be quoted, Truman responded. Since the matter was at the U.N. General Assembly, he said, “I don’t think it would be right or proper for me to interfere at this stage, particularly as it requires a two-third vote to accomplish the purpose sought. Marshall was handling the issue,” he told him, “I think, as it should be and I hope it will work out all right.”35
Pressure on the administration to support the majority report was also coming from both Republicans and Democrats. Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, met with Rabbi Silver in New York City and told him that he favored the majority report as “the only hopeful basis for a settlement of the Palestine conundrum.” But, he added, he could not accept imposing it by force, which might lead the United States to take responsibility and send in troops. Vandenberg then wrote to his Senate colleague Robert A. Taft that he wanted to develop a Republican position, in which they would “unequivocally continue to assert our belief that viable partition is the sound and hopeful answer.” His hope was that the General Assembly would vote for partition and that a formula would “be found which will produce the acceptance by both Arabs and Jews without too much grief or bloodshed.”36
At the same time as Vandenberg expressed what he saw as the right Republican position, leading New York Democrats, along with the governors of twenty-three states, publicly urged that the United States come out in support of the majority report and partition.37
As much as he wished the Palestine problem to be out of his hands, Truman was going to have to make a decision. Was the United States going to support partition, and if so, how strongly? He consistently argued that the proper place for the settlement of such disputes was the United Nations. Now that it had come up with a plan, he had to consider Eleanor Roosevelt’s point; if he wanted the infant United Nations to succeed, how could he not support the UNSCOP majority report recommending partition? The Arabs’ intransigence helped him to commit himself. On October 9, Clifton Daniel of The New York Times reported that the Grand Mufti had arrived in Lebanon for a meeting of the Arab League, to discuss military measures should partition be attempted. The League announced that they intended to occupy Palestine if the British forces withdrew and to resist by force any effort to create a Jewish state.38 When Truman was given the report in the Oval Office, he thought the League’s position was “belligerent and defiant.” Therefore, he claimed in his memoir, he then “instructed the State Department to support the partition plan” 39 (our emphasis).
On October 11, Herschel Johnson, U.S. representative on the Ad Hoc Committee on Palestine, gave a speech publicly endorsing partition. Though rejecting the use of U.S. troops in Palestine, he called on the United Nations to establish a volunteer police force to help keep the peace in there, if needed. Until the future status of Palestine was decided, he said, it should remain the responsibility of Britain, the mandatory power, to administer the area in its transition to independence. The New York Times called Johnson’s statement “clear and explicit” and remarked that it gave “considerably stronger support to partition than had been expected.”40
Supporting partition was now the official U.S. policy, but the State Department set about adjusting the borders of the proposed two states. The territorial modifications it suggested when meeting with the U.S. delegation included taking Safed and the southern Negev away from the Jews and placing them in the new Arab state.41 Marshall explained the decision of State and the U.N. delegation to have the Negev go to the Arabs by pointing out that it was “overwhelmingly Arab” and a “barren, arid and topographically inhospitable area suitable only for marginal cultivation and seasonal grazing,” a task carried out only by its present inhabitants, “semi-nomadic Arabs.” Experts, he incorrectly wrote, “admit that there is extremely slight chance of any large-scale development in the area.” If it went to the Jews, “it would create a wedge in an Arab area inhabited by traditionally truculent and fanatical Moslems” and would increase the difficulty of creating the two states. As for the Jews’ argument for the desirability of their state having an outlet to the Red Sea and the port of Aqaba, Marshall argued that “Aqaba is not in Palestine,” and any plan to have any part of Palestine bordering on the Red Sea as a port “is open to serious doubt.”42
Not everyone on the U.S. delegation agreed. The two American representatives on the Ad Hoc Committee, Herschel Johnson and General Hilldring, wrote Austin a memo that Austin forwarded to Marshall, pointing out that the United States was the only country asking for the Negev to be reassigned to the Arab state. Both of them felt strongly that it would be a mistake to make this change. If the United States introduced this publicly, the Jewish Agency would vigorously oppose it, as would “all the friends of partition in the 37-nation committee,” of which there were many. The only support would come from the Arab states. That meant that if the vote for partition failed, the blame would be put on the United States for “raising this major doubt as to the justice of the partition plan.”43
The Jewish Agency was becoming increasingly alarmed about the United States’ attempt to give the Negev to the Arabs. Not only was it backtracking on previous promises, but it was dangerous because the Yishuv’s enemies might use it as a weapon against the Ad Hoc Committee’s overall support of UNSCOP’s majority plan. They would try to use it to change U.N. delegates’ minds about partition; they would now think it had no chance of succeeding since the U.S. delegation was vacillating. Ironically, the Soviet delegate, S. L. Tsarapkin, had made a statement before the Ad Hoc Committee endorsing partition and opposing any changes to the UNSCOP recommendations. The Soviets, who had long opposed Zionism, were being more steadfast in their support than their wavering American friends.44
How could the State Department be stopped from giving away the Negev? “The situation,” Epstein wrote, “called for immediate and drastic action on our part to prevent that calamity.” There was only one possible action that could help them: “Direct and instant intervention by the President of the United States himself.” (our emphasis). And the only person who would be able to influence Truman was Chaim Weizmann. Weizmann had just arrived in New York, where he was to address the United Nations, when Epstein called him at the Waldorf-Astoria telling him that it was crucial that he see Truman as soon as possible and convince him not to take away the Negev from the Jewish state. Weizmann agreed to try if Epstein could set up an appointment. Epstein then called Niles, who was able to set one up with the help of the British ambassador, Lord Inverchapel, for November 19.45 Just as the former British ambassador, Lord Halifax, had arranged for the British subject Weizmann to see Truman, so Inverchapel cooperated in arranging a meeting. At times, Inverchapel expressed strong Zionist sympathies, but Acheson found him to be so eccentric that he did not know what he really believed.46
Epstein was passionate about the Negev and especially the inclusion of Eilat—then called Elath—within the proposed borders of the Jewish state. If there were any chance at all of cultivating the desert, it could be realized only by Jewish pioneers, who had already succeeded in regions in Palestine that had previously been dismissed as uncultivable. The Negev would increase the absorptive capacity of the Jewish state and create new opportunities for large-scale immigration and settlement. It was crucial because it had outlets to both the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, giving the country access to both the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Given Arab opposition, the Jewish state probably would not be able to use the Suez Canal. The only alternative was to use the port on the Gulf of Aqaba.47
Weizmann was buoyant and optimistic about what might transpire. The Harrison Report had launched the events that led to UNSCOP’s majority report and he attributed all this to Truman’s actions as president. He compared Truman favorably to Lord Balfour, whom all knew to be “a friend and sympathizer of the Zionist cause.” Now he wanted to believe that Zionism had once again found a “powerful champion.”
On the nineteenth, the day he was to meet Truman, Epstein joined Weizmann and Justice Felix Frankfurter for breakfast. Epstein gave Weizmann a memo and a map locating the Gulf of Elath and demonstrating its importance to the future Jewish state. The memo, which Weizmann used as the basis of his discussion with Truman, stated:
For the Jewish State, this outlet will be one of the most important routes for commercial relations with that part of the world. The Jewish State, to absorb the refugees coming from Europe, will have to do its utmost to develop its industrial and commercial capacities, and in this connection the importance of Elath is much greater than just a piece of land on the Red Sea.
In view of present strained relations with the Arabs, and the existing Arab boycott, there is a permanent threat that, by the cutting off of the Persian Gulf by the Iraq Government, or through the Suez Canal by the Egyptian Government, the Jewish State can be isolated from some part of the world which may be of great importance….
Elath has played a major role in Jewish history, from the early days of the Jewish Kingdom, and the UNSCOP Majority Report, giving this place to the Jewish State, has recognized the historic connection of the Jews with this part of the Red Sea.
Elath, in the hands of the Arabs, may be a constant menace in the rear of the Jewish State. The Arab States have an outlet to the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba through Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia.48
Before he left for the White House, Epstein gave Weizmann a piece of advice: just focus on one issue—the necessity of including the Negev and Elath in the Jewish state. Weizmann would not have enough time with Truman to cover other points, and he would have a better chance of getting Truman’s support if he kept his request to the single issue that was of the greatest importance. If that issue were postponed, it might prove the last chance to make them part of the Jewish state.
The group moved on to the White House, where Weizmann and Epstein were joined by Clark Clifford, David Niles, and the chief of protocol, Stanley Woodward. Epstein remained outside the Oval Office as Weizmann went in alone to join the president. A half hour later, Weizmann emerged, looking pleased.49 As suggested, Weizmann had contained his conversation with Truman to the issue of the Negev and diligently kept the president’s focus on it when he began to wander. The chemist Weizmann had painted a picture for Truman that appealed to the farmer he once had been. By using desalted water, the Jews would make the desert bloom. Their experiments with desalination were already producing carrots, bananas, and potatoes in areas where nothing had grown for hundreds of years. If the Negev were taken from the Jews, it would remain a desert. Aqaba too was crucial, Weizmann told the president. It was now a useless bay, which had to be dredged, deepened, and made into a waterway that could accommodate ships of sizable dimensions. If it were part of a Jewish state, Weizmann told Truman, “it will very quickly become an object of development, and would make a real contribution to trade and commerce by opening up a new route.” It would be a parallel highway to the Suez Canal, shortening the route from Europe to India by a day or more. “I was extremely happy,” Weizmann later wrote, “to find that the President read the map very quickly and very clearly. He promised me that he would communicate at once with the American delegation at Lake Success.”50
Two hours later, at 3 P.M., Herschel Johnson was standing in the lobby of the building used by the General Assembly. He was about to talk to Moshe Shertok about the change regarding the Negev when he was summoned to the phone. The president was calling. Truman told Johnson that he was not happy with the instructions given to the U.S. delegates by the State Department. “Nothing should be done,” Truman instructed Johnson, “to upset the apple-cart”;51 the Negev should go to the Jews. Truman told the same thing to General Hildring: that he personally agreed with Weizmann’s views and that “he wished the Delegation to go along with the majority report on the Negeb.”52 The State Department plan had been foiled. “Obviously the President,” Weizmann wrote, “had been as good as his word.”53
On November 22, Ambassador Johnson delivered a speech to the United Nations Ad Hoc Committee on Palestine in which he formally withdrew the previously stated U.S. reservations about the Negev and introduced a new resolution to make Beersheba and the surrounding territory included as part of an Arab state and not part of a Jewish state. The Jewish Agency had already indicated that it would be willing to give this area up and make some other modifications. Including the Negev in a Jewish state was now the official U.S. position.
Johnson, who had by this time become sympathetic to the Jewish position, then criticized the British for not giving the Ad Hoc Committee their full cooperation and for creating a very difficult situation by declaring they could not take part in the implementation of a plan if they did not have the approval of both peoples of Palestine. This condition, as the British knew very well, was impossible and was the very reason they had referred the problem to the United Nations in the first place. And how, he asked, did they expect to contribute to a solution if they abstained from voting, which is what they intended to do?54
Britain was in fact being most uncooperative. Sir Alexander Cadogan, its representative to the United Nations, told the delegates that British troops would not be available to enforce any settlement against either Arabs or Jews and that Britain planned to evacuate the last of its troops by August 1948. He warned that this did not mean that Britain would continue to maintain a civil administration in Palestine until that date. It intended to lay down its Mandate anytime it wanted after the General Assembly took a position not accepted by both Arabs and Jews. He concluded with what the press called a “cryptic” statement. “It follows,” he said, that if the United Nations were in Palestine taking preparatory steps for a settlement, “it must not expect British Authorities either to exercise administrative responsibilities or to maintain law and order.” They would do so only in the areas they still occupied. Confusing as his statement was, some delegates who favored partition saw this as grounds for optimism. If the General Assembly approved any solution by a two-thirds majority, he added, the British government “would not take any action contrary to it.”55
Johnson’s speech angered Henderson, who sat down and wrote another memo to Undersecretary Lovett. Henderson wondered if President Truman realized that the U.S. partition plan would leave only local law enforcement organizations to preserve the peace in Palestine. There would be wide-scale violence on all sides, he predicted, and the local police would not be able to cope with it. As he saw it, the United States was fostering a plan that would draw in U.S., Soviet, and perhaps other troops to Palestine, and he urged that the administration think twice before sending in U.S. troops.56 Lovett immediately took the Henderson memo to Truman and read it to him at their daily 12:30 P.M. meeting. “I explained to him,” he noted, “that the Department thought the situation was serious and that he should know of the probable attempts to get us committed militarily.”57
Lovett also discussed with Truman the question of what role the U.S. delegates should play, if any, in ensuring that partition passed the General Assembly. Should the United States actively lobby other nations’ delegates? “The President,” Lovett stressed, “did not wish the United States Delegation to use threats or improper pressure of any kind on other Delegations to vote for the majority report favoring partition of Palestine. We were willing to vote for that report ourselves because it was a majority report but we were in no sense of the word to coerce other Delegations to follow our lead” (our emphasis). That instruction would turn out to be critical. At the present moment—a few days before the vote was scheduled to take place—it was not certain that a majority of the U.N. General Assembly would in fact vote for partition. Such a passive posture, although Truman might not have been aware of its implications, would be interpreted as indifference by the smaller states.58
On November 24, Moshe Shertok and Jamal Husseini gave their concluding remarks to the Ad Hoc Committee. Shertok kept his short and to the point, arguing that the Jews’ right to immigrate and settle in part of Palestine was no less legitimate than the Arabs’ claim. He ended by telling the delegates, “A nation that has in a period of six years, lost six million will not be deterred from its attempt to base itself in the only spot on earth that it views as belonging to itself.” Jamal Husseini summed up the Arabs’ position by declaring that they absolutely rejected partition and demanded an independent state in all of Palestine.59 Then, after hearing weeks of testimony, the committee voted, rejecting the proposal of Committee 2, set up to handle the minority report, by 29 to 12. The next day it approved the majority report by a vote of 25 to 13 with 17 abstentions. The matter would now go back to the General Assembly, where a two-thirds vote of the countries actually voting (as opposed to the entire U.N. membership) would be required for passage. By that measure, the votes for partition in the Ad Hoc Committee would have been short by one vote to be passed in the General Assembly.
The vote in the General Assembly was scheduled for the next day. Everyone was on pins and needles. Emanuel Neumann, Rabbi Silver, Moshe Shertok, and some others arrived early at Flushing Meadows, milling around and exchanging predictions about how the votes would go. They were nervous but feeling optimistic, as they had a lot of supporters at the United Nations, including the president of the General Assembly, Dr. Oswaldo Aranha, and Secretary-General Trygve Lie. But now Aranha walked by and mentioned that things did not look so good for partition since three or four of the small countries that had been positive or uncertain the day before had now decided to vote against it.60 This was confirmed during the session when the delegates from the Philippines and Haiti both spoke against partition. The Greek representative also declared that Greece would vote against it. Rumors began to circulate that other countries were considering changing their votes.
During a break, as the Jewish Agency representatives sat in a corner of the corridor looking dejected, one of its South American supporters came over and said, “Go home! The sight of your faces is demoralizing your friends.”61 During the session, Shertok had such a worried and downcast expression that Trygve Lie took Goldmann aside and asked him to say something to Shertok because he was sending a message that he thought “the partition plan was done for.” Lie himself favored partition because it was the result of UNSCOP, and he believed that if one wanted the new world body to succeed it was important to support its committees’ recommendations.62 The Arabs, David Horowitz observed, were “smiling broadly and crowing, their heads held proudly.” He wasn’t surprised to see Britain’s Harold Beeley “radiant with joy.”63
Given these alarming developments, the Jewish Agency decided that the vote had to be delayed at all costs. The next day was Thanksgiving, when no session would be held. If they could postpone the vote until after the holiday, it would give them more time to make a last-ditch effort to marshal the necessary votes. The Zionists and their allies told their friends in the General Assembly to “deliver full-length addresses in support of the resolution and to keep talking as long as possible.” Aubrey Eban approached UNSCOP member Professor Rodríguez Fabregat of Uruguay and asked him if he thought he could make such a speech. Fabregat was happy to help, as was his friend García Granados, replying, “For me an hour-long speech is not a filibuster. It is a brief observation.” Others followed suit, provoking the Arabs to make their own long speeches.64
At the lunch break, Neumann took General Hilldring aside and explained the situation. Could he get the U.S. delegation to request that the evening session be canceled on the ground that it was the eve of Thanksgiving Day? Hilldring said he would try.65 It was getting late, and if they were to continue they would be there all night. Finally, Aranha asked for a vote to adjourn until Friday. It passed 24 to 21.66 On Friday, Alexandre Parodi, the French representative, moved that another twenty-four hours pass before a vote to see if the two sides might make some progress in reconciling their differences. This request seemed reasonable, and it passed.67
Now the lobbying intensified. Of particular interest were Haiti and Liberia, which had abstained during the Ad Hoc Committee vote, and the Philippines, which had not participated. The Arabs had made inroads with these countries and wanted to hold on to their gains. Prince Faisal of Saudi Arabia reported to the British representatives that delegates from the Philippines, Liberia, and Greece were “deliberately lying low to avoid pressure,” since they had now promised their votes to the Arab states. The Philippines delegate had just pronounced that he would not back any dismemberment of Palestine. The Greek delegate, despite the fact that Greece was a major economic and political beneficiary of the Truman Doctrine, also announced his opposition to partition.68 The Greek ambassador later explained that Greece had voted against partition “as part of a deal which the Greek representatives had made with the representatives of the Moslem states. In return for Greek support on the Palestine issue, the Islamic states agreed to give full support to Greece in the future on Greek questions arising before any UN organ.”69 Camille Chamoun of Lebanon, Faris al-Khouri of Syria, and other Arab delegates told the Guatemalan delegate, Granados, that they were putting pressure on the president of Guatemala in his nation’s capital. The Arabs had offered Costa Rica support for a seat on the U.N. Trusteeship Council if it changed its declared intention to vote for partition.70 Most of all, the Arabs were banking on what U.S. State Department officials had told them: that the United States would vote for partition but would not use pressure to coerce other delegations to follow its lead.71
It was becoming obvious to the pro-partition forces that the U.S. delegation’s hands-off policy was having disastrous effects and was giving the impression to the other delegations that the creation of the Jewish state was not especially important to the U.S. government. This view was now being reinforced since the Philippines, Haiti, and Greece were going to vote against partition.72 The fate of the partition vote now lay in the hands of those nations, as well as Liberia and Ethiopia. Now that they had a little reprieve, the Jewish Agency and its allies rallied their forces, ready to do whatever it took. “Cablegrams sped to all parts of the world,” David Horowitz recalled. “People were dragged from their beds at midnight and sent on peculiar errands…. not an influential Jew, Zionist or non-Zionist, refused to give us his assistance…. Everyone pulled his weight…in the despairing effort to balance the scales to our favor.”73
Horowitz was not exaggerating. On November 26, when Philippine Ambassador Carlos Romulo addressed the General Assembly, he indicated that the Philippines would be voting against partition. There had to be some way to change this vote. The agency leaders learned that an obscure civil servant named Julius Edelstein had once worked in the Philippines and was a personal friend of the president of the Philippines. They called the State Department and finally tracked Edelstein down in London through the U.S. Embassy. Joseph Linton, the agency representative in London, called him in the middle of the night and asked him to immediately call President Manuel Roxas and convince him to have his delegation vote for partition. Sleepy and complaining, Edelstein nevertheless followed through. He woke Roxas up from his afternoon nap and tried to persuade him to have his delegates vote favorably. Even more persuasive was a call from “a United States Representative intimating that failure to support the United States position on the Palestine question might have an adverse effect upon Philippine-American relations.” Two Supreme Court justices, Felix Frankfurter and Frank Murphy, wired Roxas, telling him “the Philippines will isolate millions and millions of American friends and supporters if they continue in their effort to vote against partition.”74 Roxas received a telegram from ten U.S. senators and then a cable from Senator Robert F. Wagner, Jr., of New York, with an additional twenty-five senatorial signatures.75 In a similar fashion, Clark Clifford lobbied the Philippine ambassador to the United States in Washington.76 All of these interventions led the Philippines’ delegates to eventually vote for partition.77
The Agency people met with scores of delegations. There were three groups they thought they could count on: Russia and its satellites, the British Dominions, and the Latin American republics.78 But to win the vote, they had to go beyond this group. Moshe Shertok and David Horowitz, for example, talked to the Ethiopian delegate, whom they expected to vote against it. They reminded him of the days of the Ethiopian war with Italy in the mid-1930s and the fact that the Italian consul in Jerusalem had asked the Jews to have their press stop backing Ethiopia, which they had refused to do. Shertok had answered that the Jews “would not sell the conscience of our people for a mess of pottage.” The Ethiopian ambassador decided to abstain, which meant one less vote against partition.79
Liberia was another potential negative vote. Former Secretary of State Edward Stettinius was asked to help by using his business connections. Stettinius called Harvey Firestone, whose rubber plantations produced a large part of that nation’s export trade. Firestone phoned Liberian President William Tubman, telling him that if his government voted against partition, as it had in one of the subcommittees, Firestone would not go ahead with plans for expansion in Liberia. Liberia ended up voting for partition. Pro-partition forces had less success with Greece. David Niles spoke to Thomas Pappas, a successful Boston businessman of Greek origin. Pappas got back to him on November 26, reporting on cables he, Spyros Skouras (a film executive), and others had sent to the Greek government. Pappas complained that Niles should have contacted him a week earlier, when there would have “more time to do something and we could have put on a lot more pressure.” Under the circumstances, “we did everything humanly possible.”80
The biggest problem for the propartition forces remained the United States’ policy of neutrality. In his memoirs Truman wrote that he had “never approved of the practice of the strong imposing their will on the weak, whether among men or among nations.” This stance, recommended by the State Department, appealed to his sense of fair play. However, now an intense public outcry for partition hit the White House. Truman wrote that the barrage “was unlike anything that had been seen there before.81 Truman was also lobbied by members of Congress. Emanuel Celler cabled Truman from New York to let him know that he was “seriously disturbed that the vote for partition of Palestine…may fail by one or two votes.” All of his efforts, he told Truman, “will be frustrated at the eleventh hour.” Celler wanted pressure brought against “recalcitrant countries like Greece” that were “immeasurably and morally indebted to us.” It was not too late to get them to change their vote, Celler argued. “It may also be necessary,” he added, “that Greece be spoken to on a higher level than our delegation at the United Nations” by men such as Undersecretary Lovett. The same pressure, he suggested, should be placed on Haiti, China, Ecuador, Liberia, Honduras, and Paraguay.82 Each time he got a message like that, Truman fumed. He had read Celler’s telegram with a “lot of interest,” Truman replied, but it had “no foundational facts in the long run.” On the bottom Truman later scribbled, “The pressure boys almost beat themselves. I did not like it.”83
Despite his announced hands-off policy, there is much circumstantial evidence that the president did act, if indirectly through others, in his administration and at the midnight hour. Former Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles, who had many contacts in the Truman administration, claimed that “by direct order of the White House every form of pressure, indirect and direct, was brought to bear by American officials upon those countries outside of the Moslem world that were known to be uncertain or opposed to partition. Representatives or intermediaries were employed by the White House to make sure that the necessary majority would at length be secured.”84
On November 11, eighteen days before the final vote was taken, there had been a cabinet meeting, and attached to a memorandum about the meeting was an unsigned and undated note in what appears to be Truman’s press secretary Charlie Ross’s hand:
Palestine votes look a little better.
A few days after the final vote had been taken, Michael Comay, the director of the Jewish Agency’s office in New York, wrote an account of what went on behind the scenes at the United Nations to Barney Gering of the South African Zionist Council. “The key to the struggle,” Comay wrote, was the Agency’s relations with the United States, which “were never satisfactory until right at the end, and were at times disheartening.” The other delegations reported that the United States, usually active to make its wishes known, was unusually quiet on the issue of partition. It was so bad that some friendly delegates told the Agency that “Washington did not insist on their support on this particular issue,” and that the American delegates “were not anxious to go out in order to line up votes.” It amounted to what Comay called a “policy of indifference.” He thought that as a result of America’s attitude three countries “completely dependent upon Washington”—Greece, the Philippines, and Haiti—came out against partition.”
The Jewish Agency then took advantage of the Thanksgiving holiday to create an “avalanche” to descend upon the White House. Truman, Comay continued, “became very upset and threw his personal weight behind the effort to get a decision. From then on Washington exerted itself to rally support and the situation improved” (our emphasis). Beforehand, sympathetic men such as Johnson and Hilldring had done their best but had been hampered by the State Department. “It was only in the last 48 hours; i.e., on Friday and Saturday, that we really got the full backing of the United States” (our emphasis). By the end, wrote Comay, “we had got the United States to take a firm stand.” Finally, at Weizmann’s urging, Prime Minister Jan Smuts of South Africa, who had been one of the original architects of the Balfour Declaration, sought to pressure Attlee and Bevin.86
Meanwhile, Loy Henderson was horrified when he heard reports about the change in the behavior of the U.S. delegates. They were ignoring the State Department’s instructions and were obviously following White House orders.87 He phoned Herschel Johnson at the United Nations and asked him bluntly, “What’s going on up there? We are being told here in Washington that the Americans at the United Nations are engaging in a lot of arm-twisting in order to get votes for the Majority Plan.” At that, Johnson “burst into tears. He said, ‘Loy, forgive me for breaking down like that, but Dave Niles called us up here a couple of days ago and said that the President had instructed him to tell us that, by God, he wanted us to get busy and get all the votes that we possibly could; that there would be hell if the voting went the wrong way. We are, working, therefore, under terrific strain trying to carry out the President’s orders’” (our emphasis).
Henderson had called Johnson, but it is hard to believe Henderson’s account that Johnson burst into tears. By this time, Johnson supported partition, and it looked as if it could go down to defeat if something weren’t done. When Johnson asked Niles what to do about the State Department, Niles told him, “Never mind the State Department! This is an order from the President!” Johnson and Eleanor Roosevelt, then went from delegation to delegation, telling them that they had been instructed by Truman to seek their support for partition.88
The British were quick to pick up on the new U.S. course. British delegates reported to the Foreign Ministry that the U.S. delegates were now “putting pressure on other delegations to support partition” and were “trying to rush matters to a final vote with as little discussion as possible.”89 The British continued to make things difficult. On November 28, in the General Assembly, Bevin handed Marshall a summary of a revised British plan for withdrawal. The British would withdraw their military in four phases and would end their civilian administration and their mandatory responsibilities for Palestine on May 15, 1948. And if partition was voted in, they did not want anyone from the U.N. commission to arrive in Palestine before May 1 because it would not fit in with their withdrawal plans.90 This would leave a transition period of only two weeks.
Finally the day of the vote arrived. On November 29, tension built as the world waited to hear the General Assembly’s decision. A small number of votes would decide the future of Palestine. When the French delegate voted yes, cheers broke out in the Assembly Hall from the audience who had packed into every seat. The final vote was announced by Chairman Trygve Lie: 33 in favor of partition, 13 opposed, and 11 abstentions. An overwhelming majority of the General Assembly had done what a few days earlier had seemed impossible. A combination of pressure, reasoning, and the joint unity of the Soviet and American delegations on the issue had all contributed to getting other originally undecided or opposed delegations to change their vote to favor partition.
As the votes were being counted, a shiver went down Emanuel Neumann’s spine. He felt the spirit of Theodor Herzl haunting the proceedings. In 1897, Herzl, the father of modern Zionism, had made the incredible prediction that a Jewish state would be founded within fifty years. Here it was, fifty years later.91
As the Arab delegates heard the vote, many stormed out of the hall. Azzam Bey and Prince Faisal stood up, “their faces twisted with anger,” the journalist Ruth Gruber wrote, and “their white robes and headdresses shook as they motioned to the delegates from the other Arab states to follow them. At the door in Arabic-accented English, Azzam Bey shouted, ‘Any line of partition drawn in Palestine will be a line of fire and blood.’”92
The British had abstained, although the world knew that Bevin and Attlee were hoping that partition would never be put into place. The British strategy had backfired. “Mr. Bevin is our sworn enemy,” Weizmann noted. “…He has twice tried to break us: first through the Anglo-American Committee, which produced a verdict quite contrary to his expectations; and a second time by handing us over to the UN, which he hoped might bring about the liquidation of the whole affair. But in fact it has done just the opposite.”93
In the streets of New York, pandemonium reigned. A few days later, crowds overflowed a theater booked for the celebration, taking their jubilation into the street. They were addressed by Mayor William O’Dwyer of New York and the major American Zionist leaders. Outside, five thousand people packed the adjacent blocks, as the speeches were broadcast over loudspeakers to those who could not get into the hall. The police estimated that twenty thousand people had sought admission into a venue that held only a quarter of that amount. Speaking to the crowd, Emanuel Neumann credited Harry Truman for the achievement, telling his audience, “If we now have this decision of the United Nations, it is due in very large measure, perhaps the largest measure, to the sustained interest and the unflagging efforts of President Truman.”94
Despite his ambivalence and anger about the pressure coming from the “extreme Zionists” and New York’s Jewish community, Truman was glad then and in the future to take the credit. Congressman Emanuel Celler sent him a telegram of praise, thanking him for “the effective work you did” in getting partition passed. Celler added, “I shall make it my business to emphasize the wonderful work you did when I address New York audiences as well as other audiences.”95
A few days later, Eddie Jacobson and Abe Granoff paid Truman a visit at the White House. They just wanted to thank him. After Granoff said, “Thank you and God bless you,” it was Jacobson’s turn to speak. “Thank you,” he told his old friend, “for the wonderful efforts to establish a Jewish State.”96 Truman then said, Jacobson wrote in his diary upon leaving the White House, that “he and he alone was responsible for swinging the votes of several delegations.”97 When he returned home, Jacobson wrote the president that he and Granoff were writing an unsigned editorial for a Jewish paper. It would, he assured the president, inform the world of his role in getting a positive vote on partition. The editorial appeared in the B’nai B’rith magazine, National Jewish Monthly.98
Truman had waited until the last possible moment to bring the full weight of the White House to secure the votes for partition. He had hoped that a simple announcement that the United States intended to vote for it would be enough. When it became obvious that it would not, he moved quickly and gave permission and encouragement for direct pressure to be applied to assure its passage. Partition, which had been sanctioned by the United Nations, was apparently the only answer for the Jews still in DP camps, American public opinion supported it, and so did his close advisers in the White House. He felt the pressure to act both politically and morally. And he realized that if partition went down, there was one person who would be blamed for it: Harry Truman.