8 Israel and the Arab-Israeli Conflict
a world where racism is officially deplored by virtually every organized government , only one non-African nation has opened its doors and its arms . The quiet humanitarian action of the State of Israel , action taken entirely without regard to the color of those being rescued , stands as a condemnation of racism far more telling than mere speeches and resolutions .
The Arab-Israeli conflict was avoidable .
Shortly after its founding in 1945 , the United Nations took an interest in the future of mandatory Palestine , then under British rule . A UN commission ( UNSCOP , or the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine ) recommended to the General Assembly , by two-thirds majority , a partition of the land between the Jews and the Arabs . Neither side would get all it sought , but a division would recognize there were two populations in the land — one Jewish , the other Arab — each meriting a state of its own .
On November 29 , 1947 , the UN General Assembly , by a vote of 33 in favor , 13 opposed , and 10 abstaining , adopted Resolution 181 , known as the Partition Plan .
Acceptance of the Partition Plan would have meant the establishment of two states , but the surrounding Arab countries and the local Arab population vehemently rejected the proposal . They refused to recognize a Jewish claim to any part of the land and chose war to drive the Jews out . This refusal has always been at the heart of the conflict — then and now .
( Indeed , some Arab countries and Iran , not to mention Palestinian terrorist organizations like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad , still do not recognize Israel ’ s very right to exist , whatever its final borders , even seventy-five years after the state ’ s establishment .)
On May 14 , 1948 , the modern State of Israel was founded . Winston Churchill captured its significance :
The coming into being of a Jewish state … is an event in world history to be viewed in the perspective not of a generation or a