Eastern Mediterranean 1947: UN Partition Plan for Palestine

10 Jul 1945 Levant Crisis 31 Mar 1946 Resumption of the Greek Civil War 17 Apr 1946 French Evacuation of Syria 7 Aug 1946 Turkish Straits Crisis 29 Nov 1947 UN Partition Plan for Palestine

The British Mandate for Palestine had become increasingly unstable since the 1930s, facing first Arab and then Jewish insurgencies against British rule. Unable to deal with the situation, Britain turned to the United Nations, which in 1947 recommended the partition of Palestine into separate independent Arab and Jewish states.

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Main Events

15 Sep 1946 Bulgarian People’s Republic ▲

On 2 September 1946 the Kingdom of Bulgaria held a referendum on becoming a republic, with official results showing 96% of the vote in favor of the change in government. However, by this point the monarchy held no real power, having been effectively taken over by the Bulgarian Communist Party in the Fatherland Front coup of 9 September 1944. Nonetheless, the referendum provided the pretext to proclaim the Bulgarian People’s Republic on 15 September 1946 and send the nine-year-old Tsar Simeon II and his mother Queen Giovanna into exile. in wikipedia

26 Jan 1947 End of British occupation of Egypt ▲

In 1947 Britain ended the occupation of Egypt which it had maintained during the Second World War and withdrew most of its troops to the Suez Canal Zone, where it still maintained a military base. This act did little to stem anti-British sentiment in Egypt, which continued to grow after the War. in wikipedia

10 Feb 1947 Cession of the Dodecanese to Greece ▲

In February 1947, at the Treaty of Paris, the Allied Powers formally ceded the Italian Dodecanese Islands to Greece. Britain, which had already committed to evacuate its army from Greece by the end of March, handed over the administration of the islands to the Greek authorities that same year. After a short period of military administration, Greece annexed the islands as the General Administration of the Dodecanese in January 1948. in wikipedia

12 Mar 1947 Truman Doctrine ▲

In an address to United States Congress, President Harry Truman outlined his policy of supporting “free peoples” against “attempted subjugation armed minorities or by outside pressures”, insisting the US assist them “primarily through economic and financial aid”. The speech was an attack on Soviet attempts to destabilize Greece and Turkey, leading the US to give financial support to those nations. As a general policy of containing Soviet expansionism by backing those it threatened, this so-called Truman Doctrine would become the foundation of US foreign policy during the Cold War. in wikipedia

15 May–3 Sep 1947 UN Special Committee on Palestine ▲

At the request of the British government, the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) was created in May 1947 to make recommendations under article 10 of the UN Charter concerning the future government of what was then the British Mandate for Palestine. In June–July the UNSCOP—made of up of representatives from Australia, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Guatemala, India, Iran, Netherlands, Peru, Sweden, Uruguay, and Yugoslavia—visited Palestine, where it met with Zionist and Jewish groups but was shunned by Arab groups, who held that the Palestinian Arabs’ natural rights were self-evident and should not be subject to investigation. After this the UNSCOP released a report that proposed either the partition of Palestine—supported by eight members with the exception of India, Iran, and Yugoslavia—or the creation of a federal union. The Jewish side accepted the partition plan while the Arab side rejected both proposals. in wikipedia

18 Jul 1947 Interception of Exodus 1947 ▲

British policy to limit Jewish immigration to Palestine led to the interception of about 50,000 migrants between 1945 and 1948, with the most notable instance being in July 1947, when the former packet boat Exodus 1947 approached the British Mandate for Palestine with an unprecedented 4,515 Jewish refugees from Europe aboard, but was caught by and jammed between two Royal Navy destroyers. The migrants were then placed on three British ships and, after France refused to accept their involuntary deportation, placed in internment camps in the British occupation zone in Germany. In terms of public relations, this incident proved to be a disaster for Britain and a great success for the Zionist cause, and by 1949 most of the refugees involved had successfully made their way to the new state of Israel by one means or another. in wikipedia

15 Aug 1947 Partition of India ▲

Under the direction of Lord Louis Mountbatten of Burma, the last Viceroy of the British Indian Empire, British India was partitioned into the sovereign states of the Dominion of Pakistan and the Union of India. As Pakistan was designated as a Muslim homeland, the religiously mixed provinces of Punjab and Bengal were also divided between the two new states. The princely states were advised to choose between Pakistan and India, rather than retain independence. in wikipedia

29 Nov 1947 UN Partition Plan for Palestine ▲

In November 1947 the United Nations adopted UN General Assembly Resolution 181 (II), recommending that the United Kingdom terminate the Mandate of Palestine, partitioning it between two independent states—one Arab and one Jewish—and a Special International Regime for the city of Jerusalem. The United Kingdom was to withdraw no later than 1 August 1948, with the two states coming into existence two months after the withdrawal. The partition plan was accepted by the Jewish Agency for Palestine but rejected by Arab leaders and governments. in wikipedia

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Eastern Mediterranean 1947: UN Partition Plan for Palestine

29 November 1947

Road to Independence