The United Nations Plan to Establish an Armed Jewish Force to Implement the Partition Plan (United Nations Resolution 181)

On 29 November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly voted to partition Palestine into two independent states, Jewish and Arab, with Jerusalem as a corpus separatum under international control. The General Assembly then established the United Nations Palestine Commission to implement partition. Amongst other things, the Commission was to establish “armed militias” under UN supervision to help realise the plan. The analysis examines various aspects of the sequence of events related to this idea, from its conception in the General Assembly to its death in February 1948. It demonstrates that under the militia clause, the United Nations intended to rely on the Jews’ main military organisation – the Haganah – to establish the Jewish state and shows how and why this plan went awry despite the converging interests of the Jews and the United Nations.