What was the role of the United Nations?
Caught between Arab and Jewish demands and short on funds, the Attlee government of Great Britain in February 1947 declared its Mandate in Palestine "unworkable" and referred the matter to the youthful UN. That body, with a surprising show of agreement between blocs, created a special committee of eleven member states to study the issues and report its recommendations.
The UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) was the first truly independent tribunal to examine the Palestine question. In the summer of 1947 UNSCOP traveled to Palestine and held hearings in Jerusalem. The Palestine Arabs boycotted it. After completing its work in Palestine, the Committee drew up its recommendations in Geneva. Committee members were especially moved by the plight of desperate Holocaust survivors denied entry to Palestine.
Countering Arab claims that there was no basis for Jewish statehood in Palestine, in July 1947, the Christian Maronite Archbishop of Beirut, Lebanon, Ignatiyus Mubarak, presented a memorandum to UNSCOP in which he advocated the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine:
... to consider Palestine and Lebanon as parts of the Arab world would amount to a denial of history.
He also declared that:
Lebanon as well as Palestine should remain as permanent homes for the minorities in the Arab world.
It was Australia’s External Affairs Minister, Dr H.V. Evatt, chairing the UN committee dealing with Palestine in 1947, played a large role in persuading the UN to adopt partition. UNSCOP's report concluded that the League of Nations pledge of a Jewish national home had never been fulfilled, as Jewish immigration and land purchases had been artificially restricted by the British Mandate authorities.
The committee recommended an end to the British Mandate and the partitioning of the area. However, the partition plan was directed only at the 23% of the original Mandate that was left after the British subdivision that gave 77% to create the Arab territory of Transjordan. Of the remaining 23%, 56% was allocated to a Jewish state, 42% to an Arab state, and an international zone for the holy places in and around Jerusalem was allocated 2%. Summarizing this in a table:
http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_indepe ... n_role.php