Background material on General Assembly Resolution 194 (III)
11 December 1948
mideastweb.org
Introduction
Hostilities between Arabs and Jews began almost immediately following adoption of the UN Partition Plan ( mideastweb.org ). Until the departure of the British, fighting was conducted on the Arab side mostly by Palestinian irregulars and volunteers organized by the Arab League and Fawzi El-Kaukji. Jordan's Arab Legion participated in fighting at the Gush Etzion block, near Hebron.
Almost unbelievably, active fighting, including massacres on both sides, in the middle of the city of Jerusalem and in broad daylight, took place under the eyes of the British Army, and the Army usually did nothing until after the fact.
On May 15, 1948, when the British had departed, the Jordan Legion, Egyptian, Syrian and Iraqi armies entered the fight. At first, the Arab side had the upper hand, especially in the siege of Jerusalem and in the south, where the Egyptian army made considerable inroads. However, as the war progressed, and particularly after the first armistice in June 1948, the Jews succeeded in arming themselves and forming an army out of the Hagannah, Irgun and Lehi underground groups, and the advantage fell to the Jewish side. Even in early stages of the war, Arab Palestinians began abandoning villages and towns under attack. Arab flight increased as the war went on, owing partly to a massacre at Deir Yassin conducted by the Irgun and Lehi, and a few subsequent massacres at Al-Dawaima, Lydda and elsewhere conducted by the Hagganah, partly to a deliberate policy introduced by the Israeli government toward the end of the war, and owing partly to the example of Arab community leaders who fled, percipitating panic, and partly, at first, to encouragement by Arab leadership to leave Palestine for the duration of the war. By the end of 1948, there were hundreds of thousands of refugees outside the borders of Palestine.
Resolution 194, presented below, was meant to deal with this problem as well as others, with a view to ending the war. The mediation mechanism proposed eventually resulted in an Armistice. Provisions regarding the refugees and economic aid for reconstruction were never implemented. The resolution concerning internationalization of Jerusalem, based on Resolution 181, had been a dead letter from the beginning. Earlier, the Arab side had refused to consent to it, now, neither side would. |
