Foreign Relations of the United States, 1948, The Near East, South Asia, and Africa, Volume V, Part 2

501BB. Palestine/2–1148

Draft Memorandum by the Director of the Office of United Nations Affairs (Rusk) to the Under Secretary of State (Lovett)¹

top secret

[Washington,] February 11, 1948.

Subject: Shift to New Position on Palestine

The following represents an attempt in the confines of two pages to suggest the logic by which this Government or other Governments might contrive a “New Look” at the Palestine problem:

1. The reports of the Palestine Commission indicate that the Assembly’s resolution of November 29, 1947, recommending the partition of Palestine, is unworkable without resort to war.

a. War by the Arab States against the Jewish State (and United Nations Representatives in Palestine).

b. War by the United Nations against:

(1) Arabs in Palestine.

(2) The Arab States.

2. The United Nations Charter clearly empowers the Security Council to use force to resist aggression and keep international peace. The Charter does not authorize force to be applied within a State to compel a political settlement. The purpose of the United Nations is to keep peace, not to make war.

3. To relax arms embargoes in order to arm the Jewish and Arab State militias will merely give official UN approval and aid to interracial and inter-religious war in Palestine. Such wars in the light of history have always been the most fanatic and destructive of human and moral values.

4. The United States Representative in the Security Council or the representative of some other government (the Chinese have already offered their services in this respect) could point to the absence of Security Council forces under Article 43, ask the members if the Security Council is prepared to go to war in Palestine or to approve war in Palestine, and suggest that before so perilous a step is taken the whole problem be reviewed by a special session of the General Assembly to be held, pursuant to the spirit of the resolution of November 15, 1947, in Europe. Meanwhile the Security Council would call on the Jewish Agency, the Arab Higher Committee, the Mandatory Power, and the Arab Governments, to give immediate pledges to keep the peace in Palestine. The Security Council would further call on the Mandatory Power to continue its administration in Palestine and its responsibility for the maintenance of law and order pending further recommendations to the Mandatory Power from the special session of the General Assembly.

The foregoing analysis is couched in terms of United Nations interest and does not take into account such obvious items of United States interest as:

(1) the inevitability of Soviet participation in any United Nations international force sent to Palestine,

(2) the strategic loss to the United States of Arabian oil supplies,

(3) the loss to the United States of Arab friendship, which is an essential prerequisite to utilizing the Middle East as a strategic lodgement for eventual United States security forces.

4 [5]. At the special session of the Assembly the United States would be prepared to support a trusteeship for Palestine to replace the present mandate until such time as the Jews and Arabs could work out a modus vivendi. Such a trusteeship could either be administered by the United Nations as is contemplated for the proposed trusteeship of Jerusalem or it could be administered by the remaining three of the Allied and associated Powers of World War I—the United States, the United Kindom, and France.

1. Drafted by Mr. McClintock.