Page 318

with which it would remain for two years, while Britain exercised its Mandate and during which 150,000 Jewish immigrants would enter Palestine.

The minority report, submitted by the committee’s three members representing Iran, India, and Yugoslavia, recommended forming a centralized federal state with one constitution, one president, and one nationality. It would consist of two governments, each enjoying autonomous independence, and immigration would be confined to the Jewish region according to its capacity for absorption. The Jewish state was allotted 14,200 square kilometers of land, the finest and most fertile land in Palestine. The Arab state was allotted 12,000 square kilometers. Under this partition, Arab lands and properties amounting to two-thirds of the area of that region would fall within the Jewish section, while less than 100,000 dunams of Jewish land and an insignificant portion of its properties would fall within the Arab section. Thus, with a stroke of the pen, the Jews would have plundered and usurped the Arabs’ properties and lands, and the Jewish colonial conspiracy would have tightened its grip over the largest, most fertile, and most important part of the Palestinian country. Under this partition, the Jewish state would include the lands of the Marj Ibn Amer, the eastern Galilee, most of the coastal plains, the Beersheba and Negev region, about half a million Palestinian Arabs, and slightly more than half a million Jews.

In reality, the committee’s report comprised two reports, one from the majority and the other from the minority. When they were submitted to the United Nations, it held its regular annual session at Lake Success in September 1947, and they were examined during that session in the presence of delegations from the Arab states and the delegation of the Arab Higher Committee for Palestine.

The news published and broadcast about the report of the Committee of Inquiry had inflamed the Arabs in Palestine and the other Arab countries and caused anxiety and agitation among the people. The Arab Higher Committee promptly formed delegations and sent them to European and American capitals to publicize the cause of Palestine and convey its grievance to the outside world, hoping that this would produce a shock leading to pressure on the states and governments involved with Zionism so that their representatives at the United Nations would not adopt resolutions approving partition.

Voices rose from Palestine and the Arab and Islamic countries denouncing partition and demanding freedom and independence for Palestine. The Arab Committee received a flood of telegrams