United Nations General Assembly Resolution 303, adopted on 9 December 1949 by a vote of 38 to 14 (with 7 abstentions), restated the United Nations' support for a Corpus separatum in Jerusalem. Notably the voting pattern was significantly different from that of the

United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine The United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine was a proposal by the United Nations to partition Mandatory Palestine at the end of the British Mandate. Drafted by the U.N. Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) on 3 September 1947, the Pl ...

vote two years earlier, with many states swapping sides. In particular, all the Arab and Muslim countries voted for the corpus separatum, having voted against the 1947 plan; conversely the United States and Israel voted against the corpus separatum, having previously supported it. The outcome of the vote was "even more decisive than the vote for the Partition Plan itself".

Background

In July 1920, at the

San Remo conference The San Remo conference was an international meeting of the post-World War I Allied Supreme Council as an outgrowth of the Paris Peace Conference, held at Castle Devachan in Sanremo, Italy, from 19 to 26 April 1920. The San Remo Resolution ...

, a Class "A" League of Nations mandates over Palestine was allocated to the British. On 29 November 1947, the

UN General Assembly The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA or GA; , AGNU or AG) is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations (UN), serving as its main deliberative, policymaking, and representative organ. Currently in its 79th session, its powers, ...

adopted a resolution recommending "to the United Kingdom, as the mandatory Power for Palestine, and to all other Members of the United Nations the adoption and implementation, with regard to the future government of Palestine, of the Plan of Partition with Economic Union" as Resolution 181 (II). The plan contained a proposal to terminate the

British Mandate for Palestine The Mandate for Palestine was a League of Nations mandate for British administration of the territories of Palestine and Transjordanwhich had been part of the Ottoman Empire for four centuriesfollowing the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in Wo ...

and partition Palestine into "independent Arab and Jewish States and the Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem." On 14 May 1948, the day on which the British Mandate over Palestine expired, the

Jewish People's Council The Jewish National Council (JNC; , ''Va'ad Le'umi''), also known as the Jewish People's Council and the General Council of the Jewish Community of Palestine was the main national executive organ of the Assembly of Representatives of the Jewis ...

gathered at the Tel Aviv Museum, and approved a proclamation which declared ''

the establishment In sociology and in political science, the term the establishment describes the dominant social group, the elite who control a polity, an organization, or an institution. In the Praxis (process), praxis of wealth and Power (social and politica ...

of a

Jewish state In world politics, Jewish state is a characterization of Israel as the nation-state and sovereign homeland for the Jewish people. Overview Modern Israel came into existence on 14 May 1948 as a polity to serve as the homeland for the Jewi ...

Eretz Israel The Land of Israel () is the traditional Jewish name for an area of the Southern Levant. Related biblical, religious and historical English terms include the Land of Canaan, the Promised Land, the Holy Land, and Palestine. The definitions ...

, to be known as the

State of Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

''. On 11 May 1949, Israel was admitted to membership in the United Nations. Early in December 1949, Israel declared Jerusalem as its capital, despite controlling only West Jerusalem, with East Jerusalem (including the Old City) being controlled by Transjordan.

The resolution

The full text of the Resolution:

Response

Israel

Voting record for Resolution 303(IV)

Comparison versus 1947 Partition Plan

Bibliography

* Hahn, Peter L. "Alignment by Coincidence: Israel, the United States, and the Partition of Jerusalem, 1949–1953." The International History Review, vol. 21, no. 3, 1999, pp. 665–689. * Abraham Bell and Eugene Kontorovich
Palestine, Uti Possidetis Juris, and the Borders of Israel

References

{{Authority control 1949 in law 1949 in the United Nations December 1949 Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the United Nations United Nations General Assembly resolutions concerning Israel 04/303