Remembering Yugoslavia’s Role in the UN Special Committee on Palestine

• In Event: Yugoslav Configurations I: Close Encounters of the Third Way: Memory of Yugoslav Transnational Solidarity with the International Left

Abstract

In May 1947, the newly formed General Assembly of the United Nations was tasked with investigating the ongoing crisis in Palestine and, if possible, devising a solution concerning the future government. To this end, the UN established the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), made up of representatives of eleven countries, including the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia, to investigate the facts on the ground and make their recommendations to the General Assembly.  While the recommendation drafted by the committee, today remembered as the UN Partition Plan for Palestine, is frequently invoked by scholars and activists seeking to understand the ongoing conflict, what is forgotten is that there was no consensus on the notion of partition. This paper explores the work of UNSCOP, with a special emphasis on the alternative proposal, drafted by the representatives of three of the committee’s members (Yugoslavia, Iran, and India), and the wartime and post-war experiences of these three member states that made them skeptical of partition. 

Author

• Kevin Kenjar, U of Rijeka (Croatia)