Illustration Jaimee Haddad. Archives L'Orient Today/Wikimedia/AFP
Jerusalem, July 4, 1947. In the storied halls of the YMCA building, a cultural landmark in Mandate Palestine, members of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) gathered to hear testimony from representatives of the Jewish Agency.London had formally requested the U.N. General Assembly to develop recommendations for a “future government of Palestine.” In response, the U.N. established an ad hoc committee tasked with finding a solution to the escalating tensions between Zionists and Arabs. This was far from the first attempt. For decades, international commissions had followed one another, achieving little success.Yet, on this day, one man’s enthusiasm made him stand out. David Ben-Gurion, who would later become Israel’s first prime minister, described the new committee as a departure from the past. After enduring “a...
Jerusalem, July 4, 1947. In the storied halls of the YMCA building, a cultural landmark in Mandate Palestine, members of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) gathered to hear testimony from representatives of the Jewish Agency.London had formally requested the U.N. General Assembly to develop recommendations for a “future government of Palestine.” In response, the U.N. established an ad hoc committee tasked with finding a solution to the escalating tensions between Zionists and Arabs. This was far from the first attempt. For decades, international commissions had followed one another, achieving little success.Yet, on this day, one man’s enthusiasm made him stand out. David Ben-Gurion, who would later become Israel’s first prime minister, described the new committee as a departure from the past. After...