1943 - Una propuesta británica de partición de Palestina

Resumen

Fuente:

Proposed Scheme for the Partition of Palestine (1943)

Fuente: Cabinet Papers por intermedio de MESH

From: Western imperialism in the Middle East 1914-1958 by David Kenneth Fieldhouse, p. 204

Between July and December 1943 a sub-committee of the cabinet discussed possible variants on the Peel and Woodhead partition plans. Its membership inclined it towards partition and to Zionist demands. The chairman was Herbert Morrison, Home Secretary, and other members were Leo Amery (Secretary of State for India), Colonel Stanley of the Colonial Office, Sir Archibald Sinclair, Liberal and Minister for Air, and R.K. Law, Permanent Secretary of the Foreign Office. All these except Stanley and Law were committed Zionists, as was Churchill, instigator of the sub-committee, who had picked its members. The committee considered many and varied points of view, but concentrated mainly on a revised partition plan produced by Amery. The military mind, represented by the Chiefs of Staff, the Cairo command, and Lord Wavell as Viceroy of India, was determined that Britain must retain control of an undivided Palestine. It would be the only based in the eastern Mediterranean, other than Cyprus, that did not depend on the goodwill of an Arab state. Eden at the Foreign Office and R.G. Casey, the (Australian) Minister of State in Cairo, both opposed partition vehemently. The Foreign Office concentrated attack mainly on Amery's proposal that the Jews should be allocated the Negev in place of those parts of Galilee which they would have had under the Peel scheme, mainly due to the likely Arab repercussions. Casey and Stanley preferred the White Paper principles, but if partition was essential wanted the area allocated to the Jews reduced. Eventually a revised partition scheme was worked out and got support from a majority of the committee. Casey wrote a dissenting paper and the Foreign Office remained hostile to any change in the White Paper.

Partition was thus back on the agenda. The sub-committee's scheme was accepted by the cabinet in January 1944 as being "as good as any that could be devised," but they decided to shelve further consideration until after the American elections later that year, and also until after the end of the European war.

Mapa original de la propuesta

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