Final Drafts of the Mandates For Mesopotamia and Palestine: For the Approval of the Council of the League of Nations.

Presented to Parliament by Command of His Majesty

Published by His Majesty's Stationary Office, London, 1921

About this Item

Rare collection of original documents relating to the Palestine Question 1917-1947. Octavos, 3 volumes, unbound. Scarce and desirable. With the failure of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry in 1946, the British government requested the General Assembly of the United Nations to form a special committee to investigate the Palestine problem. The United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) arrived in Palestine on 15 June 1947. The Arab Higher Committee believed UNSCOP to be pro-Zionist, and so boycotted proceedings, although some members of the AHC did meet the committee in a private capacity. While UNSCOP was in Palestine, the SS Exodus arrived in Haifa with Jewish Displaced Persons seeking to illegally immigrate to Palestine, and some have stated that it was this that changed the UN's outlook to support the creation of the state of Israel. UNSCOP's final recommendations delivered on 3 September 1947 at Geneva, supported the termination of the Mandate, with a majority of committee members recommending the partition of Palestine into two separate states, and a minority favouring a federal union with Jerusalem as its capital. Having originally boycotted UNSCOP, the Arab Higher Committee must have realised that there would have been only a very small window of opportunity between the Geneva meeting and the General Assembly vote to present their case, and so compiled the present lot. Published on 1 October 1947, it contains 46 different documents, 'Includ[ing] the texts of correspondence, memoranda and notes submitted to British and international authorities by Palestinian Arab organisations between 1921 and 1947' (Khalidi & Khadduri). One assumes it was distributed to members of the UN General Assembly prior to the vote on Partition; this occurred on 29 November 1947, with the General Assembly adopting Resolution 181, based on the UNSCOP majority plan (with only slight modifications to the proposed recommendations). We can only trace 11 copies in institutions: 2 in the UK (LSE and Oxford), 8 in the US, and one at the American University of Beirut (Khalidi & Khadduri 780).

Seller Inventory # 95293

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Final Drafts of the Mandates For Mesopotamia and Palestine: For the Approval of the Council of the League of Nations.
• Publisher: His Majesty's Stationary Office, London
• Publication Date: 1921
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Seller catalogs:
  • First Edition