Ever since November 1947, when the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 181, known as “the Partition Plan” — calling for the establishment of “Independent Arab and Jewish states” along with a special international status (corpus separatum) for Jerusalem and an economic union in what had been Palestine under the British Mandate — the two-state paradigm has been the accepted international formula for resolving the conflict between Palestinian Arabs and Jews in Palestine.
Although there had been a minority among the Jews — the associates of Prof. Martin Buber in the Ichud and Brith Shalom movements and the Hashomer Hatzair movement — which had advocated a bi-national state, that version of a one-state solution was rejected by a clear majority of the Jews, who preferred an independent Jewish state in part of Palestine.
At the time, the Zionists who represented the Jewish nationa
read more ...