United Nations Palestine Commission

The United Nations Palestine Commission was established by United Nations Resolution 181 in 1947. This resolution called for the partition of Palestine into separate Arab and Jewish states, with Jerusalem designated as an international city. The commission's task was to oversee the selection and establishment of provisional governments for these states.

The context for this resolution was the growing tensions between Arab and Jewish communities in Palestine, which had been under British mandate since 1922. Following World War II, Britain referred the complex issue of Palestine to the UN. The UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) investigated and proposed either partition or a single binational state. The partition plan, largely based on UNSCOP's majority report, was accepted by the Jewish community but rejected by the Arab community, leading to violence shortly after its passage. The idea of partition had been previously explored by the Peel Commission in 1937, though it was deemed infeasible at the time.123