The UN, Palestinians, Israel and a stalled two-state solution

EVER since the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states in 1947, the UN has been inextricably linked to the fate of Palestinians, with the organisation meeting this week hoping to revive the two-state solution.

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Here is a timeline on the issue:

In November 1947, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 181 dividing Palestine - which was then under British mandate - into Jewish and Arab states, with a special international zone for Jerusalem.

Zionist leaders accepted the resolution, but it was opposed by Arab states and the Palestinians.

Israel declared independence in May 1948, triggering the Arab-Israeli war which was won convincingly by Israel the following year.

Around 760 000 Palestinians fled their homes or were expelled - an event known as the “Nakba,’ Arabic for “catastrophe,” which the United Nations only officially commemorated for the first time in May 2023.

In the aftermath of the Six-Day War of 1967, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 242, which called for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from territories occupied during the conflict, including the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem.

But linguistic ambiguities between the English and French versions of the resolutions complicated matters, making the scope of the required withdrawal unclear.