When Doc Evatt Did a Job on Palestine 1

Over the next few days I intend posting - in 4 parts -  an important critique  - Justice Evatt & Palestine: The Limits of Justice - of Australian Labor Party icon, Herbert Vere Evatt's role in the United Nations' partition, and therefore criminal destruction, of Arab Palestine, in 1947. It was written in the 80s by Caroline Graham, Lecturer in Politics, Faculty of Humanities, University of Technology in Sydney. I am not aware, apart from my own posts on the subject of Evatt, of any other attempt to take Evatt to task on this subject. Given that pro-Zionist Labor politicians invariably cite Evatt's deplorable role in the partition of Palestine, and hence the creation of the state of Israel, with pride, Graham's critical analysis should be read by everyone. Here is Part 1:

"To his old man Foreign Affairs was big time. Heroic figures. A conversation on that subject nearly always led to talk of Herb Evatt, his father's only Australian hero, to talk of his work for the UN, and how Robert Menzies had finally destroyed him."

That quotation from a short story by Greek Australian Angelo Loukakis encapsulates the strong feelings of reverence, combined with sympathy, aroused by Evatt in most progressive Australians. He was our hero, destroyed by the forces of darkness and reaction.

On the question of Palestine, added to Evatt's status and martyrdom has been the fact of bipartisan and broad support for the state of Israel, and so it is easy to understand why no serious critique of Evatt's leading role in the UN's 1947 decision to partition Palestine has been attempted.

It is an unpleasant task to highlight the mistakes of a national hero, but perhaps it is time to take a closer look at what was in my view the greatest blunder of his career, in both a moral and a legal sense. His active promotion of the partition of Palestine was the action in which he swung furthest away from his own ideal of a reign of international law and justice, implemented through the UNO.

The decision itself and the process at the UN by which it was reached actually subverted international law and basic legal principles. This did not go unremarked - a number of eminent international lawyers and diplomats, amongst others, expressed serious reservations and criticisms at the time.

With the benefit of hindsight we also have to add that partition has never been implemented. It is and always was unworkable without the support, however lukewarm, of the parties to the conflict. Then as now, neither Jewish nor Palestinian leaders have supported partition except for temporary tactical reasons and Evatt's "fair and just solution" still lies on the drawing board of history.

Before embarking on a detailed critique, I will summarize Evatt's role in what he once called "the Palestine job." It is well known that Evatt, as Minister for External Affairs in the Curtin-Chifley Labor government from 1941-9, had thrown himself wholeheartedly into the postwar formation of the UNO. By the late 40s his reputation there was such that he knew he could achieve the honour of becoming President of the UN General Assembly (UNGA). Indeed, he won the presidential election of 1948. That he regarded this as the crowning point of his career is emphasised by the epitaph on his gravestone in Canberra Cemetery, which reads simply : "President of the United Nations General Assembly." None of his other distinctions rates a mention.

He had been a candidate for the 1947 presidential term but had narrowly lost out to Dr Aranha of Brazil. Evatt made it known that he would stand for 1948, and Dr Aranha wanted to assist him. Naturally it would be in Evatt's interest to take some prominent and helpful role in the UN arena in the lead up to the next presidential election. He was already chairing the UN Atomic Energy Commission in 1947, but the urgent problem of Palestine emerged early in that year as the most dramatic and high profile issue facing the UN in the next UNGA session.

In April 1947 the British Labour Government, unable to stem the violence in Palestine dumped the problem in the lap of the UN. The UNGA immediately convened a Special Session to confront this development. After a fortnight of hearing from Palestinian, Arab and Jewish leaders a Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) was appointed to investigate further and to recommend a solution to the next regular UNGA session in September. (It's important in this narrative to know that the UNGA's regular annual session are from September to the end of November, and that it is obviously extremely difficult to convene at any other times.)

UNSCOP consisted of representatives from 11 middle ranking or third world nations, including Australia. After conducting hearings in Palestine, boycotted by Palestinians and other Arabs in accordance with their rejection of the UN's competence to decide on the future of Palestine, it completed its report on 31st August.

"It recommended unanimously that the mandate should be terminated and independence granted at the earliest possible date; that the economic unity of Palestine should be preserved; that the sacred character of the Holy Places should be safeguarded and access to them assured; and that the General Assembly should immediately make an international arrangement for solving the urgent problem of the 250,000 displaced European Jews in Europe... A majority of 8 members proposed the partition of Palestine into independent Arab and Jewish  States and an International City of Jerusalem, to be administered under permanent United Nations trusteeship... A minority of 3 members [India, Iran Yugoslavia], all with substantial Moslem populations, called for an independent federal government with Jerusalem as [its] capital and for Arab and Jewish states having jurisdiction over such matters as education, social services, public health and agriculture... The Arab Higher Committee rejected both partition and a federal state. The Jewish Agency accepted UNSCOP's majority proposal as an 'indispensable minimum'." (1. Margaret Arakie, The Broken Sword of Justice, 1973, pp 55-58)

The significance of the partition proposal for both Arabs and Jews is clearly spelt out by British historian David Hirst:

"For the Zionists, the Partition Plan ranked, as a charter of legitimacy, with the Balfour Declaration which., in their view, it superseded and fulfilled. Certainly, it was a no less partisan document. Palestine comprises some 10,000 square miles. Of this. the Arabs were to retain 4,300 square miles while the Jews, who represented one-third of the population and owned some 6% of the land, were allotted 5,700 square miles. The Jews also got the better land; they were to have the fertile coastal belt while the Arabs were to make do, for the most part, with the hills. Yet it was not the size of the area allotted to the Jews which pleased them - indeed, they regarded it as the 'irreducible minimum' which they could accept - it was rather the fact of statehood itself. Conversely, it was not merely the size of the area they were to lose, it was the loss pf land, sovereignty and an antique heritage that angered the Arabs. The Partition Plan legitimized what had been, on any but the most partisan interpretation of the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate, illegitimately acquired. The past was, as it were, wiped out. Overnight, the comity of nations solemnly laid the foundations of a new moral order by which the Jews, the great majority of whom had been in Palestine less than 30 years, were deemed to ave claims equal, indeed superior, to those of the Arabs who had lived there from time immemorial." (2. The Gun & the Olive Branch: The Roots of Violence in the middle East, 1977, p 132)

Equally important, as Hirst points out, "the proposed Jewish State was... to contain more Arabs - 509,780 - than Jews - 499,020." (ibid, p 133)

On receiving the UNSCOP's recommendation the General Assembly formed a special Ad Hoc Committee on the Palestinian Question (on which all member states were represented) to reach a conclusion on the recommendation as soon as possible. Divided into 3 sub-committees, the first (consisting of 9 member states, including the US and the Soviet Union) supported partition. The second (composed of the 6 Arab states, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Colombia) drew up plans for a unitary state. The third focused on the forlorn hope of reconciliation.

Evatt was elected chairman of the committee. In his own words: "This committee was to be a committee not of any limited character but comprising everyone of the 57 nations. Accordingly its decisions would probably determine the final UN Assembly vote on the Palestine question and indeed this proved to be the case... (Dr Aranha) assured me that they were all anxious that I should accept the responsibility: " I tell you most sincerely that the future of the Assembly depends on the success of the Palestine Committee and in the interests of the United Nations I ask you to do the job." ... I was also alive to the fact, and Dr Aranha did not attempt to conceal it, that the Palestine job was the "hot potato" in the Assembly and that quite a few of the delegates were expressing the opinion, perhaps the hope, that the proceedings of the committee would end in deadlock... I was greatly impressed by Aranha's point of view. He was tremendously keen on success of the 1947 Assembly. It seemed to me that if the United Nations could reach a fair and just solution of the Palestine question, it would greatly increase its own power and prestige; it would make history well worth making." (3. H.V. Evatt, Task of Nations, 1949, pp 129-131)

As history shows, the Special Committee was expertly and energetically chaired by Evatt, often holding as many as 3 meetings a day in order to rush proceedings through by the end of November. This time the Palestinians and other Arabs decided not to boycott the process, and the committee heard from a lengthy line-up of speakers from both sides.

Towards the end of November the committee began to vote on a number of divisive issues. First came the question of whether the UN had jurisdiction to reach a decision on the future government of Palestine - this was only narrowly won. A proposal that the whole question of jurisdiction should be put before the International Court of Justice was narrowly lost.

Then came the vital vote on the UNSCOP partition plan. Of the 57 votes, 25 were in favour and 13 against, with 19 abstentions. Thus the partition proposal went forward to the UNGA and it was a foregone conclusion that this voting pattern would be closely repeated in that forum, with exactly the same membership. However, in accordance with UN by-laws, this was a vote on a substantive issue and so would require a majority of two-thirds of the votes of the plenary Assembly.

It is not within the scope of this paper to describe the pressures which were now exerted on a small and dependent member states like Haiti, the Philippines and Liberia to change their votes. This scandal has been documented by a number of writers and participants. The taking of the vote was postponed by the UN Secretary General Trygve Lie apparently for no other reason than to allow the arm-twisting to continue behind the scenes. At the last possible moment before the 1947 UNGA session was adjourned, partition won by 33 votes to 13, with 10 abstentions.

In Australia, Evatt has received voluminous praise for his role in all this. For example, Alan Renouf has written: "no better testimony exists to Evatt's pursuit of justice than the part he played in the establishment of the state of Israel." (4. Let Justice Be Done: The Foreign Policy of H.V. Evatt, 1983) The Zionist lobby were especially fulsome: for example, Rieke Cohen, then president of the Women's International Zionist Organisation branch in Australia, called Evatt "an instrument of God for the rebirth of the Jewish state." (5. Quoted in Max Freilich, Zion in Our Time: Memoirs of an Australian Zionist, 1967) Evatt's biographers - Kylie Tennant, Alan Renouf, and Allan Dalziel - do not suggest that there could be another side to the story, let alone that Evatt may have erred.

However I will take up three issues surrounding the case, and Evatt's role, which I think call for critical analysis. These are the problem of Evatt's bias or interest in the outcome; the question of UN competence to recommend partition of a country; and the question of the failure of the Special Committee to refer the case to the International Court of Justice. (Evatt was in a position to exert a major influence in deliberations on the latter two issues).

Next installment: Evatt's Bias