Sovereignty or Security?

Despite frenzied attempts by the Arab world to clog the machinery of the United Nations, the General Assembly voted last Saturday to partition Palestine and give the Jewish people a homeland. The thirty-three-to-thirteen ballot brought truculent howls from the delegates of six Arab states and the threat of a Holy War to preserve the sacred sterility of Palestine's soil. With the passage of this first important legislative decree the United Nations reaches a vital turning point in its history.

Eager to push forward with a plan for dividing Palestine, the United Nations has yet to offer an acceptable method of insuring the partition's success. The authors of the plan place their hope for peaceful government during the early life of the nascent states in an armed, locally recruited militia. In the event of an Arab uprising, any native constabulary would prove hopelessly inadequate to keep peace among the warring factions. With this in view, the U.N. cannot neglect the possibility of a concerted Arabian effort to crush the new Jewish state. By failing to provide an effective security program the U.N. opens the door for bitter civil war.

While the question of a Security Council-sponsored police force has been raised in the U.N. many times, the motion has always stalled on the two-headed, green-eyed problem of sovereignty and national interest. Palestine security posed the very same problems that have always sapped the United Nations of its intended strength. The U.S. didn't want to offend, any more than possible, the wealthy owners of Arabian oil lands; any concentration of Russian troops in the Middle East seemed strategically unwise; and small nations refused to sacrifice their tiny armies to the cause of international police. The stakes riding on a successful partition of Palestine demand a safeguard beyond the efforts of a weak state militia. As the originator of the plan, the United Nations can do the Jewish people a great service and fulfill its purpose in the eyes of the world.