21 - Was Partition of Palestine Fair?

Summary

The International Court of Justice arguably has a power to use extralegal considerations in certain situations and to make decisions on the basis of fairness. When the General Assembly debated the possibility of voting a partition of Palestine, the predominant strain of reasoning was that the Arab and Jewish parties could not come to agreement between them, hence the only solution was to divide the territory. Only a few states mention considerations of fairness. Some said that Jewish statehood had been promised during the League era. Some said that atrocities committed against European Jewry under National Socialism, on top of discrimination and attacks stretching farther back in history, warranted Jewish statehood in Palestine. In response, it was argued that the population of Palestine should not lose its territory because the Jews had been mistreated in Europe. A number of states proposed that Western states should accept substantial number of Jews from Europe. That alternative was opposed by those advocating Jewish statehood in Palestine.