United Nations Special Committee on Palestine
On 29 November 1947, the General Assembly adopted Resolution 181, based on the UNSCOP majority plan (with only slight modifications to the proposed recommendations).
The team consisted of Ralph Bunche, Constantin Stavropoulos, John Noel Reedman, Henri Vigier and Alfonso Garcia Robles.
The Special Committee was given wide powers to ascertain and record facts, to investigate all questions and issues relevant to the problem of Palestine, and to make recommendations.
[10] The committee's final composition was: Australia, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Guatemala, India, Iran, Netherlands, Peru, Sweden, Uruguay and Yugoslavia.
UNSCOP first heard evidence from two British representatives and the head of the Jewish Agency's Political Department, Moshe Shertok, who submitted documents and were questioned by the committee's members.
Jewish Agency officials also ensured they met with Jews who spoke the native languages of committee members such as Swedish, Dutch, Spanish, and Persian.
During the committee's visit, it was accompanied by Jewish Agency officials acting as liaisons: Abba Eban, David Horowitz, and Moshe Tov.
During UNSCOP visits to Arab areas, they were often met with empty streets, as well as locals who refused to answer their questions and even fled restaurants when they arrived.
[15] It then held 12 public hearings from 4 to 17 July, during which 31 representatives from 12 Jewish organizations gave testimony and submitted written depositions, totaling thirty-two tons of material.
[20] The committee also noted the intense security and draconian laws in Palestine as a result of the ongoing Jewish insurgency conducted mainly by the Irgun and Lehi and to a lesser extent the Haganah.
In addition, the Emergency Regulations imposed by the British, which allowed for detentions, confiscations, deportations, and trials before military rather than civil courts with no right to counsel, the admission of Henry Gurney, the Chief Secretary of Palestine, that the Palestine administration was spending nearly $30 million a year for police purposes, as well as the British insistence that their officials appear before UNSCOP hearings in private and a demand that they be informed in advance about who would be giving testimony, also left a negative impression.
On June 16, the day of UNSCOP's first formal hearing, a British military court sentenced three Irgun fighters, Avshalom Haviv, Meir Nakar, and Yaakov Weiss, to death for their role in the Acre Prison break.
Committee members discussed the sergeants when meeting with Begin, and refused an Irgun request to call Haviv, Nakar, and Weiss to testify before them over allegations of torture.
[21] UNSCOP also followed the events surrounding the SS Exodus, an illegal immigration ship carrying 4,554 Jewish Holocaust survivors which was intercepted by the Royal Navy.
Some Committee members were present at the port of Haifa and witnessed British soldiers violently removing resisting passengers from the ship so they could be deported back to Europe.
The committee completed its work in Palestine by hearing the eyewitness testimony of the Reverend John Stanley Grauel,[22] who was on the Exodus, convinced UNSCOP to reverse an earlier decision[which?].
[16] UNSCOP then flew to Geneva, and on August 8, a subcommittee began a week-long tour of displaced persons camps in American and British occupation zones in Germany and Austria, and interviewed Jewish refugees and local military officials.
The Ad Hoc Committee on the Palestinian Question was appointed by the General Assembly, and two plans were drawn up for the Governance of Palestine on the termination of the Mandate.
