Principle and Expediency: The State Department and Palestine, 1948

According to the conventional wisdom, the United Nations in effect established the state of Israel, doing so when the General Assembly voted for the partition of Palestine in November of 1947. President Truman ardently and consistently believed in a Zionist state, and hence was taken aback when Warren R. Austin, American Ambassador to the Security Council, in March 1948 announced that the United States was abandoning partition and supporting a UN trusteeship.

Volume 2, Number 4 (1978)