h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

McKay, the source I gave indicates that a huge number of countries backed the two-state solution (including Canada, Czechoslovakia, Guatemala, Netherlands, Peru, Sweden, Uruguay and the USSR), of which the United States was only one. Britain was actually in a minority and her proposal was unpopular. It was the United Nations that brokered the formation of a Jewish state within Palestine. So pressure on the UK came from the international community, not just the United States. And much of that pressure seems to have been because of sympathy for the Jewish people because of the holocaust.

Interestingly, in one of his essays George Orwell chides the British Left for what he regarded as their rather unthinking pro-Zionism and argues that the rights of the Arabs were being ignored. A minority view on the Left at the time, it's interesting that it became the majority one a few decades later.

The Left sides with victims, or at least perceived victims. When Israel was a beleagured state surrounded by anti-Semitic enemies, it was deemed "worthy" of support. After 1967 when Israel trounced the Arabs, the Palestinians became the "victims".

Zagreb - you have to go further back to understand this one - When they were splitting up the old Ottoman Empire the UN decided to bin ideas like Kurdistan and Armenia, and created a state that inclded modern day Palestine, Israel, and Jordan. Eventually the Arab rulers of the area chose to have an independant state under a British Mandate. Herein the rub - under a British mandate - thus the Arab states expected Britain to decide on the future of the area.

When the UN chose a different answer to the problem - and I'm sorry I would say that this was due to American pressure within the Assembly ~ they lay the seeds of the future troubles.