After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I, Palestinian territory came under British control. At the end of World War II, However, the British preferred to renounce their mandate and put the area in the hands of the UN, because it was no longer possible for the British Kingdom maintain order in those territories. The United Nations established a Special Committee, the UNSCOP, United Nations Special Committee on Palestine, in order to find a business solution that would provide long term stability. UNSCOP's proposal was to create two States, one Arab and one Jewish, and to consider Jerusalem corpus separatum under the supervision of the United Nations.
From a territorial point of view, the partition proposal favoured slightly the Jewish State, that would cover the 56% of the total territory; from the point of view of population, Palestine was then occupied for 2/3 from Arabs and one for 1/3 by Jews: The 2% of the Jews, i.e. 10.000 people, After partition they wouldn't have found neither in Israel, nor in the international area of Jerusalem; the 31% of the Arabs, i.e. 405.000 people, would not have been found to live nor in Arabic, nor in Jerusalem.
The reactions to this proposal were disparate and required lengthy negotiations started: the Jews accepted willingly the plan, While the Arabs rejected it from the beginning; the UN had to resort to more votes to get to the final version of the 29 November 1947, the so-called "UN resolution 181", the UNSCOP plan is approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations.
Immediately followed clashes and skirmishes between the Jewish and Arab population; the departure of British troops in may ' 48 the conflict expanded and gave rise to the Arab Israeli war –.
The "catastrophe", so it is called in Arabic this conflict, led to the origin of the State of Israel, that less than two years after approval of the partition plan extended over an area almost twice that laid down by the UN and the remnants of the planned Palestinian State was annexed to Transjordan and Egypt.
The "two-State solution", the theory that to resolve the conflict in Palestine's need to create two separate States brokered for Arabs and Jews, is considered far more than just a hypothesis, and denotes all the despair and the drama of a coexistence impossible and utopian peace.
Maria
 
