On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 181, recommending a plan for Arab and Jewish states, an economic union, and a separate international regime for Jerusalem. The vote was 33 in favor, 13 against, and 10 abstentions. It gave the plan clear international political support, but as a General Assembly recommendation it did not itself establish either state, impose final borders, or create the proposed institutions.
What the Assembly voted for
Resolution 181 recommended that the United Kingdom and UN member states adopt and implement the plan for the future government of the country. It set out proposed boundaries, transition steps, and a UN commission intended to help carry out the arrangements. The resolution’s full text begins with its recommendation and then lays out the plan. The document text distinguishes the Assembly’s decision to recommend the plan from the plan’s proposed future actions.
The recorded tally was 33–13–10. The United States and Soviet Union both voted in favor; the UN’s index for the second session lists the plenary meetings, outcome, and adoption date. That broad vote gave the recommendation substantial diplomatic weight. It did not transform a recommendation into a treaty or a binding territorial judgment.
Political legitimacy and legal force
The vote demonstrated that a majority of UN member states supported partition as a proposed arrangement. The Jewish Agency accepted the majority proposal as a basis for establishing a state despite reservations, while Arab leaders rejected partition and argued for one independent Arab state. Those responses mattered politically: the proposal offered a negotiated framework recognized by the international organization, but the parties did not jointly implement it.
The General Assembly can make recommendations under the UN Charter. Resolution 181 used that form: it recommended adoption and implementation to the United Kingdom and member states. The plan’s own calls for transition and a commission did not make the Assembly itself a government with authority to transfer sovereignty. Historical summaries sometimes call the vote an international mandate; the precise point is that it was an important political endorsement and recommendation, not a self-executing legal creation of Israel or an enforceable border agreement.
What followed
The British Mandate ended in May 1948, and Israel declared independence. The proposed Arab state and UN regime for Jerusalem were not established under Resolution 181. A 1949 U.S. government report describes the UN vote as a recommendation and records that no government was established for the proposed Arab state. Thus the vote remains central to the diplomatic history of Israel’s founding, while its terms must be distinguished from the later facts of sovereignty, control, and armistice. For the map and institutional provisions, see the partition map and economic union.