| UN Security Council Resolution 46 | |
|---|---|
| Date | April 17 1948 |
| Meeting no. | 279 |
| Code | S/723 (Document) |
| Subject | The Palestine Question |
Voting summary | 9 voted for None voted against 2 abstained |
| Result | Adopted |
| Security Council composition | |
Permanent members | |
Non-permanent members | |
United Nations Security Council Resolution 46, adopted on April 17, 1948, having referenced the goals of United Nations Security Council Resolution 43 and noting that the United Kingdom was still the Mandatory Power in charge of the Palestinian territory, it was responsible for ending the conflict there and every member of the Council was due to aid it achieve such a peace.
The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization that was tasked to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international co-operation and be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations. The headquarters of the UN is in Manhattan, New York City, and is subject to extraterritoriality. Further main offices are situated in Geneva, Nairobi, and Vienna. The organization is financed by assessed and voluntary contributions from its member states. Its objectives include maintaining international peace and security, protecting human rights, delivering humanitarian aid, promoting sustainable development and upholding international law. The UN is the largest, most familiar, most internationally represented and most powerful intergovernmental organization in the world. In 24 October 1945, at the end of World War II, the organization was established with the aim of preventing future wars. At its founding, the UN had 51 member states; there are now 193. The UN is the successor of the ineffective League of Nations.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 43, adopted unanimously on April 1, 1948, notes the increasing violence and disorder in Palestine, calling upon the Jewish Agency for Palestine and the Arab Higher Committee to make representatives available to the Security Council to arrange and enforce a truce. The Resolution further calls upon armed Arab and Jewish groups to cease acts of violence immediately.
The United Kingdom (UK), officially the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, informally as Britain, is a sovereign country lying off the north-western coast of the European mainland. The United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state, the Republic of Ireland. Apart from this land border, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the North Sea to the east, the English Channel to the south and the Celtic Sea to the south-west, giving it the 12th-longest coastline in the world. The Irish Sea lies between Great Britain and Ireland. With an area of 242,500 square kilometres (93,600 sq mi), the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world. It is also the 22nd-most populous country, with an estimated 66.0 million inhabitants in 2017.
With that in mind it called on both the Arab Higher Committee and the Jewish Agency to immediately cease all acts of violence, to stop outside combatants from entering the territory, stop importing weapons, refrain from any immediate political activity which might later prejudice the rights or claims of any community, cooperate with the British authorities and refrain from any actions which might endanger the safety of any of the Holy Places in the territory. The resolution further called upon all the countries of the region to cooperate in any way they could, particularly enforcing the movement of fighters or arms into the territory.
The Arab Higher Committee or the Higher National Committee was the central political organ of the Arab Palestinians in Mandatory Palestine. It was established on 25 April 1936, on the initiative of Haj Amin al-Husayni, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, and comprised the leaders of Palestinian Arab clans and political parties under the mufti's chairmanship. The Committee was outlawed by the British Mandatory administration in September 1937 after the assassination of a British official.
The resolution was adopted by nine votes to none, with abstentions from the Ukrainian SSR and Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 30 December 1922 to 26 December 1991. Nominally a union of multiple national Soviet republics, its government and economy were highly centralized. The country was a one-party state, governed by the Communist Party with Moscow as its capital in its largest republic, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Other major urban centres were Leningrad, Kiev, Minsk, Alma-Ata, and Novosibirsk. It spanned over 10,000 kilometres east to west across 11 time zones, and over 7,200 kilometres north to south. It had five climate zones: tundra, taiga, steppes, desert and mountains.
