Czechoslovakia and the UN Partition Plan for Mandatory Palestine as Evidenced in the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs Archives
2017
Abstract
The paper uses documents from the Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to look into a largely disregarded aspect of Czechoslovakia-Israel relations. Before the State of Israel was declared, Czechoslovakia intervened significantly in Middle East politics: in the Spring of 1947, the Czechoslovak ambassador to the UN went high-profile during the General Assembly meeting where establishment of the Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) was green-lit.
This body was authorized to examine the state of affairs in Palestine and to submit a proposal to solve the crisis. Karel Lisický was the Czechoslovak representative with the UNSCOP who co-authored the essential proposal advocating the creation of two independent sovereign states.