Australia and the Palestine Question, 1947–1949: A New Interpretation

Abstract

By 1947, the conflicting national aspirations of the Arab majority and Jewish minority within Palestine had developed into an intractable problem. The responsibility for the political future of Palestine fell upon the fledgling United Nations and thereby weighed upon the shoulders of all its constituent states. This was a time, however, when the nations of the globe were emerging from the shadow of a world war, and were re-evaluating their construction of foreign policy. In this thesis I utilise the Palestine Question as a prism through which to explore the nuances in the Australian conception of postwar diplomacy.