For this notion of Jerusalem's future has always appealed most forcefully to the Holy See, and, even now, when it has no chance of getting it, the Vatican is eager for a sovereign stake in Jerusalem not altogether unlike its stake in Rome. Greece has its own parallel Orthodox Christian reasons for taking a similar position. Not having pressing internal reasons of their own to disagree, the northern Europeans go along with the antique formula. It was none other than the German foreign minister who, representing the chair of the European Union, wrote the Foreign Ministry of Israel announcing Europe's fidelity to the idea of the internationalization of the city, as if the internationalization of anything has worked in our time. And, in South Africa, President Nelson Mandela himself has met with Arafat to discuss ways in which the U.N. General Assembly, through its nearly defunct Trusteeship Council, could help the Palestinians put international law on the side of their claim to statehood.
Some history is in order.
As the Arabs vehemently argued then, the Partition Plan resolution did not come from the Security Council and therefore lacked the force of international law. The Jews, by contrast, saw an opportunity to achieve at least some sovereignty and security for the Yishuv, and they wisely took Resolution 181 as the moral sanction that it was for the achievement of the Zionist idea. The partition of 1947 was, in fact, the second partition of Palestine. The first had been effected 26 years prior. The territory initially envisioned for the Jewish National Home by both the Allied Supreme Council of the Paris Peace Conference and the government of Great Britain, to which was awarded the Mandate for Palestine, straddled both sides of the Jordan.