The Reminiscences of Zafrulla Khan — Page 199
183 REMINISCENCES OF SIR MUHAMMAD ZAFRULLA KHAN as he had apprehended, his instructions were changed and he voted for Partition. So, through these manoeuvres, enough votes were shifted to push the resolution through. I have stated the exact facts and to our minds it has been absolutely clear, and, nothing has so far happened to shake us from that belief, that it was the personal intervention of President Truman that brought about these changes. It is obvious that these three votes, Haiti, Liberia and the Philippines, could only have yielded to pressure from Washington. Partition was carried through, and one significant aspect was that that has been the only major question since the United Nations was set up on which the USSR and the USA voted on the same side. Why was the USSR anxious to carry through the Partition? Subsequent events have shown that the USSR has not been too fond of the Zionists or of the State of Israel. What they wanted was to drive a wedge between the United States and the Arab states. That has been one major consequence, so far as the West is concerned, of the manoeuvring that then took place. It might be asked what was President Truman's interest? President Truman's interest was perfectly obvious. He was a candidate for the presidency the following year and his position was none too strong. There was a rift in his own party. The Jewish vote was a very strong factor in the situation. Eventually, he won the election and won it easily, but in the fall of 1947 Jewish support must have appeared vital to him. It is only fair to add, however, that President Truman had been consistent in his support of the Zionists. Mr. Ernest Bevin, the Foreign Minister of the United Kingdom, is on record as having stated in the Assembly that in 1946 he had almost succeeded in bringing about an agreement between the representatives of the Jewish Agency and the Arabs, in London, on the basis of restricted immigration into Palestine, when President Truman's open telegram, urging the British to permit immediate admission of 100,000 Jewish immigrants into Palestine, forced his hand and destroyed the last chance of a settlement. The setting up of the State of Israel has created a problem in the Middle East which there appears to be no means of resolving. It is all very well to urge that the State of Israel is an established fact; but that