Today in Asian History: U.N. Partition of Palestine

On November 29, 1947, the U.N. General Assembly passed a Partition Plan for Palestine.

General Assembly Resolution 181 was meant to resolve the Arab-Jewish conflict by dividing Palestine into separate Jewish and Arabs states: Israel and Palestine.

The partition plan was never fully enacted, since all of the neighboring Arab states attacked Israel as soon as it declared its independence.

The past 60 years have seen aggrieved Arab and Muslim groups take up arms against the Israelis and their western allies around the world. They often cite the Jewish-Palestinian problem as a root cause of their anger.

Photo by GPO / Getty Images.