When First Nations Don't Count: H.V. Evatt and the Erasure of Palestinian Rights

Abstract

As Minister for External Affairs in the Chifley Government, Herbert Vere Evatt played a pivotal role at the United Nations in securing the partition of Palestine and recognition of the State of Israel. These endeavours were represented by Evatt and in subsequent commentary as exemplifying Evatt's commitment to justice. This article questions how this could be the case when Evatt, in steering partition through UN forums, knowingly disregarded the opposition to partition by the Arab majority of Palestine. The article explains this apparent contradiction by challenging the view that Evatt's principal motivation was humanitarian. While acknowledging that Evatt's sympathy for Jewish suffering was sincere, it is argued that Zionism was, for Evatt, a cause that enabled him to advance an imperialist Australian foreign affairs agenda in the United Nations. It was this agenda that led him to support partition against the wishes of Palestinians. The article argues that partitioning Palestine under the auspices of the UN advanced Australia's foreign policy goals in two ways. It helped Evatt to validate the UN as an institution capable of delivering outcomes beneficial to medium powers, thus advancing Australia's strategic goal of a regional zone of control comprising Australian-administered UN trusteeships over non-state territories of the southwestern Pacific. Second, it undermined the UN's doctrine of self-determination by subordinating the sovereignty of Indigenous peoples to a system of mediated imperialism.