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In early 1947 David Ben Gurion holds a series of talks with British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin in which he tries to persuade him to turn the wheel back to the period preceding the White Paper. Ben Gurion wants British rule to continue until the Haganah is ready for a war with the Arabs.

February 2: The British demand that the Yishuv leadership play an active role in eliminating terror. The demand is rejected by the Jewish Agency. Golda Meyerson reminds High Commissioner Sir Alan Gordon Cunningham of his promise to assist the Jewish Agency in its fight against the Revisionists.

February 7: In official talks with the Arabs and unofficial talks with representatives of the Jewish Agency, the "Bevin plan" is proposed: the creation of a Palestinian state divided into Arab and Jewish cantons, whose political character was to be that of a condominium regime for five years. After the program has been rejected by both sides, Britain announces on 18 February that she intends to hand over the problem of Palestine to be decided by the United Nations.

April: David Ben Gurion checks the weapons that are at the Haganah's disposal. The supply is meager and has been obtained by brave and daring acts. Only a few of the commanders have military experience. Ben Gurion also clarifies the strength of the armies of the neighboring Arab states.

April 22: The American section of the Jewish Agency submits a formal request (to the UN) for permission, as a matter of "simple justice", to be heard on behalf of the Jewish people.

May 5: UN General Assembly Resolution 104: The first committee grants a hearing to the Jewish Agency.

May 8: Abba Hillel Silver takes his seat at the UN between Cuba and Czechoslovakia to make the first presentation of the Jewish case.

May 12: Moshe Shertok, head of the Political Department of the Jewish Agency presents the Jewish case before the UN.

May 22: David Ben Gurion, chairman of the Jewish Agency, presents the Jewish case before the UN.

May 31: The first illegal immigrant ship, the Yehuda Halevi, arrives and brings immigrants from Marocco.

July 4: David Ben Gurion appears before UNSCOP.

July 8: Dr. Chaim Weizmann appears before UNSCOP.

July 18: The British intercept the illegal immigrant ship Exodus 1947 with 4.515 persons aboard and tow it into the Haifa harbor. The immigrants are transferred to three deportation ships, which sail west but not to Cyprus. On 29 July, the ships will reach Port-de-Bouc in southern France. The passengers are allowed to go free but refuse to disembark. Several UNSCOP members, then in Palestine, witness the transfer of refugees to British ships for return to France. The Exodus affair becomes "one of the greatest displays of the Jewish struggle, of Jewish pride, and of the connection with the Land of Israel", according to David Ben Gurion.

August: The demand of the Exodus passengers to be returned to Palestine and their refusal to disembark attract international attention.

August: Zionist underground activists from Iraq arrive in Palestine on a secret direct flight from Baghdad, led by Shlomo Hillel.

August 21: The British announce that the three deportation ships at Port-de-Bouc will sail to Hamburg.

September, 7: British transport ships disembark the illegal immigrants of the Exodus 1947 by force in the port of Hamburg in front of hundreds of photographers and reporters. The passengers are returned to DP camps in Germany.

September: Moshe Shertok and Emanuel Neumann participate on a regular basis in the work of the UN Ad Hoc Committee on Palestine and of Sub-Committee 1 which is appointed to prepare a detailed plan for the partition of Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state.

October 1: Dr. Chaim Weizmann addresses the Ad Hoc Committee. "The character of our movement as a genuine effort at national liberation and society building cannot be obscured by slanders ... I will not discuss whether it is a good or a bad fortune to be a minority in an Arab state. I would leave the Jews of Iraq, of Yemen and Tripoli - and the Christian Assyrians of Iraq to pronounce upon that ... a world which does not hear us in this moment of our agony would be deaf to the voice of justice and human feeling which must be raised loud and clear if the moral foundations of our society are to survive."

October 2: Abba Hillel Silver before the Ad Hoc Committee. He states the position of the Jewish Agency on the UNSCOP majority proposal. While Silver makes clear that partition is not the Jewish Agency's proposal and that it will entail "a very heavy sacrifice on the part of the Jewish people", he says that the Agency will be prepared, albeit reluctantly, "to assume the responsibility of recommending aquiesence to the supreme organs of our Movement ... because the proposal makes possible the immediate establishment of a Jewish State. Silver rejects the UNSCOP minority report, because "under the constitutional provisions envisaged in this recommendation, Palestine would become an Arab state with two Jewish enclaves, in which the Jews would be in the frozen position of a permanent minority of the population."

October 2: David Ben Gurion addresses the Elected Assembly of Palestine Jews.

November: Shortly before the UN vote, Ben Gurion makes a serious effort to seek the neutrality of Abdullah ibn Hussein of Transjordan. The king's secret interlocutor is Golda Meyerson (Meir) in her capacity as head of the Political Department of the Jewish Agency.

November: The United Nations General Assembly discusses the UNSCOP report. Intensive Jewish-Zionist effort is made to obtain a majority of two-thirds for the partition plan. Jewish Agency representatives are allowed to attend all meetings of Sub-Committee 1 and to offer comments, opinions, and suggestions on every point under discussion.

In December, the first arm deal is concluded with Czechoslovakia for the purchase of 10.000 rifles, 4.500 heavy machine guns, and 3 million rounds of ammunition. The Soviet Union sanctions sales. The weapons were manufactured for the Germans at the Skoda arms factory. The deal is concluded by Ehud Avriel, head of Rechesh (Haganah arms purchasing mission).

December 13: The Jewish Agency denounces what is becoming a rising tide of Irgun reprisals, calling them "spectacular acts to gratify popular feelings."

December 29: Two ships with 7,000 immigrants are boarded by British forces before they can reach the coast of Palestine. The Jewish Agency wants to avoid confrontation with the British, knowing that immigration will open on 1 February 1948. Ben Gurion gives orders that there has to be no resistance.

In 1947, the last non-Zionist member of the Jewish Agency Executive, Georg Landauer, resigns.
After the death of Louis Marshall in 1929 (shortly after the Zürich session) the 50 percent participation of non-Zionists in the Jewish Agency and its organs does not work in practice and the Zionist element becomes preponderant. This development is accelerated because of WW II and the Holocaust, in which many of the communities to be represented in the Jewish Agency are completely destroyed. The supreme organs of the Jewish Agency, Council and Administrative Committee do not meet after 1939. With the resignation of Georg Landauer, the Executives of the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organization become in fact identical, and so do the two organizations themselves.

Chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive: David Ben Gurion.

Chairman of the Executive of the World Zionist Organization - Jewish Agency, American Section: Dr. Abba Hillel Silver.

Treasurer of the Jewish Agency: Eliezer Kaplan.

Chairman Youth Aliyah Department:Hans Beit, Georg Landauer, Moshe Kol.

Chairman Settlement Department: Eliezer Kaplan.

Chairman of the Immigration Department: Moshe Shapira.

January: American president Harry S. Truman replies to a letter from Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia and states he is convinced that the Jews in Palestine have no interest in expelling Arabs or in using Palestine as a base for aggression against neighboring Arab states.

January 31: The British announce the formation of security zones - British enclaves for self-protection (Bevingrad) - and the evacuation of British women and children from Palestine.

In the beginning of 1947 the Palestine Symphony Orchestra invites the American Jewish composer Leonard Bernstein to conduct a series of concerts.

February 18: British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin announces that Britain is referring the Palestine mandate to the UN without specific recommendation. A week later he accuses U. S. president Truman before the House of Commons of causing an impasse in solving the Palestine question by playing domestic politics with the issue.

March 1: Etzel attacks the British Officers' Club in Goldschmied House in Jerusalem, resulting in 12 fatalities and over 20 wounded.
On the next day the British impose martial law on Tel Aviv and part of Jerusalem, which lasts 15 days.

March 17: Etzel member Moshe Barazani is sentenced to death for possession of a hand grenade.

April 2: The British Government informes the Secretary-General of the United Nations of its intention to place the question of the future government of Palestine on the agenda of the next regular session of the General Assembly.

April 16: The Etzel members Mordechai Alkachi, Dov Gruner, Yehiel Dov Dresner and Eliezer Kashani are hanged in Acre jail. Five days later Meir Feinstein's and Moshe Barazani's blow themselves up in the Jerusalem prison, a few hours before the execution. On 29 June, the Etzel members Ya'akov Weiss, Avshalom Haviv and Meir Necker are hanged in Acre jail. As a reprisal, Etzel hangs two British sergeants on the following day near Netanya.

April 27: The special session of the UN General Assembly meets and takes up the first stage which is known as the "battle of the agenda", a major effort by the five Arab member states (Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Syria) to prejudge the UN decision at the outset. They demand that a additional item, "The termination of the Mandate over Palestine and the declaration of its independence", be appended to the session's agenda. This proposal is defeated.

First concert with the Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra and Leonard Bernstein in Tel Aviv.

May 1: Leonard Bernstein introduces his "Jeremiah" symphony in the Edison Cinema in Jerusalem.

May 4: Etzel breaks into Acre prison and frees 41 prisoners.

May 14 : A Special Assembly of the United Nations meets to discuss the British proposal to set up a special committee which will prepare a proposal for discussion on the Palestine question at a meeting of the UN Assembly in the autumn of 1947. Soviet UN representative Andrei Gromyko tells the General Assembly of the Soviet support of the Zionist aspirations for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. At the end of the discussion the special assembly appoints a committee of 11 members under the chairmanship of the Swedish judge Sandstrom, and instructs it to prepare a solution to the Palestine problem.
UNSCOP and the Partition Recommendation.

June: The UNSCOP arrives in Palestine.

July 29: The British execute three Etzel members by hanging.

July 30: In response, Etzel hangs the two British sergeants it held hostage.

July 31: British soldiers run amok in Tel Aviv, shooting indiscriminately. Five Jewish bystanders are killed and over 20 are wounded.

August 10 and 14: Resuming terrorist activity after a long lull. Arabs attack a coffee house in Tel Aviv and violent incidents occur at the Jaffa - Tel Aviv boundary.

September 1: The UNSCOP report is published. It recommends the prompt ending of the British mandate and the partition of Palestine into and Arab state, a Jewish state, with an international zone containing the holy places.

September 23: The recommendations of the UNSCOP are placed on the agenda of the second regular session of the General Assembly which meets in New York in September. It was first dealt with by the Ad Hoc Political Committee. The Ad Hoc Committee appoints Sub-Committee 1 to deal with the majority report and Sub-Committee 2 (consisting almost exclusively of Arab and Moslem states) to work on the minority report.

September 26: British Colonial Secretary Arthur Creech-Jones announces before the UN Ad Hoc Committee that his country is prepared to relinquish the Mandate for Palestine.

A U. S. position paper of the State Department recommends that the Negev should be included in the prospective Arab state. The UNSCOP report assigned most of the Negev to the prospective Jewish state.

October: Tension mounts in the Upper Galilee when a Syrian force penetrates Palestine. It is routed by the British. A Palmach battalion reinforces the settlements in the region.

October 11: U. S. delegate, Ambassador Herschel V. Johnson tells the General Assembly that his country supports the UNSCOP majority plan.

October 13: Semyon K. Tsaraapkin announces the support of the Soviet delegation for the partition plan.

Confrontations take place between members of the Haganah, Etzel and Lehi involving the prevention of mounting posters, fights and even kidnappings.

November 25: The Ad Hoc Committee votes on the reports of both sub-committees. The plan worked out by Sub-Committee 2 was defeated by 29 votes to 12, with 16 abstentions. The partition plan presented by Sub-Committee 1 is approved by the substantial majority of 25 to 13, with 17 abstentions and 2 members absent, or by just one vote short of the two-thirds majority of those present and voting that would be needed for acceptance in the final vote to be taken by the General Assembly.

November 29: Vote of the General Assembly on the partition plan (UN Resolution 181).

The Palestinian Arabs reject the partition plan.

November 30: Two Egged busses are attacked by Arabs, resulting in six fatalities and many wounded. These incidents are considered the start of the War of Independence.

Several days after the UN partition decision, anti-Jewish incidents occur in Yemen and Syria.

The U. S. announces a total embargo on arms shipments to the Middle East.

Great Britain announces its intention to terminate its responsibilities under the mandate on 15 May 1948. British forces in Palestine will be used only in self-defense and will not intervene in fighting breaking out between Palestinian Arabs and Jews.

In 1947 seven Dead Sea Scrolls are found by Bedouins in various locations west of the Dead Sea. Eliezer Sukenik acquires three of them (the Second Isaiah Scroll, the Thanksgiving Psalms and the War Scroll) for the Hebrew University. Sukenik will be the first person to suggest that the scrolls belonged to the Essenes.

UN documents 1947.

April: Rudolf Höss, commandant of the Auschwitz extermination camp, is sentenced to death after a trial in Warsaw. He is executed on a site overlooking the camp.

Catholic, Protestant and Jewish representatives meet at the Swiss town of Seelisberg and issue the Ten Points of Seelisberg.

Marie Syrkin (1899-1989), writes "Blessed Is the Match", a study of Jewish resistance to the Nazis during WWII.

U. S. Jewish novelist Saul Bellow writes "The Victim" in which he studies antisemitism through the story of a relationship.

Arthur Miller, U. S. playwright, writes "All My Sons".

Roman Vishniac (1897-1990), photographer, publishes "Polish Jews", a collection of his photographs of Polish Jewish life before the Holocaust.

Arnold Schönberg (1874-1951), Austrian composer, writes "Ein Überlebender aus Warschau" - "A Survivor from Warsaw", which recounts the fate of Polish Jews under Nazism.

Violinist Yehudi Menuhin is the first Jewish artist after WWII to perform with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, a controversial figure because he held his position during the Nazi era.

Mikhail Botvinnik, Soviet chess master, wins the first world chess title.

The Aleppo Synagoge is attacked and set on fire by rioters. More than ten years the fact is concealed that the Aleppo Codex is saved.

Gerty Theresa Radnitz Cori is awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.