The decision by the United Nations to partition Palestine in 1947 was a major watershed in Middle Eastern history. Not only did it lead to the creation of the state of Israel, a Zionist aim since the eighteenth century, but it set in stone a conflict which still to this day remains unresolved.Although the decision aimed to appease both Jews and Arabs, who laid differing ideological claims to the same territory and, as James L. Ilsley stated, was the ‘best of four unattractive and difficult alternatives,’ it failed.