On August 31, 1947, a majority report of the UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) recommended that the region be partitioned into an Arab and a Jewish state, which, however, should retain an economic union. Jerusalem and its environs were to be international. These recommendations were substantially adopted by a two-thirds majority of the UN General Assembly in Resolution 181, dated November 29, 1947, a decision made possible partly because of an agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union on partition and partly because pressure was exerted on some small countries by Zionist sympathizers in the United States. All the Islamic Asian countries voted against partition, and an Arab proposal to query the International Court of Justice on the competence of the General Assembly to partition a country against the wishes of the majority of its inhabitants (in 1946 there were 1,269,000 Arabs and 678,000 Jews in Palestine) was narrowly defeated.
Approximately 150,000 Arabs remained in Israel when the Israeli state was founded [after a widespread and coordinated Zionist campaign of terror, confiscation and expulsion]. This group represented about one-eighth of all Palestinians and by 1952 roughly the same proportion of the Israeli population. The majority of them lived in villages in western Galilee. Because much of their land was confiscated, Arabs were forced to abandon agriculture and become unskilled wage labourers, working in Jewish industries and construction companies. As citizens of the State of Israel, in theory they were guaranteed equal religious and civil rights with Jews. In reality, however, until 1966 they lived under a military jurisdiction that imposed severe restrictions on their political options and freedom of movement.
[ Britannica ]