FOIAWEAR — THE PARTITION / The Estimate Written the Night Before the Vote Tee

FOIAWEAR / ARCHIVE SERIES 065

THE PARTITION — on 28 November 1947 the Central Intelligence Agency issued ORE 55, an estimate on what would happen if the United Nations voted to partition Palestine. The General Assembly voted the next day.

The summary opens with a flat prediction: “Armed hostilities between Jews and Arabs will break out if the UN General Assembly accepts the plan to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab States as recommended by the UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP).” It sizes the coming fight — “The largest number actively engaged against the Jews at any one time will probably be between 100,000 and 200,000” — and then makes the call the file is remembered for: “Without substantial outside aid in terms of manpower and material, they will be able to hold out no longer than two years.”

Two years. The estimate was wrong about almost everything that followed, and it was written with total confidence. It also reads, from the far end, like a weather report from a different century: the Russians were “actively but secretly assisting the Jews”; “large ships filled with illegal immigrants have been leaving the Rumanian port of Constanza”; British officers suspected Soviet “lumber ships” leaving the Black Sea “carrying arms below decks to both the Jews and Arabs in Palestine.”

The artwork is the room where that sentence was typed: a manual typewriter under a bent desk lamp, a half-finished page still in the roller, cables in a wire basket, a red stamp on the blotter. The chair is pushed back and empty. No faces are depicted.

The QR code on the front opens the source: https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/0000256628 — the released ORE 55, “The Consequences of the Partition of Palestine.” Every quotation above is from it.

Garment: Comfort Colors 1717, 6.1 oz garment-dyed cotton, S–4XL. Front print only; plain back. Artwork approximately 6.9 × 4.6 in, QR approximately 1.8 × 1.8 in.

Colours: offered in both dark and light garment colours — the desk in amber, bone, slate and oxblood on Black, Graphite, Espresso, Navy and Pepper, and the same scene struck as a dark ink plate on White, Ivory, Butter, Chalky Mint, Blossom, Light Green and Chambray.

Care: machine wash cold, inside out, tumble dry low. Do not iron the print directly.

FOIAWEAR is an independent brand and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the Central Intelligence Agency or the United States government.