The revolution and pacts (54).The Bernadotte plan (I). UN mediation. The first bid by the United Nations to resolve the Arab-Jewish conflict came on May 28, 1948 when it appointed Count Folke Bernadotte, a scion of Sweden's royal family and chairman of Sweden's Red Cross as mediator, “to promote a peaceful adjustment of the future situation in Palestine”. This was necessitated by the termination of the British Mandate in Palestine, the immediate violence that followed the UN Partition Plan and the subsequent unilateral Israeli Declaration of Independence. The Security Council reinforced his mandate by declaring an arms embargo. In this capacity, Bernadotte, the first official mediator in the UN history, succeeded in achieving an initial truce during the subsequent 1948 Arab-Israeli War and laid the groundwork for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. The specific proposals showed the influence of the previously responsible British government and to a lesser extent the US government. A diplomat fluent in six languages, Bernadotte was immediately faced with the volatile situation in the Middle East. Arabs and Jews had been fighting over Palestine for decades and the conflict escalated after the adoption of the UN partition resolution (November 29, 1947). When Israel declared its independence on May 14, 1948, five Arab armies invaded Israel. After exhaustive negotiations with both sides, Bernadotte, submitted what he called a “possible basis for discussion”. The plan included specific territorial adjustments in the borders, return of all Palestinian Arab refugees, and some limitations on Jewish immigration. The terms Bernadotte proposed included the establishment and supervision of a truce between the forces of Israel and those of Arab states, and “adjustment of the future situation”. He established a truce, which was broken and restored several times and never properly supervised due to lack of personnel. Being a novice in the Middle East, Bernadotte received assistance from a UN team headed by the able African-American Ralph Bunche, who became the brains behind Bernadotte's mission and political plans. However, Bernadotte's design for a settlement of the Palestine issue was molded under Anglo-American pressure, motivated mainly by the Cold War policy of containing Soviet expansion in the Middle East. The so-called Bernadotte Plan for Arab-Israeli settlement was sent out twice: in June (1948) as a trial balloon and in September (1948) as a proposal for UN action. The plan called for a modification of the partition recommended by the UN Assembly in November 1947. The boundaries he proposed reflected the status quo of the frontlines as of July, with Jerusalem in the first version allotted to Transjordan and in the second placed under UN auspices. Palestinians who had lost their homes in the war were to be given a choice between repatriation and receiving compensation and settling elsewhere. Implicit in the proposal was the abandonment of the UN Assembly's plan to establish a Palestinian Arab state beside Israel. Instead, Bernadotte proposed to cede the residual area to Transjordan. [email protected]
