Progress Report of the United Nations Mediator on Palestine

Summary

The United Nations Mediator’s general progress report to the Secretary-General, for transmission to the Members of the United Nations, under paragraph 2, part II, of General Assembly resolution 186 (S-2) of 14 May 1948: a first-hand account of the mediation effort since he took up his responsibilities on 21 May 1948, written because the General Assembly’s third session convenes on 21 September and, in his view, has reached the juncture at which it must take the vital decisions a peaceful settlement requires (Progress Report of the United Nations Mediator on Palestine, lines 325-333). Part One, read in full in this part together with the opening of its Annex I, holds that the resolution of 29 November 1947 has been “outrun and irrevocably revised by the actual facts of recent Palestine history” (lines 381-397), that a sovereign Jewish State is a living reality which can be eliminated only by the force the Security Council has prohibited, that the right of the more than 300,000 Arab refugees to return to their homes must be safeguarded, and — in its Conclusions — that the General Assembly should affirm the refugees’ right to return at the earliest possible date, fix revised frontiers (the Negeb and Ramleh and Lydda to the Arab territory, Galilee to the Jewish territory), place Jerusalem under effective United Nations control, declare Haifa a free port and Lydda a free airport, and establish a Palestine conciliation commission (lines 897-1053). Part 2 completes Annex I (the Arab League’s rejection of the 27 June suggestions and its unitary-State counter-suggestions, the Mediator’s comments on both, and the Provisional Government’s 5 July letter with the Mediator’s 6 July reply), gives Annex II (the Provisional Government’s 1 August rejection of any substantial re-admission of Arab refugees while a state of war exists) and Annex III (the Mediator’s flight log, May-September 1948), and reads Part Two, the supervision of the two truces, through the assessment of the second truce: an observer operation created after each truce had begun, some 500 complaints in the four-week truce and some 300 in the second truce’s first seven weeks, three violations reported to the Security Council in the first truce and four further serious violations in the second, and the conclusion that no substantial military advantage was gained by either side as a result of the truce supervision (lines 1121-2240). Part 3 completes Part Two with the observer casualties — four killed and seven wounded — and its conclusions on the truce operation, and reads Part Three, Assistance to Refugees, in full: of somewhat more than 400,000 Arabs in the area under Jewish occupation, almost the whole population “fled or was expelled” and approximately 50,000 remain, with 360,000 Arab refugees counted as of 10 September 1948 against 7,000 Jewish refugees; some 85 per cent of the refugees are held to be vulnerable groups, the Children’s Fund allocated $411,000ofthe$796,000 requested, and the report closes by holding that for the international community to accept its share of responsibility for the refugees is one of the minimum conditions for bringing peace, followed by the two annexes tabulating the replies to his 16 August appeals for commodities and general aid (lines 2241-3359).

What the file is

The report as reproduced on the UNISPAL page for document A/648(SUPP), headed there “Mediation, truce supervision, refugees, proposals for peaceful settlement (a.k.a. “Bernadotte plan”) - UN Mediator on Palestine - Progress report [A/648(SUPP)]”. General Assembly Official Records, Third Session, Supplement No. 11 (A/648), Paris, 1948. The text copy (3,359 lines, about 41,300 words) is the text of that web page: it opens with the site’s navigation, gives the report in English with no page markers — printed page numbers appear only in the table of contents — and closes, after the report, with the page’s subject and publication-date metadata (publication date given there as 16/09/1948) and site footer. The Mediator writes in the first person throughout. The text copy carries slips as printed, recorded in the reading notes and under Open questions: among them “Jewish Stare” for Jewish State, “Chapter VIII sanctions” for the Charter chapter the report elsewhere calls Chapter VII, and a missing verb in the sentence on the Arab view of the Jews’ historical claims. The report is signed at Rhodes on 16 September 1948 by F. Bernadotte as United Nations Mediator for Palestine (line 2593); after the signed report the text copy gives Part Three’s two annex tables and then the web page’s own metadata (document symbol A/648(SUPP), publication date 16/09/1948) and site footer to line 3359.

Section by section

• Table of contents (lines 114-319). Part One, The Mediation Effort (printed p.3-28): I. Introduction; II. The basic factors in the Palestine situation; III. Résumé of the negotiations; IV. Demilitarization of Jerusalem; V. Refugees; VI. The resolution of the General Assembly of 29 November 1947; VII. Protection of the Holy Places; common services; VIII. Conclusions; Annex I, correspondence on the suggestions of 27 June 1948; Annex II, the Provisional Government of Israel’s reply on the return of Arab refugees; Annex III, flight log. Part Two, The Supervision of the Two Truces (printed p.31-45 as listed in the contents, its section V listed at p.33 as printed). Part Three, Assistance to Refugees (printed p.47-57 in the contents).
• Part One, I. Introduction (lines 321-375). The Mediator took up his responsibilities on 21 May 1948 and has reported to the Security Council on the mediation effort, the truce supervision and the refugee problem; this general report is timed for the General Assembly’s third session opening 21 September, and it would be “a mistake of tragic consequences” if the question were not considered and the necessary decisions taken. Since his arrival in Cairo on 28 May he has found neither agreement nor a basis for agreement, but the problem is not insoluble and the juncture for vital General Assembly decisions has now been reached. The Security Council resolutions of 29 May and 15 July (S/801 and S/902) have ended organized hostilities: except for the nine-day interval between the four-week truce ending 9 July and the indefinite truce beginning 18 July, there have been no large-scale military actions since 11 June, though daily localized incidents and numerous breaches by both sides continue. The 15 July resolution, invoking Article 40, fixed no time-limit: the truce is to remain in force until a peaceful adjustment is reached, and a party resuming hostilities would risk action under Article 39 and Chapter VII. The truces, almost three months of “cooling off”, spared both sides heavy losses each could ill afford; formal agreement between the parties is not indispensable, but a firm, reasonable General Assembly position is, and such a decision should be morally binding on both the Arab States as Members and the Jews as aspirants to membership.
• Part One, II. The basic factors in the Palestine situation (lines 377-459). “The fundamental issues in Palestine today are partition, the Jewish State, Jewish immigration and Arab refugees” (line 381). The 29 November 1947 resolution provided for partition with economic union — an Arab State, a Jewish State and Jerusalem as a corpus separatum linked in an Economic Union, largely because of doubts over the Arab State’s and Jerusalem’s economic viability — but its execution required Arab and Jewish co-operation, and the events since adoption showed a dangerous antagonism provoking virtual civil war even before the Mandate terminated on 15 May 1948; the resolution “has already been outrun and irrevocably revised by the actual facts of recent Palestine history” (line 397). The Jewish State is “a living, solidly entrenched and vigorous reality” (line 405), recognized de jure or de facto by an increasing number of States including two permanent members of the Security Council, its Provisional Government exercising all the attributes of full sovereignty; it was born “in violence and bloodshed”, its establishment the only implementation given to the resolution and by a procedure contrary to that envisaged, and it can be eliminated only by a force the Security Council has prohibited — the Arab dilemma. The Arabs, Palestinian and of the seven Arab States, recognize the right of many Jews in Palestine to remain as citizens of a Palestinian State but bitterly reject a separate Jewish State; their use of force was a tragic mistake whose very extremity measures the intensity of their feeling. They regard the nationalistic Jews as interlopers and aggressors, point to the preponderant Arab population and the country’s Arab character for many centuries, fear immigration-driven expansion threatening Palestine, Transjordan and the entire Arab Near East, and have consistently advocated a unitary Arab State with full rights for the Jewish minority — a position the report calls unrealistic, as it does the cantonal and federal schemes. Immigration is submerged in the larger issue of the Jewish State’s existence. A new element is “the exodus of more than 300,000 Arabs from their former homes in Palestine” (line 457); their resettlement, in their former abodes or elsewhere, must be faced, and “the right of the refugees to return to their homes if they so desire must be safeguarded”.
• Part One, III. Résumé of the negotiations — the period 28 May to 15 July (lines 461-621). His functions under resolution 186 (S-2), adopted at the Assembly’s 135th meeting on 14 May 1948, and the Security Council’s instruction of 29 May (S/801) are recited. After concentrating on the four-week cease-fire, from 15 June he held exploratory discussions in Cairo — where the Arab League’s Political Committee set up a Sub-Committee of the Prime Ministers of Egypt, Transjordan and Lebanon and the League’s Secretary-General — and in Tel-Aviv with the Provisional Government’s Minister for Foreign Affairs; the parties were wholly divergent, Arabs against partition of any kind, Jews adamant for an independent State under resolution 181 (II) and unrestricted immigration, yet both expected his ideas on a basis of settlement during the truce. The Arabs refused a joint round-table conference; working-level experts met him separately at Rhodes (four Arab experts arriving 21 June, two Jewish experts 23 June, consultations to 25 June). On 28 and 29 June, under cover of his letter of 27 June (S/863), he presented his suggestions: Palestine as defined in the original 1922 Mandate, including Transjordan, might form a union of two members, one Arab and one Jewish, their boundaries negotiated with his assistance and then fixed by a boundaries commission; the union would promote common economic interests, operate common services including customs and excise, undertake development projects and coordinate foreign policy and common defence, acting through a central council, each member controlling its own affairs including foreign relations; immigration would be each member’s competence, subject after two years to review by the union council at either member’s request and, failing a council decision, to a binding ruling by the Economic and Social Council taking economic absorptive capacity into account; religious and minority rights fully protected by each member and guaranteed by the United Nations; Holy Places preserved with existing rights guaranteed; and recognition of the right of residents who had left their homes because of the conflict “to return to their homes without restriction and to regain possession of their property” (line 521). Territorial suggestions in an annex: the whole or part of the Negeb to Arab territory, the whole or part of Western Galilee to Jewish territory, Jerusalem in Arab territory with municipal autonomy for the Jewish community and special arrangements for the Holy Places, consideration of the status of Jaffa, a free port at Haifa including the refineries and terminals, and a free airport at Lydda.
• Part One, III continued — the replies and his comments (lines 557-621). His report to the Security Council of 12 July (S/888, paras. 22-24) is quoted on the Mediator’s role: good offices offer friendly suggestions, mediation must “encourage compromise rather than strict adherence to legal principles”, its suggestions have no binding effect, and his 27 June suggestions rested on the equities — neither party could be called on to surrender completely its position — and on the common denominator both parties admitted, the necessity of peaceful Arab-Jewish relations and the importance of economic unity. Both parties rejected the framework as a basis for discussion and reaffirmed their positions (the exchanges are at Annex I). The Provisional Government’s letter of 5 July 1948 objected to the deviations from the 29 November resolution, particularly on immigration and Jerusalem, and offered no counter-suggestions; his reply of 6 July, excerpted, holds that he has not considered himself bound by that resolution — had he done so “there would have been no meaning to my mediation” — while its basic objectives, separate existence for the two communities and close economic ties, are maintained in his suggestions in a different framework; that immigration is related to absorptive capacity and is an object of international concern, so an eventual say for the Economic and Social Council is justifiable; and that “Jerusalem stands in the heart of what must be Arab territory in any partition of Palestine” (line 593), was never intended to be part of the Jewish State, and its status is separate from the Jewish State’s constitution and boundaries. The Arabs’ counter-suggestions of 3 July 1948, signed by the Secretary-General of the League of Arab States, provided for a unitary State in the whole of Palestine and offered little or no compromise; his commentary of 5 July, quoted, holds that a unitary State with proportional representation overlooks the Jews’ separate, virtually autonomous cultural and political community and its intense nationalism, could only be a troubled State unless that minority were crushed by force, and that there is “no possibility whatsoever of persuading or inducing the Jews to give up their present separate cultural and political existence” — the alternative, wiping out the Jewish State by force, he could not recommend. On 9 July, after the Arab refusal to prolong the truce, hostilities restarted and he went to Lake Success for the Security Council’s prompt intervention.
• Part One, III continued — the period since 15 July, and the offer of direct negotiation (lines 629-663). The Security Council resolution of 15 July (S/902) urged the parties to continue conversations with the Mediator “in a spirit of conciliation and mutual concessions”. Returning to Rhodes on 19 July, he consulted Arab leaders at Beirut, Amman and Alexandria: the Arab States would maintain the truce but reject acceptance or recognition of the Jewish State and would not meet Jewish representatives, and they had become greatly concerned and incensed about the mounting distress among the huge number of Arab refugees, considering solution of that problem fundamental to a settlement. He therefore concentrated on refugees and the demilitarization of Jerusalem, took a “cooling-off” period on the basic political problems, and attended the International Red Cross Conference in Stockholm to further relief action. His two Tel-Aviv visits at the end of July and early August showed the Jewish attitude stiffened, Jewish opinion less receptive to mediation, after the interval between the truces. Talks in Alexandria and Tel-Aviv on 6-9 September, after his return to Rhodes from Stockholm on 3 September, showed no prospect of voluntary agreement and no Arab willingness to negotiate directly or through him, but a more moderate and realistic atmosphere; he concluded the General Assembly must decide at its forthcoming session, that firm and equitable decisions could win at least tacit acceptance, and that the truce could hold through the session but might not be indefinitely prolonged beyond it. The flight log is Annex III. On 6 August Mr. Shertok, the Provisional Government’s Foreign Minister, asked him to transmit an offer of direct peace negotiations to the Arab States at war with Israel; Syria, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia replied that the League’s Secretary-General would reply for them, no written reply came, and on 6 September that Secretary-General told him orally in Alexandria that the Arab representatives were unwilling to enter direct negotiations; Egypt’s written reply of 11 August said it had accepted the ceasefires out of respect for the Security Council, could not recognize “the so-called State of Israel”, and considered a reply unnecessary. He would welcome direct negotiations, believes the offer was sincerely made, and stands ready to assist.
• Part One, IV. Demilitarization of Jerusalem (lines 665-711). Jerusalem had greatly suffered before the first truce: the Old City entirely in Arab hands, by far the greater part of the New City occupied by Jewish forces, front lines interlocked; destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Dome of the Rock or the Wailing Wall “would be an irreparable loss” (line 669). The 7 July agreement demilitarizing the Mount Scopus area encouraged him to press for the City as delimited in resolution 181 (II), or a smaller area; the instrument proposed on 3 July to the Arab League’s Special Sub-Committee in Cairo and to Tel-Aviv would have covered the area, United Nations supervision, the procedure, prohibitions on military operations, fighting personnel and arms, civilian rights, supplies and access to the Holy Places. The Provisional Government was prepared to discuss it under certain assumptions; the Arab States found it unacceptable as a whole and also refused an emergency immediate cease-fire in Jerusalem pending a decision if the truce were not prolonged, which the Provisional Government was ready to accept. He reported this to the Security Council on 12 July (S/888). On 15 July the Council ordered an “immediate and unconditional cease-fire in the City of Jerusalem” as “a matter of special and urgent necessity” and instructed him to continue his demilitarization efforts without prejudice to Jerusalem’s future political status (S/902); the Arab League’s Political Committee accepted that part on the understanding that talks toward security in Jerusalem would follow, its telegram also stating — contrary to the understanding from his 3 July Cairo talks — that the Arab States had accepted his 3 July demilitarization proposal in principle.
• Part One, IV continued (lines 713-739). A working paper was communicated to both parties. The Palestine Arab Higher Committee’s Chairman and Secretary, from Damascus on 25 July, asked the Arab States to reject the proposal in toto as tending “to obliterate its Arab and Islamic character, detach it from Palestine and establish an international administration therein, thus implementing the partition scheme” and as impossible to enforce against the Jews. The Arab States’ official answer of 31 July, transmitted by the League’s Secretary-General, did not use the word “demilitarization”: the Arab States agree to a permanent cease-fire in Jerusalem removing the City from the conflict without prejudice to Arab rights and the City’s ultimate status, unattainable unless the other side does not attack the city or exercise military or paramilitary activities in it. Mr. Shertok’s communication of 28 July reaffirmed the Provisional Government’s rejection of the Mediator’s demilitarization plan, its attitude influenced by his proposal to place Jerusalem ultimately under Arab rule, while remaining ready to examine a scheme protecting the City from further destruction without prejudging its ultimate settlement or Jewish vital interests; his clarification made point (3) an “acceptance in principle of any scheme which will ensure results desired”, demilitarization not excluded, but Dr. Bernard Joseph, its Jerusalem representative, pointed out on 3 August that the Government had not agreed in principle that Jerusalem should be demilitarized and that he would exceed its decision by entering negotiations to elaborate an actual plan — especially regrettable, the report says, because the Arab reply to the identical request was affirmative, with facilitating notes. With heavy firing nearly every night, he concentrated in early August on a permanent unconditional cease-fire; his interim report of 19 August (S/979) attributed the Jewish attitude more to political reasons about Jerusalem’s future status than to military considerations, and held that even with both parties’ agreement demilitarization could not take effect “without a strong adequately armed United Nations force to be provided immediately”, so he had serious doubts it could be attained in the near future. The Security Council’s President replied by cable that the Council relies on the Mediator to make all efforts toward speedy results; on 9 September in Tel-Aviv he told Mr. Shertok further representations about a United Nations force were useless unless the Jewish as well as the Arab authorities accepted demilitarization in principle.
• Part One, V. Refugees (lines 741-803). The question is treated here only politically; the humanitarian and administrative aspects are in Part Three. Arabs form the vast majority of the refugees. From the start he held the firm view that their right to return to their homes at the earliest practical date should be established. His cable proposal of 26 July 1948 to the Provisional Government’s Foreign Minister, after their Tel-Aviv conversation that day, is quoted in full: he is “deeply concerned with the plight of some three hundred thousand Arab refugees scattered in Arab countries and Arab-controlled areas of Palestine” (line 761), whose suffering winter will intensify and who left practically all their possessions behind; recognising the Provisional Government’s security, economic and political misgivings, but citing the indefinite truce, he proposed that, without prejudice to the ultimate right of all Arab refugees to return if they desire, a limited number determined in consultation with the Mediator — especially those formerly living in Jaffa and Haifa — be permitted to return as from 15 August, that differentiation may be made between men of military age and all others, and that the Mediator enlist international organizations’ aid for the returnees’ resettlement and rehabilitation. The Provisional Government’s reply, received 1 August, rejected the proposals: action on purely humanitarian grounds disregarding the military, political and economic aspects might aggravate the problem, security considerations alone make agreement impossible in the truce, and the problem could only be considered when the Arab States are ready to conclude a peace treaty with Israel; its full text (S/949) is at Annex II. He reported to the Security Council (S/948) reiterating his firm view that the right of return at the earliest practicable date should be affirmed. “It is, however, undeniable that no settlement can be just and complete if recognition is not accorded to the right of the Arab refugee to return to the home from which he has been dislodged by the hazards and strategy of the armed conflict between Arabs and Jews in Palestine” (line 793); the majority of the refugees come from territory allotted by the 29 November resolution to the Jewish State, and “The exodus of Palestinian Arabs resulted from panic created by fighting in their communities, by rumours concerning real or alleged acts of terrorism, or expulsion” (line 793). Reports from reliable sources tell of large-scale looting, pillaging and plundering and destruction of villages without apparent military necessity; the Provisional Government’s liability to restore private property to its Arab owners and indemnify wanton destruction is clear, irrespective of any indemnities it may claim from the Arab States. Affirming the right does not solve the problem — the vast majority may no longer have homes, and resettlement presents a complex economic and social problem — but “their unconditional right to make a free choice should be fully respected” (line 801).
• Part One, VI. The resolution of the General Assembly of 29 November 1947 (lines 805-863). The plan was accepted by the Jewish Agency’s representatives, rejected by the Arab States and the Arab Higher Committee’s spokesman as not binding; on 14 May 1948 the Jews declared the State of Israel and, the Mandate ending the next day, its Provisional Government controlled the most important parts of the allotted Jewish State area, claiming to act according to the resolution as far as circumstances permitted and making no claim beyond its boundaries; when the Arab States’ armies entered Palestine on 15 May it appealed to the Security Council invoking the 29 November resolution, while the Arab States, claiming the resolution illegal and unjust, contended they had come legitimately to the assistance of Palestine’s Arabs. The Provisional Government has apparently since modified its attitude: boundaries should now be modified for the present military situation and more readily defensible frontiers, and on Jerusalem it is sceptical of internationalization and presses to include at least the Jewish part in Israel. An economic union could only function by agreement — “An economic union cannot be imposed on a completely unwilling partner” (line 829) — and Arab unwillingness has inhibited the resolution’s realization in an essential feature. The boundary provisions presupposed economic union and full freedom of transit: separated parts joined at points of intersection, boundaries drawn with military considerations largely excluded and related to a population distribution now significantly affected by the refugee movements — objections that become serious without a union. No central Arab authority exists and no independent Arab State has been organized or attempted in Arab-controlled Palestine, partly from unwillingness to suggest tacit acceptance of partition; partition without economic union would leave the Arab State economically nonviable unless its population submitted to a substantial fall in its standard of living, which the union’s single customs union and revenue division were designed to offset. A form of partition therefore exists without an Arab State or an economic union, thrusting the Arab part’s future and viability into the foreground. Jerusalem as a corpus separatum, also part of the economic union, could hardly exist as a separate entity without economic integration — freedom of transit, unified transport and communications, and a 5 to 10 per cent share of the union’s revenues — so, economic union not being immediately practicable, its viability assumes great importance.
• Part One, VII. Protection of the Holy Places; common services (lines 865-895). Resolution 186 (S-2) charged him also to arrange common services and assure protection of the Holy Places, religious buildings and sites. Authorities on both sides have tried to preserve them, but many stand in heavy-fighting areas and some have been destroyed, synagogues demolished in the Old City’s Jewish quarter among them; Jerusalem remains critical under frequent mortar and artillery shelling even in the truce, and military authorities have requisitioned many hospitals, hospices and schools of religious orders. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre has been hit once without appreciable damage; the Church of Dormition, placed by the report in the Old City, has been severely hit with its walls standing; the Mount of Olives and the Garden of Gethsemane are spared and intact; the Haram-esh-Sharif, including the Dome of the Rock, has suffered shelling damage to windows and inlaid work; the Church of the Nativity and other Bethlehem sites are undamaged. United Nations observers and the Truce Commission have also intervened; demilitarization of Jerusalem, more than any other action, would ensure the Holy Places’ safety. Common services cannot be arranged while the parties refuse to meet and interpret the truce literally as a suspension of hostilities with no change in spirit.
• Part One, VIII. Conclusions (lines 897-1053). No formal submission has been made since the 27 June suggestions, which were flatly rejected by both parties, were purely tentative, and have never since been pressed; a political and economic union, however desirable, is certainly not now propitious. It is not within his province to recommend a course of action to the Members — that is their responsibility through the appropriate organs — but his duty to acquaint them with conclusions from three and one-half months of consultations. Seven basic premises: (a) peace must return and harmonious Arab-Jewish relations ultimately be restored; (b) “A Jewish State called Israel exists in Palestine and there are no sound reasons for assuming that it will not continue to do so” (line 929); (c) its boundaries must finally be fixed by agreement or, failing that, by the United Nations; (d) geographical homogeneity and integration should be the major objective of the boundary arrangements, applying equally to Arab and Jewish territories, whose frontiers should not be rigidly controlled by the 29 November arrangements; (e) “The right of innocent people, uprooted from their homes by the present terror and ravages of war, to return to their homes, should be affirmed and made effective, with assurance of adequate compensation for the property of those who may choose not to return” (line 953); (f) Jerusalem should be accorded special and separate treatment; (g) international responsibility should be expressed as international guarantees, particularly on boundaries and human rights. Specific conclusions: (a) the war should be pronounced formally ended, by agreement or by the United Nations, and the indefinite truce superseded by a formal peace or at minimum an armistice with complete withdrawal and demobilization or wide separation in broad demilitarized zones under United Nations supervision — the premise as printed invokes “Chapter VIII sanctions” (line 981; see Open questions); (b) the frontiers, absent agreement, should be established by the United Nations and delimited by a technical boundaries commission, with revisions to the 29 November boundaries: the Negeb south of a line from the sea near Majdal east-southeast to Faluja to be Arab territory, the frontier then running from Faluja north northeast to Ramleh and Lydda, both Arab territory, and thence following the 29 November line, and Galilee to be Jewish territory; (c) the disposition of Palestine’s territory outside the Jewish State should be left to the Arab States’ Governments in full consultation with Palestine’s Arab inhabitants, with the recommendation that the historical connexion and common interests of Transjordan and Palestine give compelling reasons for merging the Arab territory with Transjordan, subject to frontier rectifications regarding other Arab States; (d) the United Nations should specially assure that the boundaries be respected and maintained, subject only to mutually agreed modifications; (e) Haifa port, including the oil refineries and terminals, should be declared a free port, without prejudice to its inclusion in the Jewish State’s sovereign territory, with free access for interested Arab countries and their undertaking not to obstruct pipeline oil deliveries to the refineries, distribution continuing on the historical pattern; (f) Lydda airport should be declared a free airport with access and use for Jerusalem and interested Arab countries; (g) Jerusalem, in the area defined in the 29 November resolution, should be treated separately and placed under effective United Nations control with maximum feasible local autonomy for its Arab and Jewish communities and full safeguards for the Holy Places and free access and religious freedom; (h) unimpeded access to Jerusalem by road, rail or air should be fully respected by all parties; (i) “The right of the Arab refugees to return to their homes in Jewish-controlled territory at the earliest possible date should be affirmed by the United Nations” (line 1025), their repatriation, resettlement and rehabilitation and compensation for those choosing not to return to be supervised and assisted by the conciliation commission of paragraph (k); (j) the rights of all Arabs in the Jewish territory and all Jews in the Arab territory should be fully guaranteed, the commission supervising the guarantee and lending its good offices, on invitation, to population-exchange efforts on the basis of adequate compensation; (k) the United Nations should establish a Palestine conciliation commission, appointed for a limited period and responsible to the United Nations, to employ its good offices for the continuation of the peaceful adjustment, foster friendly Arab-Jewish relations, supervise the boundary, road, railroad, free port, free airport, minority rights and other arrangements decided by the United Nations, and report promptly any development likely to alter those arrangements or threaten the peace of the area.
• Annex I, item 1 (lines 1055-1217). The Arab League Secretary-General’s letter of 3 July 1948, conveying the Political Committee’s reply: paras. 1-5 (read in part 1) record the cease-fire breaches the Committee alleged, recite the Mediator’s stated basis, recall his Cairo statements of 15-16 June that he was unbound by previous decisions and his suggestions would not be based on the status quo, and object that the first suggestion, treating Transjordan as part of Palestine, stood on a false basis and exceeded the mediation’s terms of reference. The Transjordan Prime Minister’s declaration, quoted in the letter, holds that Transjordan should never be implicated in the Palestine problem nor forced into a union with a Jewish State, that its position is never to allow a Jewish State in Palestine and to exclude partition, and that after Palestine’s deliverance her future status is the right and concern of her own people alone; the Committee strongly upholds the declaration. Para. 6 sums the suggestions up as a two-member union, immigration under each member’s competence for two years with eventual recourse to the Economic and Social Council on absorptive capacity, protection of minority rights and the Holy Places, and territorial arrangements. Para. 7 holds the suggestions as a whole “go to realize Zionist ambitions” for partition and a Jewish State: on immigration they exceed the partition plan, which restricts immigration to the proposed Jewish State’s area, while the union opens a wider scope throughout Palestine and even Transjordan, immigration being the pivot of the dispute and used by the Zionists under “The Biltmore Programme”; economic unity is sure evidence political partition is artificial, is intended to safeguard Zionist interests and exploit the Arabs, and, the country being indivisible economically, raises the question “How could it then be divided politically?”; the territorial arrangements allocate the Jews an area half of whose population are Arabs possessing the bulk of its land. Para. 8: the Committee compared the suggestions with the Mediator’s declared principles and found them “most disappointing to the Arabs”, granting the Zionists more than the failed partition plan and none of the Arabs’ demands, and deeply regrets it cannot accept them as a suitable basis for discussion; it proposes the attached proposal instead. (Signed) Abdul Rahman Azzam.
• Annex I, item 1, attached counter-suggestions (lines 1219-1285). “Draft of the Constitution and future Government of Palestine”: a provisional government representative of all important sections of the citizenry in proportion to their numerical strength; an electoral law, register and elections for a constituent assembly, which also functions as a legislature; and constitutional principles strictly adhered to — Palestine a unitary and sovereign State with a democratic constitution, guarantees for the Holy Places and for human rights and fundamental freedoms, rights to separate religious courts and to maintain separate educational institutions, Hebrew as a second official language in areas where Jews are in a majority, naturalization requiring a continuous period of legal residence to be determined by the constituent assembly, adequate representation, wide local discretion in social services, a supreme court with power to pronounce on legislation’s constitutional validity, and minority guarantees unamendable without the minority’s consent expressed through a majority of its representatives in the legislature.
• Annex I, item 2 (lines 1287-1369). The Mediator’s comments on the League’s observations, handed to the Committee in Cairo on 3 July 1948. General comments: the suggestions are tentative only and he never expected unqualified approval; as Mediator he comes single-handed, can make no decisions and impose no sanctions, and can progress only by discovering a formulation with a reasonable chance of both parties’ agreement. Specific comments: the truce-supervision notes have been referred to Colonel Thord Bonde, his Deputy in charge of truce supervision, and complaints have come from both sides in approximately equal volume; the suggestions are in no way based on the status quo de facto (a Jewish Provisional Government exists with no restrictions on its sovereign authority, and his suggestions hinted at substantial restrictions on it) or de jure (the 29 November resolution, though unimplemented and its Palestine Commission relieved of its responsibilities, has not been annulled, and his arrangement differs from it in structure and boundaries), so they are not “a reproduction of the basis of the partition plan…”; the Transjordan reference did not exceed his broad 14 May mandate to “promote a peaceful adjustment of the future situation of Palestine”, was purely optional and subject to the directly interested parties’ willingness, and could be worked out without affecting Transjordan’s sovereign status; the suggestions would increase Arab population and influence, restrict the Jewish member, advantage both members economically — economic unity, he believes, is of even greater advantage to Arabs than to Jews — and virtually compel the Jewish member to peaceful policies; and on immigration, each member would exclusively control entry into its own borders, the intent being to limit Jewish immigration into the Jewish area before a saturation point endangering neighbouring Arab areas is reached.
• Annex I, item 3 (lines 1371-1441). The Mediator’s comments on the Arab counter-suggestions, transmitted by letter dated 5 July 1948: the proposal incorporates the basic tenets of the Arab position and is not designed as a compromise; “citizenry” and the basis of citizenship are left ambiguous by paragraph 4(VII), including the fate of Jews not accorded citizenship; proportional representation is clearly set forth only for the provisional government; the net effect is that the Jewish community becomes a permanent cultural and political minority in the unitary State; the Hebrew-language and local-autonomy provisions are severely limited and narrow; the supreme court’s composition is not hinted at; paragraph 4(XI) safeguards only such minority rights as are specifically enumerated; and the proposal makes no reference to economic rights, immigration, police forces or the defence force. A unitary sovereign State on proportional representation, though fully consistent with democratic principles, overlooks that Palestine’s Jews are a completely separate, virtually autonomous cultural and political community imbued with an intensely nationalist spirit; such a State could only be a troubled State unless that minority were thoroughly crushed by force; the proposal gives no suggestion how the existing Jewish political entity is to be eliminated by peaceful means, and “there is no possibility whatsoever of persuading or inducing the Jews to give up their present separate cultural and political existence”, while wiping out the Jewish State by force is a course he as Mediator cannot recommend.
• Annex I, item 4 (lines 1443-1479). Letter dated 5 July 1948 from the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Provisional Government of Israel: surprise that the suggestions appear to ignore the 29 November 1947 resolution, “which remains the only internationally valid adjudication on the question of the future government of Palestine”, and do not fully take into account Israel’s effective establishment within the area assigned to it and other territorial changes from repulsing the Arab attack; the Jewish people accepted that settlement as a compromise entailing heavy sacrifices and its territory as an irreducible minimum, and the territorial provisions now need improvement for Israel’s safety and in view of its repulse of the aggression, the resolution’s settlement having been based on partition of western Palestine between the Jewish people and Palestine’s Arab population; no encroachment on or limitation of Israel’s free sovereignty can be agreed, and economic cooperation arrangements can only be entered into by agreement between free and sovereign States; consent to the resolution’s economic union cannot be binding where the proposed partner State is wholly different in identity and dimensions; particularly emphatic opposition to any derogation, in favour of any joint or international body, from Israel’s sovereignty over immigration, complete freedom over which “was the very essence of the Jewish claim to statehood”; and the Government was “deeply wounded” by the Jerusalem suggestion, which it regards as disastrous — the Jews of Jerusalem a two-thirds majority before the aggression, the whole city with few exceptions now in Jewish hands, and the General Assembly having resolved on an international regime — and will never acquiesce in Arab domination over Jerusalem.
• Annex I, item 5 (lines 1481-1525). The Mediator’s letter of 6 July 1948 to the Provisional Government’s Foreign Minister, in substantially the terms excerpted in Part One, section III: the suggestions were exploratory only; the Government has offered no counter-suggestions unless its references to the 29 November resolution imply unwillingness to consider any others; he was not bound by that resolution but maintains its basic objectives; boundaries acceptable to the Jewish community would not require revision in the Jewish favour solely because Arab Palestine might merge with a neighbouring Arab State, and the conflict was only in its early stages when the truce began; his suggestions could be imposed on no one; a party cannot treat the resolution’s favourable parts as effective and its unfavourable parts as ineffective; immigration is related to absorptive capacity and is an object of international concern, justifying an eventual Economic and Social Council say; and Jerusalem, which was never intended to be part of the Jewish State, stands in the heart of what must be Arab territory in any partition, its status separate from the Jewish State’s constitution and boundaries.
• Annex II (lines 1527-1587). “Reply of the Provisional Government of Israel to the proposal regarding the return of Arab refugees”: letter from its Minister for Foreign Affairs, Hakirya, 1 August 1948 (signed M. Shertok). The Government is not unmindful of the uprooted Arabs’ plight but cannot agree to their re-admission to Israel-controlled areas for overriding security, war-outcome and settlement-stability considerations; return during the truce would prejudice Israel’s rights and position under the 29 May resolution’s no-prejudice provision, relieve the aggressor States of the refugee problem’s pressure, and handicap Israel’s war effort by bringing in a “politically explosive and economically destitute element”; the root cause of the conflict, of which the mass flight is a mere corollary, is the Arab League’s refusal to accept Israel as of right or as an accomplished fact; the indefinite truce is no firm foundation, the Arab States having hedged their acceptance with conditions and maintaining defiance on the Jerusalem water supply and the Jerusalem-Tel-Aviv highway; limiting return to Jaffa and Haifa’s former residents does not minimize the difficulty, both cities being vulnerable points and centres of grave menace; reintegration and even maintenance would be economically insoluble, the envisaged international assistance is purely hypothetical, and the Government will instead claim compensation from the Arab States for the havoc of their armed intervention; the mass flight is a direct effect of Arab aggression from outside, and but for that intervention there would have been an overwhelming measure of local Arab acquiescence in Israel’s establishment; as long as a state of war exists it cannot re-admit the Arabs who fled “on any substantial scale”, and “The Palestinian Arab exodus of 1948 is one of those cataclysmic phenomena which, according to the experience of other countries, change the course of history”, its solution to come with a peace treaty, when counter-claims, the Jewish communities in the Arab countries’ position and the Arab Governments’ liability for reparations will all be relevant.
• Annex III (lines 1589-1705). Flight log of the special plane assigned to the Mediator, 27 May to 9 September 1948: Paris-Rome-Athens-Cairo at the outset, then repeated circuits among Cairo, Haifa, Amman (via Mafrak), Beirut, Jerusalem, Damascus, Tel-Aviv and Rhodes; Rhodes-Cairo and Rhodes-Tel-Aviv-Cairo in early July; on 10-11 July Rhodes-Rome-Geneva-Amsterdam, then a commercial-airline crossing Amsterdam-Prestwick-Gander-La Guardia (11-12 July) and return (17-18 July); Rhodes-Beirut-Haifa-Tel-Aviv in late July; Rhodes-Amman-Jerusalem-Alexandria, Alexandria-Tel-Aviv-Haifa and Rhodes-Haifa-Jerusalem in August, then Rhodes-Rome-Geneva-Stockholm (12-13 August); and in September Stockholm-Copenhagen-Paris-Geneva-Rome-Rhodes, Rhodes-Alexandria and Alexandria-Amman-Haifa-Tel-Aviv-Rhodes (1-9 September).
• Part Two, I. Introduction (lines 1715-1793). Resolution 186 (S/2) empowered the Mediator to co-operate with the Truce Commission for Palestine appointed by the Security Council’s resolution of 23 April 1948; resolution S/801 of 29 May 1948 called for a four-week cessation of armed force, no introduction of fighting personnel into Palestine and the seven Arab States, no mobilization or military training of men of military age introduced, and no import or export of war material, urged precautions for Jerusalem and the Holy Places, and instructed the Mediator in concert with the Truce Commission to supervise observance, with a sufficient number of military observers. Both authorities accepted the cease-fire in principle but with important reservations, so its terms and effective date had to be negotiated; his interpretations and decisions were accepted by both parties on 9 June and the truce took effect on 11 June 1948 (terms in S/829). In the truce’s last week the Provisional Government accepted both a thirty-day prolongation and a ten-day unconditional cease-fire, the Arab States neither, and hostilities broke out again on 8 July; on 10 July he reported to the Security Council in person (S/888). Resolution S/902 of 15 July 1948 is quoted in full: it determines the situation a threat to the peace under Article 39, orders a cease-fire under Article 40 not later than three days from adoption, orders an immediate and unconditional cease-fire in Jerusalem within twenty-four hours, instructs him to continue his Jerusalem demilitarization efforts and to supervise the truce and establish procedures for examining alleged breaches since 11 June 1948, and decides the truce shall remain in force until a peaceful adjustment is reached. He fixed the cease-fire at 1500 hours (GMT) on 18 July 1948 and found both parties had complied.
• Part Two, II. The four-week truce from 11 June to 9 July 1948 — organisation (lines 1795-1861). The observation organization had to be created after the truce had begun, with almost no advance preparation: five Swedish Army colonels acted as his personal representatives, Colonel Thord Bonde as Chief of Staff for the truce supervision; Belgium, France and the United States each furnished 21 officers (63 observers, arriving in Cairo 11-14 June), 51 Secretariat guards followed on 21 June and 30 more officers arrived 27 June-5 July, with some 10 United States auxiliary technical personnel. Equipment was obtained only between 12 and 14 June — used vehicles, planes and radio equipment from the United States and United Kingdom, a French naval corvette and three United States destroyers — and was insufficient, some of it soon unserviceable. Palestine, the actual scene of conflict, was the main observation area, divided into five areas from a Haifa headquarters; observers were also sent to Damascus, Beirut, Bennt Jbail (as printed), Amman, Baghdad, the Suez area and Egyptian airfields and ports. For Jerusalem the Truce Commission was responsible for supervising the cease-fire and truce, the observers assisting; observers could investigate and settle complaints on the spot but had no power to prevent a violation or enforce their decisions.
• Part Two, II — operation (lines 1827-1901). Some 500 complaints or incidents were dealt with; a large number proved entirely without substance and many were greatly exaggerated, and conflicting statements made responsibility impossible to assess clearly in most cases. Jerusalem kept a record of 197 complaints (39 Arab, 131 Jewish, 27 by the observers), the great majority sporadic sniping and firing; outside Jerusalem 258 were recorded (147 Arab complaints, 59 Jewish, 52 breaches discovered by the observers). On war materials, apart from the Altalena the Arabs filed only two specific complaints, the United States brought two cases and the United Kingdom one, the Provisional Government five against the Arab States, and no evidence supported any of them; his conviction is that any clandestine supply would have been too limited to make a substantial difference. On men of military age (18-45), the only exception found was the Altalena, where the Irgun Zvai Leumi claimed some 800 men, women and children were brought to Israel; in all some 260 to 265 Jewish men of military age were admitted and placed in camps. Irregular forces on both sides, who in many cases considered themselves not bound by the cease-fire, were responsible for breaches on both sides, and he insisted the respective Governments accept full responsibility for activities in areas they occupied. Three violations were reported to the Security Council: the Altalena incident (the Provisional Government’s explanation of the disposition of the men and arms landed was not satisfactory); the Egyptian refusal to permit United Nations-controlled relief convoys to isolated Jewish settlements in the Negeb, firing on them; and the Transjordan and Iraqi forces’ failure to permit water to flow to Jerusalem, no water flowing during the truce despite the Security Council’s 7 July decision.
• Part Two, II — the City of Jerusalem, and the end of the truce (lines 1863-1925). Jerusalem’s population prior to hostilities was about 165,000, of which about 100,000 were Jews and about 50,000 were Arabs (the report does not identify the remaining about 15,000 (computed); see Open questions); Israeli forces held the greater part of the City, the Arab Legion the Old City and a small part of the New City, and the Arabs controlled all the main supply routes, the Jews cut off except for the “Burma Road” by-pass opened a few days before the truce, and Ras el Ain, part of the pipe-line and the Latrun pumping station. The 16 June “No man’s land Agreement” withdrew each side to an agreed line with the intervening houses evacuated and reduced friction and incidents. Relief convoys, supervised by the Truce Commission after the International Red Cross Committee could not do so, were checked at Tel-Aviv, Latrun, Babel-Wad and Jerusalem, quotas being agreed on 23 June; efforts on water failed and were reported as a violation. The 7 July Mount Scopus demilitarization agreement was executed by the Arab and Israeli commanders with the Truce Commission and the senior United Nations observer, the United Nations accepting responsibility for the area’s security and food and water, and was observed during the hostilities between the truces. Free access to the Holy Places could not be assured, access involving crossing and recrossing front lines; but no major fighting took place in Jerusalem during the truce. As prolongation failed, all observer personnel and equipment were withdrawn to the Jewish coast on 7 July and evacuated on 8-9 July, a Swedish colonel, a senior Secretariat member and eight United Nations guards remaining in Jerusalem.
• Part Two, II — assessment of the first truce (lines 1903-1925). Quoting a detailed report in preparation: the supervision was a most difficult and novel operation, its organization created in its entirety with personnel and equipment never sufficient, but it achieved its purpose; the mere effluxion of time during a cessation of hostilities would favour the Jews, the status quo preventing the attackers attaining their objective and enabling the defenders to consolidate, yet each side is also prevented from defeating the other, and “I am convinced that no substantial military advantage was gained by either side as a result of the operation of the truce supervision” (line 1915); some 500 incidents and alleged breaches were dealt with, only three violations reported to the Security Council, and there was not one case of major fighting or large-scale operations. His cabled report of 5 July 1948 (S/865) is quoted: “On the whole, the truce has worked well” (line 1919), much bloodshed and destruction having been avoided; after the truce he stands fully by that statement.
• Part Two, III. The truce ordered by the Security Council on 15 July 1948 — organization (lines 1927-2027). Adopted under Chapter VII, S/902 was an order, not an appeal: the cease-fire took effect in Jerusalem on 16 July and elsewhere on 18 July. During the fighting of 8-18 July Israeli forces had captured Ras el Ain, Jerusalem’s water source; at Latrun the Arab Legion retained part of the Tel-Aviv-Jerusalem road while the pumping station came to be in no man’s land; and Israeli forces occupied Ramleh, Lydda, Nazareth and a number of Arab villages, most of whose inhabitants fled, augmenting the refugee numbers. A larger operation was planned: 300 officer observers (Belgium 50, France 125, United States 125), of whom 137 had arrived by 1 August (47 Belgian, 50 French, 40 United States); Major-General Lundstrom of the Swedish Air Force was appointed Chief of Military Staff and personal representative, arriving 29 July with nine Swedish officers; 300 enlisted observers were additionally requested (84 United States enlisted men had arrived at the time of writing), with 4 French and 78 United States enlisted auxiliary technical personnel. Equipment listed: 90 radio sets as printed (“go radio sets”; see Open questions), 14 small planes contracted by the United Nations and 4 United States C-47 Dakotas, a French corvette and 3 United States destroyers, and motor vehicles from the United Kingdom (50 jeeps, 20 jeep trailers, 2 automobiles) and the United States (12 jeeps, 5 trucks). Haifa was again headquarters, with a Central Truce Supervision Board chaired by the Chief of Military Staff; observer groups were assigned to each Arab army and Israeli army group, to Jerusalem, to the coast and ports, to Tel-Aviv-Jerusalem convoys, and, from the end of August, to airports; the plan and instructions are in S/928. Observer distribution is given as of 1 August (Jerusalem 10; Haifa 49, Tel-Aviv 26, Tiberias 8; Gaza 7, Nablus 8, Ramallah 1; Beirut 8, Damascus 7, Amman 7) and as of 8 September (Jerusalem 79; Haifa 76, Tel Aviv 28, Tiberias 13, Aqir 2, Natanya 4, Rama David 4; Gaza 14, Nablus 15, Ramallah 7, Hebron 4; Beirut 17, Damascus 14, Amman 16, Aqaba 2, Alexandria 5, Cairo 5, El Arish 3, Port-Said 1, Baghdad 3, Basra 3), the Provisional Government’s complaint that supervision was confined almost exclusively to Palestine having some force. Complaints unsettled on the spot go to Haifa Headquarters, the less serious to the Chief of Staff and the more serious to the Central Truce Supervision Board, whose decisions pass through the Mediator to the Governments; major violations not immediately rectified are reported to the Security Council.
• Part Two, III — operation (lines 2029-2191). Front lines: group commanders were instructed to map the lines as at the cease-fire’s commencement or as first reached; as of 8 September the lines had been settled over some 350 kilometres with some 50 kilometres remaining, the procedure not applying to the Negeb, where there are no front lines but fortified settlements over a large area. Complaints: some 300 in the second truce’s first seven weeks (18 July-4 September) against some 500 in the four-week truce; of the 286 recorded, 151 were Arab complaints, 86 Jewish, 46 reported by the observers (30 against Arabs, 16 against Jews) and 3 by the French Consul in Jerusalem. The table of complaints by nature gives printed totals of 105 against Arabs and 182 against Jews (its rows sum (computed) to 105 and 184; see Open questions), the largest categories against Jews being attacks and raids on positions and villages and abductions (47), shelling, mortaring or air bombardment (24) and sniping, machine-gunning, hand-grenading and ambushing (21), and against Arabs shelling (20), sniping (18) and attacks and raids (17). As of 4 September, 87 had been settled or closed, 43 investigated and under review, and 157 still under investigation. The complaints’ nature was on the whole more serious than in the first truce. The uncooperative attitude of some local commanders, troops and irregulars on both sides, sometimes encouraged by official public pronouncements, led to his appeal of 18 August (S/977) and the Security Council resolution of 19 August (S/983) holding each party responsible for irregular forces and all persons in territory under its control, forbidding reprisals and any gain through violation.
• Part Two, III — operation, the four serious violations (lines 2135-2183). (1) Latrun pumping station: in no-man’s land and considered in United Nations hands but unguarded; repair work arranged on 11 August was pre-empted when the station was completely destroyed by demolition charges in the night of 11-12 August; he reported on 12 August that preliminary investigation indicated Arab irregulars, and on 4 September (S/993) that the destruction was a flagrant violation perpetrated by Arabs, possibly irregulars, the Security Council having requested (S/970) all efforts to ensure Jerusalem’s water supply. (2) The Red Cross zone in Jerusalem (Government House, the Jewish Agricultural School and the Government Arab College): Israeli forces attacked Egyptian positions south of the zone on the night of 16-17 August and remained in occupation of part of it; the Central Truce Supervision Board decided on 27 August that the Israeli forces had committed two flagrant violations and ordered their withdrawal by 29 August, creating a United Nations-supervised neutral zone around the zone from which all troops were to withdraw by 29 August; all three forces accepted after delay and withdrew on 4 September (reported S/992), the Israeli authorities protesting the Arab Legion’s failure to withdraw from Nabi Dawid and Deir Abu Tor. (3) Gaza: two French observers, Lt.-Col. Joseph Queru and Captain Pierre Jeannel, were killed on 28 August by Saudi Arabian irregular troops under Egyptian military command; Egyptian anti-aircraft guns had fired at their Auster plane in violation of the truce and the unarmed observers were murdered and robbed after landing, though there was an element of United Nations responsibility in that the Egyptian forces had no advance notice and the pilot was not properly briefed; Egypt was notified of its responsibility and redress requested (reported 6 September, S/994). (4) Ein Ghazal, Jaba and Ijzim: the Arab complaint claimed 4,000 refugees and tens of thousands captured and massacred; the preliminary investigation (reported 30 July, S/934) found the villages deserted and damaged with no evidence of massacre or capture, the Israeli authorities admitting some inhabitants killed or made prisoners in a “police raid” to stamp out sniping blocking the Tel-Aviv-Haifa road; after observers located more than 8,000 villagers and established less than 130 killed or missing, the Board found the villages were attacked by the Jews between 18 and 25 July by air and land, the inhabitants forced to evacuate, and Ein Ghazal and Jaba destroyed after the evacuation, the attack not excusable as a police action since at the truce’s commencement the villagers had offered to negotiate; on 9 September he informed the Provisional Government that the action was unjustified, the systematic destruction of two villages excessive and a violation of the truce’s spirit and letter, that the villagers should be allowed to return forthwith and be rehabilitated, including restoration of all houses damaged or destroyed at the Government’s expense (reported 12 September, S/999).
• Part Two, III — operation continued, Jerusalem, and assessment (lines 2185-2240). Observers also settle many incidents on the spot, and their presence has been a restraining influence on both sides; the coast-and-ports and airports groups patrol against introduction of war material and fighting personnel and check immigration of men of military age. On such men the practice changed: instead of camps, arrivals in Israel are given special identity cards and assigned to particular areas for periodic checking; from 23 July to 8 September 14,359 immigrants arrived in Israel, of whom 4,295 were men of military age; no adequate check was possible in the Arab areas and the seven Arab States. Outside Jerusalem there is no serious problem over the Holy Places’ preservation; in Jerusalem protection and free access remain impossible. The Negeb supply problem was decided on 14 September: the Jews and Egyptians may each use the El Faluja crossroads road exclusively for six hours daily under United Nations supervision, and Israeli air supply of the settlements is to cease except for road-inaccessible settlements under supervision. In Jerusalem (79 observers) the city is effectively partitioned, the “No man’s land Agreement” ended and not renewed, and the situation is considerably worse than in the first truce, with almost nightly exchanges of fire; his reports of 1, 7 and 12 August (S/939, S/955, S/961) and his 18 August warning (S/977) preceded the Security Council’s 19 August resolution (S/983), which strengthened the observers’ hand but has not ended violations, which he holds inevitably linked to the unsolved demilitarization problem. The Mount Scopus agreement continued but deteriorated, the Arabs not permitting water pipe-line repairs, both sides obstructing food convoys, and replacement of Jewish police personnel blocked by Arab objections. Convoys to Jerusalem, after the Truce Commission’s 2 August drawing of attention (S/938) to the Arabs’ refusal to allow water and food supplies to reach Jerusalem, improved from late August and now function smoothly; with the Latrun station destroyed, the Jews built a small-capacity auxiliary pipe-line along the “Burma Road” giving Jerusalem a minimum of water; the situation remains one of high tension, improved but still precarious. Assessment (paras. 31-32): the second truce’s indefinite duration allowed a more elaborate and adequate supervision organization, shortages less severe than in the first truce, fewer incidents but violations of a more serious nature, at times leaving the truce itself precarious; nevertheless no large-scale military operations have occurred, and the cessation of hostilities has prevented a great deal of destruction, ruin and bloodshed and saved many lives. Section IV, Observer casualties, begins at line 2239; its text is read in part 3.
• Part Two, IV. Observer casualties (lines 2239-2301). The observers are praised for loyalty to the cause of international peace, courage and impartiality; they are unarmed, with no power to prevent violations or enforce their rights or decisions, on a difficult and hazardous task. Killed (4): Commandant René de Labarrière (French Army, near Afula, 3 July 1948), Ole H. Bakke (Norway, United Nations guard, Jerusalem, 13 July 1948), Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Queru and Captain Pierre Jeannel (French Army, near Gaza, 28 August 1948). Wounded (7): Commandant du Moustier de Canchy (Afula, 3 July), Captain Robert Dens (Belgian Army, Gaza, 3 July), Private First Class Edward Brodeur (United States Marine Corps, Jerusalem, 3 July), Captain Paul J. J. Leyder (Belgian Army, Latrun, 1 August), Captain Michel Taymans (Belgian Army, Jerusalem, 13 August), Captain Henri Tors (French Army, Jerusalem, 28 August) and Eric Gormsen (United States, United Nations guard, Jerusalem, 8 September). All were casualties in the service of the international community.
• Part Two, V. Some conclusions regarding the truce operation (lines 2303-2349). No definitive views are offered, the supervision being a continuing responsibility, but on more than three months of two truces: his dual role as Mediator and truce supervisor is itself a factor, truce disputes drawing him in and his supervisory decisions not being dissociable in the disputants’ minds from mediation; Jerusalem was considerably more tense in the second truce (changed dispositions, increased manpower concentration, and the importance each side attaches to the City’s status in a settlement), recent improvement following the Security Council’s 19 August decision, more observers and localized demilitarization efforts, yet the truce there could not long be maintained if a settlement appeared indefinitely deferred; the supervised Jerusalem food convoys worked remarkably well in both truces while the water efforts failed in both, the Latrun destruction nullifying them in the second; the first truce’s major complication was harvesting — front lines ran almost entirely through Arab cultivators’ land, and Arab harvesters in no man’s land and near or behind Jewish positions were fired on, before and after his ruling of 16 June — while the Negeb’s lack of a continuous front line forced each side to by-pass the other’s positions to supply its own, supervised convoys largely solving it in the first truce and, agreement failing in the second, his own terms of 14 September governing future convoys; supervision has two aspects, the fighting fronts and checking movements of materials and men over a very large part of the Middle East with a limited observer force; slowness to act hampered it, and the United Nations was not in a position, in personnel, armed guards, communications, transport or budget, to set up the required machinery rapidly; the second truce, ordered under threat of Chapter VII action with no time-limit, made breaches a matter of compliance with a Security Council order, and both sides complain its compulsory prolongation is contrary to their interests — the truce imposes a heavy burden on both sides, “but even so, the burden of war would be heavier” (line 2343). The truce is not an end in itself: there is a period when the potentiality for constructive action from a truce achieved by international intervention is at a maximum, and if it is not seized the supervision machinery will lose effectiveness and become an object of cynicism and the advantage of international intervention may be lost.
• Part Three, I. Nature of the problem (lines 2351-2447). “as a result of the conflict in Palestine, almost the whole of the Arab population fled or was expelled from the area under Jewish occupation” (line 2365), including the large Arab populations of Jaffa, Haifa, Acre, Ramleh and Lydda; of somewhat more than 400,000 Arabs before the outbreak of hostilities, approximately 50,000 are estimated to remain in Jewish-controlled territory, while some 7,000 Jewish women and children from Jerusalem and Arab-occupied areas sought refuge in Jewish-controlled territory. As of 10 September 1948 confirmed estimates give a total of 360,000 Arab refugees, distributed (places and figures in the text copy’s order) as: Iraq 3,000, Lebanon 50,000, Syria 70,000, Transjordan 50,000, Arab Palestine (a) Nablus-Tulkarm-Ramalla 80,000 and (b) Gaza 65,000, Egypt 12,000, with a printed distribution total of 330,000 (lines 2367-2427), the remaining refugees scattered along access roads or in tiny isolated communities or hiding places. The situation became acute when Ramleh and Lydda, to which many thousands had fled from Jaffa and elsewhere, fell just before the second truce (18 July 1948); late-comers were deprived of everything except the clothes they stood in and, besides their homes (many destroyed), lost all furniture, assets and tools of trade. Promoting the inhabitants’ welfare was among his responsibilities under resolution 186 (S-2); the Arab League’s late-July appeal to the Secretary-General, noting its Cairo bureau to organize aid, is quoted asking for action to relieve the situation’s acuteness and gravity, and the International Refugee Organization’s Preparatory Commission Executive Secretary, doubting the refugees’ eligibility under Annex I of the IRO constitution, is quoted concluding that prior claims on its limited resources and its restricted finances would make new operating responsibilities difficult to assume.
• Part Three, II. Preliminary survey (lines 2449-2493). On 21 July 1948 he asked the Secretary-General for a senior Department of Social Affairs official, who surveyed Palestine at once, linking his enquiries with a League of Red Cross Societies officer’s preliminary survey. Palestinian Arabs are not citizens of the Arab States in which they have sought refuge, and in Arab Palestine had no recognized government to protect them, local authorities unable to meet necessities where refugees in some instances outnumbered residents by approximately 2:1; they had been under the United Kingdom’s Palestine Administration as Mandatory Power, and on the Mandate’s termination on 15 May 1948 were in a territory for whose future the United Nations had assumed responsibility. The rapid preliminary social survey completed on 7 August 1948 in Arab-occupied Palestine, from observation and a random sampling of 500 small units, estimated infants 0-2 at 12 per cent, ages 3-5 at 18 per cent, ages 6-18 at 36 per cent, pregnant women and nursing mothers at slightly more than 10 per cent, and aged, sick or infirm at some 8 per cent — “a vulnerable total of approximately 85 per cent”; some 22 per cent were camped on the ground under trees, water supplies were inadequate, unprotected and a health menace, sanitary accommodation was in most places absolutely absent, and 49 positive typhoid fever cases were found in the Ramallah area (6 August 1948). Food relief was an irregular issue of a standard 500 grammes of bread per day, supplemented in some localities by a small money issue; there was virtually no provision for the special needs of the vulnerable groups, hospital accommodation and registered medical personnel were far below basic provision, and lack of clothing, bedding and water threatened typhus and relapsing fever with the cold and rainy weather from about mid-October, alongside grossly prevalent eye diseases, typhoid, enteritis and dysentery. Immediate needs, in order: (a) food and protected water, adequate and regularly distributed; (b) preventive inoculation and emergency hospital provision; (c) work or activity for the refugees; (d) tentage for 60,000 persons before 15 October; (e) clothing and bedding. On repatriation, the immediate solution appeared to be the return of those who desired it; his 26 July proposal and the Provisional Government’s 1 August reply are restated as in Part One, the Government having since re-affirmed its unwillingness to take back any refugees at the present time. The problem has three phases: immediate relief of absolute basic needs; a September-December 1948 programme on exact registration figures and expert study; and a long-range programme through the winter of 1948 until August-September 1949, when harvesting will be completed.
• Part Three, III. Immediate relief of basic needs (lines 2495-2517). On 12 August 1948 he invited the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund to assist for the children, pregnant women and nursing mothers, estimated at three-quarters of the Arab refugee total; Dr. M. Kahany, the Provisional Government’s Geneva representative, on 13 August requested similar facilities for Arab and Jewish women and children in Jewish-controlled areas (some 12,000 children and some 8,000 women). The Fund’s Executive Board on 17 August (E/ICEF/75) found an emergency within its competence, excluded cereals, and allocated a global sum not to exceed $411,000plusshippingforatwomonth{s}^{\prime }programme,againsthisrequestof$796,000 plus shipping for the Arab refugees — less than requested, but the foundation of the immediate relief programme. The Arab States, especially the refuge States, have provided supplies and money to an extent greatly straining their resources, and it is claimed that sum has already exceeded the assistance received or anticipated from all other nations or organizations combined. On 16 August he telegraphed twenty-four nations for specific commodities, to be diverted to him at Beirut from vessels at sea or adjacent ports, and twenty-nine other nations for general food or funds, replies within ten days, with a second telegram on 1 September; the situation as of 8 September is in Part Three’s Annexes I and II, the greatest shortage being cereals and shipping a major difficulty in some instances. Intake and warehousing at Beirut, duty exemption, free transport and decentralized distribution under supervision were negotiated with the League of Arab States, preliminary agreements signed with Lebanon and Syria; Egypt’s Government, the International Red Cross and other bodies made medical stores and inoculation material available, Lebanon and Syria worked on registration and inoculations, the first consignment of 2,500 ten-man tents was procured in August through British Foreign Office approaches, and the League of Red Cross Societies, the International Red Cross Committee (arranged to work in unison) and the World Council of Churches responded encouragingly.
• Part Three, IV. Short term planned programme (lines 2519-2561). Approaches to the specialized agencies for exact figures for a September-December 1948 programme: the World Health Organization’s Director-General allocated Dr. H. Mooser, assisted by a Secretary-General-assigned medical officer, to survey epidemiological risks and low-lying tent-village sites (a compromise with necessity — severe highland winter against lowland malaria and sanitation risks), operations commencing in Cairo on 7 September; the Food and Agriculture Organization’s Director-General, with Haffnawy Pasha, Director of its Near East Regional Office, made available Dr. Kirk and Professor Abbassy to survey the immediate and potential production picture of Palestine and surrounding countries, against the bad 1946 and 1947 harvests, the impossibility of a normal 1948 harvest, disrupted labour and the refugee influx, investigations in September; the International Refugee Organization’s Preparatory Commission Executive Secretary placed General C. Hardigg, his chief officer for supply and transport, at the Mediator’s disposal, commencing at Beirut on 8 September. Recruiting refugee medical officers from the assembly centres in Western Germany and Austria had so far failed on qualifications. No medical aid was felt necessary in Jewish-controlled areas, whose facilities are more than adequate and which contain almost all Palestine’s public and private hospitals and bacteriological laboratories, against an acute shortage in the Arab parts. Some national Red Cross organizations have allocated field officers, and the World Council of Churches’ relief programme is in the hands of Dr. Klein of Saint George’s Cathedral, Jerusalem. The second stage co-ordinates the United Nations, the specialized agencies, the Children’s Fund and voluntary agencies into one integrated plan in close association with the League of Arab States, decentralizing through approved local national committees, with a policy of disengagement as the refuge countries and their helpers take up the burden; the extreme stringency of the United Nations budget allowed only a nominal administrative provision, so the programme relied on donations of material and of seconded officers. A senior Secretariat member serves as Director of Disaster Relief at Beirut headquarters, assisted by a Chief Medical Officer (WHO), a Chief Supply Officer (IRO, later UNICEF), a Director of Field Operations (IRO), two supervisory Field Medical Officers and a Field Supervisory Supply Officer, with Liaison and Supply Officers at Damascus, Amman, Ramallah, Tel Aviv or Haifa, Gaza and Jerusalem besides Beirut; volunteers from the International Red Cross, the World Council of Churches and other agencies are to supervise distribution and medical provision at refugee level, Arab committees from Government to village and camp level cooperating, and a special liaison unit at Lake Success coordinates at United Nations Headquarters.
• Part Three, V. Long range programme (lines 2563-2565). Even if the refugees returned home at once, present circumstances would require maintaining them during the winter and until August/September 1949, when harvesting will have been completed; action must be taken to determine and implement the necessary measures, and “It is my hope that the General Assembly of the United Nations will assume this responsibility.”
• Part Three, VI. Conclusions (lines 2567-2587). (a) Approximately 360,000 Arab refugees and 7,000 Jewish refugees require aid in Palestine and adjacent States. (b) Large numbers are infants, children, pregnant women and nursing mothers, destitute, “vulnerable groups” in the medical and social sense. (c) Destruction of property and loss of assets will render most of them a charge on their refuge communities for a minimum of one year, through this winter and until the end of the 1949 harvest. (d) Palestine’s Arab inhabitants are not citizens or subjects of Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Transjordan; as residents of a former mandated territory for which the international community has a continuing responsibility until a final settlement, they understandably look to the United Nations for effective assistance. (e) Temporary alleviation is inadequate to a continuing need unless the supplies and personnel available are of permanent value in establishing or greatly improving social services — general social administrative organizations, maternal and child care, training of social workers, and food economics. (f) Refugees, on return to their homes, are entitled to adequate safeguards for their personal security, normal employment facilities, and adequate opportunities to develop within the community without racial, religious or social discrimination. (g) So long as large numbers remain in distress, responsibility for their relief should be assumed by the United Nations in conjunction with the neighbouring Arab States, the Provisional Government of Israel, the specialized agencies and humanitarian, non-political voluntary bodies. In conclusion, “The choice is between saving the lives of many thousands of people now or permitting them to die” (line 2585); the international community’s acceptance of its share of responsibility for the refugees is “one of the minimum conditions for the success of its efforts to bring peace to that land” (line 2585). The report then thanks his staff and the Secretary-General and is signed (Signed) F. Bernadotte, United Nations Mediator for Palestine, Rhodes, 16 September 1948 (lines 2589-2599).
• Part Three, Annex I (lines 2601-2947). Replies from the twenty-four countries telegraphed on 16 August 1948 for specific commodities, with quantities donated as shown in the table: among full-quantity replies, Australia (1,000 tons wheat, 50 tons butter, and cheese printed as “50,000 tons” against 50 tons requested), France including its North African colonies (30 tons oil, 150 tons fruit), Ireland (200 tons potatoes), Italy (20 tons oil), the Netherlands (50 tons peas, 50 tons haricot beans), Norway (50 tons fish) and Switzerland (50 tons cheese, 12.5 tons milk powder, 37.5 tons condensed milk); Indonesia undertook to try to supply in full 350 tons rice and 250 tons sugar, Burma donated 30 tons rice against 300 requested and would try to supply the balance, the Union of South Africa donated 50 tons meat and no wheat against 500 tons wheat and 50 tons meat requested, and New Zealand, besides the quantities requested, offered 5,000 tons potatoes and 2-300 tons dehydrated potatoes if a ship were available; Belgium, Brazil, Canada and Turkey gave intermediate replies, Haiti and the Philippines replied nil, Argentine, Chile, Cuba, Portugal and Uruguay show no reply, the United Kingdom is entered with £100,000 for tentage and medical supplies from the Near East, and the United States replied on 22 August that it was working with voluntary agencies to provide quantities. The full country-by-country table, with every requested and donated figure as printed, is in the reading notes.
• Part Three, Annex II (lines 2949-3359). Replies from the countries to which the general telegram of 16 August 1948 was despatched: money donations from Ceylon (50,000 rupees), Ethiopia (£5,000, placed in National Provincial Bank, London), India (100,000 rupees) and Venezuela (50,000 bolivares, in national products), a Luxembourg donation printed as 10 tons barley and “14,228 tons canned meat and vegetable” (as printed), intermediate replies from Bolivia, Colombia (then nil), El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico, nil replies from Costa Rica, Ecuador and Panama, and no reply shown for Byelorussia, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the Dominican Republic, Honduras (printed “HUNDURAS”), Liberia, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Rumania, Sweden, Ukraine, the USSR and Yugoslavia; Denmark replied nil but noted aid from the Save the Children Fund and Red Cross. A closing table gives supplies donated by agencies other than governments: the Egyptian Red Cross (50 tons medical supplies for South Palestine), the Egyptian Government (40,000 doses anti-typhoid vaccine and other vaccines, sulpha drugs and Atabrine for Amman), the Greek Red Cross through the World Health Organization (syringes, needles and 100 first aid boxes), the ECA Mission Greece with United States voluntary aid (200 tons emergency relief supplies for Beirut), American Medical Relief, Inc. (5 ambulances), the American Red Cross (2 ambulances, $250,000worthofmedicalsupply,20tonsDDT,furthermedicalsuppliesandmilk,andcereals),ChristianWorldServiceInc.(clothingbales,vitamintabletsandDDT,shippedtoBeirut),C.R.O.P.(2train-loadswheatandabox-caritemprinted"bilk",availableinGreece),theAmericanArabianOilCo.($200,000 for 1-1/2 million cans of baby food, at the Near East Foundation’s disposal), the World Relief Service of National Catholic Welfare Conference ($25,000topurchaseflourinEgypt),LutheranWorldReliefInc.(5tonsclothing),theNearEastFoundation(expandedservicesandpersonnel),InternationalBechtelInc.($100,000 at the Near East Foundation’s disposal) and the Danish Save the Children Fund (300,000 Crowns to supply soup daily for ten thousand children in camps). The text copy then closes with the web page’s document metadata and footer, which are not part of the signed report.

Key passages

• “The fundamental issues in Palestine today are partition, the Jewish State, Jewish immigration and Arab refugees” (Progress Report of the United Nations Mediator on Palestine, line 381).
• “It has already been outrun and irrevocably revised by the actual facts of recent Palestine history” (Progress Report of the United Nations Mediator on Palestine, line 397, of the resolution of 29 November 1947).
• “the Jewish State is a living, solidly entrenched and vigorous reality” (Progress Report of the United Nations Mediator on Palestine, line 405).
• “the right of the refugees to return to their homes if they so desire must be safeguarded” (Progress Report of the United Nations Mediator on Palestine, line 457).
• “to return to their homes without restriction and to regain possession of their property” (Progress Report of the United Nations Mediator on Palestine, line 521, suggestion (9) of 27 June 1948).
• “Jerusalem stands in the heart of what must be Arab territory in any partition of Palestine” (Progress Report of the United Nations Mediator on Palestine, line 593, the Mediator’s letter of 6 July 1948).
• “It would be an offence against the principles of elemental justice if these innocent victims of the conflict were denied the right to return to their homes while Jewish immigrants flow into Palestine” (Progress Report of the United Nations Mediator on Palestine, line 793; the sentence continues in the text copy with wording recorded as printed in the reading notes).
• “An economic union cannot be imposed on a completely unwilling partner” (Progress Report of the United Nations Mediator on Palestine, line 829).
• “A Jewish State called Israel exists in Palestine and there are no sound reasons for assuming that it will not continue to do so” (Progress Report of the United Nations Mediator on Palestine, line 929, basic premise (b)).
• “The right of the Arab refugees to return to their homes in Jewish-controlled territory at the earliest possible date should be affirmed by the United Nations” (Progress Report of the United Nations Mediator on Palestine, line 1025, specific conclusion (i)).
• “It is evident that these suggestions as a whole go to realize Zionist ambitions in respect of the partition of Palestine and the establishment of a Jewish State” (Progress Report of the United Nations Mediator on Palestine, line 1157, the Arab League’s letter of 3 July 1948, para. 7).
• “How could it then be divided politically?” (Progress Report of the United Nations Mediator on Palestine, line 1177, of a country the letter holds indivisible economically).
• “The Palestinian Arab exodus of 1948 is one of those cataclysmic phenomena which, according to the experience of other countries, change the course of history” (Progress Report of the United Nations Mediator on Palestine, line 1579, Annex II, the Provisional Government’s letter of 1 August 1948).
• “I am convinced that no substantial military advantage was gained by either side as a result of the operation of the truce supervision” (Progress Report of the United Nations Mediator on Palestine, line 1915, quoted from the Mediator’s detailed report in preparation).
• “but even so, the burden of war would be heavier” (Progress Report of the United Nations Mediator on Palestine, line 2343, of the truce’s burden on both sides).
• “as a result of the conflict in Palestine, almost the whole of the Arab population fled or was expelled from the area under Jewish occupation” (Progress Report of the United Nations Mediator on Palestine, line 2365).
• “The choice is between saving the lives of many thousands of people now or permitting them to die” (Progress Report of the United Nations Mediator on Palestine, line 2585).
• “I believe that for the international community to accept its share of responsibility for the refugees of Palestine is one of the minimum conditions for the success of its efforts to bring peace to that land” (Progress Report of the United Nations Mediator on Palestine, line 2585).

Evidence the work relies on

• The report presents itself as a first-hand account by the Mediator appointed under General Assembly resolution 186 (S-2) of 14 May 1948, based on his consultations with Arab and Jewish authorities over three and one-half months, his exploratory discussions at Cairo and Tel-Aviv from 15 June 1948, the separate Rhodes consultations with four Arab and two Jewish working-level experts on 21-25 June, and his later talks at Beirut, Amman, Alexandria and Tel-Aviv (lines 325-333, lines 469-481, lines 629-645).
• It rests on and quotes its own documentary record: the suggestions of 27 June 1948 (S/863) with their territorial annex (lines 485-555); the report to the Security Council of 12 July 1948 (S/888), quoted at length on the Mediator’s role and cited for the Jewish State’s position and the Jerusalem demilitarization negotiations (line 409, lines 557-575, line 697); the Provisional Government of Israel’s letter of 5 July 1948 and the Mediator’s reply of 6 July (lines 581-595); the Arab counter-suggestions conveyed by the Secretary-General of the League of Arab States on 3 July 1948 and the Mediator’s commentary of 5 July (lines 597-619); the Mediator’s cable proposal on refugee return of 26 July 1948 and the Provisional Government’s reply received 1 August (S/949, at Annex II) (lines 753-785); his reports to the Security Council on the refugee question (S/948) and on Jerusalem’s demilitarization of 19 August (S/979) (line 789, line 729); and the opening of Annex I, the Arab League Secretary-General’s letter of 3 July 1948 (lines 1055-1120).
• It cites the governing resolutions as it presents them: General Assembly resolution 181 (II) of 29 November 1947 and resolution 186 (S-2) of 14 May 1948, Security Council resolutions S/801 of 29 May 1948 and S/902 of 15 July 1948, Articles 39, 40 and Chapter VII of the Charter, and article 4 of part II of The Hague Convention on the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes on the mediator’s part (lines 325-329, lines 333-365, line 557).
• Part 2 of the ingest adds the full Annex I correspondence: the League of Arab States’ letter of 3 July 1948 with its attached unitary-State counter-suggestions (lines 1055-1285), the Mediator’s comments on the League’s observations and on the counter-suggestions (the latter transmitted 5 July 1948) (lines 1287-1441), the Provisional Government’s letter of 5 July 1948 and the Mediator’s reply of 6 July (lines 1443-1525), Annex II, the Provisional Government’s letter of 1 August 1948 on refugee return (lines 1527-1587), and Annex III, the flight log (lines 1589-1705).
• Part Two rests on the truce-supervision operation’s own record as the Mediator presents it: the truce terms in S/829, the organization plan and observer instructions in S/928, the complaint and incident records kept by the observers (some 500 in the first truce; 286 recorded in the second truce’s first seven weeks, with the table of complaints by nature at lines 2041-2135), the dated observer distributions of 1 August and 8 September 1948 (lines 1979-2017), and his reports to the Security Council, among them S/865 of 5 July and S/888 of 12 July 1948 on the first truce, and on the second truce S/934 (30 July), S/939 (1 August), S/955 (7 August), S/961 (12 August), S/977 (18 August), S/992 and S/993 (4 September), S/994 (6 September) and S/999 (12 September), together with the Security Council’s resolutions and requests he cites (S/970, S/983 of 19 August), the Truce Commission’s report of 2 August (S/938), and the Central Truce Supervision Board’s findings on the Red Cross zone and on Ein Ghazal, Jaba and Ijzim (lines 2135-2183).
• Part Three rests on the relief operation’s own record as the Mediator presents it: the Arab League’s late-July 1948 appeal to the Secretary-General and the IRO Preparatory Commission Executive Secretary’s reply (lines 2433-2447); the rapid preliminary social survey completed on 7 August 1948 in Arab-occupied Palestine, based on observation and a random sampling of 500 small units, together with the 49 positive typhoid cases found in the Ramallah area on 6 August 1948 (lines 2457-2465); the Children’s Fund Executive Board’s decision of 17 August 1948 (E/ICEF/75) allocating up to $411,000againstthe$796,000 requested (lines 2501-2511); the replies, as of 8 September 1948, to his telegrams of 16 August 1948 to twenty-four nations for specific commodities and to twenty-nine other nations generally, tabulated in Part Three’s Annexes I and II (lines 2601-3359); and the specialized-agency surveys commissioned for the September-December programme — WHO’s Dr. H. Mooser from 7 September, FAO’s Dr. Kirk and Professor Abbassy in September, and IRO’s General C. Hardigg from 8 September 1948 (lines 2527-2545).

Analysis

Part One is an appraisal, not a narrative of operations: its method is to state each party’s position as the Mediator elicited it, set it against what he calls the realities created since November 1947 — a sovereign Jewish State in existence, no Arab State or economic union in existence, more than 300,000 refugees in flight — and draw conclusions addressed, in the end, not to the parties but to the General Assembly, whose firm decisions he presents as the indispensable substitute for the parties’ absent agreement. Its central distinction is between the 29 November resolution’s objectives (separate existence for the two communities, close economic ties, an international regime for Jerusalem), which his successive proposals keep, and its territorial and institutional scheme, which he treats as revisable by the facts: his 27 June union including Transjordan, his July exchanges insisting he is not bound by the resolution, and his Conclusions’ revised frontiers, free port and airport, and merger recommendation for the Arab territory all follow from that distinction. The same premises carry his strongest claims: the refugees’ right of return is affirmed repeatedly and unconditionally in this part, coupled with restoration of property and indemnity for wanton destruction, while the exodus itself is explained in a single sentence by panic, rumours of real or alleged terrorism, or expulsion. The account is the Mediator’s own: the parties’ positions reach the reader through his summaries and through correspondence he selects and excerpts (Annex I gives the exchanges in full, but only its opening is read in this part), and Jewish and Arab claims about each other’s truce breaches are recorded as claims, except where his observers are invoked. Limits visible in this part: no population, land or casualty figures beyond the refugee total of more than 300,000 (also “some three hundred thousand” in the 26 July cable), no statement of the evidence behind the reports of looting and village destruction beyond “reliable sources”, and no treatment in Part One of how the conclusions’ frontier revisions relate to the populations living in the Negeb, Ramleh and Lydda, or Galilee.

Part Three is a relief administrator’s account, not an investigation of the exodus: it states in one sentence that almost the whole Arab population of the Jewish-occupied area “fled or was expelled” (line 2365) without apportioning the two, and its evidence is the operation’s own — a rapid preliminary survey on a random sampling of 500 small units, confirmed estimates expressly subject to later modification, and donation tables whose figures are reproduced as the replies gave them, including a donated cheese figure fifty times the quantity requested (see Open questions). Its method throughout is to quantify need (the 85 per cent vulnerable total, the 500-gramme bread issue, tentage for 60,000 before 15 October) and then to organize supply around what donors and agencies actually offered, which is why the Children’s Fund’s $411,000allocationagainsta$796,000 request, and the cereals shortage in the appeal replies, carry its argument that temporary alleviation cannot meet a continuing need. Part Two’s closing conclusions apply the same pattern to the truce: the operation’s limits are stated as institutional facts — unarmed observers, machinery the United Nations could not set up rapidly, a Mediator drawn into the disputes he supervises — and the warning that supervision will become an object of cynicism if the truce’s period of maximum constructive potentiality is not seized is addressed, like Part One’s conclusions, to the General Assembly about to meet.

People, organizations, places and events

United Nations Mediator on Palestine, Folke Bernadotte, Provisional Government of Israel, Moshe Sharett, Bernard Joseph, Arab League, Abdul Rahman Azzam, Arab Higher Committee, Jewish Agency, Economic and Social Council, Transjordan, City of Jerusalem, Haifa, Galilee, Palestine Conciliation Commission, United Nations Truce Commission for Palestine, Thord Bonde, Irgun, Arab Legion, Altalena Affair, International Committee of the Red Cross, Nazareth, Ramla, UNICEF, World Health Organization, Food and Agriculture Organization, International Refugee Organization, World Council of Churches, League of Red Cross Societies, Acre, Jaffa, Nablus, Gaza

Concepts

Right of Return, Partition, Corpus separatum, Holy Places

How it relates to other sources

• Against Resolution 181 (II): Future government of Palestine: the report is a nine-months-later appraisal of that resolution by the Mediator appointed after its implementation failed. It restates the Plan’s architecture accurately in outline — partition with economic union, Jerusalem as a corpus separatum receiving 5 to 10 per cent of the union’s revenues — and then records what the resolution’s own text could not: the Arab State and the Economic Union never came into existence, the Jewish State came into existence by a procedure contrary to the Plan’s, and its Provisional Government, which first claimed to act under the resolution and claimed no territory beyond its boundaries, is now pressing for boundary revisions and for at least Jewish Jerusalem (lines 805-863).
• Against Report to the General Assembly (UNSCOP): where UNSCOP’s majority proposed partition with economic union as a plan to be adopted, the Mediator’s 27 June suggestions and his Conclusions keep the two-community and economic-unity objectives while discarding the scheme’s particulars — a union including Transjordan in June, and in September a recommended merger of the Arab territory with Transjordan, Galilee wholly Jewish and the Negeb, Ramleh and Lydda Arab, none of which is in UNSCOP’s plan as ingested.
• Later sources in the wiki read this report’s author and its refugee demand back: The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine has Folke Bernadotte demanding the unconditional return of all the refugees, repeating the demand in his final report, and murdered for it in September 1948, with UN General Assembly Resolution 194 as his posthumous legacy; the text read here affirms the right of return at the earliest practical date throughout Part One, but its only concrete return proposal in this part is the rejected 26 July proposal for a limited number, especially from Jaffa and Haifa, from 15 August — the Conclusions’ affirmation is general and is held alongside Pappe’s characterization, not reconciled with it. Nakba and Survival records that after July 1948 Bernadotte proposed Israel annex the whole Galilee or the western and southern portions it had occupied, with Jordan the proposals’ second beneficiary and the Palestinians the main losers; the Conclusions read here assign Galilee as Jewish territory and the Negeb as Arab territory and recommend merging the Arab territory with Transjordan.

Open questions

• Specific conclusion (a) rests on the Security Council having forbidden military action “under pain of Chapter VIII sanctions” (line 981, as printed). The Introduction of the same report grounds the same prohibition in Article 39 and Chapter VII (line 349). Both readings are held as printed, not reconciled.

• Part One, II, para. 10 (line 433), on the Arab viewpoint, reads in the text copy: “they not only the historical claims of the Jews but even the legal basis for their presence in Palestine which the terms of the Mandate provided” — a verb appears to be missing after “they not only”; the wording is held as printed, reading uncertain.

• Part One, III, para. 15 (line 637) reads “that Jewish in the settlement would probably be more ambitious” — a word appears to be missing after “Jewish” in the text copy; held as printed, reading uncertain.

• Specific conclusion (j) (line 1029) reads “with a view to troublesome minority problems” for the conciliation commission’s good offices toward population exchanges — a verb appears to be missing; held as printed.

• Specific conclusion (a) as printed (line 981) runs “has forbidden further employment of military action in Palestine as a means of settling the dispute should be pronounced formally ended” — the sentence’s structure suggests an omission in the text copy between “dispute” and “should”; held as printed.

• Annex I, para. 2 (lines 1077-1091): the Arab League letter says Zionist forces “prevented the Arab inhabitants of the areas they now occupy from gathering their harvest and used them for the erection of new fortifications” — whether “them” refers to the inhabitants or to the harvest/areas is not clear in the text copy; held as printed.

• The table of contents lists Part Two, section V, “Some conclusions regarding the truce operation”, at printed page 33, out of sequence after section IV at page 42 (lines 237-251); held as printed.

• Slips in the text copy recorded in the reading notes and held as printed include: “Jewish Stare” for Jewish State (para. 13 of section II), “on the hand” for “on the other hand” (para. 13), the stray “v” in suggestion (2), “I947” in the 6 July letter excerpt, “delimited inn” and “United, Nations” and “on to the ultimate status” in section IV, the “{sin” opening of Dr. Joseph’s conclusion, “l have renewed” and “less” for “unless” in section IV para. 18, “forcedto” in section VI para. 7, the stray ”]” after “social” in conclusion (i), “Alexandria, an and Tel-Aviv” and “at my time” in section III, and “at its; meeting” in Annex I para. 4. Whether each slip is in the printed report or only in the web text copy is not established in this part.

• The report places the Church of Dormition in the Old City of Jerusalem (line 877). The statement is recorded as the report’s; no other ingested source in this part locates the church.

• The Introduction dates the Security Council’s indefinite-truce order both to the resolution of 15 July and to “the order of the Security Council of 18 July” (line 349), the latter being the date the report gives for the indefinite truce’s beginning; held side by side as printed.

• The table of complaints by nature in Part Two, section III, para. 10 (lines 2041-2135) prints totals of 105 against Arabs and 182 against Jews. The rows as printed sum (computed from the rows as printed) to 105 against Arabs and 184 against Jews. Both the printed totals and the row figures are held as printed, not reconciled.

• Part Two, section III, para. 10 gives 286 complaints and incidents of which records have been kept (151 Arab complaints, 86 Jewish, 46 reported by observers and 3 by the French Consul in Jerusalem — summing (computed) to 286), and then states that as of 4 September 87 had been settled or closed, 43 were under review and 157 were still under investigation — summing (computed) to 287. Both sets of figures are held as printed.

• Part Two, section II, para. 15 (line 1867) gives Jerusalem’s population prior to the outbreak of hostilities as about 165,000 in all, of which about 100,000 were Jews and about 50,000 were Arabs. The report does not say these were the only groups in the city, and does not identify the remaining about 15,000 (computed). The remainder is held as unexplained, not as a contradiction.

• Part Two, section III, para. 5 (line 1955) lists the radio equipment as consisting of “go radio sets” (as printed), in a list that proceeds to 16 motor-vehicle mounted radio stations and 40 “walkie-talkie” sets; the figure is held as printed, reading uncertain.

• Annex II’s heading carries a footnote marker, “the return of Arab refugees 1” (line 1533); no footnote text for it appears in lines 1527-1587. Whether the footnote appears elsewhere in the printed report is not established in this part.

• Slips in the text copy recorded in the reading notes for lines 1121-2240 and held as printed include: “fundamental] approach” in the Mediator’s comments on the Arab counter-suggestions, “en its part” and the capital “Safety” in the Provisional Government’s letter of 5 July 1948, “Hakirya, I August 1948” and the missing full stop after “position” in Annex II, “1 discovered” and “With important reservations” in Part Two, section I, “ant into operation”, “never e clearly defined” and “between I2 and 14 June” in section II, “lumbers” for numbers, “and. men” and “reported 10 the Security Council” in section II, para. 14, “implemented The” in section II, para. 19, “novel operatic” in the assessment of the first truce, the missing full stop after “forces” in section III, para. 2, “by I August” in section III, para. 7, “take the law into it own hands” and “on I8 August” in section III, para. 12, and the colon closing the first sentence of section III, para. 24. Whether each slip is in the printed report or only in the web text copy is not established in this part.

• The Arab complaint on Ein Ghazal, Jaba and Ijzim, as the report reports it (line 2167), claimed “4,000 refugees and tens of thousands captured and massacred” in three villages whose inhabitants the observers later established at more than 8,000 located, with less than 130 killed or missing. The complaint’s figures and the Board’s findings are held side by side as the report presents them, not reconciled.

• Part Three, I, para. 2 states a total of 360,000 Arab refugees as of 10 September 1948 (line 2367) and then gives a distribution whose printed total is 330,000 (line 2427), the text adding that the remaining are scattered along access roads or in tiny isolated communities or hiding places. Both totals and the text’s own bridge between them are held as printed.

• Part Three, II, para. 3 (line 2461) estimates the refugee population as 12 per cent infants 0-2, 18 per cent aged 3-5, 36 per cent aged 6-18, slightly more than 10 per cent pregnant women and nursing mothers, and some 8 per cent aged, sick or infirm, “representing in all a vulnerable total of approximately 85 per cent”. Taking “slightly more than 10” as 10, the stated percentages sum (computed) to 84 per cent. Both the percentages and the stated total are held as printed.

• Part Three, Annex I: Australia is shown as donating “50,000 tons cheese” (as printed) against 50 tons of cheese requested. Greece’s entry reads “10 tones oil” requested and “to tons oil” donated (both as printed, the second reading uncertain). New Zealand’s request includes “25 tons mild powder” (as printed, for milk powder). The United Kingdom’s entry in a table of replies to the 16 August 1948 commodity telegrams is dated 12 August and marked “(Sec.Cncl)” (as printed). All are held as printed.

• Part Three, III, para. 3 states the appeal’s situation as of 8 September 1948 is shown in Annexes I and II, but Annex II records replies dated 11 September 1948 from Denmark, El Salvador and Ecuador. Both dates are held as printed.

• Part Three, Annex II: Luxembourg’s donation is printed as “10 tons barley” and “14,228 tons canned meat and vegetable” — the second figure is held as printed, reading uncertain. Honduras is printed “HUNDURAS”. The agency table’s C.R.O.P. entry includes “1 box-car bilk” (as printed, reading uncertain), and the Egyptian Government entry quotes a telegram from St. Aubin, “Choucha Pacha advises can deliver Cairo…”, truncated in the text copy as printed.

• Two footnote asterisks in Part Three — after “over a wide area.” (line 2431) and after “the Arabs who fled.” (line 2481) — have no footnote text anywhere in lines 2241-3359; the only other asterisks in the range are the ”***” divider before the closing thanks (line 2587). Whether the footnotes appear in the printed report is not established.

• Slips in the text copy recorded in the reading notes for lines 2241-3359 and held as printed include: “international] peace” and “it is; apparent” in Part Two, “16 Tune” for 16 June and “thought related” for though related in Part Two, V; in Part Three, “in biding” for in hiding, “the cloths in which they stood”, “appeal fro the League”, “transmitted tome”, “his enquired”, “States I which” for in which, “residents b approximately” for by, “Work of activity” for work or activity, the garbled repeated fragment in II, para. 7 (“their homes of those refugees who desired to return”), “186(S-20)” for 186 (S-2) and the lower-case month names in III, para. 1, “to appeals”, “b telegram”, “situation wit regard” and “that n some instances” in III, para. 3, “Directory-General” (twice) and “Regional Officer” for Office and “International refuge Organization” in IV, “provision b the Arab States”, “the second services” for the seconded services and “seconded b” in IV, paras. 10-11, “with it is hoped” and “lake success” and “activity in the America” in IV, paras. 12-13 (para. 13 also lacking a closing full stop as printed), “have the been completed” in V, and in VI “one ear” for one year, “an continuing need” and “I believe hat responsibility” for that, and at the close “at m disposal” for at my disposal. Whether each slip is in the printed report or only in the web text copy is not established.

Coverage

lines 1-3359 of 3359, read in full in parts 1-3 of 3 (Part One in full with Annexes I-III; Part Two in full; Part Three in full with its Annexes I-II, closing with the signed report at Rhodes, 16 September 1948, and the web page’s metadata and footer).