The War's Aftermath • 295Bunche was able to negotiate a truce so that isolated Jewish settlements
could be resupplied, but the agreement was soon violated and fighting re¬
sumed. Israelis were able to push back the Egyptians and gained much of
the northern Negev, including Beersheba. What the Israelis most wanted,
though, was Judea, where Brigadier General Moshe Dayan attacked Arab
Legion positions around Hebron and Bethlehem until the UN obtained a
new cease-fire. Meanwhile, Israeli forces in Galilee drove the Syrian-backed
Arab Liberation Army northward into Lebanon. While the UN members
went on debating the Bernadotte plan in late 1948, Israel tried to push
Egyptian and Arab Legion forces out of the Gaza area and the southern
Negev. Another brigadier general, Yigal Allon, attacked the Egyptians at
Auja, and by year's end the main fighting front had crossed the old Palestine
border into Egyptian Sinai. When Egypt still would not sue for peace,
Britain invoked the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty to thwart the Israelis. Cairo
was embarrassed to turn to the British, but no Arab country was prepared
to rescue Egypt.
The UN now began a bizarre exercise in diplomacy. No Arab state was
willing to confer directly with Israel, giving it de facto recognition, but in
January 1949 Ralph Bunche opened what he called "proximity talks" on the
island of Rhodes. Egyptian and Israeli delegations, in separate suites of
the same hotel, haggled over terms while Bunche carried proposals from
one side to the other, finally securing an armistice agreement. Three months
later, after the Arab Legion had lost the Negev areas it had occupied, Trans-
jordan signed at Rhodes a separate agreement, one that in fact ratified a
pact that King (formerly Amir) Abdallah had secretly made with Israel's
army commanders. Israel now gained access to the Gulf of Aqaba, a fateful
achievement that deprived Egypt and Transjordan of direct overland con¬
tact and enabled Israel to build a port at Eilat. Lebanon signed an armistice
with Israel in March. Syria finally followed suit in July 1949. Iraq, which had
also sent forces into Palestine, never signed an armistice (as it had no com¬
mon border with Israel, this hardly mattered) and opposed any Arab peace
with Israel.
THE WAR'S AFTERMATHWould these armistice agreements lead to a comprehensive peace between
Israel and the Arabs? The UN Conciliation Commission for Palestine
called a conference in Lausanne, where Israeli and Arab delegations were
to settle their outstanding differences. But negotiations broke down before
the two sides even met. Israel wanted a comprehensive settlement, whereas