294 • 17 ISRAEL'S REBIRTH AND THE RISE OF ARAB NATIONALISMinterests in Iraq and Kuwait. But although the Foreign Office and many sen¬
ior diplomats did favor the Arabs, the British government depended too
heavily on US military and economic support to openly challenge its Middle
East policies. Continental Europe was recovering from the ravages of World
War II, and most liberals sympathized with the Jewish state. Europeans who
volunteered to aid the Arab armies often turned out to be unrepentant
Nazis. Meanwhile, many Americans and Europeans rallied to Israel's cause
to atone for the Holocaust.
UN Mediation Attempts
The United Nations, overtaken by events in May 1948, tried to settle the
Arab-Israeli conflict in ways that angered first one side, then the other, and
sometimes both. It promptly sent a mediator, Sweden's Count Folke
Bernadotte, who managed to get both sides to accept a monthlong cease¬
fire in early June. Both sides were exhausted from four weeks of intense
fighting, but only the Israelis used this respite to obtain and distribute
arms to its troops. Bernadotte published a plan that would have given the
Negev Desert (assigned mainly to the Jews under the 1947 partition plan)
and Jerusalem to Transjordan. In return, Israel was to get parts of western
Galilee that had been allotted to the Arabs. Egypt, whose troops had occu¬
pied most of southern Israel, would get nothing. On 8 July fighting re¬
sumed on all fronts. During the next ten days, the Israelis took part of
Galilee and the strategic towns of Lydda and Ramleh, expelling their in¬
habitants, as the Arab Legion refused to fight there. But the UN secured
another cease-fire before the Jewish forces could capture the Old City of
Jerusalem (containing the revered Western Wall). On 18 July another un¬
easy truce descended on Palestine.
As both sides prepared for yet another round of fighting, the UN medi¬
ator made a new appeal to Arab support. Bernadotte added to his plan a
stipulation that the Arab refugees be allowed to return to their homes in
cities and villages now under Israeli control. How, with winter's cold and
rain imminent, could these people wait in makeshift camps for a chance to
return? Who could have known that Palestinian Arabs (and their descen¬
dants) would wait and wait and wait, as pawns or perpetuators of a con¬
flict that the United Nations was supposed to settle in 1948? But the
Israelis wanted the Arabs' homes, lands, and crops for the Jewish immi¬
grants whom they hoped to attract. Bernadotte was murdered in Septem¬
ber by Stern Gang extremists.
Ralph Bunche, an American, became the new UN mediator. His first
challenge lay in the northern Negev, mostly occupied by Egyptian troops.