Bernadotte Report Asks U. N. Halt Palestine War, Rule Jerusalem; Arab League Starts Own Regime

Mediator Also Urges Changes In Partition Plan

By the Associated Press, Paris

Bernadotte Report Asks U. N. Halt Palestine War, Rule Jerusalem; Arab League Starts Own Regime — Evening Star, 20 September 1948 — Evening Star · Washington, District of Columbia · 20 September 1948

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“PARIS, Sept. 20.—A posthumous report by the murdered Count Folke Bernadotte declares the United Nations should step in to end the Palestine war if the Arabs and Jews fail to make peace.

The mediator wrote that ‘Israel exists in Palestine,’ and the future of Arab Palestine should be left to the Arab states, ‘in full consultation with the Arab inhabitants’ of the Holy Land. His 35,000-word report was distributed to the 58 U. N. member states as his body and that of French Lt. Col.

Andre Pierre Serot were being flown home… All of Galilee should be ‘defined as Jewish territory,’ he added. The partition plan gave Western Galilee to Arab Palestine, but it is now under control of the Israeli Army.

While Count Bernadotte left the disposition of Arab Palestine to the Arab States, he recommended that ‘in view of the historical connection and common interests of Trans-Jordan and Palestine, there would be compelling reasons for merging’ Arab Palestine and neighboring Trans-Jordan.

Count Bernadotte’s report also recommended: The Jewish port of Haifa, including oil refineries and terminals, should be declared a free port. The airport at Lydda should be declared a free airport. The right of 360,000 Arab refugees to return to their homes in Jewish-controlled territory, or payment of compensation by Israel to those ‘choosing not to return.’

The United Nations should provide special assurance that Jewish-Arab boundaries are ‘respected and maintained.’ The political, economic, social and religious rights of all Arabs in Jewish territory and all Jews in Arab territory of Palestine ‘should be fully guaranteed and respected by the authorities.’”

Context added by this archive

Return or compensation, on an American front page, three days after the man who wrote it was shot in Jerusalem. The number in the report is 360,000.

The same front page carries the Arab League announcing its own government for Palestine over the protests of Trans-Jordan and Iraq, with King Abdullah’s reply printed beside it: creation of such a government is “an arbitrary act without the consent of the Palestinian people, a thing I will not agree to and will oppose.”

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"Bernadotte Report Asks U. N. Halt Palestine War, Rule Jerusalem; Arab League Starts Own Regime," Evening Star, 20 September 1948, p. 1. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1948-087. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1948-087