THE MISSION OF COUNT FOLKE BERNADOTTE, A COSTLY LESSON IN MISPERCEPTIONS (ABRIDGED)
Until the death of Count Bernadotte, there were no major violations and the truces were kept. The Israeli military offensives that destroyed the truces were carried out after the death of Bernadotte and that was no coincidence.
As early as his first report of 27th June, he recommended “The right of residents of Palestine ….. to return to their homes without restriction and to regain accession of their property”. (This being the origin of the famous Resolution 194 of December 1948, giving refugees the right to return to their homes.)
By killing the Mediator, the Israelis also killed his plan as a strange unholy coalition was forged, consisting of Israel and its allies, including the Soviet Union at that time, and of the Arab states and their allies, who were all against Bernadotte’s plan. The death knell came when President Truman on the 28th of October, in a speech in New York, repudiated the plan. Only the British supported it until the end but they could not push it through. Thus, the Bernadotte Plan was killed.
The assassination of Count Bernadotte was not just an assassination of a Swedish count or of one single individual – it was the killing of the United Nations and the United Nations Mediator. After him, there have been no more United Nations mediators. All successors have not been called mediators but have been called Special Representative of the Secretary General or similar. . . . as the Israelis say, “Um schmumm”- “the United Nations is nothing”. Indeed, the UN did nothing in 1948 after the assassination of the UN Mediator. It declared no sanctions against the state of Israel and it took no practical actions against the state of Israel. The murderers were set free.
Of course, the Arab states and other smaller states, like Sweden, drew the same lesson. From that point on, we can follow up to the recent blowing up of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, including the UN Special Representative. What did the United Nations then do?
(Professor Sune Persson Associate Professor (docent) in Political Science, University of Göteborg ROYAL UNITED SERVICES INSTITUTE, LONDON, 2 JUNE 2004)