"Folke Bernadotte and the first Middle East roadmap"

[Aidoneus]

"Folke Bernadotte and the first Middle East roadmap"
By Louis Farshee
YellowTimes.org Guest Columnist (United States)

http://www.yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=1561&mode=thread&order=0

(YellowTimes.org) – September 17, 2003 falls on a Wednesday this year. In 1948, it was a Friday. In the late morning of that day fifty-five years ago, a lone, white DC-3 bearing the symbol of the International Red Cross landed without incident at Kalandia, an Arab civilian airport north of Jerusalem. On board was Count Folke Bernadotte of Sweden, the U.N. Mediator on Palestine.

Since November 29, 1947, when the U.N. General Assembly adopted Resolution 181 recommending Partition of Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states, civil war erupted in the Holy Land and continues unabated. By early spring 1948 it was obvious that wishful dreams of peaceful compliance with the historic resolution had evaporated in the gunsmoke of acrimony. As violence escalated, all sorts of proposals to end the conflict were discussed at the U.N. On May 14, 1948, the last day of the British Palestine Mandate and the day prior to Israel's Declaration of Independence, Folke Bernadotte was appointed Mediator on Palestine. His assignment was Herculean; stop the fighting and oversee enactment of the Partition Resolution.

Bernadotte was well known for his humanitarian works while head of the International Red Cross during WWII. One act that brought him acclaim occurred in the closing weeks of the war when he facilitated release of thousands of Jews, Christians and allied Prisoners of War from German concentration and POW camps. A nephew of the King of Sweden, fluent in six languages, he was internationally respected as an honorable and capable humanitarian with no political agenda. His selection as Mediator had been proposed by the U.S. and his appointment was approved unanimously.

In his four month tenure as Mediator, Bernadotte shuttled between Arab capitals, toured trouble spots and Palestinian refugee camps, met with leaders on all sides, arranged two cease-fire agreements, submitted two reports to the U.N. with recommendations for resolving the conflict and kept a diary that contained his observations and, at times, scathing assessments of Israeli belligerence.

After landing at Kalandia, Bernadotte and his party motored to Jerusalem to meet with U.N. Truce Observers and inspect several proposed sites for a new headquarters. At the time, he and his staff were operating from the Hotel des Roses on the Greek island of Rhodes, a location Bernadotte believed too far removed from the war zone.

After meeting with truce observers and visiting certain proposed headquarters sites, Bernadotte, in a three-car convoy, entered the Katamon Quarter of Jerusalem. Each car displayed U.N. flags and Red Cross banners. No one in the convoy was armed and Bernadotte repeatedly refused to wear a flack jacket.

The Katamon Quarter was under Israeli army control and largely deserted. Christian residents of this once affluent section of Jerusalem had been expelled at gunpoint by Zionist military forces in late April.

Shortly after passing through an Israeli army checkpoint, the convoy was stopped by a jeep blocking the road. Three gunmen in Israeli army attire bounded from the jeep and began firing at the cars. Bernadotte was shot at point blank range. At least six rounds fired from a Schmeisser submachine gun hit him in his left arm, throat and chest. The attack was over in seconds and Bernadotte was dead.

The seating arrangement from right to left in the back seat of the Mediator's car placed Bernadotte on the right, French Colonel Andre Serot, chief U.N. Observer in Jerusalem in the middle and Swedish General Aage Lundstrom at the left window. Lundstrom was head of U.N. Truce Supervision in Palestine and Bernadotte's personal representative.

Serot had earlier asked to sit next to Bernadotte on this leg of their trip so he could personally thank him for rescuing his wife from the Dachau concentration camp in 1945. According to Serot, she owed her life to Bernadotte. The assassins, confusing Serot for Lundstrom, whom they also intended to murder, shot and killed Serot. In their printed statement, acknowledging responsibility for the assassinations, the killers apologized for murdering Serot "by mistake." Lundstrom escaped injury and his written report of the incident is an original source document. It appears as Appendix I in Bernadotte's diary posthumously published under the title "To Jerusalem."

With the exception of the killers, their accomplices, and supporters, condemnation of Bernadotte's assassination was universal. Suspecting that Lehi, also known as the Stern Gang, was behind the killings, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion ordered its members arrested and their organization disbanded. The four hit men were, in fact, Stern Gang members consisting of three gunmen and a driver subsequently identified and named in Kati Marton's book, "A Death in Jerusalem." The three gunmen were Yitzhak Ben-Moshe, "Gingi" Zinger, and Yehoshua Cohen. Cohen was the shooter who murdered Bernadotte. The fourth member of the hit team, the jeep driver, was Meshulam Makover.

Of the three Stern Gang leaders who dispatched the killers, Israel Eldad, Natan Yalin-Mor and Yitzhak Shamir, only Yalon-Mor was brought to trial along with one gang member, Mattiyahu Shmulovitz. They were not charged with Bernadotte's murder but with membership in a terrorist organization. Following their conviction, Yalon-Mor and Shmulovitz were pardoned under a general amnesty ordered by Ben-Gurion after serving only two weeks in jail. Kati Marton noted "…not one of the hit team would ever spend a night in jail or face a court of justice."

Based upon events in Israel following Bernadotte's assassination, it is apparent that being a member of the Stern Gang was not a blight upon one's good name but a career-enhancing credential. For example, Natan Yalin-Mor was elected to a seat in the First Knesset, the Israeli parliament. The shooter, Yehoshua Cohen, became Ben-Gurion's personal bodyguard. In 1983, Yitzhak Shamir succeeded Menachem Begin as Prime Minister.

The final version of Bernadotte's Plan was sponsored by the U.S. as Resolution 194 and adopted December 11, 1948. Since then, it has been affirmed by the General Assembly at the opening of every session. Among other things it called for repatriation of, or compensation to, the Palestinian refugees. From his earliest days in Palestine, Bernadotte had seen first-hand the plight of the refugees and he consistently spoke about this problem. In his final report and recommendations, he wrote that the plight of the Palestinian refugees was the greatest obstacle to peace.

The Israeli government rejected Resolution 194 and, in 1965, unilaterally declared it "obsolete." In more recent years, the U.S. has abandoned support for it. Clearly, Resolution 194 was aborted by Israeli intransigence, U.S. indifference, U.N. unwillingness to enforce it and Bernadotte's assassination.

By detouring from the First Middle East Road Map, the U.S. set the precedent for rejection of all subsequent Road Maps including the current and moribund initiative of George Bush.

{Louis Farshee, M.A. is a freelance writer and businessman from the Northwestern area of the United States and can be contacted at [e-mail].}

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[jos]

1. Likud Terrrorism

This wasn't the first, or the last time, they resorted to murder.

Thanks for the post.

[the_sam]

2. Only Palestinians Murder!

Duh!