On 21 May 1948 Trygve Lie, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, informed Aubrey Eban, then Israel's representative to the United Nations, of the appointment of Folke Bernadotte as Mediator for Palestine, following a decision by a committee of the five Great Powers. That day marked the beginning of an unhappy relationship between the new Jewish state and the United Nations Mediator. At the time the state of Israel was involved in a life-and-death struggle against six of her Arab neighbors. The tide did not turn in her favor until June-July, when the mediation was well under way. However, on the day that Eban was informed of Bernadotte's appointment, the Arabs were attacking on all fronts: the Arab Legion in Jerusalem, the Egyptian army along the coast towards Tel-Aviv, and the Syrians in the northern Jordan valley. Indeed, by 26 May, the Israeli army had suffered a serious defeat at Latrun, which was not exploited by the Arab Legion although the road to Tel-Aviv was open. Three days earlier the Arab Legion armored column had been repelled at the Notre Dame monastery by a single Israeli Molotov cocktail. One day earlier Kibbutz Yad Mordechai, in the south, had surrendered. By 27 May, Dov Joseph, the Military Governor of Jerusalem, cabled ominously to the Provisional Government in Tel-Aviv warning that Jerusalem's food stores were sufficient for only one week.' Israel's relationship with the Mediator began on 26 May, when Dr Nahum Goldmann, the Israeli representative in London, met Count Bernadotte. Volume I of Documents on the Foreign Policy of Israel (14 May-30 September 1948) (Jerusalem, 1981),2 in which Bernadotte's mission is the main theme, supplies the reader with Goldmann's version of the discussion (No.92). According to this account, Goldmann presented himself as a dedicated representative of his government, insisting on the inclusion in the Jewish state of both the southern Negev and western Galilee. Bernadotte's own version of the discussion, however, differs in important points from Goldmann's. According to the Mediator, Goldmann had stated that the Jews would not be able to withstand Arab intransigence for more than a year or two. Consequently, they preferred to enter a Middle Eastern confederation. Goldmann also volunteered information about the British plan to give the southern Negev (below 31 degrees) to Abdullah, and even confided to Bernadotte that the Jewish leaders themselves were not united as to the importance of the region.3 Had the Israeli foreign policy-makers known of Goldmann's liberal interpretation of his duties as an official representative, they would surely have rebuked him in the strongest terms. However, at this stage it was too early to appreciate the threat which Bernadotte's mission posed to the newly born state. Anxiety was confined to the information, worrying but well known, concerning Britain's wish to exhaust Israel through Arab attacks, and to the
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