Rep. Emanuel Celler of New York today charged the U.S. State Department and the British Foreign Office with “coercing” the late Count Folke Bernadotte into changing his Palestine proposals, which, Celler declared, had adhered to the U.N. partition decision of Nov. 29, 1947, leaving the Negev in Israeli territory.
Count Folke Bernadotte, Celler asserted at a press conference here en route from Israel back to New York, said that pressure had been applied on the mediator at a secret meeting held in Rhodes on Sept. 13. He explained that he could not divulge his source at this time for that charge, but promised to make all the facts public “at the proper time.”
He told reporters here that he would introduce a resolution at the next session of Congress, demanding an investigation into the part played by Robert McClintock, of the United Nations division of the State Department, whose visit to Rhodes with Sir John Troutbeck, of the Middle Eastern Section at Cairo of the British Foreign Office, was confirmed today by a spokesman for Dr. Ralph Bunche, acting U.N. mediator for Palestine.
The U.N. spokesman asserted that the U.S. and the British officials had arrived last month at Rhodes without any invitation. They stayed two days only but they had a draft report on Palestine already completed when they reached U.N. headquarters on the island. While conceding that the two officials may have talked to Count Bernadotte about other issues besides the refugee problem, as first reported, the spokesman insisted that there had been no major changes in the Bernadotte report following the visit of McClintock and Troutbeck.
BERNADOTTE REPORT “IS NOT A BERNADOTTE REPORT,” CELLER ASSERTS
“The so-called Bernadotte report is not a Bernadotte report,” Celler declared. “To call it his is to befoul the memory of the late martyred mediator.” The New York Representative said that Bernadotte had told several Israeli officials before his assassination that the Negev belonged to the Jewish state, adding that Jerusalem should not and could not be internationalized.
Just returned from a visit of more than two weeks to Israel, Celler, who is flying to N.Y. tomorrow, said that the Anglo-American coercion took the form of a threat by both governments to refuse to support the mediator’s plan before the U.N. General Assembly, virtually assuring its defeat. The mediator reluctantly bowed to this pressure, the Representative charged, and the final report posthumously released on Sept. 20 was redrafted, awarding the Negev to the Arabs.
Celler predicted that Israel would accept the Bernadotte plan “but they will not swallow it as a whole–only as a basis for discussion and negotiation.” He added that reports from Israel that the Jewish state was willing to accept a compromise, cutting off the Negev at the 31st parallel, were completely without foundation. The United Nations has no more right to take the Negev from Israel than to take Texas from the United States, he argued. But the General Assembly a year ago did have the rower to dispose of mandated territory, he declared.
“I have consulted international lawyers,” he continued, “and they tell me that the United Nations now has no right to interfere in the affairs of a sovereign state.” While the Negev is thus inviolable, he emphasized that Western Galilee could still be awarded to the Jewish state because that had been designated as part of a projected Arab state which never came into existence and, accordingly, still remains indisposed as mandated territory.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
