Count Folke Bernadotte, U.N. Palestine mediator, today advised Secretary-General Trygve Lie that the truce is “holding up well on the whole.” Bernadotte added that he would now turn his full attention to the mediation aspect of the problem and predicted that by the beginning of next week he would have certain concrete suggestions relating to basic questions in the hoped for-settlement for submission to the state of Israel and the Arab countries.
Meanwhile, U.S. delegate Phillip c. Jessup informed lie that in accordance with the Security Council’s cease-fire resolution of November 29, the United States had taken the following steps: 1. Issued” instructions to prevent the embarkation for Palestine of all “fighting personnel.” How the U.S. is defining that term was not disclosed; 2. Instructed government agencies and the U.S. Maritime Commission to inform the mediator in advance of all sailings for the Middle East and how many “men of military ago” are embarking; 3. Supplied military observers with airplanes, communications equipment and three naval patrol vessels to the mediator; 4. Was maintaining a “rigorous arms embargo covering the shipment of all war materiel from the United States and its possessions to Palestine and the countries of the Middle East.”
A documented report, linking James Terry Duce, millionaire vice-president of the Arabian American Oil Company with the British Foreign Office and the Arab League in a new conspiracy to whittle down the state of Israel by amputating the Negev, was laid before President Truman and Lie today by the Nation Associates.
The expose, quoting a confidential report from Duce to W.F. Moore, president of Aramco, reveled an alternative plan, proposed by Abdul Rahman Azzam Pasha, secretary-general of this Arab League, to create a Jewish ghetto state modelled on the Vatican in the Te1 Aviv area. This report, “which in turn was submitted to the State Department, became its bible in sabotaging the U.N. decision with respect to Palestine.”
In a memorandum to President Truman, Freda Kirchwey, president of the Nation Associates, charged Loy Henderson’s Near Eastern Division of the State Department with “active collusion” to destroy the effectiveness of every act taken by Truman and the U.N. to implement partition of Palestine. This group, the memorandum added, is largely responsible for the delay in extending de jure recognition to the state of Israel and for holding up a United States loan and arms for Haganah.
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