By April 23, 2008 Read More →

Palestine Truce Talk Collapsing, Associated Press, St. Louis Globe-Democrat, June 7, 1948.

Moshe ShertokArabs Blame Conditions Set by Jews

Bernadotte Probably Will Offer Terms Today, Israel Says

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CAIRO, June 6 (AP),-The Government of Israel said tonight the United Nations mediator probably would decide tomorrow the time table for a four-week truce in the Palestine war.

Reports from the Arab world, however, indicated negotiations for the cease-fire accord had hit a snag and that efforts to engineer at least a temporary end to the bloody fighting were in danger of failing.

The Israeli Government said in a communique, after its Foreign Minister, Moshe Shertok, talked with the mediator. Count Folke Bernadotte, in Haifa today-

“It was understood that Count Bernadotte is expected to make up his mind finally during the course of tomorrow when he would communicate his conclusions to both sides, propose the deadline and expect the reply.”

MEDIATOR VISITS KING

Nevertheless, a dispatch from Amman, where Bernadotte also conferred with King Ahdullah during the day, said the truce agreement appeared to be breaking up. It had been accepted in principle last Wednesday by both the Jews and Arabs.

The Arabs blamed the deadlock on Jewish insistence that immigration into the Holy Land be allowed to continue and that the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway be kept open.

Intensive military operations were in progress while the truce negotiations were being carried on.

Israeli troops forged a half-circle around Arab concentrations on the northeastern approaches of Tel Aviv and drove within three and a half miles of strategic Tulkarm, Jewish leaders said.

RAID BY JEWISH PLANES

Israeli planes hammered Tulk-arm. The Jewish bulletin said large fires were touched off in an Arab military camp in that city, the western anchor of the Arabs’ Tulk-Jenin-Nablus triangle.

According to Jewish accounts this was the second major threat to Tel Aviv which Jewish forces have blunted in the last two days. The first one- a drive by Egyptian forces up the Palestine coast-was thrown back at Yibna, 14 miles south of Israel’s capital.

King Abdullah’s legionnaires hurled 100 shells today into Jewish-held districts of modern Jerusalem after Israeli infantry made another unsuccessful attempt to storm the Old City’s Zion Gate.

The Jewish attack was abandoned after three hours of close-quarter fighting failed to dislodge the legionnaires from their machinegun posts in the thick walls of the Old City.

BERNADOTTE GRIM

Bernadotte, the United Nations mediator in Palestine, was grimaced and noncommittal following his talks with Abdullah and Trans-Jordan Foreign Minister Fawzi Pasha Malki in Amman.

Abdullah said he did not discuss a truce with Bernadotte since the problem must be handled by the Arab League’s Political Committee, which is expected to meet in Cairo in a few days.

CONDITIONS ATTACHED

Both the Jews and Arabs attached “explanations” to their acceptance of the truce proposed by the UN Security Council. The Jews said they assumed that, during the truce, immigration of all except military personnel would be permitted in the Holy Land. The Jews also insist on the opening of the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway, the supply route for 80,000 to 80,000 Jews besieged in modern sections of Jerusalem.

One high Arab authority in Trans-Jordan said Jewish stubbornness had raised obstacles which might “kill any truce.”

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