ABSTRACT

On December 13, 1948, the Security Council decided that the Conciliation Commission would be made up of representatives of the United States, France, and Turkey. The United States, which was involved behind the scenes in deciding the composition of the committee, decided to play a central role in the peace process. Some researchers have called this another historical turning point at which the Amer icans replaced the British in the Middle East.1 The British resisted the Amer icans’ attempts to have their own representative on the committee, but Troutbeck gloomily admitted that “the key to the situation seems to lie with the United States Government.”2 None of this prevented the British from confronting the Amer icans for what had been the focus of the British efforts on the Palestine question-tearing the Negev away from the State of Israel and annexing it to Transjordan. In early January, with the opening of the armistice talks between Israel and Egypt on the agenda, the British tried to ensure that Israel would carry out the Security Council’s decision and withdraw in the Negev to the pre-operational lines as a condition for negotiations. “We certainly could not bring pressure to bear on Egypt to negotiate merely on the basis of a cease-fire without a withdrawal of forces in accordance with the November 4th Resolution,” the British tried to make clear to the Amer icans.3 But Egypt agreed to go into armistice talks without an Israeli commitment to withdraw, and the United States kept its mouth shut, both on the demand for withdrawal and on the downing of British planes by Israel on January 7, 1949. The Foreign Office wondered in exasperation whether the Amer icans could provide a clear answer on its position. “Are they standing by the Jewish view that they must hold what they have achieved by force, or do they uphold the view that we must both stand by Security Council decisions?” Or, perhaps, was the United States abandoning the UN resolution that called for an Israeli withdrawal in the Negev?4 On January 13, after further pleas and threats by the Foreign Office (chiefly Bevin’s initiative to violate the embargo and renew weapons shipments to the Arabs), the United States made its position clear to Britain in conversations conducted separately by Truman and Robert Lovett, Marshall’s stand-in, with the British representative in Washington. Lovett asked the British not to take advantage of the Security Council resolution to push Israel out of the Negev.