ABSTRACT
On April 5, Bunche flew to Beirut to attend the opening of the last round of armistice talks, those between Israel and Syria. He found the Syrians to be the hardest nut to crack, and this round of negotiations would prove to be the most difficult and drawn out. This was no surprise. Syria’s opposition to the very existence of Israel was uncompromising, the fruit of a deep and ardent commitment to Arab nationalism and the Palestine issue. Unlike Egypt and Jordan, Syria held no direct parleys with Israel while the fighting was in progress. In response to the Security Council’s call for the combatants to sign armistice agreements, Syria announced that it would not negotiate with Israel, on the grounds that an armistice agreement entailed recognition of Israel. The Syrians attacked Egypt for its willingness to sit down with Israel and for the agreement it signed, and treated Lebanon and Jordan similarly. Adel Arslan, one of the leading players in the political arena and foreign minister at the time, took up the cudgels against talks with Israel. In his diary, he described his attempts to dissuade the Egyptians and Lebanese from negotiating with the Jewish state. Arslan was also harsh in his assessment of Bunche. “Not a mediator or an acting mediator, but an Amer ican, half-Black, who follows his government’s instructions and is trying to get the Arab states to recognize Israel unconditionally,” he wrote in January 1949.1
Not only were the Syrians obstinate in their position, they also held certain military advantages. During the fighting, they had managed to consolidate their hold on several positions west of the international border, and the IDF ’s attempts to repulse them failed. The Syrians held a bridgehead near Mishmar Hayarden, in a territory south of Ein Gev between the international border and the Sea of Galilee, and in a small stretch between the Banyas and Kibbutz Dan-all of which the Partition Plan had allocated to the Jewish state. Syria wanted to retain this territory, but negotiations with Israel would probably require them to withdraw, or at least reduce their control. This situation contributed to the Syrian unwillingness to hold talks.2
