On
May 9, 1956 Dag Hammarskjöld submitted his “Report to the Security Council Pursuant
to the Council’s Resolution of April 4, 1956, on the Palestine Question.” On
May 11, the UN SG held a press conference to discuss his findings.
Israeli spokesmen initially
presented an upbeat and optimistic picture of the SG’s Middle East mission for
public consumption. The DG of the MFA welcomed the report as “a political paper
of first-class importance, the most important ... to deal with Israel-Arab
relations since Israel came into existence.” After praising the Report’s
sophistication, tone, balance and forthrightness, Walter Eytan added that it
was “difficult to resist the feeling that Mr Hammarskjold’s report has done
more than state the facts or clear the air: it seems to have created an
opportunity for a real advance towards better relations in the Middle East.”
For his part, British Ambassador Jack Nicholls in Tel Aviv was “struck by the
apparent contradiction between Israeli satisfaction with [Hammarskjöld’s] visit
and his own indications that he found the Israelis most difficult and
unhelpful.”
Hammarskjöld’s impressions of Israelis and Egyptians were
conveyed to Britain’s chief delegate at the United Nations in New York, Sir
Pierson Dixon. During an “extremely confusing
lunch-table discussion” on May 8, Dixon reported that:
Mr Hammarskjold was very critical of Colonel Nasser, but unstinted
in his praise of M. Fawzi. [- - -] [H]e had spent 27 hours in discussion with
Mr Ben Gurion. Towards the end he had come to like and respect the old man, who
had been very considerate to him. Mr Ben Gurion’s basic attitude however
shocked him deeply. He was not prepared to accept the authority of the United
Nations or basic principles of the Charter. At all stages he insisted on
reserving the right of Israel to repudiate or reject decisions of the United
Nations where Israel believed her sovereignty to be threatened or prejudiced.
In the end he thought he had brought Mr Ben Gurion round to a more charitable
view of the United Nations and to a greater sense of his international
obligations. [- - -] There can be no doubt that Mr Hammarskjold feels that he
had a very rough time and had to resort to methods very different from his
favourite quiet diplomacy in order to achieve as much as he did. Several times
he said that it had been like being in a mad-house, and constantly stressed how
often he had been obliged to thump the table and deliver ultimatums. All this
was obviously highly uncongenial. I think also that there is an element of
bitterness against the Israelis. He confessed that at one moment he thought he
was going to be able to bring off a deal in connexion with the reduction of
Egyptian troop concentrations in Sinai etc. [- - -] But Mr Ben Gurion, who had
encouraged him to talk to the Egyptians on these lines, had absolutely refused
to go along with the idea once Mr Hammarskjold had shown that the Egyptians
might play.
Hammarskjöld’s attitudes were much more colorfully described by Dixon in a
subsequent letter:
During a conversation on May 9 the Secretary
General spoke to me very frankly about his misgivings and the impressions the
Israelis had created on him. He said that he had returned profoundly depressed
from his visit to the Middle East. To be quite frank he did not think it would
be possible to find a solution to the Palestine problem. His reasons were as
follows.
Israel, for all outward appearances, had not
the makings of a state. It was not really a nation. The motive power came from
a few fanatics at the top. He did not believe that on a longer view anything
more than a “symbolic enclave” could be visualised.
Then, apart from Ben Gurion, there was no
real leader; and Ben Gurion, though not without a touch of greatness, had so
many faults that he could not be relied on to lead the country into nationhood.
But what had depressed Mr
Hammarskjold most of all was the underlying state of mind of the Israeli
leadership – a combination of an inferiority complex and a fatalistic
conviction that violence was their only weapon for survival. This was a very
unhealthy pathological attitude which was far more dangerous than the “madness”
of the Arabs. The Israelis were as doomed as Oedipus. The Arabs were just plain
simple crazy.
Mr Hammarskjold likes rationalising
international situations along psychological lines, and his remarks as such
need not perhaps be taken too literally. Still, I feel sure that these
impressions are deeply imprinted and account for his present disinclination to
be involved in the future as a principal in the Palestine imbroglio.
SOURCES: The Report is in SCOR 11th year, supplement
Apr-May-June 1956, document S/3596;text published in Public Papers of
the Secretaries-General of the United Nations: vol.III Dag Hammarskjöld, 1956-1957, eds.
Andrew W. Cordier & Wilder Foote, (New York / London: Columbia University
Press, 1973), 84-111; news conference in ibid., 111-23.
Israeli comments given in the "Voice of Zion" broadcast
in English, May 13, 1956, ISA FM 130.02/3/5934/33; “New Opportunities following
the Secretary-General’s Report,” Omer, May 15, 1956, transl.
extract in TNA FO371/121741 VR1074/292; “After Hammarskjold – the First
Test,” Jewish Observer and Middle East Review, May 25, 1956,
clipping in UNA S-0159-0004-07.
Other impressions are in: Nicholls to Rose, May 23, 1956,
FO371/121741 VR1074/292; Dixon to FO, May 8, 1956, TNA FO371/121739 VR1074/225; Dixon to
Ross, May 11, 1956, Secret, TNA FO371/121740 VR1074/274.
