MIDDLE EAST: On the Move

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U.N. was still searching last week for some way to end the conflict. Swedish Count Folke Bernadotte was named as a mediator between Jews and Arabs. The U.S. pressed for a Security Council resolution that would recognize a "threat to the peace and breach of the peace" in Palestine, and pave the way for sanctions to enforce a truce. Britain balked. Unless King Abdullah's Arab Legion spilled over into territory marked for Jewish control by the U.N. partition plan, Britain apparently was not going to try to check him. On British insistence, the Security Council voted for another sanctionless truce order, with a 36-hour time limit. While U.N. debated, U.S. Consul General Thomas Wasson, member of the U.N. Truce Commission appointed last month, was killed in Jerusalem by a sniper's bullet.

At week's end, Israel's government announced that it would order Israeli forces to cease fire on the U.N. deadline, if the Arabs did the same. On the deadline, Arabs asked for another day and a half to discuss the truce order among themselves. But the brief hope for immediate peace flickered out when Arab spokesmen added a condition which the Jews would not accept: Israel's government must cease to function before the Arabs would consider a truce.