The Progress Report of the United Nations Mediator on Palestine is a UN official record submitted by the United Nations Mediator on Palestine to the Third Session of the General Assembly. It was written and prepared by the UN Mediator Count Folke Bernadotte and was published on September 16, 1948 one day before he was assassinated by members of Lehi.
The report deals with the mediation efforts between Jews and Arabs in Palestine, the two UN supervised truces in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, June 11 - July 9, 1948 and July 18 to the time the report was written and with the refugee situation. Bernadotte was an ardent supporter of the Arab refugees right to return — in the report he strongly urged the provisional Israeli government to let them return to their homes:
- It would be an offence against the principles of elemental justice if these innocent victims of the conflict were denied the right to return to their homes while Jewish immigrants flow into Palestine, and, indeed, at least offer the threat of permanent replacement of the Arab refugees who have been rooted in the land for centuries.
He also detailed his correspondence with Israeli officials regarding the refugee problem and their denial of his appeal.
Famous quotes containing the words progress, report, united, nations, mediator and/or palestine:
“In this nation I see tens of millions of its citizens, a substantial part of its whole population, who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life. I see one third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished. The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“We have been here over forty years, a longer period than the children of Israel wandered through the wilderness, coming to this Capitol pleading for this recognition of the principle that the Government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed. Mr. Chairman, we ask that you report our resolution favorably if you can but unfavorably if you must; that you report one way or the other, so that the Senate may have the chance to consider it.”
—Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919)
“In the United States, though power corrupts, the expectation of power paralyzes.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)
“That is the great end of empires before God, to be Catholic and draw nations into their Catholicism. But our empire is less and less Christian as it grows.”
—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)
“Their errors have been weighed and found to have been dust in the balance; if their sins were as scarlet, they are now white as snow: they have been washed in the blood of the mediator and the redeemer, Time.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
“I know a lady in Venice would have walked barefoot to Palestine for a touch of his nether lip.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)