Following Israel’s success in the ten-day campaign and even more so, due to the complete failure of the Arabs, international pressure mounted to stop the fighting. With the British at the forefront, the United Nations Security Council voted unanimously on July 12th for a ceasefire taking effect on July 15th, coupled with a warning that failure to comply would result in serious economic consequences.
The ceasefire indeed took place on July 15th, and all parties observed. Count Bernadotte, the UN mediator, had 310 military observers, in addition to 18 planes and 4 ships to supervise the ceasefire, which he hoped would transform into a permanent truce.

Bernadotte was confident in his ability to negotiate a peace agreement between the sides, as he had no problem making far-reaching proposals. At the end of the first truce, Bernadotte reflected:

The experience I had this past month strengthened my view that the resolution adopted by the General Assembly on the 29th of November 1947 was an unfortunate one… The artificial frontiers given to the Jewish state were bound to result in warlike complications.

The Count’s first proposal (referred to in an earlier entry of this Israel history), called for giving the Negev to the Arabs and the whole of Galilee to the Jews, with Jerusalem becoming an Arab city. Bernadotte had also proposed limiting Jewish immigration after the first two years.

After the second truce began, Bernadotte first returned to Sweden to rest and then met with his staff in Rhodes. At the time, he wrote,

The Jews had shown a blatant unwillingness for real cooperation, and the Arabs had asked me to leave them in peace for a few weeks to allow the popular excitement in their countries to die down.

On September 16th, Bernadotte submitted his plan to bring peace to Palestine, which had changed significantly from his earlier proposal. He noted that the Jews had established “a living, solidly entrenched, and vigorous reality”. Thus, his initial suggestion for an economic union between the Jewish and Arab states was dropped. In addition, Bernadotte proposed that Jerusalem would no longer be an Arab city, but an international city. Yet, the Negev would remain in Arab hands and Galilee in Jewish hands. Finally, Arab refugees would be allowed to return to their homes from which they fled.

The next day, in Jerusalem, as he was traveling between the Arab and Jewish sections of the city, four gunmen approached Bernadotte’s vehicle and murdered him along with another UN representative. It was widely believed that the militant Lechi group had carried out the assassination. The Israeli government arrested many of Lechi’s leaders, nevertheless, the perpetrators of Bernadotte’s assassination were never found.