501.BB Palestine/10–2348: Telegram
The Acting Secretary of State to the Secretary of State, at Paris
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Telmar 92. Eyes only for Marshall from Lovett. In a letter1 addressed to Dean Alfange, Chairman, American Christian Palestine Committee of New York, released last night from Republican headquarters, Governor Dewey in effect repudiated Administration’s Palestine policy with respect to the Bernadotte Plan. He reaffirmed his “wholehearted support of the Republican Platform and that certainly included the Palestine plank”. This plank pledged “full recognition to Israel with its boundaries as sanctioned by the UN and aid in developing its economy”. While the careful language “with its boundaries as sanctioned by the UN” could be used subsequently to support argument that November 29th Resolution was not specifically mentioned, entire statement is clearly aimed to support the original UN partition plan with boundaries unchanged.
Furthermore, statement obviously designed to take advantage of widely publicized criticism of President for abandoning Palestine plank in Democratic Platform and timed specifically to embarrass President during his windup trip to Chicago, New York and Brooklyn next week.
I therefore feel positive that President’s reaction will be immediate and aggressive, largely because good faith of Democratic candidate has been directly challenged for breach of his platform pledge. Although President has not yet communicated with me, I anticipate unhappy weekend and propose, unless you instruct me otherwise, to urge that he content himself with reaffirmation his support of Democratic [Page 1508] platform language and stress importance of UN efforts in Paris in trying to find acceptable solution. Platform read in pertinent part: “We approve the claims of the State of Israel to the boundaries set forth in the UN Resolution of November 29 and consider that modifications thereof should be made only if fully acceptable to the State of Israel”. Latter phrase is the important part at present. It is only by some such general statement that we can avoid detailed discussion in succeeding political speeches of Negeb and other problems raised by Bernadotte Plan or flat disavowal USDel September 21st statement, which I hope and believe can be avoided. Will also urge he use Bundle’s exposition Bernadotte Plan if absolutely necessary.
You may wish inform Douglas so he can batten down hatches.
- Dated October 22.↩