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For four months Bernadotte flew up & down the Middle East in his Red Cross plane. In his Red Cross uniform (with khaki short trousers) he still looked like a Boy Scout. He was not a brilliant man, but all who met him recognized his sincere desire to bring to others the peace he had always known at home.
On the evening of the murder, 13-year-old Bertil Bernadotte switched on the radio at Dragongärden. That is how he heard the news. He ran to his mother, who took the news with outward calm; she had feared for weeks that her husband would be killed. Quietly she went to call her elder son, who was away at school. Soon the whole family assembled. King Gustav heard of his nephew's death as he was returning from his summer vacation; the old King wept. In Paris, U.N. delegates heard the news as they were getting ready for this week's General Assembly.
"That Troublesome Zone." Count Folke Bernadotte's assassination reminded U.N. of its crucial weakness—inability to enforce its decisions or even to protect its emissaries. Secretary General Trygve Lie, looking weary after a hurried flight from Oslo, said angrily: "The murder reflects an unprecedented and intolerable lack of respect for the dignity and authority of the United Nations."
Then the Security Council appointed the U.S.'s Ralph Bunche as Bernadotte's temporary successor. Bunche is a brilliant American Negro, son of a Detroit barber and grandson of a southern slave; a Ph.D. (Harvard), he was professor of political science at Howard University, specialized in colonial problems, served in OSS during the war, joined the State Department and finally became director of U.N.'s trusteeship division.
In Haifa, Israeli security police hovered anxiously about the new mediator. From Stockholm, Countess Bernadotte spoke to her husband's aide by shortwave radio. Said she: "Give my best to Ralph Bunche. I know what he meant to my husband." Said Mrs. Bunche in Manhattan: "I feel very sad about this appointment ... I can't help but have fears for him as long as he's in that troublesome zone."
This week the U.N. published Bernadotte's recommendations for a peace settlement which he had completed just before his death. The gist: Galilee was to go to the Jews, the Negeb desert was to go to the Arabs, Jerusalem was to be placed under U.N. control.
In Israel there was general fear that Bernadotte's murder would bring even more violence. Arabs were reported massing troops; Israeli forces took up battle positions. But in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, two days after the murder, life seemed normal. "We were more worried about Lord Moyne's assassination," said one Israeli. "But the world soon forgot it, and other incidents like it won our state."
The car in which Bernadotte was killed was brought to Tel Aviv and parked in front of the U.N. mission's hotel. Someone had chalk-marked a jagged bullet hole in the rear seat, and a pretty brunette girl told passersby: "That's the one that got him." The staff of the U.N. truce mission had lost its last shred of idealism about its task. "I'm in the country where Christ was born," said a U.S. captain in a bar, "and I wish to Christ I was in the country where I was born."