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This week Bernadotte left for the Greek island of Rhodes to begin the second and most difficult part of his job—to arrange a long-term settlement between Jews and Arabs. He left behind a sputtering Palestine. The Jewish terrorist organization Irgun Zvai Leumi accused the Israeli government, in accepting the truce, of "submitting to shame rather than continuing the struggle." The implied threat to break the truce brought a sharp statement from Israel's Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion: "The Government will not suffer any attempt to be made by anyone in our midst to break the truce . . . Anyone who attempts to break the discipline of the state at this hour will be considered an enemy of Israel."
The possibility of extending a month's uneasy truce into permanent peace now depended on the willingness of both sides to give a little ground at Rhodes. But Israelis said that they would never consider any solution that did not recognize Israel's sovereignty; Arabs were still flatly refusing to acknowledge even the existence of the Jewish state. Said Transjordan's King Abdullah: "There is in Palestine a fire which must be extinguished. The Western states wish to bury this fire under embers which might rekindle and again burst into flame."