The First Nobel: The Importance of the Mediator

The first Nobel Peace Prize for political processes in the Middle East was received by Dr. Ralph Bunche, who died exactly 40 years ago, at the age of 66. He gained the award in 1950 for his success in bringing Israel and its neighbors to armistice agreements, which brought an end to the War of Independence in temporary borders. He did this as a special U.N. mediator in the region after the murder of his predecessor, Count Folke Bernadotte, by the Lehi people.

Bunche’s biography looks like a promo for Obama’s life story. His Afro-American grandfather was a university lecturer who married his student, who came from a mixed family. The father was a black, uneducated barber. When Ralph was 13, his father left home and his mother died of tuberculosis. He grew up with his grandmother, developing a combination of talent and ambition.

He excelled at Harvard where he obtained a doctorate in political science and international relations. During World War II he was recruited by American intelligence, and in 1944 started working for the State Department, devoting most of his time to the establishment of the U.N., where he operated for the rest of his life.

In 1947 he was appointed as a member of the U.N. Special Committee on Palestine, headed by Bernadotte, and in September 1948 Bunche replaced him and served as the mediator between Israel and its neighbors for the truce agreements that would be signed in 1949.

He was a fair broker in the full sense of the word. Apparently, he did not have a tendency to one side or the other and his goal was to implement his experience in order to solve problems that initially seemed insurmountable.

The decision Bunche made from the beginning was one that Israel sought, but that the Arab countries disapproved of it: He managed to persuade the U.N. to adopt a resolution calling the parties to open negotiation in order to initiate a cease-fire on the way to peace. To Ben-Gurion, the avowal that this was about the future peace was imperative to the young country’s legitimacy, yet the Arabs were not willing to commit to it. Bunche pressed on, and in November 1948 the Israeli claim was accepted as a U.N. resolution, opening the door for truce negotiations.

Bargaining with Egypt was very laborious. The Egyptians wanted Beersheba and insisted that Gaza be under their control. At certain stages, it felt like it was impossible to bridge the gaps, but then Bunche drew out a mediation proposal. Beersheba [goes] to Israel; Gaza to Egypt. Israel, which gained sovereignty over Negev, “had to” give up, for the first time, on Gaza.

In another give-and-take with Syria, Bunche ran the tough negotiations from New York. Israel demanded that Syria back off to the international border, but Syria was not willing to do so. Then Bunche pulled out the offer: Syria would retreat to the international border and the areas from which it withdrew would be demilitarized. He did not clear the issue of the sovereignty of these territories, therefore opening the door for a controversy that never came to an end.

Bunche completed his tenure as someone who left a real imprint on the region and finished the war. There is no doubt that he deserved the Nobel Prize granted to him a year later. He proved the significance of an intermediary when two parties are not mature enough to arrive at agreements by themselves: to convey messages, convince, try to explain to each side the interests of its fellow, and especially to bring up the bridging proposals of his own. A conspicuous absence of someone like Bunche is manifest today more than ever before.