The fledgling United Nations is meeting in Lake Success, New York after the General Assembly approved a partition plan for Palestine six months earlier. UN Secretary General Trygve Lie asks Rufus Jones to recommend a candidate for municipal commissioner and Jones suggests AFSC head Clarence Pickett, but Pickett decides his responsibilities at AFSC do not allow him to serve and recommends Evans to Lie. Evans’ appointment is approved by the Jewish Agency for Palestine and the Arab Higher Committee representing the Palestinian Arab population. Evans previously participated in AFSC’s program to feed German children after World War I.
But the British, who are preparing to leave Palestine upon the expiration of the Mandate on May 15, do not support establishment of a police force to maintain order in Jerusalem and fighting there continues. Evans reaches Cairo but refuses to accept an armed escort to go on to Jerusalem, so remains in Cairo.
James Vail returns to Cairo and he and Evans meet with newly appointed UN mediator Count Folke Bernadotte, head of the Swedish Red Cross, who urges them to go to Jerusalem. Evans and Vail travel as far as Amman, as fighting in Jerusalem continues. In Amman they learn the Jordanians no longer support the municipal commission. They return to Cairo and seek support from Arab leaders for the municipal commission.
After the first truce is declared on June 11, Evans and Vail finally travel to Jerusalem with Count Bernadotte. In Jerusalem they confirm that now neither Israeli nor Jordanian authorities accept the municipal commission and Harold Evans submits his resignation as municipal commissioner to the UN. Historian Nancy Gallagher comments, “The Quaker role in the municipal commissionership and the internationalization of the city under the auspices of the United Nations had come to an end. Quaker hopes for reconciliation had been dashed.” Bernadotte, who negotiated the release of 31,000 prisoners from German concentration camps three years earlier, was assassinated in Jerusalem by the Zionist paramilitary group LEHI on September 17, 1948.
