FROM OUR ARCHIVES
65 YEARS AGO
On April 18, 1947, The Palestine Post reported that Czechoslovak foreign minister Jan Masaryk was regarded as the possible president of the Special Meeting of the UN General Assembly on Palestine. Meanwhile Britain was cool to the idea of the participation of the Jewish Agency in the Assembly’s deliberations, even without the right to vote.
Britain accused UNRRA and organizations working with it, such as the American Joint Distribution Committee, of wittingly or unwittingly assisting “illegal” Jewish immigration to Palestine.
Two more death sentences were confirmed by the British Jerusalem Military Court on Moshe Barazani and Meir Feinstein.
During 1946, 198 Arabs and 98 Jews were found guilty of carrying arms by the British Military Courts in Palestine. Twenty-two Jews (and no Arabs) were sentenced to death, but none of these sentences were carried out. [Four Jews were hanged on April 16, 1947.] Eight Arabs and 10 Jews were found guilty by civil courts of a similar offense, but none was sentenced to death.
The Stern Group claimed responsibility for placing a bomb that failed to explode at the Colonial Office in London.
50 YEARS AGO
On April 18, 1962, The Jerusalem Post reported that Dr. Joseph E. Johnson, the special envoy of the Palestine Conciliation Commission, concluded a day-long conferences with foreign minister Golda Meir and the ministry’s senior officials. Johnson told the Post that he had very interesting and useful talks in Israel and was now leaving for Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt. He also planned to make another tour of the Middle East later during the summer, to prepare a report for the UN General Assembly meeting in autumn.
Chief of staff Lt.-gen. Zvi Tsur said that while he did not expect a major war, Israel must be ready to be forced to fight over the Negev irrigation plan, or the Straits of Tiran, or other security matters. The IDF, Tsur declared, must be ready for local full-scale attacks.
Fire was opened on watchmen at the Jewish National Fund equipment park at Lahav in the northern Negev. Tracks of two infiltrators led to the Jordanian border.
10 YEARS AGO
On April 18, 2002, The Jerusalem Post reported that US secretary of state Colin Powell left Israel emptyhanded, without any concrete achievement on a cease-fire, a Palestinian renouncement of terrorism coupled by real action on the ground, or a full IDF withdrawal from the territories under the Palestinian Authority. Nevertheless he succeeded in de-escalating the situation in the North during his visit to Lebanon and Syria.
US president George Bush said that Powell was returning to Washington from the Middle East “having made progress towards peace” and had reiterated a series of expectations for Israelis, Palestinians and the Arab world.
Defense minister Binyamin BenEliezer announced that the IDF could within days pull out from Jenin and Nablus, but would remain, for now, in Bethlehem, if an adequate solution was found for the Church of the Nativity, and from Ramallah.
– Alexander Zvielli