FROM OUR ARCHIVES

65 YEARS AGO

On March 13, 1949, The Palestine Post reported from Rhodes that Israel and Trans-Jordan had signed a formal cease-fire agreement. It did not cover the “Triangle” where Iraqi troops were stationed, as no official answer had been received from Baghdad in answer to a query by acting mediator Dr. Ralphe Bunche whether Trans-Jordan was empowered to act on Iraq’s behalf. However, Bunche stated the ceasefire would be extended to this area as well, after Iraqi soldiers left the area. After the cease-fire was signed, both the Israeli and Trans-Jordanian delegates sat down to more detailed negotiations. “The entire Negev is in our hands,” foreign minister Moshe Sharett told correspondents in Tel Aviv. Dr. Paul Mohne, the acting mediator’s representative in Tel Aviv, left for Aqaba to investigate the reported Negev clash between Israel and Trans-Jordan. Bunche received a formal complaint from Trans-Jordan that Israeli forces had tried to cross the lines occupied by Trans-Jordan about 35 km. north of Aqaba “in Egyptian territory,” without giving a date. The British War Office announced that it was reinforcing its garrison at Aqaba. Aubrey [Abba] Eban, Israeli representative at the UN, protested that the UN Palestine Conciliation Commission had decided to grant a hearing to the ex-mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini. The protest indicated that the mufti had collaborated with Hitler in the massacre of six million Jews and was an “avowed enemy of the UN.” The Turkish coast guard authorities arrested 70 Jews who were alleged to be leaving for Israel illegally. In Haifa, the Hagana marched under its own flag in a parade celebrating Hagana Day, commemorating the defense of Tel Hai. A parade recalled the Hagana’s story from its early days up to its incorporation in the IDF.

50 YEARS AGO

On March 13, 1964, The Jerusalem Post reported that foreign minister Golda Meir had told a press conference in Luxembourg that she was leaving Europe for Israel under the impression that things were “taking a favorable turn” in connection with Israel’s relations with the Common Market. In Dallas, Rabbi Hillel Silverman testified that Jack Ruby did not know right from wrong when he shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of president John F. Kennedy. The Algerian government accepted 200 Palestinians for “military training” as a contribution to the liberation of Palestine. – Alexander Zvielli