FROM OUR ARCHIVES
65 YEARS AGO
On December 28, 1951, The Jerusalem Post reported that two soldiers were killed and one wounded in an ambush on the Ein-Husub–Sdom road. The three soldiers, traveling in an army track, saw the head of an Arab hiding behind a rock. While trying to turn the vehicle around, automatic fire was opened on them. They returned the fire, killing one of the attackers. The Arabs had time to rob the soldiers of their arms and uniforms, before a passing IDF vehicle found the dead and the wounded. The ambush took place at the almost the same place as two previous attacks in 1951. A strong protest had been lodged with the UN Israel-Jordan Armistice Commission.
Foreign minister Moshe Sharett said that the $100 million assessment by the UN Palestine Conciliation Commission’s Refugees Office of the value of Arab property abandoned in the Palestine 1948 war was, in effect, academic. He said the report was being studied and there had been no possibility of checking the figures in Paris. But, he added, even if he had some observations, he doubted whether they would be voiced publicly. “We didn’t get the property through a business transaction, but through a revolution,” he said. “The transfer of the property was only one of the many aspects of this revolution.”
After heavy rains citrus picking began throughout the country at an increased tempo and no limits were set on the amount of fruit picked.
50 YEARS AGO
On December 28, 1966, The Jerusalem Post reported that premier Levi Eshkol reported to the Atomic Energy Committee in Jerusalem on the joint US-Israel desalination project, following the visit here the previous week of US roving ambassador Ellsworth Bunker. The meeting heard reports on the various subcommittees of the Atomic Energy Committee.
In Cairo, the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Ahmed Shukeiry, had announced the formation of a secret revolutionary council. The council, to include persons inside Jordan, would “undertake the preparation of the people to wage a battle for liberation with the Palestine Liberation Organization in the vanguard.”
Egypt had informed the United Arab Command that it was stopping its payments to the command, and to the Arab joint arming program. This followed several recent cases in which Egypt had paid its installments in Egyptian pounds instead of hard currency, as demanded by the Arab League.
S.Y. Agnon returned to Israel by El Al after receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature, stating: “I spent three weeks abroad and it would take me 30 years to tell about it.”
10 YEARS AGO
On December 28, 2006, The Jerusalem Post had learned and reported that Hezbollah was paying Palestinian splinter groups “thousands of dollars” for each Kassam rocket fired at the western Negev. According to Israeli intelligence information, Hezbollah was smuggling cash into the Gaza Strip and paying “a number of unknown local splinter groups” for each attack. Shin Bet (Israeli Security Agency) sources said the Islamist organizations paid several thousand dollars for each attack, with the amount dependent on the number of Israelis killed and wounded. “We know that Hezbollah is involved in funding terrorist activity in the Gaza Strip and West Bank,” a security official said.
Prime minister Ehud Olmert and visiting Egyptian foreign minister Ahmed Abul Gheit discussed various ways Israel could trade Palestinian security prisoners in return for the captive Cpl. Gilad Schalit, but did not discuss releasing any as a goodwill gesture ahead of the Eid al-Adha holiday.
The 10,000th Nefesh B’Nefesh immigrant arrived in Israel.