FROM OUR ARCHIVES

50 YEARS AGO

On January 5, 1967, The Jerusalem Post reported from Tiberias that two Syrian soldiers crossed into the demilitarized zone, east of Ein Gev, across the lake and opened fire at two members of the kibbutz working in the fields. No one was hurt. A complaint had been lodged with the UN Israeli-Syrian Armistice Commission. The Foreign Ministry spokesman had drawn attention to the recent, frequent sabotage incidents and provocations on the Syrian border.

Foreign minister Abba Eban received British ambassador Michael Hadow in Jerusalem and discussed with him the Syrian border situation. This matter was also discussed between Soviet ambassador Dmitri Chuvakhin, and Foreign Ministry director-general Yosef Tekoa.

The Post’s editorial dealt with transport development progress in Israel and the ambitious IL 90 million expansion plan for Lydda airport [today Ben-Gurion Airport]. The plan made public envisaged the retention of the current airport, while reserving land for later development on the seashore at the Rishon Lezion sand dunes. Transport investments would only be productive, the editorial stated, if they were planned with full awareness of the responsibility to the future. Public transport facilities were increasingly sought as a remedy to the problems created by the explosion in the number of motor cars.

25 YEARS AGO

On January 5, 1992, The Jerusalem Post reported that all Arab delegations had joined the Palestinians in delaying their departure to the new round of peace talks in Washington to protest Israel’s decision to expel 12 Palestinians. The US, while urging that the talks begin as planned in two days’ time, slammed the Israeli move and had publicly appealed to rescind this decision. Prime minister Yitzhak Shamir’s spokesman Ehud Gol said that Israel would rebuff the US call and would not reconsider the expulsion. Gol added that Israeli negotiators would leave for Washington as originally scheduled. Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak phoned Shamir to protest the deportations. Egyptian officials said that this was the first phone contact between the two in more than two years. Outgoing US ambassador William Brown met with Shamir in his office in Jerusalem and later told reporters that the US had also deplored the policy of expulsions.

Most of the public health system operated on a minimal emergency schedule for 24 hours as unions protested health minister Ehud Olmert’s registration of five government hospitals as public corporations.

Thousands of Jerusalem families were for the fourth consecutive day without electricity and heating.

10 YEARS AGO

On January 5, 2007, The Jerusalem Post reported that the government was reassessing legal status of West Bank building with the aim of prodding voluntary outpost evacuations. Committees had been set up in the Defense Ministry and the Civil Administration to map out all construction in the settlements and to come up with “carrots and sticks” to use in persuading settlement leaders to voluntarily evacuate illegal settlement outposts.

In a frosty and uncomfortable atmosphere, prime minister Ehud Olmert and Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak met at the Northern Peak resort in Sharm e-Sheikh. Mubarak made no statement on progress over the release of Cpl. Gilad Schalit, expressed his confidence in his country’s effort to stem the smuggling of arms into Gaza and failed to criticize the firing of Kassams on southern Israel, saying that this was the work of one or two people. Israel’s unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip in August 2005 had prompted Mubarak to deepen his country’s involvement in Palestinian affairs.

– Alexander Zvielli