FROM OUR ARCHIVES
65 YEARS AGO
On January 29, 1952, The Jerusalem Post reported that a 10-year agricultural plan designed to make Israel self-sustaining in food production and costing $840 million, the major portion of which would be provided by American Jewry, had been launched by United Palestine Appeal [a beneficiary of the United Jewish Appeal] agencies in conjunction with the Israeli government. Reporting to the annual meeting of the board of directors, Rudolf Sonneborn, United Palestine Appeal national chairman, explained that the implementation of the plan was divided into three-year periods of initial settlement and agricultural development. About four million dunams [400,000 hectares] were to be cultivated under this plan.
Almost a million dunams of land was being cultivated by new settlers, agriculture minister Levi Eshkol told the Knesset during the debate on the subject of why many new immigrants left their farms. Eshkol said that there were 10,000 head of livestock, 12,000 head of sheep, 2,500 work animals and 400,000 fowl in new settlements. There was also new equipment, which had been purchased mostly in the US with funds of the Export-Import Bank. There were tractors of various kinds, ploughs, combine harvesters, spreaders, trucks and wagons.
50 YEARS AGO
On January 29, 1967, The Jerusalem Post reported that a second session of the extraordinary meeting of the UN Israeli-Syrian Mixed Armistice Commission to discuss the cultivation in the Demilitarized Zone was held on Israeli territory in a special tent set up near Mahanayim.
An anti-vehicle mine of the British Mark II type was discovered near She’ar Yashuv, some 500 meters away from the Syrian army post at Tel Azzayat, and was defused. Police and trackers found the tracts of two men coming from and returning in the direction of Tel Azzayat. A complaint was lodged with the UN Mixed Israeli-Syrian Armistice Commission.
The Ophir freighter Hashlosha was considered by the management as “wrecked,” not yet lost. Two overturned lifeboats bearing her identification, an unopened life jacket, oil stains, timber of hatch covers and empty barrels were found by the Italian navy in the vicinity of what was presumed to be the disaster area in the Tyrrhenian Sea. At a press conference, Ophir’s general manager said that it must be assumed that the ship sank before the crew had time to lower the lifeboats.
25 YEARS AGO
On January 29, 1992, The Jerusalem Post reported that hours after Israel, Gulf and North African Arab states sat together for the first time in history to discuss Middle East peace, the US and Israel deadlocked over the future role of Palestinian representation in regional working groups. Foreign minister David Levy told the press that Israel rejected outright a compromise put forward by US secretary of state James Baker which would have Palestinians from abroad join the peace process for the first time by participating in working groups dealing with refugees and economic development.
In an attempt to emerge from the legal headache of mishandled parking citations, Tel Aviv mayor Shlomo Lahat cancelled 140,000 tickets still pending from the 1980s – many of them unexplainably “lost” by the city’s computer. The massive parking amnesty came on the heels of an investigation ordered by Lahat to check why the city failed to send citations to thousands of parking violations from 1985 to 1989.