FROM OUR ARCHIVES
65 YEARS AGO
A Mount Scopus policeman who had accidentally shot himself in the hand was transferred to a hospital in Tel Aviv only a full week later, because the Jordanians refused to honor an agreement reached previously by the Mixed Armistice Commission that wounded or sick from Mount Scopus would be transferred to a Jerusalem hospital immediately. After a Mount Scopus resident doctor recommended the policeman be immediately transferred to a hospital, it later appeared that the Jordanians had insisted that a Jordanian doctor inspect the patient before he could leave no-man’s-land, as “they have no confidence in either the UN or the Israeli physicians.” Though he was eventually released to be taken to a Tel Aviv hospital, the unprecedented procedure was rejected on principle by the Israeli delegation, which held that the Jordan authorities had no standing with regard to the Israeli area on Mount Scopus, or the communications line necessary between it and the rest of Israel, which was a UN responsibility. Mount Scopus was considered a UN-protected Israeli exclave within Jordanian-administered territory.
The Haifa municipality’s anti-mosquito campaign advertised in the press reached its climax when two Piper Cub planes showered leaflets on Mount Carmel. The leaflets urged residents to get DDT, which was available free of charge at five stations, to fight the mosquitoes. “Do your duty – destroy the pest. Haifa municipality helps you to help yourself. The reward is sound sleep,” the leaflets read. [DDT was banned internationally from agricultural use in the ’70’s and ’80s due to its negative impact on the health of humans and animals, though it is still used today to combat malaria and other disease pathogens, particularly in India.]
50 YEARS AGO
A leading East Jerusalem lawyer and an insurance agent were placed under administrative arrest for their “central role” in organizing the East Jerusalem business strike earlier in the week. The two men, both prominent in the Muslim community, would be held for three months as “ordinary prisoners.”
In a more “normal” development, six pickpockets were arrested in the Old City – five of them Jews from the Tel Aviv area and the sixth an Arab from Jericho.
The Bank of Israel cautioned Arab merchants in the Israeli-controlled territories to be on guard against accepting fake banknotes when doing business with Israelis. It appeared that a number of Israelis paid for their purchases in Hebron the week before with dummy notes printed for advertising purposes.
25 YEARS AGO
Israel was planning to set up a field hospital and humanitarian aid center in Yugoslavia as the first phase of a program to assist victims of the fighting and refugees from the war zones of the Balkan country. Apart from providing medical treatments and distributing medicines, the hospital, if established, would also serve as a center for distributing food and clothing. Hundreds of Jewish refugees had already successfully escaped Sarajevo and many were headed for Israel via Budapest.
At least 10 Jewish families moved into apartments in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, in a move apparently aimed at embarrassing prime minister Yitzhak Rabin on the eve of his meeting with US president George H.W. Bush. – Daniel Kra