FROM OUR ARCHIVES
65 YEARS AGO
On February 26, 1948, The Palestine Post reported that at the UN Security Council the US had formally proposed that the five Big Powers should be given the task of finding a solution to the Palestine problem.
The British Foreign Office had privately approached the Sunday Express, which was serializing the memoirs of Roy Farran, the alleged murderer of Alexander Rubowitz, and suggested that it might be advisable not to publish them. The Foreign Office was concerned at Farran’s embarrassing frankness in these articles.
An Arab attack base was blown up in Haifa’s Wadi Rushmiye. Two Jews were killed; nine Arabs and two British constables were wounded.
Arieh Berman, 33, was fatally injured and two of his companions were wounded in an Arab ambush near Gedera.
The Hagana stormed an Arab gang base and demolished six building on the Jaffa-Tel Aviv border. A strong Arab attack on Givat Herzl, Salameh Road and the Brenner Quarter was repulsed.
A food convoy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv came under heavy Arab fire from both sides of the road. Three Jewish drivers were killed and 16 other drivers and escorts were wounded, but the convoy finally arrived in Jerusalem.
50 YEARS AGO
On February 26, 1963, The
Jerusalem Post reported that the Jerusalem District Court had dismissed the testimony of three Arabs accused of spying for Egypt “as a pack of lies” and convicted them as members of a spying ring set up by the Egyptian intelligence in the Gaza Strip. [Egypt occupied the Gaza Strip in 1963.]
Israel was prominent in nuclear research for peaceful purposes, prime minister David Ben-Gurion told the Knesset, when he opened the debate on the budget of the Prime Minister’s Office.
A wildcat strike which began among workers of the Eilat Port Services spread to all sectors of the port, idling 170 persons and holding up the unloading of the freighter Safad.
Chief rabbi Yitzhak Nissim declared that the Supreme Court decision ordering the Interior Ministry to register a mixed marriage would “endanger the unity of the nation.”
25 YEARS AGO
On February 26, 1988, The
Jerusalem Post reported that US secretary of state George Shultz had stated upon his arrival in Israel that he was carrying “a workable proposal” for a Middle East peace process and proclaimed optimistically that “if we can work together with commitment and determination, we can make 1988 a year of peace in the region.” American officials made last-ditch efforts for Shultz to meet Palestinians. But Israeli Arabs had also rejected the US peace initiative.
The IDF staged a pre-dawn raid on Kabatya, arresting 100 local residents suspected in the involvement in the lynching of a local villager who allegedly worked for the Shin Bet. The houses of two suspects were blown up.