FROM OUR ARCHIVES
65 YEARS AGO
On February 24, 1949, The Palestine Post reported that Israel and Egypt were about to sign an armistice agreement at 10:30 Israel time the following day. The Egyptian delegation, which carried the proposal to Cairo for government approval, returned that day, exactly six weeks after the talks at Rhodes began. Egypt’s decision to sign the Rhodes agreement virtually as drafted the previous week, had come sooner than generally expected and it caused great satisfaction in Israel. It was reliably reported that the implementation of the Israeli-Egyptian armistice would be fully entrusted to a joint Israeli-Egyptian Armistice Commission. The Israel-Transjordan talks had been postponed for two days “at the initiative of Israel and with the consent of Transjordan.” It was reliably reported at Rhodes that the implementation of the Israeli-Egyptian armistice would be fully entrusted to a joint Israeli-Egyptian Commission. Dr. Walter Eytan, the head of the Israeli delegation at Rhodes, announced that the terms of the armistice agreement with Egypt left the entire Negev in Israel’s hands. He expected that the negotiations with Egypt were over, and Israel looked forward to similar talks with all Arab nations. Uninterrupted sniping continued on the central front, in the Ramat Hakovesh area. It spread all over the central front, where there was heavy firing for over an hour. The UN Palestine Conciliation Commission ended talks in Beirut and was expected to be back in Tel Aviv for talks with government officials. Over 120 young Orthodox Jews from England moved to a new settlement in Galilee.
50 YEARS AGO
On February 24, 1963, The Jerusalem Post reported that according to Prof. Amos de Shalit, head of the Nuclear Physics Department at the Weizmann Institute, “Dr. Yuval Ne’eman’s theory of the grouping of elementary particles pushed back the frontiers of scientific research in this field, opening new research vistas.” Prime minister Levi Eshkol confirmed in the Knesset, in reply to non-confidence motions, the findings of the seven-man ministerial committee in the matter of the Lavon “affair” and of the 1954 “security mishap” in Egypt. (The question was who gave order for this “mishap.”) The cabinet approved foreign minister Golda Meir’s visits to Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg.
25 YEARS AGO
On February 24, 1989, The Jerusalem Post reported that both the US and the Soviet Union jostled for the center-stage in the quickening Middle East diplomatic drama. In Tokyo, US secretary of state James Baker spoke disparagingly of the Soviet Union’s high-profile performance, while in Cairo Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze rejected US president George H.W. Bush’s relegation of Moscow’s “limited role” in the peace process. In Cairo, PLO chairman Yasser Arafat held his first press conference for Israeli journalists and said he wanted to make a special, personal appeal to the Israeli public, saying “we are cousins, you have to treat me as an equal human being.” Troops of the South Lebanese Army (loyal to Israel) killed three Palestinian terrorists of Nayef Hawatmerh’s Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine in the Israeli security zone in Lebanon. President Chaim Herzog met presidents Bush and Mubarak and King Carlos of Spain in Tokyo where he went to attend the funeral of Emperor Hirohito. – Alexander Zvielli