FROM OUR ARCHIVES
50 YEARS AGO On January 12, 1967, The Jerusalem Post reported that a Syrian tank of Soviet manufacture was destroyed and another damaged, and two Israeli soldiers were wounded, one of them seriously, during a fierce two-hour exchange of fire in the Hula region. A warlike atmosphere pervaded Upper Galilee. In Beit Katzir, prime minister Levi Eshkol declared that Israel would reply to force by force. Eshkol addressed the press after a tour of the Syrian border, accompanied by chief of staff, Lt.-Gen. Yitzhak Rabin and OC Northern Command, Maj.-Gen. David Elazar.
The Syrian Army spokesman said the fight began after Israeli forces opened fire and claimed at UN headquarters that Israel was deliberately increasing tension in the area. The firing from Syria continued when Gen. Odd Bull, the UNTSO chief of staff in Jerusalem, was holding talks in Damascus with the Syrian chief of staff.
In Washington, president Lyndon Johnson pledged in his State of the Union address to Congress that the US would use its influence to try to improve relations among Middle East countries.
The Soviet Union had expelled several Israeli citizens for alleged “espionage” activities, according to the government daily newspaper Izvestia. The newspaper also indicated that three other Israelis had been expelled after coming to the country “in the guise of tourists” to spread Zionist propaganda and engage in espionage, some of them with connivance of the Israeli Embassy in Moscow. One of the men, Yona Shubov, was said to have come for the Israeli pavilion at the Moscow agricultural exhibition in May 1966.
25 YEARS AGO On January 12, 1992, The Jerusalem Post reported from Washington that identical letters written by Israel to both the Palestinian and Jordanian delegations proposing ways to break the deadlocked Middle East peace talks had left the two Arab delegations cautiously optimistic on the eve of resumption of peace-talks negotiations. The Israeli proposal was forthcoming on accommodating the Palestinian-Jordanian delegation’s desire to immediately break up bilateral negotiations into two tracks, concentrating separately on Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Jordanian issues.
IAF jets successfully destroyed terrorist targets in Lebanon. The raid, which killed 12 people according to Lebanese sources, was aimed at the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command base at Damur.
The US no longer treated Russian Jews as refugees. Russian Jews held by US immigration officials had watched their bid for political asylum evaporating. 10 YEARS AGO On January 12, 2007, The Jerusalem Post reported that US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice was arriving in the region, but there were no great expectations for her visit, since both prime minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas were not leaders, able in Washington’s eyes, to reach a peaceful arrangement.
A hi-tech computer system aimed at improving the flow of information between various departments of the National Insurance Institute, simplifying the process by which the benefits are distributed, had been scrapped after seven years of development and an investment of NIS 30 million.
The Winograd Committee investigating the conduct of war against Hezbollah in summer 2006 sent warning letters to Olmert, defense minister Amir Peretz, chief of staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz and former OC Northern Command Maj.-Gen. (res.) Udi Adam. This could mean that the panel was considering making potentially dangerous personal recommendations.