From fighter to statesman
QUESTION Was Yitzhak Rabin, former prime minister of Israel, a war hero?
Yitzhak RaBiN is considered a war hero in his homeland. he was born in Jerusalem, then in British Mandatory Palestine, on March 1, 1922.
aged 19, he joined the Palmach, an elite branch of the haganah, a zionist military organisation representing the Jews in Palestine after World War i.
he assisted the allied invasion of Lebanon, then held by Vichy French forces. his skill for planning saw him rise swiftly through the ranks.
the Palmach maintained an uneasy alliance with the British, but turned against them over the imprisonment of Jewish immigrants.
in 1938, the British had attempted to stop waves of refugees arriving from hitler’s Germany by building a prison south of haifa.
the atlit camp closed during the war, but reopened in 1945 as more and more immigrants, many of whom were holocaust survivors, arrived in Palestine.
On October 10, 1945, in a raid planned by Rabin, the Palmach broke into atlit and released 208 detainees.
after the establishment of the israeli army, the Palmach was reorganised into three brigades, one of which was commanded by the 26-year-old Rabin.
During the first of the arab-israeli wars, 1948-49, Rabin directed the operations in and around Jerusalem and fought the Egyptians in the Negev region.
he was the deputy commander of Operation Danny, capturing the cities of Ramle and Lydda. in 1949, he was part of the israeli delegation to the armistice talks with Egypt.
Rabin became chief of staff of the israeli army in January 1964. it was his strategy of swift mobilisation of reserves and destruction of enemy aircraft on the ground that proved decisive in israel’s victory in the Six-Day War.
in 1973, he was elected to the knesset (parliament) as a member of the Labour Party and a year later joined prime minister Golda Meir’s cabinet as minister of Labour.
Rabin was prime minister from 1992 to 1995. For his role in the Oslo peace accords, he was awarded the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize. On November 4, 1995, he was assassinated by Yigal amir, an israeli Right-wing extremist who opposed the peace plan.
Sam Fells, Ombersley, Worcs.
QUESTION What is the smallest number of MPs to have taken part in a debate in the House of Commons?
a POPuLaR meme on social media is a picture of a handful of MPs in an otherwise empty chamber with taglines such as ‘Debating the impact of welfare reforms on the sick and disabled’.
this is sometimes contrasted with images of a full chamber of MP supposedly debating an increase in their salaries.
in fact, the image of the almost deserted house of Commons is believed to have come from an adjournment debate, a short session that takes place at the end of the day.
it allows a backbench MP to raise an issue and receive a response from the appropriate government minister.
MPs are not obliged by parliamentary rules to attend the house at any time. therefore, the attendance record of MPs are not kept and the numbers are not recorded by hansard.
Where debates are specialised, sometimes there are almost empty chambers. the smallest debate in recent memory took place on December 20, 2016, when the all-Party Parliamentary Group for Leasehold and Commonhold Reform discussed a possible scandal surrounding leaseholds on new-build houses. the debate was attended by just 13 MPs and housing minister Gavin Barwell.
Thomas Vine, London SW5. thE aswan high Dam, which was completed in 1971, directs the Nile into the manmade reservoir Lake Nasser, which is 85 per cent within Egypt and 15 per cent in Sudan.
the lake is 298 miles long and 9.9 miles across at its widest point with a capacity of 32 cubic miles of water.
the dam altered a water cycle farmers had relied on for thousands of years and which had provided the bedrock of the ancient Egyptian economy.
the annual flooding of the Nile deposited four million tons of nutrient-rich sediment that enabled an agricultural revolution.
the aswan high Dam does provide benefits. it enables the authorities to release water during a drought, control floodwaters and prevent damage along the floodplain.
it generates ten billion kilowatt hours of hydroelectric power, about half of Egypt’s annual supply, and has improved navigation along the Nile.
But it has also created problems. Poor drainage of the newly irrigated lands has led to saturation and increased salinity. More than half of Egypt’s farmland is now rated to have medium to poor soils.
Farmers use a million tons of artificial fertiliser as a substitute for the nutrients that once filled the floodplain.
there has been an increase in disease, such as the parasitic schistosomiasis, related to stagnant water.
it has been calculated that 1.2 cubic miles of sediment have been deposited in Lake Nasser at a rate of 4.7 billion cubic feet a year.
it is being investigated whether mining these rich sediments to spread on arable land is a viable option.
A. T. Kira, Salford, Gtr Manchester.
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