Biography
On May 15th, the day after the United Nations created the state of
Israel, Israel was attacked by Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan. A
15 month battle for independence ensued.
The next major crisis after the war of independence was the Suez crisis
of 1956. On 26 July Egyptian Pres. Nasser nationalized the canal,
cautioning that Israeli shipping through it would not receive protection.
Israeli troops invaded the Sinai peninsula 29 October, aided by the
bombing of Egyptian airfields by British and French planes 31 October, and
a cease-fire began 7 November.
The Six-Day War of 1967 resulted in Israel's conquest of the Sinai plus
the Gaza and West Bank territories and East Jerusalem (formerly under
Jordanian control) and the Golan Heights (formerly belonging to Syria).
Military historians generally consider Israel's strategy and execution to
have been brilliant, a "text-book" case. "At 7:10 a.m. of
June 5, Major General Mordechai Hod, commander of Israel's air force,
radioed the attack order from the operations room of the defense ministry
in Tel Aviv. ... The Six-Day War ended officially at 6:30 p.m., Israel
time, on June 10." (1)
The Jewish holy site known as the Western Wall (Wailing Wall) was taken
by Israeli soldiers on 7 June at approximately 9:00 a.m. (2)
An event that shocked the world was the assault by Palestinian gunmen
on Israeli athletes at the Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany; this was on
5 September 1972, beginning at 5:00 a.m. (3) It was a horrific spasm in a
period of simmering tension, and Israel's military promptly retaliated by
bombing and strafing Palestinian guerrilla bases in Lebanon and Syria.
The 1973 war, often called the Yom Kippur War, began on 6 October:
"at 2:00 p.m., as the Israeli cabinet was gathered in emergency
session, a military aide suddenly entered the conference room and
whispered urgently to [Prime Minister] Mrs. [Golda] Meir. The enemy
onslaught had begun." (4) Within two weeks, the Egyptian attack on
the Sinai frontier had been blunted as Israeli units crossed the Suez
Canal and trapped Egypt's 3rd Army; a cease-fire with Egypt was formally
signed 11 November. On the Syrian front, the battle was more protracted,
and a cease-fire agreement was not reached until 31 May 1974.
A major Israeli political shift took place in the wake of the 1973-74
war: the organization of the hard-line Likud Party, led by Menachem Begin.
The Labour Party had been in power since independence, but Likud replaced
Labour in the election of 13 May 1977.
Northern Israeli settlements continued to be harassed from across the
Lebanese border, leading Israel to launch an invasion 6 June 1982,
reportedly beginning at 11:00 a.m. local time (5); a massive bombardment
of PLO targets in Lebanon had begun on 4 June. It was a costly operation
for Israel, and Israel continued to occupy a "security zone" in
southern Lebanon until 24 May 2000. A major objective of the invasion was
to expel the PLO from Lebanon, and in the process Israeli forces, directed
by Ariel Sharon, were at least complicit in the massacre of thousands of
Palestinian men, women and children at two refugee camps on 16-17
September 1982. Arabs were enraged, Israelis were horrified: at least
400,000 protested in the streets of Tel Aviv on 24 September 1982.
In this same general period, Israeli warplanes boldly struck at the
nuclear reactor under construction at Tuwaitah, Iraq; they took off from
the Etzion base in the Sinai at 4:00 pm on 7 June 1981. "With the
setting sun behind them," they dropped bombs that penetrated the
protective dome and destroyed the reactor inside. (6)
Continuing the campaign against the PLO, Israeli planes flew 1500 miles
across the Mediterranean to bomb PLO headquarters 12 miles south of Tunis,
Tunisia, on 1 October 1985, destroying Yassir Arafat's political
headquarters and residence and those of several other PLO officials.
On 5 October 1986 the London Sunday Times published a story on Israeli
nuclear armaments, using insider information supplied by Mordechai Vanunu.
The article asserted that Israel possessed 100-200 nuclear weapons. Vanunu
subsequently disappeared from London, then was secretly tried and
imprisoned in Israel.
The next major flare-up was the Palestinian intifadeh (uprising), which
began 9 December 1987 as a spontaneous protest of 20 years of Israeli rule
and Jewish settlement in the Occupied Territories. The second intifadeh
began in response to Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount, sacred to
Muslims, on 28 September 2000 at 7:30 a.m. (7)
Milestones in the peace process include:
- the Camp David Preliminary Agreement (Egypt-Israel) of 17 September
1978 (following the total lunar eclipse the previous day);
- formal peace treaty of 26 March 1979;
- Oslo accord (PLO-Israel) of 13 September 1993;
- Israel-Jordan treaty of 26 October 1994;
- the Wye Agreement on West Bank and Gaza Strip territories of 23
October 1998 (ceremony concluded at 5:44 pm EDT, 38N50/76W05 --
because of the beginning of Sabbath at 6:00 pm) (8)
(1) A History of Israel, Howard M. Sachar, New York: Knopf, 1996; pp.
639, 658
(2) Sachar, p. 654
(3) Chronicle of the Twentieth Century, Mount Kisco, NY: Chronicle Books,
1987, p. 1052
(4) Sachar, p. 755
(5) source unknown
(6) Sachar, p. 879
(7) www.canadazone.com/palestine/events.htm
(8) source unknown
Peter Doughty: mailto:pdoughty@drizzle.mm.com
* Nicholas Campion's Book of World Horoscopes is available for
£39. Details are available by emailing BWH@caol.demon.co.uk.
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For More Information:
"Land for peace" is a basic formula in the Middle East so
these two map sites are helpful in understanding the conflict.
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What Do You Think?
- Is Ariel Sharon going to bring peace or war to Israel? Can you
predict a month for a peace settlement or the outbreak of war?
- Historically, what have been the astrological portents of Israeli
war and peace? Lets look at the war charts: Israel's birth in 1948,
the 1956 Suez crisis, the 1967 six day war, the 1973 Yom
Kippur/Ramadan War, the 1982 massacres in Lebanon lead by Sharon, the
1987 Intefada I and 19xx Intefada II. Plus the peace charts: Camp
David 1979, Madrid 1991, Oslo 1993, Jordan treaty 1993, Gulf
Cooperation Council 1994, Hebron 1997, Netanyahu-PNA 1998. Can we find
the "trigger" points in the chart? (pun intended.) I wonder
if a rectification program like JigSaw would help?
- Has Sharon made an internal shift for peace as his ads indicate or
is he the same old fighter underneath the ad campaign? Can a
73-year-old leopard change his spots? Is he another Begin – a hawk
who can make peace without looking weak?
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