The USSR broke off diplomatic relations with Israel because of the defeat in 1967 of the Arab states which it had supported and armed. Soviet leaders Kosygin, Brezhnev and Podgorny are depicted as the three wise monkeys: ‘See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.’

They ignore a hijacking by the PFLP to Algiers of an El Al flight the week before, but continue to exhort the Israelis to leave the territories conquered during the Six Day War and demand ‘no further aggression’.

Ze’ev (Ha’aretz 29 July 1968)

1 Jan

Mortar attack on Kfar Ruppin amidst exchange of gunfire with Jordanians

1 Jan

Repatriation of 500 Egyptian prisoners of war under Red Cross supervision

9 Jan

Eilat–Ashdod oil pipeline attacked

15 Jan

USA condemns plans to build housing in Sheikh Jarrah and on Mount Scopus

27 Jan

Air and sea search for lost Israeli submarine Dakar

29 Jan

Paula Ben-Gurion dies at Sde Boqer aged 76

31 Jan

Ultra-orthodox demonstrate in Jerusalem against carrying out of autopsies

14 Feb

Eshkol says that he considers the River Jordan to be Israel’s natural frontier

17 Feb

Yitzhak Rabin arrives in Washington, DC as Israeli ambassador to the USA

25 Feb

Employers and employees to give 15 days’ advance notice on strikes

3 Mar

Interior minister explains ruling that West Bank is no longer ‘enemy territory’

7 Mar

Rouhi el Khatib, former East Jerusalem mayor, is deported to Jordan

10 Mar

Chief Rabbi Nissim requests halt to archaeological work at Western Wall

18 Mar

School bus carrying teachers and children blown up by mine north of Eilat

21 Mar

Army launches incursion into Jordan to destroy Fatah camp at Karameh

7 Apr

President Shazar sends condolences following Martin Luther King’s killing

15 Apr

Moshe Levinger and his followers celebrate Passover at Hebron’s Park Hotel

17 Apr

Yigal Allon welcomes return of religious Jews to Hebron

2 May

First broadcast of Israeli television

8 May

Defence Ministry states that Fatah members are not prisoners of war

22 May

Israelis and Egyptians exchange fire across the Suez Canal

4 June

Jordanian long-range guns attacked by Israeli jets after artillery barrage

5 June

Sirhan Sirhan, born in Jerusalem, shoots Robert Kennedy in Los Angeles

17 July

Religious affairs minister announces construction of religious quarter in Hebron

18 July

West Bank curfew lifted after thirteen months

23 July

El Al flight 426 hijacked to Algiers by PFLP

11 Aug

Two Syrian air force MiG-17 interceptor jets defect to Israel

21 Aug

Both Maki and Mapam denounce the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia

9 Oct

Bomb thrown at the Cave of Makhpela in Hebron injures 47 civilians

23 Oct

Labour party secretariat votes 242–136 for alignment with Mapam

4 Nov

Stoke Mandeville games opened by President Shazar in Ramat Gan

5 Nov

Richard Nixon elected 37th president of the USA

6 Nov

Dayan proposes single economic unit stretching from Gaza to Jerusalem

22 Nov

Bomb in Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda market kills 11

19 Dec

Yitzhak Sullam, recipient of Israel’s first heart transplant, dies in hospital

20 Dec

Max Brod, writer and keeper of Kafka’s works, dies in Tel Aviv aged 84

28 Dec

Israeli raid on Beirut airport destroys 12 Lebanese passenger planes

The aftermath of the Six Day War was marked by the commencement of a war of attrition. The Beit She’an (Beisan) Valley, close to the Jordanian border, was often targeted by Jordanian gunners. On 1 January, a mortar attack from across the River Jordan was aimed at Kfar Ruppin in the Beisan Valley, followed by a two-hour exchange of fire between the Jordanians and Israeli forces on the West Bank, about ten miles north of Damiyah Bridge. The New Year weekend also saw grenades thrown near a cinema in Gaza, a mine exploding under an Israeli half-track in Khan Yunis, a car driver wounded by sniper fire on the Golan Heights and a firing on workers in the fields of Ein Yanav in the northern Arava near the Dead Sea. A Chinese-manufactured mine killed one soldier and injured four border policemen in their jeep near Kibbutz Gesher in the Beisan Valley.

Fatah, which had established bases in Jordan, often crossed the border to plant mines to damage water pumping stations or electrical power units and thereby disrupt services to kibbutzim and moshavim in the region. The Eilat–Ashdod pipeline was also damaged near Mitzpe Ramon. Israeli naval vessels turned back Jordanian speedboats which had left Aqaba in the direction of Eilat.

An exchange of gunfire regularly took place across the Suez Canal which had been closed to shipping since June 1967, leaving fifteen vessels stranded. In late January, the Egyptians opened fire on Israeli units at Qantara and in the Canal region. The Israelis destroyed two Egyptian tanks in response and five Israeli soldiers were wounded in the clash.

Jerusalem and its environs were another front between Israeli troops and members of Fatah. In March, a fuel tank, tractors and machinery belong to Mekorot, the national water works company, were destroyed and a Druze night watchman was killed near Abu Ghosh.

In May, there was a mortar attack on Kibbutz Manara near the Lebanese border, a region which had been quiet during the previous year.

In the south, a school bus on an awayday excursion from Herzliya drove over a landmine planted in the road near Beer Ora in the Negev, killing teachers and injuring many children.

Following the conquest of East Jerusalem and its reunification, there had been periodic closures of merchants’ shops and teachers’ strikes in protest. In March, Israel deported Rouhi el Khatib, the deposed mayor of Jerusalem, to Jordan on the basis that he had served as a conduit for funds which financed such protests. The sympathies of the population of the West Bank became an issue for the Israeli military. In a meeting with Sheikh Mohammed Ali Jabari, the pro-Jordanian mayor of Hebron, and other Arab officials, Moshe Dayan asked them not to give shelter to Fatah infiltrators.

In mid-February, King Hussein pledged to take action against Fatah militants who were operating from Jordan. The Jordanian parliament, however, was split on whether or not to curtail Fatah activities and thus close down bases on their territory. In March, Israel mounted a large-scale operation into Jordan, targeting the locations of Karameh and Safi, in which as many as 150 Fatah militants and 84 Jordanian soldiers were killed. More than thirty Israeli troops were killed in the heavy fighting.

In June, Eshkol reported that 184 Israelis had been killed and 617 wounded, including the crew of the Eilat, since the end of the Six Day War. Most of the Israeli casualties had occurred within a twenty-mile stretch between Kinneret and Tirat Zvi.

In July, an El Al Israel flight from Rome to Israel was hijacked by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and forced to proceed to Algiers. The non-Jewish passengers were allowed to depart for Paris. Israeli women and children were then released while the men remained. Following five weeks of quiet negotiations, Israel agreed to release sixteen Palestinian prisoners for the release of both captives and aircraft.

At the very end of the year, the PFLP attacked another El Al aircraft at Athens airport, in which a passenger was killed and a female flight attendant injured. Two days later, the Israelis responded by sending in a Sayeret Matkal squad to destroy twelve passenger aircraft and two cargo planes belonging to Lebanese and Arab airlines at Beirut airport.

The settlement of the conquered territories brought criticism from the US State Department when plans for building in Jerusalem were revealed. Eshkol announced the establishment of a Nahal outpost near the ruins of Kibbutz Beit Ha’Arava which had been abandoned to Jordanian forces during the war of 1948.

Maximalists from both Left and Right supported settlement on the West Bank. In April, Yigal Allon greeted about seventy Jews who were arriving to re-establish a Jewish community in Hebron since the killings and departure in 1929. He also met leaders of the Greater Israel movement. In July, plans were announced to build housing for families, dormitories for yeshiva students, a dining hall and medical clinics in Hebron. Four hundred Arab notables protested about the government’s refusal to remove the settlers. On Yom Kippur, Jews worshipped near the Cave of Makhpela in Hebron. A few days later, a hand grenade exploded on its steps.

A similar attempt was made to re-establish a Jewish quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem and to resurrect destroyed or damaged buildings. Sixteen acres were appropriated. In May, Eshkol stated that Jerusalem would remain a united city amidst plans to relocate government departments to East Jerusalem. Neve Ya’akov, which had been occupied by the Jordanians in 1948, was now incorporated into Jerusalem. Bnei Akiva of North America was given permission to establish a study institute at Kfar Etzion, overrun in 1948.

Moshe Dayan argued that the Golan Heights would have to be settled. He also suggested that Sharm el-Sheikh should be a permanent Israeli base. The first civilian settlement in northern Sinai was established.

Allon argued that the Jordan Valley, with a population of 18,000, should be further settled by Jews, with a corridor connecting the Judaean and Samarian mountains with the East Bank of the River Jordan. The Allon plan was designed to partition the West Bank between Israel and Jordan rather than annex it in its entirety. This brought condemnation from adherents of the Greater Israel movement such as the poet Natan Alterman.

Despite the formation of a united Labour party, there were profound ideological differences. When Rafi’s Dayan proposed a single economic unit from Gaza to Jerusalem encompassing Beersheba and Hebron, he was strongly opposed by Mapai’s Pinhas Sapir, who argued that it would lead to a binational state.

King Hussein proposed the establishment of a separate Palestinian state in ‘a special relationship with Jordan’, the capital of which would be situated in East Jerusalem.

There was continuing unrest in the West Bank amidst demonstrations, strikes by businesspeople and the closure of schools. Curfews were imposed. Palestinian Arab activists – Nasserists and Communists – were expelled to Jordan.

In January, the founding conference of the Labour party took place, integrating Mapai, Ahdut Ha’Avoda and Rafi – with the exception of Ben-Gurion who remained outside. The Labour secretariat voted 242–146 to form an alignment with Mapam. This alignment possessed more than sixty-one seats and therefore, in theory, could govern without forming a coalition with non-socialist partners.