Charles de Gaulle is depicted as Cato the Elder, preaching to the Roman Senate. De Gaulle had strongly condemned Israel’s attack on aircraft at Beirut airport in December 1968 and instituted an embargo on all military equipment to Israel.
When nine Iraqi Jews were publicly hanged as ‘spies’ in Baghdad in a holiday atmosphere a few weeks later, France did not make ‘a moral protest’. De Gaulle argued that the executions could not be separated from the wider Arab–Israel conflict.
De Gaulle is depicted as saying: ‘Outside of this, I do believe that Israel must be pressured.’
- 6 Jan
Military announces Israel suffered 281 killed, 1,115 injured since June 1967
- 13 Jan
Jewish Agency states that it will establish 22 settlements on the Golan Heights
- 19 Jan
Agreement between Labour and Mapam to form alignment of four parties
- 27 Jan
Nine Jews hanged publicly as Israeli spies in Baghdad’s Liberation Square
- 4 Feb
Yasser Arafat elected chairman of the PLO
- 5 Feb
Foreign Minister Eban rejects West Bank Palestinian entity as ‘unrealistic’
- 14 Feb
First Katyusha attack on Israel itself targets Mitzpe Ramon in the Negev
- 18 Feb
PFLP attack on El Al aircraft at Zurich airport prevented by security guard
- 21 Feb
Itzik Manger, Yiddish poet and essayist, dies in Tel Aviv aged 67
- 21 Feb
Two killed, nine injured in Jerusalem Supersol supermarket bombing
- 26 Feb
Prime Minister Levi Eshkol dies of heart attack aged 73
- 5 Mar
Dayan calls for economic and legal integration of the territories into Israel
- 6 Mar
Hebrew university cafeteria bombed by a PFLP cell, injuring 28
- 9 Mar
Abdel Munim Riad, head of Egyptian armed forces, killed in Israeli mortar attack
- 11 Mar
Golda Meir named as Israel’s fourth prime minister
- 24 Mar
Abba Khoushi, mayor of Haifa (1951–69), dies
- 16 Apr
Jewish Agency announces development projects at Kfar Etzion, evacuated in 1948
- 19 Apr
Egyptian commando raid across Suez Canal at Ismailiya
- 28 Apr
Justice Ministry authorises registration of businesspeople in East Jerusalem
- 14 May
Ramat Eshkol building project inaugurated in Jerusalem
- 19 May
Agudat Yisrael proposes Knesset no-confidence motion about seven-day television
- 31 May
PFLP attacks Saudi Arabia–Lebanon oil pipeline on Golan Heights
- 9 June
Knesset approves change of name of unit of currency from pound to shekel
- 24 June
Fatah destroys oil pipeline section in the port of Haifa
- 21 Aug
Australian sheep herder sets fire to al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem
- 29 Aug
TWA aircraft containing Israeli passengers hijacked to Damascus
- 2 Sept
Labour Alignment loses support, a decrease of 17 per cent, in eleventh Histadrut election
- 8 Sept
Two hand grenades thrown into the El Al Brussels office
- 26 Sept
Swiss police charge Alfred Frauenknecht with selling Mirage secrets to Israel
- 15 Oct
Opening of magistrates’ court at Quneitra on the Golan Heights
- 28 Oct
Labour Alignment loses seven seats at general election
- 10 Nov
Meir reveals letter of 18 Georgian family heads wishing to emigrate to Israel
- 16 Nov
Two Israeli merchant vessels damaged by explosives in Eilat harbour
- 27 Nov
Hand grenade thrown into El Al Athens office
- 9 Dec
US secretary of state, William Rogers, proposes new peace plan
- 15 Dec
Ezer Weizman enters new cabinet as Gahal transport minister
- 25 Dec
Five embargoed gunboats, purchased by Israel, slip out of Cherbourg
President de Gaulle intensified the embargo on arms and spare parts which France had implemented after Israel’s victory in the Six Day War. French helicopters were used by the Israelis in the attack on Beirut airport and France had a large investment in the commercial airliners that were destroyed. France refused to deliver the fifty Mirage V jet fighters ordered in 1966 and already paid for.
In September, Swiss police arrested Alfred Frauenknecht, who sold huge quantities of Mirage documentation to the Israelis in an attempt to circumvent the French embargo.
Georges Pompidou continued this policy on succeeding to the presidency in June and refused to deliver five remaining gunboats, also ordered by Israel in 1966 and paid for. The boats slipped out of Cherbourg on Christmas Day after they were sold to an Oslo front company, ostensibly conducting North Sea oil exploration. Flying the Norwegian flag, the gunboats entered Haifa harbour on 31 December.
At the beginning of the year, Israeli military authorities announced that since the end of the Six Day War, 600 Arab militants had been killed and 1,500 captured, plus many from conventional Arab armed forces. There were 1,280 reported border incidents, of which 920 were on the Jordanian front.
In February, Yasser Arafat announced that several European volunteers were fighting with Fatah. Moshe Dayan reported to the Knesset that Mao’s China was providing both arms and training to the PLO.
Attacks by mainly Fatah militants increased in a wide variety of civilian locations. A trial in January revealed attempts to blow up a Tel Aviv cinema and the offices of the daily Yediot Aharanot. Two people were killed by a bomb placed in Jerusalem’s Supersol supermarket. An East Jerusalem television shop jointly owned by Jews and Arabs was also bombed. A car bomb was detonated in Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Street.
In June, three bombs were set off in Bab el Wad Street in Jerusalem in order to target visitors to the Western Wall. In late October, several bombs exploded in the Kiriat Sprinzak and Neve Sha’anan quarters in Haifa. In Eilat, underwater explosives, planted by frogmen, damaged two Israeli merchant vessels.
More powerful Katyusha rockets now featured in attacks on Mitzpe Ramon and the Timna copper mines. The PFLP blew a hole in the Aramco pipeline in the Golan Heights which carried crude oil from Saudi Arabia to Lebanon. A similar attack took place in June when a pipeline in Haifa harbour was destroyed. Pylons were demolished in the eastern Negev, cutting off the delivery of electricity.
Attacks from Fatah and the PFLP clearly impressed Palestinian youth in the West Bank and Gaza. In February, there were demonstrations and strikes by high school students in many West Bank locations as well as business closures. Posters of Yasser Arafat were displayed. Several leaders of the protests were deported to Jordan.
In mid-February, King Hussein and Yasser Arafat met for the first time in Amman to discuss the movement of several thousand PLO fighters from Egypt to Jordan. There were subsequent press leaks that Hussein had clandestinely met both Abba Eban and Yigal Allon in London.
At the same time, there were military exchanges between Jordanian and Israeli forces as well as retaliation against Palestinian positions on Jordanian soil. Abba Eban dismissed the notion of a Palestinian entity on the West Bank and generally supported the Allon plan which returned demilitarised territory to Jordan. In April, Hussein presented a peace plan based on UN Resolution 242, which was quickly rejected by the Israeli government. Presented with Nasser’s approval, it was also rejected by Syria, the PLO and many other Arab states. Hussein then moved to attain greater political and military control in Jordan and to rally pro-Jordanian Palestinians on the West Bank.
The Ba’athist government of Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr sent Iraqi troops to Jordan to take part in military exchanges with Israel. In early December, Israeli aircraft attacked Iraqi positions in northern Jordan in retaliation for the shelling of settlements in the Galilee region. This laid the basis for the arrests of Jews accused of being part of a CIA–Zionist conspiracy to overthrow the Baghdad government. It was claimed that they trained in sabotage in Abadan, Iran. This government had come to power in a coup in July 1968, but feared that it would be quickly supplanted. Al-Bakr thereby attacked ‘fifth columnists’ at a rally. This laid the basis for the public execution of nine Iraqi Jews – mainly from Basra – in Baghdad’s Liberation Square at the end of January. It was promoted by the regime as a festival of celebration and tens of thousands were bussed in. This created great anger within Israel, but was also criticised within the Arab world. More Iraqi Jews were executed in August. Both Yasser Arafat and Radio Moscow justified the executions. Golda Meir told the Knesset at the end of the year that fifty-three people including eleven Jews had been hanged and many imprisoned.
There were ongoing military exchanges across the Suez Canal. This was accompanied by raiding parties on the opposite bank by both sides. Israeli incursions went further into Egyptian territory. In December, the US secretary of state, William Rogers, proposed a plan to end the war of attrition between Israel and Egypt.
In November, Golda Meir’s government openly publicised the activities of the Jewish emigration movement in the USSR. The pressure of Soviet immigrants in Israel, the growing involvement of Diaspora Jewry and attacks from the Israeli Right promoted the publication of a letter from the heads of eighteen Georgian Jewish families. Israeli policy moved from promoting civil rights for Soviet Jews to one of free emigration.
The formal establishment of the Labour Alignment at the end of January did not mean an end to ideological disputes and the threat of breakaways. Indeed Shimon Peres thought that Rafi could win more seats outside Labour. Rafi and Ahdut Ha’Avoda favoured more settlement in the West Bank, while Mapam and parts of Mapai did not. When Golda Meir came out of retirement to become prime minister after the sudden death of Levi Eshkol, there were party abstentions by supporters of Dayan who believed that he should have stood for the post. In the Knesset, Ben-Gurion abstained in the vote of confidence in Golda Meir and proceeded instead to establish the State List with the remnant of Rafi.
Dayan wanted to annex the Golan Heights, Gaza and a section of the Sinai peninsula which would link to Sharm el-Sheikh. Ahdut Ha’Avoda’s Yigal Allon wanted the River Jordan to be ‘Israel’s security frontier’.
The election produced a loss of seven seats for the Labour Alignment which went mainly to Ben-Gurion’s new State List. Gahal remained static at twenty-six seats, but the breakaway Free Centre under Shmuel Tamir gained two mandates. Gahal had not advanced despite the very open divisions within Labour. While most parties remained static electorally, this marked the beginning of the fragmentation of the Labour consensus and a gradual movement to the Right.
