The Fourth Arab League Summit convenes in Khartoum, Sudan. Participants agree that all measures should be taken to regain lands controlled by Israel after the War, and that the oil-rich countries would finance an increased Arab military presence in the region.
Following Israel’s victory and subsequent acquisition of Jordan’s territory along the West Bank of the Jordan River in the war, the Israeli government annexes roughly 70 square kilometers of land next to West Jerusalem.
The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) is established during a Palestinian National Council meeting of nearly 400 delegates convened by King Hussein of Jordan.
April 8, 1960 U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold for the first time publicly criticizes Egypt’s confiscation of Israeli cargo on ships going through the Suez Canal. The Egyptian closure of the Straits of Tiran and the…
May 26, 1958 Four Israeli police officers and the chairman of the United Nations’ Israel-Jordan Mixed Armistice Commission are fatally shot by Jordanian fire in the demilitarized zone on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem. Both Israel…
In a nationally televised address to the American people, President Dwight Eisenhower discusses the tense situation in the Middle East in the aftermath of the October 1956 Suez War.
August 26, 1955 Secretary of State John Foster Dulles delivers a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations that points to the Eisenhower administration’s new plan to launch covert discussions between Israeli Prime Minister David…
Two Israeli paratrooper platoons made up of approximately fifty IDF soldiers storm an Egyptian army camp in Gaza. The raid is a reprisal for continued fedayeen (Palestinian militants) attacks against Israeli civilians.
April 17, 1954 Gamal Abdel Nasser, 36, is appointed the prime minister of Egypt. Nasser’s interest in politics goes back to age 12 when he accidentally participated in an ultranationalist protest calling for the overthrow…
September 2, 1953 Israel starts work on a project to divert some of the water of the Jordan River at the B’not Yaakov (Daughters of Jacob) Bridge in the north of the state for use…
May 11, 1953 U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles arrives in Cairo at the start of a 2½-week fact-finding trip to Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, India, Pakistan, Turkey and Libya. Dulles emphasizes…
Jordan formally annexes the West Bank and East Jerusalem, allowing the Palestinian inhabitants therein to obtain Jordanian citizenship.
Shaikh Yusuf Yassin, Saudi Arabia’s Deputy Foreign Minister, states that “Arab states would never agree to any working relationship with Israel.”
March 3, 1950 The Iraqi government retracts a policy banning emigration to move to Israel, on the condition that Jews give up their Iraqi citizenship when they leave the country. In addition, those who previously…
December 13, 1949 Prime Minster David Ben-Gurion appoints Reuven Shiloah, a former Jewish Agency official and a Foreign Ministry special operations adviser, to establish and lead the Institute for Collating and Coordinating Intelligence Operations, the…
December 5, 1949 Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion declares in a Knesset speech that “Jewish Jerusalem is an organic, inseparable part of the state of Israel” and that Israel rejects any attempt by the United Nations…
In an address to the Knesset, Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett reconfirms Israel’s willingness to negotiate agreeable and sustainable terms of peace with its neighbors.
Israel’s War of Independence ends with the signing of individual armistice agreements between the newly established Jewish state and Jordan, Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon in 1949.
Shortly after Israel declared its independence from the British, on May 14, 1948, the US sent a memorandum to the UN that indicated its acceptance of the new state and the direction of its future policy in the Middle East.
Israeli politician, diplomat, historian, and writer Abba Eban is born in Cape Town, South Africa.
Golda Meir, Israel’s first female prime minister, is born Golda Mabovitch in Kyiv, Ukraine, then part of czarist Russia.
