November 4, 1966 Egypt and Syria sign a mutual defense treaty and create a joint military command. The move comes amid constant low-level violence on the Israeli-Syrian border, characterized by Syrian guerrilla raids and shelling…
February 23, 1966 Saleh Jadid launches a coup of young army officers against a Syrian government of old-guard members of the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party who themselves seized power in a coup in 1963. The…
May 18, 1965 Eli Cohen is hanged in Marjeh Square in Damascus after being convicted of spying for Israel and being sentenced to death March 31, 1965. Cohen was born in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1924…
Syrian police raid the home of Damascus businessman Kamel Amin Tha’abet, who is in fact a Mossad Spy named Eli Cohen, and arrest him on charges of espionage.
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…
September 6, 1840 The nine surviving Damascus Jews accused of killing a Franciscan Capuchin friar and his servant to harvest the blood are freed by order of Muhammad Ali, the Ottoman pasha who controls an…
