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…
September 26, 1955 Oil is discovered in Heletz, a moshav in southern Israel that becomes the site of the state’s first successful oil well. The Heletz field, containing an estimated 94.4 million barrels of oil,…
The Mosul-Haifa pipeline, which spans 590 miles, connects the Mosul oil fields and the Mediterranean Sea. It begins in Kirkuk, Iraq and ends in Haifa.
July 11, 1927 A major earthquake strikes Jericho just after 3 p.m., killing between 300 and 500 people and injuring at least 700 others. Measured at a magnitude of 6.3, the quake lasts about five…
March 1, 1920 A Shi’ite Arab militia, accompanied by local Bedouins, attacks the Jewish agricultural settlement of Tel Hai, which has served as a border outpost in the Upper Galilee between British-controlled Palestine and French-controlled…
A massive earthquake and subsequent landslide devastate Jewish and Arab communities in Safed (Tz’fat). The mountain town, which had been the long-time home to a thriving Jewish population, suffers thousands of deaths.
