August 9, 2006 Israel’s Security Cabinet approves an expansion of the military offensive in southern Lebanon nearly a month after the outbreak of the Second Lebanon War. Also known as the Israel-Hezbollah War, the conflict…
July 12, 2006 The Second Lebanon War begins when Hezbollah launches Katyusha rockets and mortars at Israeli border towns and Israel Defense Forces positions, a diversion for a raid across the border to ambush an…
April 18, 1996 Israeli artillery fire strikes a U.N. compound where at least 800 Lebanese civilians are sheltering in the village of Qana in southern Lebanon. At least 13 shells hit the compound, killing 106…
June 14, 1985 Two Lebanese Shiite terrorists armed with grenades and handguns hijack TWA Flight 847, a 727 traveling from Cairo to San Diego with scheduled stops in Athens, Rome, Boston and Los Angeles, shortly…
Palestinian militant factions unsuccessfully challenge Arafat’s control during the First Lebanon War.
In a quickly organized and somewhat surprising move, the Knesset votes to annex the Golan Heights by a vote of 63-21.
After a breakdown in diplomatic talks between Gerald Ford and Yitzhak Rabin, 76 senators sign a letter to the president stressing the importance of both military and economic assistance to Israel.
February 27, 1974 U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger arrives in Tel Aviv from Damascus with a list of 65 Israeli prisoners held by Syria since the Yom Kippur War in October 1973, along with…
May 22, 1970 Palestinian terrorists ambush an Egged school bus on the road from Moshav Avivim, near the Lebanese border, to Dovev and kill eight children and four adults. The ambush takes place at a…
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.
After unarmored Israeli tractors were fired upon in the demilitarized zone, Israeli forces began to return fire. The event soon escalated.
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…
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.
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…
