Friday, November 30, 2007

TIMELINE - 30 NOVEMBER, 1947

One day after the United Nations voted to create a Jewish and an Arab state in Palestine, the Palestine Post reported that six Jews were murdered by Arab terrorists who ambushed Jerusalem bound buses and another was murdered in Jaffa.

On this day sixty years ago, the Arabs of Palestine, with the encouragement and assistance of the neighbouring Arab States, launched a series of attacks on their Jewish neighbours, in an attempt to undo by force the decision taken on the previous day by the United Nations to partition the British Mandate of Palestine into independent Jewish and Arab States, linked in economic union. This campaign of violence culminated in the invasion of the newly declared State of Israel on 15 May, 1948 by the regular armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq and contingents from Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

"The invasion of Palestine by the Arab States was the first armed aggression which the world had seen since the end of the war" - Trygve Lie, then United Nations Secretary-General, 'In the Cause of Peace' @ p 174.

An informative read on this subject is Sarah Honig's Forget the 30th of November in the Jerusalem Post

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