Sean Rocha

1957: Israelis protest UN demand to withdraw from the Sinai

This newsreel (from The Internet Archive) shows a rally of 100,000 in Tel Aviv in 1957 protesting a UN demand to withdraw from Gaza and the Gulf of Aqaba — following the Israeli invasion (with France and Britain) of Egypt in 1956, Israel controlled the western coast of the gulf down to Sharm el-Sheikh on the southern tip of the Sinai.   Israel agreed to the UN withdrawal demand after the US guaranteed it aid in the event of further Egyptian raids but would continue to occupy these regions intermittently over the next five decades.  It recaptured Gaza and the Sinai in the 1967 War, withdrawing from the Sinai in 1982 as part of the peace treaty with Egypt and from Gaza most recently in 2005 (which I wrote about at the time for Slate) though it continues to control Gaza’s principal land and sea borders and air routes.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, March 3rd, 2011 at 6:26 am. It is filed under That is Genius and tagged with Egypt, Israel, Middle East, politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.