Jerusalem Post
Jan 19 2005

On this Day

On this day
By ALEXANDER ZVIELLI

50 years ago:
On January 19, 1955, The Jerusalem Post reported that finance
minister Levi Eshkol announced far-reaching, further incentives for
foreign investors.

Israel told the UN that it would not accept any solution to the
question of the Bat Galim vessel, impounded by Egypt, that would not
provide for the ship to proceed through the Suez Canal to Haifa.

Israel also drew the UN’s attention to the continued Syrian attempts
to arrogate to itself, by force, rights in the Demilitarized Zones to
which Syria was not entitled. This was also the reason Israel turned
down the suggestion, made by general Burns, chief of staff of the
Truce Supervision Organization, to partition the Demilitarized Zone
into two administrative areas. Israel held that it had exclusive
rights in these areas under the relevant pasages of the Armistice
Agreements. (All such disputes referred to the pre-1967 armistice
lines.)

350 Armenians crossed into the Jordanian-occupied Old City of
Jerusalem and Bethlehem to celebrate their Christmas (across the
pre-1967 armistice lines).

The Kibbutz Dati refused to join the merger of the Mizrahi and Hapoel
Hamizrahi movements.

The percentage of locally mined clay used by the Israeli ceramic
industry had risen from less than 30% in 1951 to 80% in 1954.