1969 in Israel

When 1969 began, Israel was still governed by the national-unity coalition formed before the Six-Day War of 1967, which remained in office for thirty-eight months.[1] The coalition was unusually broad by Israeli standards, incorporating the Alignment, Gahal, Herut, the National Religious Party, the Independent Liberals, Rafi, and minority lists. Parties that had previously sat in opposition received ministerial posts and portfolios as integrated coalition members.[1]

Fighting along the Suez Canal had already intensified before 1969; a Knesset debate index labels an October 29, 1968 sitting "Beginning the War of Attrition."[2] Israel established the Bar-Lev Line of fortified positions along the canal's eastern bank, which became the focus of Egyptian artillery and commando attacks.[3][4] On January 20, 1969, the Israel Labor Party and Mapam formalized a new Alignment before the Knesset election. It held 63 seats, the first and only time a single parliamentary group held an absolute Knesset majority.[5]

Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, who had led Israel since 1963, died in office on February 26, 1969.[1] The Labor Party selected Golda Meir to succeed him. Meir had served as minister of labor and national insurance from 1949 to 1956, foreign minister from 1956 to 1966, and secretary-general of Mapai beginning in 1966.[6]

Meir assumed the premiership on March 17, 1969, at age 71. She became Israel's first woman prime minister and the world's third female prime minister, after Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka and Indira Gandhi of India.[6] She inherited a government with a composition similar to Eshkol's, although its foreign-affairs and security guidelines were redrafted.[5]

The Knesset held a memorial sitting for Eshkol on March 6 and debated the composition and program of Meir's government on March 17.[2] Coalition parties retained the national-unity arrangement partly because they were wary of the approaching election.[1] The religious parties also faced an internal question over whether to remain in a government headed by a woman.[7] Following the October election, another national-unity government was formed under Meir with essentially the same composition.[1]

The defining military crisis of 1969 was the War of Attrition with Egypt. The ADL chronology dates the beginning of its major 1969 phase to March 8, when Egypt launched a sustained offensive along the Suez Canal.[8] Historian Benny Morris describes Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser's purpose as wearing down Israel's resolve to remain in the Sinai Peninsula through artillery attacks on the Bar-Lev Line and commando raids against its forts and supply roads.[4]

Morris describes Egyptian artillery as having overwhelming superiority and causing serious Israeli casualties almost daily. Israel responded during the summer by deploying the Israel Air Force against Egyptian artillery and frontline trench systems on the canal's western bank.[4] The conflict also included Israeli raids and later deep air strikes into Egypt, raising the possibility of direct superpower confrontation as Soviet involvement increased.[1]

On July 10, 1969, Egyptian commandos crossed the canal in dinghies and attacked an Israeli position at Mezach on the eastern bank, killing seven Israelis, wounding five, and taking other soldiers prisoner. The attack severely damaged morale among Israeli reservists serving along the canal.[3] During the night of July 19–20, Flotilla 13 naval commandos and personnel from Sayeret Matkal attacked Green Island, a heavily fortified Egyptian position at the canal's southern end. The operation involved an underwater approach and close-quarters fighting under Egyptian artillery fire. The source estimates that approximately 80 Egyptian soldiers were killed; Israel suffered six dead and fourteen wounded.[3]

The Green Island operation remained classified for 25 years. It demonstrated Israel's ability to attack protected Egyptian radar, communications, and military positions and contributed to Egyptian fears that similar raids could recur.[3]

On September 9, the IDF conducted Operation Raviv, also known as the Ten-Hour War, on Egypt's Red Sea coast. Israeli forces masqueraded as Egyptian troops, landed on the western coast of the Gulf of Suez using captured Arab armor, and raided military targets along approximately 70 kilometers of coastline. The operation combined an amphibious landing, a daylight advance, destruction of military infrastructure, and evacuation by naval landing craft.[9]

The fighting continued into 1970, including Israeli deep air strikes and growing Soviet involvement, before a ceasefire in August 1970.[1][8] An INSS study reports 968 fatalities and 3,730 wounded during the broader War of Attrition, including 260 combatants in the Suez Canal arena. The conflict also occurred on a smaller scale along the ceasefire lines with Jordan and Syria.[10]

In parallel, Yasser Arafat became chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization in February 1969.[8] Palestinian terrorists carried out sabotage operations against Israel from Jordan and Syria during the period.[11]

The Seventh Knesset election was held on October 28, 1969, the first national election after the Six-Day War.[12] The electorate numbered 1,758,685, and 1,367,743 votes were cast, producing a turnout of 77.8 percent.[13] The contest included the Labor-Mapam Alignment, Gahal, the National Religious Party, and David Ben-Gurion's State List.[5]

The Alignment won 632,035 votes, or 46.2 percent of the total, and 56 seats. This was more than any single list had previously won in an Israeli election, although the Alignment lost the overall majority it had held in the Sixth Knesset.[5] Gahal won 26 seats, the National Religious Party 12, and the State List four. Together with two associated minority lists, the Alignment controlled half of the Knesset. The new Knesset first met on November 17.[5]

The campaign introduced several procedural changes. A new Election Financing Law limited spending, television was used for national electioneering for the first time, and mass rallies became less central.[5] The parties designated as members of the ensuing coalition held a combined 102 seats, creating another exceptionally broad national-unity government whose composition was substantially similar to its predecessor.[1][5]

The International Institute for Counter-Terrorism records 14 terrorist incidents against Israeli citizens or Jewish communities abroad in 1969, compared with two in 1968 and 12 in 1970.[14]

On February 8, terrorists machine-gunned an El Al aircraft at Zurich's Kloten Airport, killing the pilot. On May 22, Danish authorities arrested three members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine accused of plotting to assassinate former prime minister David Ben-Gurion in Copenhagen. Bomb attacks also targeted Israeli diplomatic or commercial offices in Copenhagen, London, Brussels, and The Hague.[14]

An August 23 attack on the Zim Shipping office in London injured one person.[14] On September 8, bombs and grenades struck Israel's embassies in The Hague and Bonn and the Brussels office of El Al within minutes of one another. Three El Al employees and a customer were injured in Brussels, while no injuries were reported at the other two sites.[15]

On August 29, PFLP members hijacked a TWA aircraft bound for Athens and forced it to land in Damascus. Syria permitted most passengers and crew members to continue but detained six Israelis with the damaged aircraft and its captain. By September 2, all but two male Israeli passengers had been released; the remaining hostages were freed in December as part of an exchange.[16]

On November 27, a grenade attack on the El Al office in Athens wounded 14 people. On December 25, former British army officer Trefor Owen Williams attempted to blow up an Israeli aircraft near Bracknell, England. Williams was convicted and imprisoned, while charges against Ronald Gorman Hamman were dropped after he agreed to give evidence.[14]

Terrorist attacks also occurred inside Israel. On February 21, a bomb detonated in a crowded Jerusalem supermarket, killing two people and injuring 20. On October 22, bombs planted in five Haifa apartment buildings killed four people and wounded 20.[17]

On August 21, 1969, Denis Michael Rohan, an Australian Protestant extremist, set fire to al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.[18] Rohan believed that his actions would prompt the Second Coming of Jesus and acted alone. The fire destroyed large parts of the site and irreplaceable artifacts.[18]

Israeli authorities arrested, tried, and convicted Rohan.[18] He was formally charged on September 1 and found guilty by the Jerusalem District Court on December 30. The court committed him to a mental hospital after finding that he suffered from paranoid schizophrenia.[19]

An official Israeli commission concluded that the fire resulted from "malicious arson" and called it a "grievous insult to religious feeling of entire Moslem community."[20] The incident generated widespread anger and diplomatic activity in the Arab and Muslim world, while later narratives falsely attributed Rohan's crime to Jews or Israel.[18]

On September 15, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 271, which referred to al-Aqsa as one of the most venerated shrines of mankind. Eleven members voted for the resolution, while the United States, Finland, Colombia, and Paraguay abstained.[20][21] The fire also served as the point of departure for the first Islamic Summit Conference, held in Rabat in September, which proposed continued cooperation and a permanent Islamic secretariat.[19]

The Nixon administration developed a diplomatic framework for resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict during 1969. U.S. officials presented its basic framework to the Soviet Union on October 28, and Secretary of State William Rogers publicly outlined the proposal on December 9.[22]

The plan called for a binding Israeli-Egyptian commitment to peace, negotiations under UN representative Gunnar Jarring, Israeli withdrawal from Egyptian territory in the context of agreed security arrangements, secure and recognized borders, demilitarized zones, and freedom of navigation through the Strait of Tiran.[22] A U.S. historical summary describes it as calling for Israeli withdrawal to the 1949 armistice lines with "insubstantial alterations" in return for peace.[23]

Golda Meir visited Washington in late September and met President Richard Nixon on September 25 and 26.[11] Israel formally rejected the Rogers Plan on December 22. Its cabinet argued that secure and agreed borders should be determined through direct negotiations and peace treaties, and that the proposals contained no adequate obligation requiring Arab states to end the activities of terrorist organizations.[24] By the end of December, the Soviet Union, Egypt, and Israel had rejected the proposal.[23]

Earlier in the year, a July 15 Knesset proceeding recorded a defense-minister statement affirming Israel's refusal to withdraw from Sharm el-Sheikh even in exchange for peace with Egypt, illustrating the government's firm position on strategically important territory.[2]

Beyond the military and diplomatic fronts, 1969 produced several notable developments inside Israel. The Labor Party's convention adopted an optional "oral doctrine" concerning Israel's territorial claims as part of the defense policies endorsed for Prime Minister Meir and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan.[25]

On December 21, 39 Black Hebrews landed at Lydda International Airport and requested immediate immigrant status under the Law of Return and land near Tel Aviv for a kibbutz. Immigration authorities said that the government, in consultation with the rabbinical courts, would determine whether they were Jewish. The group received three months' tourist status and settled in Dimona, where it was assisted with housing, employment, Hebrew instruction, and other support normally provided to immigrants.[26]

Immigration from the Soviet Union totaled 3,038 Jews in 1969, compared with 5,675 arrivals during the preceding four years. The pace increased toward the end of the year.[25] Golda Meir addressed a Tel Aviv solidarity rally supporting the campaign for Soviet Jewish freedom. The National Library record identifies its location as probably Kings of Israel Square, now Rabin Square.[27]

The Jerusalem International Book Fair was held during the year.[28] Approximately 15,000 Israeli students demonstrated outside the French Embassy in Tel Aviv against President Charles de Gaulle's decision to halt French arms supplies to Israel. Contemporary newsreel footage showed demonstrators waving banners, reading Scripture, and chanting slogans.[29]

Israel's government also voted to change the name of the national currency from the Israeli pound, or lira, to the shekel. The change was not immediate; a contemporary account expected implementation to take approximately two years.[30]

The War of Attrition continued until the August 1970 ceasefire.[8] An INSS study reports 968 fatalities and 3,730 wounded during the broader conflict.[10] Israeli raids and deep air strikes increased pressure on Egypt but also heightened Soviet involvement and the danger of a confrontation between the superpowers.[1]

Golda Meir's governments, formed and re-formed during 1969, faced the continuing war, the diplomatic repercussions of the al-Aqsa fire, and an expanding international campaign of Palestinian terrorism.[18][14] The 102-seat coalition formed after the election demonstrated the unusual breadth of the national-unity arrangement.[5]

The election also marked changes in Israeli political campaigning through the introduction of television electioneering and statutory campaign-finance limits.[5] Taken together, the leadership transition, sustained warfare, election, diplomatic initiatives, and coordinated terrorist attacks made 1969 an important turning point between the Six-Day War and the crises of the early 1970s.

Chronologies differ over when the War of Attrition began. The ADL dates its beginning to March 8, 1969, when the major Egyptian campaign opened, while a Knesset debate index labels an October 29, 1968 sitting "Beginning the War of Attrition."[8][2] The difference reflects whether the term is applied to the clashes and shelling that preceded 1969 or specifically to the major offensive launched in March.

U.S. and Israeli records also frame the Rogers Plan differently. State Department records emphasize reciprocal peace obligations, withdrawal, and negotiated security arrangements, while Israel's December 22 rejection emphasizes direct negotiations, secure agreed borders, and enforceable obligations against terrorism.[22][24]