This Week in History: The Wye River land-for-peace agreement
Premium special: A glimpse into historical moments in Israeli news from this week in 'The Jerusalem Post' front covers.
By CAROLINE FRANKThis week in History: Wye River land-for-peace agreement(photo credit: REUTERS)
This week we bring you three significant historical world events that took place between 1932 and 2008. All three events were reported in The Jerusalem Post and played a crucial role in creating the world we live in today. The Nazi war crimes trial of 1945 paved the way to the execution of notorious Nazis in the Nuremberg trials, while the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 was a time when the United States and the Soviet Union almost had a nuclear war.
On October 19, 1945, The Palestine Post reported on the opening session of the International Military Tribunal held in Berlin. The article above states that the proceedings ended in under an hour when the indictment against the 24 top-ranking Nazis was received. The article notes that the trial which took place over 50 minutes could have been over in 15 minutes had anything said not need to be translated into French, English and German. One month later the Nuremberg trials commenced which led to the eventual execution of the Nazi war criminals aforementioned in the Post's October front-page article. On October 23, 1998, The Jerusalem Post reported that then Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then Palestinian chairman Yasser Arafat were expected to sign a "land for peace" agreement. The memorandum drafted at Wye, Maryland was signed in Washington later that day. It promised to restore momentum to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process begun at Oslo, after 19 months of mounting tension and to pave the way for comprehensive negotiations aimed at a final peace agreement. Known as the Wye River Memorandum, the agreement was signed following a 21-hour session mediated by then-US president Bill Clinton. The memorandum provided a detailed timeline of each side's obligations. Among some of the measures on the timeline included Israel to withdraw its troops from a further 13 percent of the West Bank and in return the Palestinians agreed to cooperate with the CIA in tracking down and arresting extremists in the Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups.
When the US found offensive nuclear missiles in Cuba, it started a tense period of 13 days while the world watched to see if the Soviet Union would remove the missiles, just 90 miles from the US. Known today as the Cuban Missile Crisis, at the time, on October 24, 1962, The Jerusalem Post was tracking the incidents as they happened. The article states then-US president John F. Kennedy signed a proclamation that poised to block Soviet arms to Cuba. "The Soviet Union gave the US a 'serious warning' on her Cuban policy," the article reports. The 13-day confrontation played out on television worldwide and was the closest the Cold War came to escalating into a full scale nuclear war. Eventually, after much debate, the Soviet Union removed the missiles, the US did not invade Cuba and the crisis ended.
