UNGA Resolution 181November 16, 2019
The UN decides Arab and Jewish states should be created as a solution to the Arab-Zionist conflict. The Plan calls for an economic union of the two states and an international regime to be set up for Jerusalem.
Israeli-Jordanian Treaty, ExcerptsOctober 26, 2019
Jordan becomes the second Arab country after Egypt (1979) to sign a peace treaty ending the state of war with Israel. The Treaty addresses boundary demarcations, water sharing, police and security cooperation, environmental issues, border crossings, administration of Muslim holy sites and other issues.
UN Security Council Resolution 338 on a Ceasefire and Direct Negotiations Following October 1973 WarOctober 11, 2019
The October 1973 War broke the logjam over whether diplomacy could unfold to kick-off Arab-Israeli negotiations. Sadat used the 1973 war as an engine to harness American horsepower. In that he succeeded since US Secretary of State Kissinger saw Sadat’s leaning to Washington not only as a chance to begin useful negotiations, but of great significance to weaning the Egyptian President away from Moscow.
Volume XXIII, Series A (August 1947 – June 1952)September 24, 2019
Chaim Weizmann died at his home in Rehovot on 9 November1952, shortly before his 78th birthday. The restless hand which had penned so many thousands of letters, to fill these twenty-three volumes and encompass an epoch, at last was stilled. Between his earliest surviving letter as a ten-year-old schoolboy in Tsarist Russia and his final one as President of the State of Israel, are recorded not merely the drama and pathos, the achievements and disappointments, of one man's journey through a remarkable life, but the modern history of a people as it struggled for its identity.
Volume XXII, Series A (May 1945 – July 1947)September 20, 2019
The present volume of the Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann begins with the Allied victory in Europe and ends in the investigation of the Palestine problem by the United Nations Special Committee. Within this period Weizmann was reduced from being the President of the Jewish Agency and the acknowledged leader of his people to a lonely figure, virtually retired from public life. This was because he continued to place his faith, at least until the summer of 1946, in cooperation with Great Britain, the Mandatory Power, while his principal colleagues in Zionism were adopting the ways of violence in Palestine.
Volume XXI, Series A (January 1943 – May 1945)September 17, 2019
The opening of this volume finds Chaim Weizmann in the United States, facing two urgent tasks: the rallying of American Jewry into a single, united front behind a Zionist platform; and the winning over of the Roosevelt Administration to the Zionist position. Following the breakdown of talks between Zionists and non-Zionists in the autumn of 1942, the Bnai Brith organization was asked by the Zionists to set up a preliminary meeting of American Jewish organizations that would prepare for a democratically-convened conference. This body would then appeal to the American Jewish community over the heads of its established leaders.
Volume XX, Series A (July 1940 – January 1943)September 13, 2019
We have seen from the previous volume in this series how support for the partition of Palestine into independent Arab and Jewish states, with substantial portions retained under the Mandate, had waned in the British Cabinet during 1938. Chaim Weizmann had struggled throughout that year to keep the scheme alive, but to no avail. The Technical Commission under Sir John Woodhead, which had been in Palestine ostensibly to produce a detailed plan, pronounced the scheme unworkable in any form. Thus, as 1939 dawned, the Zionist leader faced the unwelcome prospect of a conference at which Arabs and Jews would meet with British representatives to seek a compromise solution to the problem based upon a unitary Palestine.
Volume XIX, Series A (January 1939 – June 1940)September 10, 2019
The two and a half years covered by this volume of the Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann introduce a period of unparalleled tragedy for the Jewish people, with, ironically, the Zionist movement in deep conflict with Great Britain, for most of the time the only Power actively engaged in the struggle against Jewry's enemy, Adolf Hitler. Despite ever-increasing evidence of Nazi intentions towards the Jews, British immigration policy as regards Palestine remained tied to the rigidly-enforced limits set by the White Paper issued by the Chamberlain Government in May 1939.
Volume XVIII, Series A (January 1937 – December 1938 )September 6, 2019
As mirrored in this volume of his letters, the years 1937-38 were for Chaim Weizmann the most critical period of his political life since the weeks preceding the issuance of the Balfour Declaration in November 1917. We observe him at the age of 64 largely drained of physical strength, his diplomatic orientation of collaboration with Great Britain under attack, and his leadership challenged by a generation of younger, militant Zionists. In his own words he was 'a lonely man standing at the end of a road, a via dolorosa. I have no more courage left to face anything—and so much is expected from me.'
Volume XVII, Series A (August 1935 – December 1936)September 3, 2019
Major changes had taken place in the structure of the Zionist Organization during the four years between the rejection of Chaim Weizmann at the Seventeenth Zionist Congress of 1931 and his reelection in 1935. The most important of these was the secession of the Revisionists, who established the New Zionist Organization in September 1935. The second was the strengthening of the Labour groups to become the central force in the movement, with 45 per cent of the delegates at the Nineteenth Congress compared with 29 per cent in 1931. Finally, there was the continued decline of the two wings of the General Zionists. These factors both necessitated and facilitated Weizmann's return to the leadership.
Volume XVI, Series A (July 1933 – August 1935)August 30, 2019
It was the style of Weizmann's leadership rather than his politics that came under fire at the 17th Zionist Congress held in Basle in July 1931. His policies, to be sure, were much criticized, but his displacement from the presidency of the World Zionist Organization and Jewish Agency at that Congress did not alter the basic strategy of the movement. Officially, Weizmann remained in the wilderness for the ensuing four years, until his re-election as President at the 19th Congress in Lucerne in August 1935. Nevertheless, he would not allow his political judgment to relax, nor would he abdicate from his role as a Jewish statesman of international rank. For January, 1933, saw the advent of Adolf Hitler to power.
Volume XV, Series A (October 1930 – June 1933)August 27, 2019
Volume XV of the Letters of Chaim Weizmann opens with the Zionist leader in an ambiguous situation: although he has resigned the Presidency of the Zionist Organization and Jewish Agency in protest against the Passfield White Paper of October 1930, which restricted Jewish immigration into Palestine and the acquisition of land there, no successor has been selected. Weizmann in fact is still the head of the movement, and this situation continues until he finds himself formally replaced as President by Nahum Sokolow at the Seventeenth Zionist Congress the following year.