Israel 1970's on going conflict

On-going conflict the 1970s

The 1970’s saw a sharp rise in the conflict between Israel and the Palestine Arabs with on going terror attacks leading many to question the security of the nation and if the PLO and other Palestinian organisations would ever agree to a viable peace for both peoples.  In between the infamous terror attacks at Munich in 1972 and Operation Entebbe in 1976, both made famous by Hollywood movies.   Israel suffered a series of terror attacks, which inflicted heavy blows on the moral of its citizens.

 

In the spring of1974 three members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine crossed the border from Lebanon, they entered an apartment building in the town of Kiryat Shmona and kill all eighteen residents, half of whom are children.  

 

Later in May terrorists of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine cross the Israeli border from Lebanon. They attack a van killing two Israeli Arab women, they entered an apartment building in the town of Ma'alot and killed a couple and their 4-year-old son. After that they took over a local school and held 105 students and 10 teachers hostage. The hostage-takers demanded the release of 23 Palestinian terrorist from Israeli prisons, threatening they would kill the students if their requests were not met. On the second day of the standoff, a unit of the elite Golani Brigade stormed the building. During the takeover the terrorists detonated their grenades and shot the children. Ultimately, 25 hostages were killed, including 22 children; 68 more were injured.  

 

In June three Palestinian militant squad members infiltrated the coastal city of Nahariya by sea from Lebanon. During the attack three civilians and one Israeli soldier were killed.  Later in September the most serious loss of innocent life occurs when a Trans World Airliner Jet with 88 passengers on board traveling from Tel Aviv to Athens crashed into the Ionian Sea after Palestinian militants detonated a bomb hidden in the baggage compartment, killing all on board.

 

1975 opened with a terrifying attack on the Savoy Hotel in Tel Aviv, eight Al-Fatah commandos seize the Hotel in Tel Aviv after rowing ashore from the Mediterranean Sea. 13 civilians were taken hostage. The Israeli counter-terrorism unit Sayeret Matkal stormed the hotel later in the day, killing seven of the eight militants. Five of the hostages were freed while eight hostages and three of the Israeli soldiers died in the operation. 

 

In May the Israeli capital was struck by missiles for the first time, after two Czechoslovakian made Katyusha rockets hit Jerusalem, fired by Arab insurgents, they struck 500 meters from the Knesset parliament building.  

 

In June a terror cell consisting of Palestinian Arab assailants from the Arab Liberation Front cross the border from Lebanon and manage to infiltrate moshav Kfar Yuval in the night and enter one of the houses of the moshav. During the assault they killed one of the family members who tried to fight them and then hold the rest of the family members as hostages, demanding the release of Palestinian terrorist  held in Israeli prisons.  A raid by an IDF infantry unit successfully neutralises the assailants. Two hostages and one soldier are also killed during the raid.  Later in July of the same year a refrigerator that had five kilograms of explosives packed into its sides explodes on Zion Square, a main square leading to Ben Yehuda Street and Jaffa Road, in Jerusalem. Fifteen people are killed and 77 injured in the attack. The PLO claimed responsibility for the attack.

 

This wave of violence against innocent civilians on both sides was one of the main reasons cited by Sholom to leave his ancestral home and paint abroad.