Israel, Palestinians to sign truce Tuesday News
Israel, Palestinians to sign truce Tuesday

[JURIST] Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon [official website; JURIST Newsmaker] and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas [BBC profile] will sign a truce on Tuesday at a summit being held in Egypt, according to reports. The truce will end four years of fighting and signals the revival of the US-backed "road map" [State Department press release] for the creation of a Palestinian state. Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat [BBC profile] said the truce would begin after the summit and would lead to the establishment of joint committees to oversee the release of Palestinian prisoners and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the West Bank. Also on Monday, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice [official website] announced [AFP story] that Lieutenant General William Ward [official profile] would become the US envoy to the region. BBC News has more on the truce agreement, and continuing coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

THIS DAY @ LAW

UN General Assembly approves Palestine partition plan

The UN General Assembly approved UN Resolution Resolution 181 (II) on November 29, 1947, recommending that the British Mandate for Palestine be split into a Jewish state, an Arab state, and an international zone for Jerusalem. The vote in the assembly was 33 for to 13 against, with 10 abstentions. The resolution sparked a war between Palestinian Arabs and Jews in 1947 and a wider war after Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon invaded the new State of Israel in 1948. Read Resolution 181 (II).

UN divided Palestine between Arabs and Jews

On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly voted to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab territories, leading to the establishment of a Jewish state the following year. Read UN General Assembly Resolution 181.

Defense Secretary Robert McNamara resigns during Vietnam Conflict

On November 29, 1967, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara announced that he was resigning from his office to accept an appointment as head of the World Bank. The announcement came as the Vietnam Conflict was becoming increasingly unpopular in the United States and abroad.