1951: The press office opens at United Nations Headquarters in Manhattan. Some 500 reporters from 40 nations are allocated 20,000 square feet of space on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th floor of the Secretariat building. Welcoming reporters to headquarters, General Assembly President Nasrollah Entezam of Iran says: “It is very easy to make war. It is very difficult indeed to make peace. We need the understanding of the peoples of the world, and you can give us a great deal of assistance in bringing this about.” The United Nations’ offices are still not wholly consolidated in the Manhattan Headquarters. Some meetings still take place in lake Success, N.Y. The final move isn’t to be completed until July 1, 1851, with the General Assembly Hall not completed until the summer of 1952.
1951: The same day that reporters are welcomed into their new digs at United Nations Headquarters in Manhattan, the Republican Committee of One Hundred petitions Congress “to rescind the treaty which brought us into the United Nations.” The committee claims the UN failed “to preserve world peace” and “failed to denounce as aggressors those responsible for the killing of American boys fighting under United Nations order in Korea.” It is to be the first in a long line of calls from the American right for the United States to withdraw from the UN. Most subsequent calls would be related to UN criticism of Israel.
1952: Israel is admitted to its first Winter Olympics, in Oslo, even though Israel was not yet a member of the International Olympic Committee. Israel, however, ended up not participating.
- Middle East Countries' Summer Olympics Medal Count and History
- Israel at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing
- The 1952 Winter Olympics in Oslo
1962: Aharon Cohen, a 55-yerar-old member of Israel’s left-wing Mapam Party, is sentenced to five years in prison for spying on behalf of the Soviet Union.
1974: Iran's Shah Mohammed Riza Pahlevi agrees to a $900 million order for 30 American-made Grumman F-14A Tomcat jet fighters. The first 24 would be delivered in 1976, the remaining six the following year.
1974: India extends full diplomatic status to the Palestine Liberation Organization in New Delhi, the first time a non-Arab country recognizes the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. The announcement precedes Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s Jan. 18 visit to Iraq, which has been supplying oil to India at discount.
1976: Some 300 students end a 48-hour sit-in at Libya’s diplomatic mission in Cairo after protesting the killing of 10 students and the arrest of many others at Benghazi University in Libya, where the students were pressing for the establishment of a student federation.
1976: Israel opens the third illegal settlement in five weeks in Syria’s Golan Heights, which Israel has occupied since 1967. The settlement, called Shaal, is on the site of a former Syrian village. “We wanted Shaal to be Israel’s answer to the Palestinian presence in the Security Council” at the United Nations, the New York Times quotes an unidentified woman from the settlement as saying.
- Syria, the Golan, and Peace with Israel
- What Is the Golan?
- May 2008: Syria and Israel Talk Peace for First Time Since 2000
1980: In Saudi Arabia, 63 people are executed by beheading in various cities around the country for their alleged role in the seizure of the Grand Mosque on Nov. 20, 1979.
- The 1979 Take-Over of the Grand Mosque in Mecca
- What Is the Grand Mosque?
- What Is the Kaaba in the Grand Mosque?
2005: Fatah’s Mahmoud Abbas is elected president of the Palestinian Authority in Gaza and the West Bank, succeeding Yasser Arafat. Abas wins the five-year term with about 65 percent of the vote in a field of seven contenders. President George W. Bush calls the election “a historic day for the Palestinian people and the people of the Middle East.” Hamas boycotts the vote.
- Palestine and the Palestinians: Country Profile
- What Is the PLO?
- What is the Palestinian National Council?
2005: The Islamic government of Sudan signs a peace agreement with Christian rebels in the southern part of the country, ending eight years of civil war that led to the death of 2 million people. The end of that war does not stop the fighting elsewhere in the country — namely, in Sudan’s Darfur region.
