1943: Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill meet secretly in Casablanca, Morocco, to map out war strategy for the rest of the year. The conference exposes rifts between the two: Roosevelt wants to wind up the campaign in the Mediterranean and invade Europe through France. Churchill disagrees, arguing that an invasion of France is premature. He wants an allied landing in Sardinia or Sicily to pull German troops away from the Soviet front and better control the Mediterranean. Churchill convinces Roosevelt, and allies land in Italy in September. Roosevelt also wanted unconditional surrender from Italy, Germany and Japan. Churchill disagreed. In that case, Roosevelt won the day. Why meet in Casablanca? As Roosevelt explained in a Dec. 14,
1975: In an interview published in Al Anwar, a newspaper in Beirut, PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat complains that Arab oil-producing nations’ financial contributions to his guerilla forces and to the armed forces of Syria, Jordan and Egypt are 40 percent below what the oil producers had promised. Arafat complains that Saudi Arabia and other oil producers are instead investing their money in Europe and the United States. “Is not this painful to the Palestinian revolution when the sea of Arab money has reached Europe and America?” The previous October at an Arab league conference in Rabat, Morocco, the six oil-producing nations (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq and Bahrain) had agreed to contribute $2.35 billion to the four concerns. Instead, they decided to contributed $1 billion less—$580 million each to Egypt and Syria, $175 million to Jordan, and $35 million to the PLO.
1976: After a four-day siege, Christian militias seize the Palestinian refugee camp of Dbayeh, seven miles northeast of Beirut. The mostly Christian population of the small camp is spared, however, and the camp allowed, eventually, to resume life. Two other Palestinian camps the militias are besieging (Jisr el Basha and Tel el Zaatar) are eventually conquered and razed after many of their inhabitants are killed.
1977: Sir Anthony Eden, prime minister and architect of Britain’s collusion with France and Israel in the 1956 war over the Suez Canal, dies in his sleep in London. “Although Eden doubtless did his best to avoid direct commitment,” the historian Hugh Thomas wrote in The Suez Affair of Eden’s secret instigation of an Israeli attack on Egypt, “there now seems little doubt that he did indeed nail Britain’s colors to the unfamiliar mast of Franco-Israeli collaboration.” Eden’s role in the Suez crisis tarnished an otherwise honorable career dating back to his opposition to fascism as Britain’s foreign secretary in the 1930s. He is 79 when he dies.
- What is Egypt’s Suez Canal?
- What Was the Suez Canal Company?
- Arab Nations’ 1956 Olympic Boycott Over the Suez Crisis
2002: Breaking a cease-fire in the West Bank, Israel assassinates Raed al-Karmi, 27-year-old leader of the Tanzim militia, a faction of Yasser Arafat’s Fatah organization. Palestinian militants retaliate by killing a 19-year-old Israeli soldier. In September, after Israel had attempted to kill Karmi, he said: “I will continue killing Israeli soldiers and settlers—not civilians.”