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Diplomatic context

At the time of the attack Tunisia had a close relationship with the US and was considered an ally against neighbouring Libya. Following the expulsion of the PLO from Lebanon in 1982 it was the US who asked Tunisia to receive the exiled fighters and allow the PLO into Tunis. President Bourguiba had been less radical than some other Arab states, in 1965 he had controversially proposed partition of what had been Palestine, a two state solution.

On 11th February 1985 King Hussein and Yasir Arafat had come to a significant agreement on how to proceed with negotiations on a peace agreement with Israel. This was followed by Britain’s Prime Minister Thatcher, on a visit to Jordan in early September, announcing the invitation of a Jordanian delegation including two members of the PLO for talks with the British Foreign Secretary, Geoffery Howe. On 27th September King Hussein announced in a speech to the United Nations that Jordan was willing to start direct negotiations with Israel. The speech was well received and referred to the ‘sons of Abraham’. Prior to the King’s arrival in New York the US administration had announced it was submitting to Congress the purposed sale of weapons to Jordan worth $1.5 billion. The 3 year package included advanced fighter aircraft and air defence systems. On the day before the attack King Hussein had a meeting with President Reagan at which he repeated his commitment to a peaceful settlement. He also emphasised that the PLO was an essential partner.

Afterwards King Hussein is quoted as saying “the raid is a stake in the heart of peace.” The October 7th hyjacking of the Achille Lauro and subsequent events led to a further cooling of relations between the West and the PLO.

There was much surprise when the US abstained from a UN Security Council motion condemning Israel. The motion put forward by Tunisia was passed unanimously 14-0, though the call for sanctions and the description of Israel as a “terrorist state” had been dropped. It was the first time that the US had not used its veto since 1982.

It was widely assumed in the Arab world that the target had been Yasir Arafat, and that the US had colluded, at least passively. The UK listening post on Mount Olympus, Cyprus, and the US 6th Fleet based around Crete would have detected the aircraft as soon as they were in the air. A Los Angeles Times report said that the US Navy had the opportunity to alert Tunisia but decided not to. It would have given over an hours warning.

Egypt Eurponean community Italy

In 1970 Zayed gave £50,000 to British politician Christopher Mayhew to establish an Arab Frienship Foundation.

Bold text*John McGlashan obituary

"John McGlashan, who has died aged 88, was a British MI6 officer linked to a plot to assassinate Egypt's President Nasser during the Suez crisis and subsequently accused of espionage – a capital crime. Exactly how he came to be seized in Cairo in August 1956 by agents of the Egyptian mukhabarat, or secret police, remains a mystery. But on February 8 the following year The Daily Telegraph reported President Nasser's demand for four other British 'plotters' to hang, under the headline 'Egypt Demands Death for 'Spies. Equally mysterious was the manner in which McGlashan – or John Reidmack Glashem, as some papers mangled it – was smuggled out of Cairo to safety. In June 1957, in his absence, he was accused in a major show trial with James Zarb, a Maltese businessman, and James Swinburn, Cairo business manager of the British-operated Arab News Agency (ANA). Both Zarb and Swinburn were jailed (then rapidly released), but McGlashan was acquitted. Based at the British embassy in Baghdad, where he operated under diplomatic cover as third secretary, McGlashan was one of 20 people said to have belonged to a 'dangerous' Secret Intelligence Service spy ring, and to have monitored Egyptian naval movements in the run-up to the 1956 Suez invasion. The ANA was SIS's local commercial cover in Cairo and also served as a useful conduit for British propaganda; it sowed 'disinformation' about Nasser via news outlets throughout the Arab world. Its journalists, including the agency's head, Tom Little, a correspondent for The Times and The Economist, were British intelligence officers, a fact quickly grasped by the Egyptians, who raided its offices in August 1956 and closed it down. This immediately compromised SIS's ability to work in Egypt – including on the plan ordered by the prime minister, Anthony Eden, for British agents to assassinate the Egyptian leader and facilitate a coup d'état, in response to 'the Muslim Mussolini's' declaration the month before that he intended to nationalise the Suez Canal. Along with McGlashan and the other British personnel, 11 Egyptians were also accused of espionage, including Swinburn's principal agent, who was later executed. With MI6 in Cairo effectively neutered, the plot to assassinate Nasser was turned over to outside agents, including the BBC Panorama reporter James Mossman, who was posted to Egypt as The Daily Telegraph's correspondent. Pressed to help, Mossman reluctantly agreed to drop off a package from the boot of his Morris Minor at a spot 12 miles from Cairo. It contained £20,000 in British banknotes, intended as a bribe to Nasser's doctor to poison the Egyptian president. Telephoning to confirm safe delivery, Mossman realised he had given the money to the wrong man." John McGlashan Daily Telegraph, 10 September 2010

• Leigh, David (27 January 1978). "Death of the department that never was". The Guardian. Facsimile of page (PDF)

During the 1960s a researcher reports cotton weavers and potters as well as the bell founder. The paper particularly focused on the Al Fakhouri pottery which used a rare technique not used elsewhere in Lebanon. This involved combining thrown and coil construction in the same pot. The resulting pots could be very large and were used for storing olives, rice, oil, arak and conserves. The clay was dug from pits at the west end of the village and from a site 2km away. It was settled during the winter in irrigated terraced beds. The manufacturing season was from May to September. The kiln was built into the hillside and was 5 metres tall; containing up to 1,500 pots at a time and consuming 7,000 kilos of wood, the firings took eight days.

Reporters and commentators who have referred to MEI in there books include David Hirst , David McDowall , David Gilmour, and Noam Chomsky

David Hirst, a long-serving Guardian Middle East correspondent, used Middle East International forty times in the footnotes to his history of modern Lebanon, Beware of Small States (2010). David McDowall references Middle East International nineteen times in his study of modern Palestine published by the Minority Rights Group in 1994. The footnotes to David Gilmour’s 1987 edition of Lebanon. The Fractured Country refer to Middle East International four times. Noam Chomsky references Middle East International twenty-one times in his 1999 edition of Fateful Triangle - The United States, Israel & The Palestinians.

• Waldmeier, Theophius (1886). Years in Abyssinia and Sixteen Years in Syria being the Autobiography of Theophilus Waldmeier Ten Years in Abyssinia and Sixteen Years in Syria being the Autobiography of Theophilus Waldmeier. {{cite book}}: Check |url= value (help)

Theophilus Waldmeier (1832 - 1915) was a Swiss Calvanist missionary who later became a Quaker.

Waldmeier was born in the Canton of Aargau and was brought up by his mother and grandmother, strict Roman Catholics, who insisted on three hours of daily prayer. Deeply unhappy he ran away to an uncle in Lörrach. Despite finishing his schooling in a Roman Catholic school he came under the influence of Evangelical Christians and developed an ambition to become a missionary. He enrolled in the Evangelical Training School for Foreign Missionaries in St. Chrischona and was consecrated in September 1858. Under the guidance of Bishop Samuel Gobat he immediately set out for Abyssinia, accompanied by the Bishop, who was returning to Jerusalem. In Alexandria he joined four other missionaries on a six month journey down the Nile and across eastern Sudan to Magdala the capital of Abyssinia. Two of his companions died on the journey. On arrival at Magdala they were introduced to King Theodore and joined four other missionaries already based there. Nine months after his arrival he married 12-year-old Susan Bell, the eldest daughter of Theodore’s English Prime Minister, John Bell. Her mother was a member of the royal family.

The Europeans were allowed to establish a boarding school which included an artisan training program. During this period Susan gave birth to five children, four of them, all boys, died in infancy. Only their daughter Rosa survived. Waldmeier became one of the King Theodore’s favourites. Things changed as Theodore’s character became more volatile and cruel. In 1866 he imprisoned all Europeans and their families. Waldmeier and his colleagues were put in charge of constructing and enormous brass mortar, the Sebastopol, capable of firing a 1000lb cannon ball. Thousands of people were involved in its construction. The following year the king moved his court to the mountain fortress at Magdala. Special roads had to be made for the Sebastopol which at times needed eight hundred men to move. The 200 mile journey took six months. Meanwhile the British sent an Anglo-Indian army to rescue the hostages. In 1868 following the defeat of his army at Magdala the king released his fifty-seven European prisoners before killing himself. During their two years as captives the fifth of Waldmeier’s sons died.

Theophilus Waldmeier

He was held prisoner by Ethiopian King Theodore and later released by General Napier's British troops at the siege of Magdala, Ethiopia in 1868.

He went to Beirut with the British Syrian Mission (which was founded in 1860). He started the Friends' Syrian Mission in 1873, founded Brummana High School in 1873 and the Asfuriya Mental Hospital in 1894. In 1874, he traveled to Europe to seek financial backing from the Society of Friends. British and American Quakers provided support for the Brummana School.

Biography

Manya Wilbushewitch (also Mania, Wilbuszewicz/Wilbushewitz; later Shochat) was born in the Grodno Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Belarus) to wealthy Jewish parents and grew up on her father’s estate near Lososna Wielka. She was a descent of Comte Vibois an officer in Napoleon's army who converted to Judaism after marrying a Jewish woman. Her grandfather was a successful merchant who provided supplies to the Russian army and had permits to travel to Moscow and St Petersberg. Her father rebelled against his parents assimilation and studied under Reb Nachum of Grodno. Her mother was the sister of Samuel Joseph Fuenn. Her eldest brother, Isaac, studied agriculture in Russia. He was expelled for slapping a professor who, in the course of a lecture, stated that the Jews were sucking the blood of the farmers in Ukraine. In late 1882, he left for Palestine and joined the Bilu movement. His letters home were a powerful influence on young Manya. Another one of her brothers, an engineer named Gedaliah, also went to Palestine in 1892 and helped fund his younger siblings' education.

As a young adult, Manya went to work in her brother's factory in Minsk to learn about working class conditions. In 1899, she was imprisoned and underwent lengthy interrogations about her contacts with Bund revolutionaries. Whilst in prison she fell in love with Sergey Zubatov, agent provocateur and head of the Tsarist Secret Police in Moscow. Zubatov conceived a plan that matched Manya‘s ideological notions, through which workers would form "tame" organizations that would work for reform rather than for overthrow of the government. She was persuaded that this would also help achieve rights for Jews. Manya proceeded to found the Jewish Independent Labor Party in 1901. The party was successful in leading strikes because the secret police supported it, but was loathed by the Bund and other Jewish socialist groups. The party collapsed and its members rounded up in 1903 following the Kishinev pogrom. Experiencing, as she put it, 'severe emotional distress' following the failure of her political organization and arrest of her friends she contemplated suicide. According to Shabtai Teveth she killed a door-to-door salesman who called at her hideout in Odessa thinking he was a member of the secret police. She dismembered the body and sent the remains to four different locations of the Russian Empire. She accepted an invitation from her brother Nachum, who was the founder of the Shemen soap factory in Haifa, to accompany him on a research expedition to some of the wilder places of Palestine. She arrived on January 2, 1904.

"I couldn't see what direction I should take in my life. I agreed to join my brother's expedition, because, in fact, I was indifferent to everything. For me it was just another adventure."

"The Hauran remained without a redeemer - and my soul cleaved unto this place."

Manya fell in love with the beauty of the land and was especially touched by the plight of the Jewish settlement in the Hauran. Baron Edmond de Rothschild had bought land in the area, but the Ottoman government stipulated that no Jews be allowed to settle there. A small group which had disregarded the decision was evicted, so the Baron resorted to leasing out the plots of land to Arab Fellahin. Manya decided to visit all of the Baron's colonies and see for herself why they were in financial straits. She became acquainted with and was greatly impressed by Yehoshua and Olga Hankin. Her decision to stay was due in a large part to their influence.

Family

In May 1908, Manya married Israel Shochat, who was 9 years younger than her. She had 2 children with him: Gideon (Geda) and Ana. Gideon Shochat was a pilot in the British Royal Air Force (RAF) during World War II and later became one of the founding pilots of the Israeli Air Force, rising to the rank of Colonel. He committed suicide in 1967. In 1971, his daughter Alona married Arik Einstein, a famous Israeli performer. They had 2 daughters together. They later divorced, the daughters remaining with their mother. They later became Orthodox Jews, and the daughters married Uri Zohar's sons. Zohar was a good friend of Einstein and became one of the leading figures in the Orthodox community.

In Palestine

As a result of her first visit, Manya reached a conclusion which anticipated that of Arthur Ruppin. She understood that the model of plantation settlement, favored by Baron Rothschild, where Jewish owners employed Arab workers and were subject to economic overseers, could never be the basis for Jewish national life. It led to financial difficulties and disaffection. She concluded that only collective agricultural settlement could produce Jewish workers and farmers who would be the basis for building a Jewish homeland. Her first priority was finding a solution for the problem in Hauran.

Manya left for Paris, where one of her brothers was editor of an agricultural journal, to research the feasibility of her ideas and then to convince the Baron to back them. In 1905, a fresh wave of pogroms swept the Russian Empire. Meir Cohen, an old friend from Minsk, came to Paris seeking the aid of the Jewish community to buy arms so they could defend themselves. Manya laid aside the Hauran project and put her efforts towards fundraising instead. She convinced Rothschild to donate 50 000 gold francs to that end.

Guns and ammunition were bought in Liège and smuggled into Russia. To deliver the final consignment, Manya disguised herself as a young rabbanit from Frankfurt, bringing eight cases of scriptures, a gift for the yeshivot of Ukraine. The guns were successfully delivered to the Jewish underground. Not one was lost.

Manya returned to Palestine in 1906 to further pursue her Hauran plan. Towards the end of the year, she traveled to the United States to raise funds for that and arms for Russian Jews. Whilst in America she met Judah Magnes, and they formed a long lasting friendship.The idea of collective settlements in general, and the Hauran scheme in particular, received no support. She realized that the only way to convince people that it could work was by putting it into practice, so she returned to Palestine in 1907. Manya shared her idea with members of "Poalei Tzion" and "Hapoel Hatzair". Hankin convinced Eliahu Krauze to give them stewardship over a failing agricultural experiment in Sejera for a year. Manya was appointed manager responsible for establishing a training farm at Sejara. The farm was used as cover by Bar Giora a newly formed underground militia founded by Israel Shochat and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi. The following year Bar Giora reinvented itself as HaShomer. Its goal was to take over the responsibility of guarding Jewish settlements which had previously being using local watchmen.

She married Israel Shochat in May 1908.

In November 1914 she was arrested and sent to Damascus for interrogation and was subsequently deported, along with her husband to Bursa, in Turkey. They returned around Passover, 1919, after attending the Poalei Tziyon convention in Stockholm.

In 1921 she was in Tel Aviv when riots broke out with Arab mobs attacking Jews in Jaffa. Along with other Hashomer members, she took part in the fighting. At great risk, she would walk around, disguised as a Red Cross nurse, to keep an eye out on developments. Her experience in Russia came in handy as they attempted to smuggle in grenades for the defenders of Petah-Tikva. She hid them among baskets of vegetables and eggs. The car they were in got mired just outside the town. A patrol of Indian cavalry approached. Their role was to search all travelers for arms. With great presence of mind, Manya averted disaster. She ran up to the patrol, begging them to help rescue the car from the mud. While they were pulling it out, she watched the baskets, saying that she didn't want the eggs to break. The cavalry then even provided an escort until they got into town.

After the riots were over, she traveled to the United States to raise funds for the defense efforts. Due to a series of differences of opinion between her and Pinhas Rutenberg, the transfer of funds was frozen and the two didn't speak for years. However, she did manage to send several thousand dollars to her husband who was waiting in Vienna, earmarked for the purchase of weapons for the Haganah. Israel Shochat oversaw the procurement and shipment of the weapons to Palestine.

Following the dissolution of Hashomer in 1920 Manya and other veterans established a new secret organisation calling themselves the Circle. One of their bases was at Kfar Giladi and their first action, May 1923, was the assassination of Tawfiq Bey, a senior police officer in Jaffa at the time of the riots.

In 1924 she was among those arrested in connection with the assassination of Jacob de Haan. She subsequently broke off relations with Ben Gurion over his failure to come to her defence when it was known that the Haganah in Jerusalem had ordered the killing.

In 1925 she joined Brit Shalom, a Jewish group that advocated a bi-national state in Palestine.

Manya and Israel Shochat were active in the Gdud HaAvoda (lit.: the "Work Battalion") and clandestine immigration, as well as arms smuggling. In 1930, Manya Shochat was among the founders of the League for Arab-Jewish Friendship. In 1948 she joined the Mapam party.

Jezzin district

Aitouleh 33:31:18N 35:26:26E

al Rihan

Aaramta

Aray, Lebanon