|
Achille Lauro Hijacking
The ''Achille Lauro'' hijacking took place on 7 October 1985, when the Italian ocean liner was hijacked by four men representing the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) off the coast of Egypt, as she was sailing from Alexandria to Ashdod, Israel. A 69-year-old Jewish-American man in a wheelchair, Leon Klinghoffer, was murdered by the hijackers and thrown overboard. The hijacking sparked the " Sigonella Crisis". Background Palestine Liberation Organization After the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was driven out of Jordan in 1970 and Southern Lebanon and Beirut in 1978 and 1982, respectively, PLO guerrillas had dispersed (under international guarantees of safety) to Tunisia, Yemen, Southern Yemen, Algeria, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and the Sudan. Meanwhile, in Lebanon, PLO chairman Yasser Arafat had run into problems with Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, who in 1983 sought to wrest effective control of the group from him by backing a mutiny within the PLO. Arafat was backed by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arab–Israeli Conflict
The Arab–Israeli conflict is a geopolitical phenomenon involving military conflicts and a variety of disputes between Israel and many Arab world, Arab countries. It is largely rooted in the historically supportive stance of the Arab League towards the Palestinians in the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, which, in turn, has been attributed to the simultaneous rise of Zionism and Arab nationalism towards the end of the 19th century, though the two movements did not directly clash until the 1920s. Since the late 20th century, however, direct hostilities of the Arab–Israeli conflict across the Middle East have mostly been attributed to a changing political atmosphere dominated primarily by the Iran–Israel proxy conflict. Part of the struggle between Israelis and Palestinians arose from the conflicting claims by the Zionist and Arab nationalist movements to the land that constituted British-ruled Mandatory Palestine. To the Zionist movement, Palestine was seen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rifaat Al-Assad
Rifaat Ali al-Assad (; born 22 August 1937) is a Syrian former military officer and politician. He is the younger brother of the late President of Syria, Hafez al-Assad, and Jamil al-Assad, and the uncle of the former President Bashar al-Assad. He was the commanding officer of the ground operations of the 1982 Hama massacre ordered by his brother. After launching a 1984 Syrian coup attempt, failed coup attempt against Hafez al-Assad in 1984, Rifaat lived in exile in Europe for 36 years and returned to Syria in October 2021 after being found guilty in France of acquiring millions of euros diverted from the Syrian state. In September 2022, France's highest court, the Court of Cassation (France), Cour de Cassation, confirmed the ruling. In August 2023, Switzerland issued an international warrant for Rifaat's arrest after its Federal Criminal Court of Switzerland, Federal Criminal Court demanded his extradition to prosecute him for his role in supervising ground operations of the 19 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nahariya
Nahariya () is the northernmost coastal city in Israel. As of , the city had a population of . The city was founded in 1935 by Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany. Etymology Nahariya takes its name from the stream of Ga'aton River, Ga'aton (river is ''nahar'' in Hebrew), which bisects it. History Bronze Age The ruins of a 3,400-year-old Bronze Age citadel were found in the coastal city of Nahariya near the beach on Balfour Street, at a site known to archaeologists as ''Khirbet Kabarsa''. The citadel was an administrative center serving the mariners who sailed along the Mediterranean coast. There is evidence of commercial and cultural relations with Cyprus and the rest of the Mediterranean region. The fortress was destroyed four times by conflagration and rebuilt each time. Byzantine period A church from the Byzantium, Byzantine period, dedicated to St. Lazarus, was excavated in the 1970s. It was destroyed by fire, probably at the time of the Sasanian conquest and occupation o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Samir Kuntar
Samir Kuntar (, also transcribed ''Sameer'', ''Kantar'', ''Quntar'', ''Qantar''; 20 July 1962 – 19 December 2015) was a Lebanese Druze member of the Palestine Liberation Front. In 1979, he took part in the Nahariya attack in Israel, for which an Israeli court would convict him of murder and terrorism. Kantar denied the accusations and maintained his innocence. He was eventually released as part of the 2008 Israel–Hezbollah prisoner exchange. Samir Kuntar was born to a Druze family in Lebanon and joined Palestinian militants in Lebanon at a young age. In 1979 at the age of 16, Kuntar and three other Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) militants snuck into Nahariya, Israel, by boat. Their goal was to capture Israelis and force Israel into a prisoner exchange, but the "raid went horribly wrong". In the end, two Israeli police officers and two Israeli civilians were dead, as were two of the PLF members. Israeli authorities argued based on eyewitness accounts and forensic evidenc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
West Bank
The West Bank is located on the western bank of the Jordan River and is the larger of the two Palestinian territories (the other being the Gaza Strip) that make up the State of Palestine. A landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the Levant region of West Asia, it is bordered by Jordan and the Dead Sea to the east and by Israel (via the Green Line (Israel), Green Line) to the south, west, and north. Since 1967, the territory has been under Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Israeli occupation, which has been Legality of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, regarded illegal under the law of the international community. The territory first emerged in the wake of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War as a region occupied and subsequently Jordanian annexation of the West Bank, annexed by Jordan. Jordan ruled the territory until the 1967 Six-Day War, when it was occupied by Israel. Since then, Israeli Civil Administration, Israel has administered the West Bank (ex ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Suicide Attack
A suicide attack (also known by a wide variety of other names, see below) is a deliberate attack in which the perpetrators knowingly sacrifice their own lives as part of the attack. These attacks are a form of murder–suicide that is often associated with terrorism or war. When the attackers are labelled as terrorists, the attacks are sometimes referred to as an act of ''" suicide terrorism"''. While generally not inherently regulated under international law, suicide attacks in their execution often violate international laws of war, such as prohibitions against perfidy and targeting civilians. Suicide attacks have occurred in various contexts, ranging from military campaigns—such as the Japanese pilots during World War II —to more contemporary Islamic terrorist campaigns—including the September 11 attacks in 2001. Initially, these attacks primarily targeted military, police, and public officials. This approach continued with groups like al-Qaeda, which combine ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Abu Abbas
Muhammad Zaidan aka Muhammad Abbas (10 December 1948 – 8 March 2004), sometimes known as Abu Abbas ( ''Abū ʿAbbās;'' ), was (with Tal'at Ya'qoub) a founder of the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) Organization. Political background Zaidan was born in 1948 in Safed, Palestine, though other sources state that he was born in a Syrian refugee camp. He studied at the Damascus University where he joined the radical, pro-Syrian Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC) under Ahmed Jibril in 1968. In 1977, major disagreements arose between the PFLP-GC, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and other Palestinian factions based in Lebanon. Zaidan, who opposed Syrian involvement in the Lebanese war, left the PFLP-GC and created the PLF with Talaat Yaacoub, which eventually split into three separate factions (and then later re-merged). Zaidan's faction of the PLF, which was the largest of the three, moved its headquarters to Tunisia. PLF lea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Operation Wooden Leg
Operation Wooden Leg (, ''Mivtza Regel Etz'') was an Israeli airstrike on the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) headquarters in Hammam Chott, near Tunis, Tunisia, on 1 October 1985. With a target from the operation's starting point, this was the most distant publicly known action undertaken by the Israel Defense Forces since the Entebbe raid in 1976. The airstrike killed between 41 and 71 people and injured between 65 and 100. According to some sources, between 60 and 70 Palestinians and 25 Tunisians were killed. Middle East International #260 11 October 1985. p.3 Donald Neff On 4 October, the airstrike was condemned by the United Nations Security Council. Background After being driven out of Lebanon in the 1982 Lebanon War, the PLO moved its headquarters to Tunisia. In April 1985, a PLO plan for a major seaborne attack on Israel was thwarted. Under the plan, PLO fighters would travel to the Israeli coast in a freighter and land in rubber dinghies, then hijack a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tunis
Tunis (, ') is the capital city, capital and largest city of Tunisia. The greater metropolitan area of Tunis, often referred to as "Grand Tunis", has about 2,700,000 inhabitants. , it is the third-largest city in the Maghreb region (after Casablanca and Algiers) and the List of largest cities in the Arab world, eleventh-largest in the Arab world. Situated on the Gulf of Tunis, behind the Lake of Tunis and the port of La Goulette (Ḥalq il-Wād), the city extends along the coastal plain and the hills that surround it. At its core lies the Medina of Tunis, Medina, a World Heritage Site. East of the Medina, through the Sea Gate (also known as the ''Bab el Bhar'' and the ''Porte de France''), begins the modern part of the city called "Ville Nouvelle", traversed by the grand Avenue Habib Bourguiba (often referred to by media and travel guides as "the Tunisian Champs-Élysées"), where the colonial-era buildings provide a clear contrast to smaller, older structures. Further east by th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Israeli Air Force
The Israeli Air Force (IAF; , commonly known as , ''Kheil HaAvir'', "Air Corps") operates as the aerial and space warfare branch of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). It was founded on May 28, 1948, shortly after the Israeli Declaration of Independence. , Aluf Tomer Bar has been serving as the Air Force commander. The Israeli Air Force was established using commandeered or donated civilian aircraft and obsolete and surplus World War II combat aircraft. Eventually, more aircraft were procured, including Boeing B-17s, Bristol Beaufighters, de Havilland Mosquitoes and P-51D Mustangs. The Israeli Air Force played an important part in Operation Kadesh, Israel's part in the 1956 Suez Crisis, dropping paratroopers at the Mitla Pass. On June 5, 1967, the first day of the Six-Day War, the Israeli Air Force performed Operation Focus, debilitating the opposing Arab air forces and attaining air supremacy for the remainder of the war. Shortly after the end of the Six-Day War, Egypt i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Larnaca
Larnaca, also spelled Larnaka, is a city on the southeast coast of Cyprus and the capital of the Larnaca District, district of the same name. With a district population of 155.000 in 2021, it is the third largest city in the country after Nicosia and Limassol. Built on the ruins of Kition, Citium, the Ancient Greece, Ancient Greek city-state best known as the birthplace of stoicism, Stoic philosopher Zeno of Citium, Larnaca is home to the Church of Saint Lazarus, Larnaca, Church of Saint Lazarus, Hala Sultan Tekke, Kamares Aqueduct, Larnaca Castle, Larnaca District Archaeological Museum, and Pierides Museum. It attracts many visitors to its beaches, as well as Finikoudes (Φοινικούδες; Greek for "palm trees"), its signature seafront promenade lined with palm trees. It gives its name to the country's primary airport, Larnaca International Airport, which is situated in the neighbouring village of Dromolaxia rather than Larnaca proper. It also has a seaport and a marina. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yacht
A yacht () is a sail- or marine propulsion, motor-propelled watercraft made for pleasure, cruising, or racing. There is no standard definition, though the term generally applies to vessels with a cabin intended for overnight use. To be termed a , as opposed to a , such a pleasure vessel is likely to be at least in length and may have been judged to have good aesthetic qualities. The Commercial Yacht Code classifies yachts and over as . Such yachts typically require a hired crew and have higher construction standards. Further classifications for large yachts are : carrying no more than 12 passengers; : solely for the pleasure of the owner and guests, or by Flag#At sea, flag, the country under which it is registered. A superyacht (sometimes ) generally refers to any yacht (sail or power) longer than . Racing yachts are designed to emphasize performance over comfort. Charter yachts are run as a business for profit. As of 2020, there were more than 15,000 yachts of sufficient size ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
