SAVE THE DATE: If you’re able, please catch my new, (hopefully) monthly livestream series with Elizabeth Urban starting Tuesday at 8 PM eastern here at Substack!
TODAY IN HISTORY
July 27, 1794: Challenged by Maximilien Robespierre to arrest all those he deemed “traitors” to the revolution, which could have included pretty much any or all of them (he didn’t specify), members of France’s National Convention decide it would just be easier to arrest Robespierre instead. In what is now known as the “Thermidorian Reaction” since it took place in the month of Thermidor on the revolutionary calendar, Robespierre and dozens of his associates were rounded up by a faction within the National Convention calling itself, appropriately, the Thermidorians. A group of 22, including Robespierre, were executed the following day. The Thermidorians established a new constitution the following year that dissolved the Convention and created a five-member Directory as the main organ of the French Revolutionary government.
July 27, 1953: The Korean Armistice Agreement, signed by the United Nations Command, the North Korean People’s Army, and the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army at Panmunjom, halts fighting in the Korean War. The agreement set terms for a ceasefire, a prisoner exchange, and the fixing of what was supposed to be a temporary border and demilitarized zone between the two Koreas, with subsequent peace talks meant to finalize the details surrounding the end of the war. So, about that—those subsequent talks, at the 1954 Geneva Conference, failed, and the temporary armistice has remained the last word on the Korean War since its signing.
MIDDLE EAST
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
Al Jazeera reports that Israeli soldiers and settlers are continuing to rampage through the West Bank:
Israeli soldiers have intensified their offensive in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, raiding at least 20 towns and villages as well as a United Nations facility, demolishing homes and arresting dozens of Palestinians, as Arab states condemned escalating settler attacks against Palestinians and their property.
Soldiers fired tear gas and detained staff at a vocational training centre run by the UN Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) in the Qalandia refugee camp, north of occupied East Jerusalem, on Monday, the Jerusalem Governorate said in a statement.
After storming the centre, soldiers held teaching and administrative staff in one of its halls, and climbed onto the roof of the camp’s local committee building.
The Israeli army had swept into Qalandia overnight, deploying across several neighbourhoods and firing tear gas and stun grenades, which sparked a fire, the governorate said.
