1965 in Israel

Incumbents

• Prime Minister of Israel – Levi Eshkol
• President of Israel – Zalman Shazar
• Chief of General Staff - Yitzhak Rabin
• Government of Israel - 12th Government of Israel

  Events

• 21 January – The Shalom Meir Tower officially opens, becoming the tallest building in the Middle East.
• 24 January – Syria announces that it has captured the Israeli spy Eli Cohen.
• 7 March – The Israeli spy, Wolfgang Lotz, is captured in Egypt.
• 14 March – Israel and West Germany establish diplomatic relations, 20 years after the fall of Nazi Germany.
• 11 May – The Israel Museum in Jerusalem is inaugurated.
• 18 May – Israeli spy Eli Cohen is hanged in Damascus, Syria.
• 19 May – The Alignment party is established as an alliance of Mapai and Ahdut HaAvoda.
• 31 May – Jordanian Legionnaires fired on the neighborhood of Musrara in Jerusalem, killing two civilians and wounding four.
• July – The 1965 Maccabiah Games are held.
• 14 July – The Israeli left-wing political party Rafi is founded by David Ben-Gurion, who breaks with Mapai, the ruling party, and leads a breakaway group of eight members of the Knesset, including Moshe Dayan, Shimon Peres, Chaim Herzog, and Teddy Kollek, amongst others.
• 2 November – the Alignment party headed by Levi Eshkol wins the sixth Israeli legislative elections.

  Israeli–Palestinian conflict

• 1 January – Fatah's first major guerrilla attack takes place when Fatah members infiltrated into Israel and attempt to sabotage the National Water Carrier. The squad manages to put an explosive device next to the Water Carrier, but it fails to explode and is later discovered by an Israeli Border Police patrol.
• 1 June – Armed Palestinian armed militants attack a house in Kibbutz Yiftah.
• 29 September – A militant was killed while attempting to attack Moshav Amatzia.
• 7 November – A Fatah cell that infiltrated from Jordan blew up a house in Moshav Givat Yeshayahu, south of Beit Shemesh. The house was destroyed, but the inhabitants were unhurt.

• 29 September – Israeli security forces kill a terrorist as he attempted to attack Moshav Amatzia.

  Notable births

• 24 February – Nitzan Horowitz, Israeli journalist and politician.
• 28 May – Alon Abutbul, Israeli actor.
• 4 June – Eli Yatzpan, Israeli entertainer.
• 20 October – Amos Mansdorf, Israeli tennis player.

  Notable deaths

• 18 May – Eli Cohen, Egyptian-born Israeli spy.
• 13 June – Martin Buber, Austrian-born Israeli philosopher.
• 7 July – Moshe Sharett, Russian -born second Prime Minister of Israel.
• 28 August – Giulio Racah, Italian-born Israeli physicist.
• 15 October – Abraham Fraenkel, German-born Israeli mathematician.
• Full date unknown – Shlomo Dykman, Polish-born Israeli translator and classical scholar.

  Major public holidays