Timeline Israel 1961-1995
Return to home
1961 Apr 11,
Israel began the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. He was accused
of World War II war crimes.
(WSJ, 4/28/97, p.A17)(HN, 4/11/98)
1961 Jul 31, Israel welcomed its
1,000,000th immigrant.
(MC, 7/31/02)
1961 Dec 9, SS Col. Adolf Eichmann
was found guilty of war crimes in Israel.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1961 Dec 15, Adolf Eichmann, the
former German Gestapo official accused of a major role in the Nazi
murder of 6 million Jews, was sentenced by a Jerusalem court to be
hanged. Adolf Eichmann was the administrator of the so-called Final
Solution and supervised the transportation of prisoners to
concentration camps.
(AP, 12/15/97)(HN, 12/15/98)
1962 May 31, Adolph Eichmann
(b.1906), Gestapo official and Nazi war criminal, was hanged near Tel
Aviv, Israel, for his role in the Nazi murder of over one million Jews.
He had been nabbed in Argentina by Peter Malkin in 1960 and taken to
Israel for trial. This was the first execution to take place in the
state Israel. Eichmann completed 1,300 notebook pages while in prison
and they were OK'd for publication in 1999. In 1963 Hannah Arendt
authored "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil."
(SFEC, 11/3/96, Par p.13) (AP, 5/31/97)(HN,
5/31/99)(SFC, 8/11/99, p.C4)(WSJ, 8/31/99,
p.A22)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Eichmann)
1963 May 8, JFK offered Israel
assistance against aggression.
(MC, 5/8/02)
1963 Jun 15, Israeli premier David
Ben-Gurion resigned.
(MC, 6/15/02)
1963 Jun 24, Levi Eshkol formed an
Israeli government.
(MC, 6/24/02)
1963 Oct 12, Archaeological digs
began at Masada, Israel.
(MC, 10/12/01)
1963 Emma Berger, a German
Christian, founded a sect of fervent believers in Germany in the 1950s
and led a portion of them to Israel in 1963, where they founded a
commune called Bethel-El.
(WSJ, 2/6/98, p.A1)
1963 South Africa conducted a
joint nuclear test with Israel, but the Israelis did not confirm the
report.
(SFC, 5/17/02, p.A2)
1963-1994 King Hussein of Jordan (1935-1999) held at
least 55 secret meetings with leading Israelis including at least seven
prime and foreign ministers.
(Econ, 11/24/07, p.88)
1964 Jan 17, The PLO charter was
put together with articles that proclaimed Israel an illegal state and
pledged "the elimination of Zionism in Palestine." The PLO was founded
in Egypt.
(SFC, 12/11/98, p.A18)(SFC, 4/30/02, p.A8)
1964 Dec 31, Syrian-based al-Fatah
guerrillas of Yasser Arafat launched their 1st raid on Israel with the
aim of provoking a retaliation and sparking an Arab war against Israel.
Fatah, a Palestinian movement for independence, made the first terror
attack on Israel and initiated the armed struggle for a state.
(WSJ, 1/22/98, p.A1)(SFEC, 1/2/00, p.A24)(WSJ,
6/5/02, p.D7)
1965 Jan 20, Generalissimo
Francisco Franco met with Jewish representatives to discuss
legitimizing Jewish communities in Spain.
(MC, 1/20/02)
1965 Mar 14, Israel's cabinet
formally approved establishing diplomatic relations with West Germany.
(AP, 3/14/99)
1965 May 12, West Germany and
Israel exchanged letters establishing diplomatic relations.
(AP, 5/12/97)
1965 May 13, Several Arab nations
broke ties with West Germany after it established diplomatic relations
with Israel.
(MC, 5/13/02)
1965 Aug 19, Auschwitz trials
ended with only 6 life sentences.
(MC, 8/19/02)
1965 Oct 28, Pope Paul VI issued a
decree absolving Jews of collective guilt for the crucifixion of Jesus
Christ.
(AP, 10/28/99)
1965 Rev. Edward Flannery (d.1998
at 86) of Providence, R.I., published "The Anguish of the Jews:
Twenty-three Centuries of Anti-Semitism.
(SFC, 10/23/98, p.D7)
1965 Teddy Kollek (1911-2007) was
elected as mayor of Jerusalem. He sought to bring Arabs into the Jewish
governed city as social and economic equals. In 1993 he was defeated in
a run for a 7th term by Ehud Olmert of the Likud Party.
(SFC, 10/18/96, C8)(SFC, 1/3/07, p.A2)
1966 Jan 2, The 1st Jewish child
was born in Spain since the 1492 expulsion.
(MC, 1/2/02)
1966 Nov 10, A land mine near
Hebron killed 3 Israeli policemen. Israel retaliated with a weekend
strike against West Bank villagers and ran into Jordanian troops in
Samu. Palestinians rioted and demanded the overthrow of Jordan’s Pres.
Hussein. The Arab legion was forced to fire and killed at least 4.
(WSJ, 6/5/02, p.D7)
1966 S.Y. Agnon (1888-1970),
Jewish writer, shared the Nobel Prize in Literature with Nelly Sachs, a
German-born Swede.
(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/agnon.htm)(AP, 10/8/09)
1966-1974 Abba Eban served as Israel’s foreign
minister.
(AP, 11/17/02)
1967 Apr 7, A, Israeli-Syrian
minor border incident escalated into a full-scale aerial battle over
the Golan Heights, resulting in the loss of six Syrian MiG-21s to
Israeli Air Force (IAF) Dassault Mirage IIIs, and the latter's flight
over Damascus.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-Day_War)
1967 May 22, Egyptian president
Nasser closed the Straits of Tiran to Israel.
(www.palestinefacts.org/pf_1948to1967_sixday_backgd.php)
1967 Jun 1, In Israel pressure
from the army and a threat by some parties to quit the governing
coalition forced PM Levi Eshkol to bring in Moshe Dayan as defense
minister.
(www.britannica.com/ebc/article-9029562)(Econ,
5/26/07, p.43)
1967 Jun 5, The Six Day War
erupted in the Middle East as Israel, convinced an Arab attack was
imminent, raided Egyptian military targets. Syria, Jordan and Iraq
entered the conflict. Jordan lost the West Bank, an area of 2,270 sq.
miles. War broke out as Israel reacted to the removal of UN
peace-keeping troops, Arab troop movements and the barring of Israeli
ships in the Gulf of Aqaba.
(AP, 6/5/97)(HN, 6/5/98)(NG, 5/93, p.58)(HNQ,
5/22/00)
1967 Jun 5-1967 Jun 10, Israel
fought the Six-Day War against Syria and captured the Golan Heights,
the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Allegations that
Israeli soldiers killed hundreds of Egyptian prisoners with the
knowledge of national leaders were made by Israeli historians in 1995.
Israel occupied Syrian territory. The Gaza Strip and the West Bank were
captured by Israel. Israel annexed the largely Arab East Jerusalem,
which included the Old City, and has since ringed it with Jewish
neighborhoods.
(WSJ, 8/17/95, p.A-1)(WSJ,11/24/95, p.A-1)(WSJ,
5/6/96, p.A-13)(SFC, 6/25/96, p.A10)(SFC, 1/22/98, p.B12)(SFC, 4/24/98,
p.A17)
1967 Jun 6, Israeli troops
occupied Gaza on the 2nd day of the 6-day war.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-Day_War)
1967 Jun 7, Israel captured the
Wailing Wall in East Jerusalem. 3rd day of the 6-day war.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-Day_War)
1967 Jun 8, On the 4th day of the
Six-Day War Israel captured the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula from
Egypt, as well as the West Bank and Eastern Jerusalem from Jordan.
Israel’s occupation of Gaza continued for the next 38 years.
(SSFC, 6/3/07, p.E6)(Econ, 1/10/09, p.9)
1967 Jun 8, Israeli forces raided
the USS Liberty, a US Navy ship stationed in the Mediterranean. Israel
called the attack a tragic mistake. The Israeli Air Force attack on the
intelligence gathering auxiliary ship Liberty killed 34 crewmen and
wounded 171. The attack took place on the 4th day of the Six-Day War in
international waters off the coast of Israel. While still a
controversy, the official explanation was that Israel believed the
Liberty was an Egyptian vessel. Commander William L. McGonagle (d.1999
at 73) was awarded the Medal of Honor for keeping Liberty afloat and
remaining on the bridge for 17 hours despite his own wounds. Israel
apologized and paid over $12 million in compensation.
{Israel, USA}
(AP, 6/8/97)(SFC, 3/9/99, p.A22)(WSJ, 5/9/01,
p.A24)(WSJ, 5/16/01, p.A23)
1967 Jun 10, The Six-Day Middle
East War ended as Israel and Syria agreed to observe a United
Nations-mediated cease-fire. Israel took Gaza and the Sinai from Egypt,
Old Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from
Syria. In 2002 Michael B. Oren authored "Six Days of War: June 1967 and
the making of the Modern Middle East." Israeli military historian Arieh
Yitzhaki later said that his research showed Israeli troops killed 300
Egyptian prisoners of war. Israel said soldiers on both sides committed
atrocities. In 2007 Tom Segev authored “1967: Israel, the War and the
Year that Transformed the Middle East.”
(AP, 6/10/97)(WSJ, 6/5/02, p.D7)(AP, 3/6/07)(Econ,
5/26/07, p.97)
1967 Jun 11, Israel and Syria
accepted a UN cease-fire. The UN brokered a cease-fire between Israel
and the defeated Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, ending the Six-Day War with
Israel occupying the Sinai, West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan
Heights.
(HN, 6/11/98)(AP, 6/11/03)
1967 Jun 11, Israel annexed the
largely Arab East Jerusalem, which included the Old City, and has since
ringed it with Jewish neighborhoods.
(SFC, 6/25/96, p.A10)
1967 Jun 28, Israel formally
declared Jerusalem reunified under its sovereignty following its
capture of the Arab sector in the June 1967 war.
(AP, 6/28/98)
1967 Jun 29, Jerusalem was
reunified as Israel removed barricades separating the Old City from the
Israeli sector.
(AP, 6/29/97)(HN, 6/29/98)
1967 Jul, In the wake of the Six
Day War some 2,000 Jews in Libya were compelled to leave the country.
(WSJ, 1/10/07, p.A19)
1967 Oct 21, The Israeli destroyer
INS Eilat was sunk by Egyptian missile boats near Port Said; 47 Israeli
crew members were lost.
(AP, 10/21/07)
1967 Nov 22, The U.N. Security
Council approved Resolution 242, which called for Israel to withdraw
from territories it captured in 1967, and implicitly called on
adversaries to recognize Israel's right to exist.
(AP, 11/22/97)
1967 Dec 14, Israel submitted to
the United Nations a five-year plan to solve the Arab refugee problem
conditioned on a general peace settlement between Israel and the Arab
states.
(AP, 12/14/02)
1967 Michael Bar-Zohar authored
"The Avengers." It covered the story of Holocaust survivors who formed
a death squad after World War II to take revenge on their Nazi
persecutors. One operation included attempts to poison hundreds of SS
officers imprisoned after the war by the Americans at Dachau and
Nuremberg in Germany. The group's 40 or so members were largely Jews
who had not been sent to concentration camps and spent the war fighting
Nazis.
(AP, 12/23/05)
1967 Chaim Herzog became the first
military governor of the West Bank.
(SFC, 4/18/97, p.E2)
1967 Sheik Assad Bayyoud Tamini
(d.1998 at 86), a militant Muslim leader who later advocated peace with
Israel, was deported from Hebron for resisting Israeli occupation. He
continued his resistance from Jordan.
(SFC, 3/24/98, p.B2)
1967 Israel passed a new patent
law that allowed Israeli companies to copy a foreign patent if the
foreign company did not market it in Israel.
(WSJ, 10/27/04, p.A1)
1968 Jan, An Israeli submarine,
the Dakar, a British-made submarine with a 69-man crew, was lost in the
Mediterranean Sea while onroute from England to Israel. The sunken ship
was found May 28, 1999, between Crete and Cyprus.
(SFC, 5/31/99, p.A8)
1968 Mar 21, Israeli forces
attacked a Palestinian base belonging to Fatah in the
village of Al-Karameh in Jordan. Israeli forces engage in a
battle with Palestinian fighters for the first time. On 24 March 1968,
the Security Council adopted resolution 248 (1968), condemning the
large scale and premeditated military actions by Israel against
Jordan. The Karameh mission failed. Muki Betser, Israeli commando, was
wounded. He later became commander of the Sayeret Matkal, Israel’s
elite counter-terrorist unit.
(SFC, 7/16/96,
p.E5)(www.un.int/palestine/chron60.shtml)
1968 May 12, In Israel the Knesset
passed the Jerusalem Day Law, making the day a national holiday.
Israel’s government proclaimed Jerusalem Day, to be celebrated on the
28th of Iyar, the Hebrew date on which the divided city of Jerusalem
became one.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_Day)
1968 Jul 8, Golda Meir resigned
from her post as secretary of the Labor Party.
(www.jafi.org.il/education/jafi75/timeline5i.html)
1968 Dec 26, A Palestinian
terrorist attack in Athens on an Israeli civilian airliner killed one
person. Mahmoud Mohammad (25) and Maher Suleiman (19) were later
captured by Greek officials, In 1970, a Greek court convicted Mahmoud
Mohammad for his role in the attack. In 1987 Mahmoud Mohammed Issa
Mohammed entered Canada, where he was ordered to be deported in 1988.
In 2007 he was still in Canada after some 30 appeals and reviews.
(http://tinyurl.com/35olct)(Econ, 9/15/07,
p.48)(www.skyjack.co.il/chronology.htm)
1968 Dec 27, The US agreed to sell
fifty F-4 Phantom jets to Israel.
(HN, 12/27/98)
1968 Dec 28, Israel attacked the
Beirut Int’l. Airport, destroying 13 civilian planes. This was in
response to an attack on an Israeli airliner in Athens by the Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Israeli_raid_on_Lebanon)
1968 Aug, The play "You, Me and
the Next War," by Hanoch Levin (1943-1999), Israeli dramatist, was
produced.
(SFC, 8/19/99,
p.D2)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanoch_Levin)
1968 Jerome Mintz (d.1997 at 67),
US anthropologist, published "Legends of the Hasidim."
(SFC,12/20/97, p.A21)
1968 Jews moved into Hebron
following its occupation in the wake of the 1967 6-Day War. They later
settled in the new suburb of Kiryat Arba.
(SFC, 12/4/08, p.A27)
1969 Jan 27, In Iraq 14 people,
including 9 Jews, were hanged for alleged espionage.
(http://tinyurl.com/5u75cx)
1969 Feb 18, The PLO (PFLP-GC)
machine-gunned an Israeli El-Al plane in Zurich, Switzerland. One
Palestinian was killed and 4 were arrested.
(SFC, 5/21/02,
p.A16)(www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Terrorism/incidents.html)
1969 Feb 26, Levi Eshkol (b.1895),
born in the Ukraine as Levi Shkolnik, died. He had served as the 3rd
Israeli premier (1963-1969).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levi_Eshkol)
1969 Mar 17, Golda Meir (d.1978)
became the 4th prime minister of Israel. She held the office to 1974.
(AP, 3/17/97)(AP, 12/8/97)
1969 May 25, The Israeli Army made
the first of four unsuccessful assaults on Arab forces in the town of
Latrun, Israel.
(HN, 5/25/99)
1969 Yair Rosenbloom (1944-1996),
songwriter and composer composed the "Song to Peace" that was later
sung by Prime Minister Rabin just before his assassination. It was
initially an anti-war protest and denounced by the military as
defeatist and banned from army radio.
(SFC, 8/30/96, p.E5)
1970 Jan 28, Israeli fighter jets
attacked the suburbs of Cairo.
(HN, 1/28/99)
1970 Feb 17, S.Y. Agnon, Jewish
writer and Nobel Prize winner (1966) died in Jerusalem. His books
included “Days of Awe,” a compendium of Jewish practices, legends and
commentaries.
(WSJ, 9/22/07, p.W6)(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/agnon.htm)
1970 Feb 21, The PFLP-GC planted a
time bomb on a Swissair jet that blew up on a flight from Zurich to Tel
Aviv. All 47 aboard were killed.
(SFC, 5/21/02,
p.A16)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swissair_Flight_330)
1970 Jun, The Israeli government
passed its initial decision to establish settlements in Gaza.
(AP, 8/15/05)
1970 Jul 21, Libya ordered the
confiscation of all Jewish property.
(http://tinyurl.com/48p4fy)
1970 Aug 7, Israel, Jordan and
Egypt agreed to a ceasefire under the terms of the US proposed Roger
Plan. The Roger Plan was originally proposed in a December 9, 1969,
speech at an Adult Education conference. The plan was formally
announced on 19 June 1970.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Attrition)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers_Plan)
1970 Sep 17, The PLO was driven
out of Jordan and forced to move to Lebanon.
(SFC, 2/8/99, p.A6)
1970 George L. Mosse (1918-1999),
a Univ. of Wisconsin historian, published "Germans and Jews: The Right,
the Left, and the Search for a 'Third Force' in Pre-Nazi Germany."
(SFEC, 1/31/99,
p.D8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mosse)
1970 Oded Fehr, Israeli actor, was
born.
(AP, 11/23/02)
1970 Hanoch Levin's play "The
Queen of the Bathtub" mocked Prime Minister Golda Meir and caused a
storm of protest.
(SFC, 8/19/99, p.D2)
c1970 George L. Mosse (d.1999 at
80), a Univ. of Wisconsin historian, published "Germans and Jews: The
Right, the Left, and the Search for a 'Third Force' in Pre-Nazi
Germany."
(SFEC, 1/31/99, p.D8)
1970 Benjamin Weiss, an
Israeli-American mathematician, first posed the "Road Coloring
Problem," which essentially assumed it's possible to create a
"universal map" that can direct people to arrive at a certain
destination, at the same time, regardless of starting point. In 2008
Avraham Trahtman (63), immigrant mathematician from Russia, provided an
8-page solution.
(AP, 3/20/08)(www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23729600/)
1972 Feb 5, It was reported that
the United States had agreed to sell 42 F-4 Phantom jets to Israel.
(www.historynet.com/tdih0205.htm)
1972 May 8, A Belgian Sabena
aircraft, bound for Tel Aviv, was hijacked by 4 Palestinians. At Lod
Intl. 2 hijackers were shot and killed by Israeli military personnel,
dressed as ground engineers. One passenger died 8 days later as a
result of her wounds. The two women hijackers were subsequently
sentenced to life imprisonment.
(www.prophetofdoom.net/Islamic_Terrorism_Timeline_1972.Islam)
1972 May 30, Three militants of
the Japanese Red Army (PFL) staged a machine-gun and hand-grenade
attack at the Lod Airport in Israel. 24 people were killed and a 100
injured. The terrorists found refuge in Lebanon until 1997 when they
were arrested. Kozo Okamoto served 13 years of a life sentence in
Israel. In 2000 Lebanon granted asylum to Kozo Okamoto. 4 other
Japanese Red Army members were deported to Japan.
(SFC, 2/19/96, p.A8)(SFC, 3/18/00, p.A3)
1972 Jun 7, German Chancellor
Willy Brandt began a 5-day visit to Israel.
(http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_image.cfm?image_id=2506)
1972 Sep 5, Terror struck the
Munich Olympic games in West Germany as Arab guerrillas attacked the
Israeli delegation. Palestinian terrorists killed 2 athletes and took 9
others and their coaches hostage. Eleven Israelis, five guerrillas and
a police officer were killed in a 20-hour siege. The Palestinian
commandos were linked to Carlos the Jackal, aka Ilich Ramirez Sanchez.
In 1984 George Jonas authored “Vengeance,” an account of an Israeli hit
squad ordered to track down those responsible for the Munich attack. In
2000 the TV documentary "One Day in September" depicted the events. In
2005 Aaron J. Klein authored “Striking Back,” and account of Israel’s
response to the Munich attack. The 2005 the Stephen Spielberg film
“Munich” was based on the book by George Jonas.
(SFC,12/11/97, p.C2)(WSJ, 9/8/00, p.W4)(WSJ,
12/21/05, p.D10)(WSJ, 1/14/06, p.A9)
1972 Sep 19, A Black September
letter bomb killed Ami Shehori, Israeli attache at the embassy in
London.
(www.nytimes.com/2004/10/08/international/middleeast/08chrono.html)
1972 Israel began establishing two
army posts in Gaza, which later become the communities of Netzarim and
Kfar Darom.
(AP, 8/15/05)
1972 Abu Daoud at a cafe in Rome
with fellow PLO guerrilla leader Abu Iyad and his assistant, Mohammed
al-Omari, read in a newspaper that the International Olympics Committee
had refused the PLO's request to send a Palestinian delegation to the
Munich Olympics. They decided to “participate in their own way.” Daoud
was given the task of doing the operation's groundwork. Daoud first
acknowledged having a role in the 1972 Munich operation in the 1999
book: "Palestine: From Jerusalem to Munich."
(AP, 2/24/06)
1972 Arkady Gaydamak (20) arrived
in Israel from Russia. By 2006 estimates of his wealth varied from
between $800 million to more than $4 billion. He said he made all of
his money on the Russian stock exchange. Gaydamak was never been
convicted of a crime, but faced an international arrest warrant because
of a French investigation into alleged arms trafficking to Angola in
the early 1990s.
(AP, 11/21/06)
1973 Feb 21, Israeli fighter
planes shot down a Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114 over the Sinai
Desert, killing over 100 people.
(AP, 2/21/98)
1973 Jan 15, Pope Paul VI had an
audience with Golda Meir at Vatican.
(http://tinyurl.com/65npaj)
1973 May 26, Jacques Lipchitz
(b.1891), Lithuanian-born, French-US cubist sculptor, died on Capri and
was buried in Jerusalem.
(www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1B1-370321.html)
1973 Jul 21, Israeli intelligence
mistakenly assassinated Ahmed Bouchiki, a Moroccan living in
Lillehammer, Norway, as part of its retribution for the Sep 5, 1972,
terrorist attack in Munich. He was mistaken for Ali Hassan Salameh
(d.1979).
(WSJ, 12/21/05,
p.D10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmed_Bouchiki)
1973 Sep 13, Israel shot down 12
Syrian aircraft to1 Israeli loss when IAF jets were attacked during a
reconnaissance mission over Syrian territory.
(www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/intel73.html)
1973 Oct 6, The fourth
Arab-Israeli war in 25 years was fought. Israel was taken by surprise
when Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Jordan attacked on the Jewish holy day of
Yom Kippur, beginning the Yom Kippur War. The Yom Kippur War in which
Syria tried to regain the Golan Heights with a massive attack with
1,500 tanks. The assault was repulsed by air power.
(WSJ, 5/6/96, p.A-13)(TL-MB, p.21) (TMC, 1994,
p.1973)(AP, 10/6/97)(HN, 10/6/98)
1973 Oct 14, US Air Force
"Operation Nickel Grass" began resupply missions to Israel for a full
month, until November 14.
(www.palestinefacts.org/pf_1967to1991_ykwar_course.php)
1973 Oct 15 Israeli tanks under
General Ariel Sharon crossed the Suez Canal and began to encircle two
Egyptian armies.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur_War)
1973 Oct 22, Israeli troops
reconquered Mount Hermon from Syria. The UN Security Council Resolution
338 called for a cease fire to the Yom Kippur War. The UN Security
Council issued Resolution 338 calling for a ceasefire and the start of
negotiations aimed at implementation of Resolution 242.
(http://tinyurl.com/5m3oom)(http://tinyurl.com/4s8kua)
1973 Oct 23, In the Yom Kippur War
Syria announced it had accepted a UN sanctioned cease-fire, and the
Iraqi government ordered its forces home.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur_War)
1973 Oct 24, The UNSC passed
Resolution 339, serving as a renewed call for all parties to adhere to
the cease fire terms established in Resolution 338. Organized fighting
on all fronts ended by October 26.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur_War)
1973 Oct, In Israel 4 conservative
parties, Gahal, Free Centre, State Party, and the Eretz Yisrael
movement formed Likud. Menachim Begin became its first leader. Ariel
Sharon helped found the Likud Party. He quit the party in 2005 in order
to head a new centrist party called Kadima (Forward).
(Econ, 11/26/05,
p.57)(http://i-cias.com/e.o/likud.htm)
1973 Nov 11, Israel and Egypt
signed a cease-fire.
(www.amichai.com/war/process/73talks.html)
1973 Nov 15-1973 Nov 22, Egypt and
Israel exchanged prisoners of war.
(www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Society_&_Culture/pows.html)
1973 Dec 1, David Ben-Gurion (87),
Israel's first prime minister (1948-1953 and 1955-1963), died in Tel
Aviv.
(AP,
12/1/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ben-Gurion)
1973 Dec 21, Israel, Egypt, Syria,
Jordan, US and USSR leaders met in Geneva. The Geneva Conference of
1973 was an attempt to negotiate a solution to the Arab-Israeli
conflict as called for in UN Security Council Resolution 338 which was
passed after the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conference_(1973))
1973 Primo Levi (1920-1987)
authored "The Periodic Table," a memoir that incorporated many of his
experiences at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
(SSFC, 5/26/02, p.M1)
1973 Abba Eban (1915-2002),
Israeli foreign minister, helped persuade the US administration of
Pres. Richard Nixon to carry out an emergency airlift of weapons and
supplies.
(AP,
11/17/02)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abba_Eban)
1973 Canadian Judy Feld Carr
established a network to help Syrian Jews, barred from traveling, to
leave the country clandestinely. Over the next 28 years she helped over
3,000 Jews leave Syria.
(SSFC, 6/28/09, p.A8)
1974 Jan 18, Israel and Egypt
signed a Separation of Forces Agreement.
(http://tinyurl.com/4z534e)
1974 Apr 10, Golda Meir announced
her resignation as prime minister of Israel. Yitzhak Rabin replaced
Golda Meir.
(AP, 4/10/97)(HN, 4/10/98)
1974 May 15, PFLP terrorists took
a school in Maalot, Israel. 26 people were killed including 21 children
after an unsuccessful rescue attempt.
(www.mfa.gov.il/mfa)(WSJ, 9/14/04, p.A20)
1974 May 31, Israel and Syria
signed an agreement on the Golan Heights.
(HN, 5/31/98)
1974 Jun 3, Yitzhak Rabin
(1922-1995) formed a new Israeli government.
(www.pmo.gov.il/PMOEng/Government/Memorial/PrimeMinisters/Rabin.htm)
1974 The UN recognized the right
of Palestinians to sovereignty and national independence.
(SFC, 2/8/99, p.A6)
1974 The Palestinian Democratic
Front took over an Israeli school in Maalot and 20 schoolchildren were
killed.
(SFEC, 8/8/99, p.A22)
1975 Jan 3, President Gerald Ford
signed the Jackson-Vanik amendment into law, after both houses of the
United States Congress unanimously voted for its adoption. Congress had
passed the Jackson-Vanik amendment for economic sanctions on Russia to
pressure the Soviet Union to allow unfettered emigration for Soviet
Jews. Pres. Bush in 2001 proposed that it be lifted.
(WSJ, 11/5/01,
p.A1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson-Vanik_amendment)
1975 May 20, The European Economic
Community adopted a trade agreement with Israel.
(http://ec.europa.eu/comm/competition/international/3a15en.html)
1975 Jul 8, Israeli premier
Yitzhak Rabin began a 4-day visit to West-Germany.
(http://tinyurl.com/4c5zyo)
1975 Sep 1, Israel and Egypt
initialed the Sinai II agreement on disengagement. A ceremonial signing
was held in Geneva on Sep 4.
(www.jafi.org.il/education/jafi75/timeline6f.html)
1975 Oct 17, A UN committee passed
a resolution saying "Zionism is a form of racism." The resolution was
reversed in 1991.
(www.heritage.org/Research/InternationalOrganizations/bg851.cfm)(Econ,
4/25/09, p.62)
1975 Nov 10, The UN General
Assembly approved a resolution equating Zionism with racism. However,
the world body repealed the resolution in December 1991.
(AP,
11/10/97)(www.heritage.org/Research/InternationalOrganizations/bg851.cfm)
1975-1985 Environmental designer Lawrence Halprin
designed the Walter and Elise Haas Promenade in the hills of Jerusalem.
(SFEM, 8/10/97, p.13)
1976 Mar 30, Israel killed 6
Palestinians protesting land confiscation.
(www.balad.org/index.php?id=138)
1976 Jun 27, An Air France Airbus
flight AF139, from Tel Aviv to Paris, was hijacked shortly after
departing Athens and taken to Uganda.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France)
1976 Jul 3, Israel launched its
daring mission to rescue 103 passengers and Air France crew members
being held at Entebbe Airport in Uganda by pro-Palestinian hijackers.
(AP, 7/3/97)
1976 Jul 4, Jonathan Netanyahu,
brother of Benjamin, led and was killed in an Israeli raid called
Operation Thunderball that rescued the [105] hostages held at Entebbe
Airport in Uganda. The raid was by Sayeret Matkal, Israel’s elite
counter-terrorist unit led by Muki Betser, and it freed all but 3 of
the 104 Israeli and Jewish hostages and crew of an Air France jetliner
seized by pro-Palestinian hijackers. A total of 45 Ugandan soldiers
were killed during the raid. The events are described by Muki Betser
and Robert Rosenberg in "Secret Soldier, The True Life of Israel’s
Greatest Commando." The hijacking was linked to Carlos the Jackal, aka
Ilich Ramirez Sanchez.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Entebbe)(AP,
7/4/97)(SFC,12/11/97, p.C2)
1976 Jul 9, Uganda asked UN to
condemn Israeli hostage rescue raid on Entebbe.
(http://openweb.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/1976-7/1976-07-09-NBC-18.html)
1976 Dec 20, Israel's PM Yitzhak
Rabin resigned.
(http://openweb.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/1976-12/1976-12-20-ABC-10.html)
1976 Israel approved a 480-mile
Trans-Israel Highway from the Galilee to the Negev Desert.
(SFC, 6/12/00, p.A12)
1977 Jan 11, France set off an
international uproar by releasing Abu Daoud, a Palestinian suspected of
involvement in the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich
Olympics. In 1999 Mohammed Oudeh, aka Abu Daoud, published an
autobiography in France in which he admitted to playing a mastermind
role in the 1972 Munich hostage episode.
(AP, 1/11/98)(SFC, 6/14/99, p.A14)
1977 Jan 12, Anti-French
demonstrations took place in Israel after Paris released Abu Daoud,
responsible for the 1972 Munich massacre of Israeli athletes.
(www.cnn.com/almanac/9801/12/)
1977 Mar 7, Israeli PM Yitzhak
Rabin met Pres. Carter.
(www.jimmycarterlibrary.org/documents/campdavid25/campdavid25_photos.phtml)
1977 Mar 12, Egypt's Anwar Sadat
pledged to regain Arab territory from Israel.
(http://tinyurl.com/37jrq9)
1977 Apr 8, Israel premier Rabin
resigned as prime minister due to a bank account scandal after it was
revealed that his wife, Leah, had illegally maintained a foreign
currency account containing about $3,000 in the United States.
(SFEC, 4/21/97,
p.D4)(http://i-cias.com/e.o/rabin_yz.htm)
1977 Apr 22, Simon Peres became
premier of Israel under Pres. Ephraim Katzir. Peres served until June
21. He served again as premier from 1984-1986, and 1985-1996.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimon_Peres)
1977 May 17, Menachem Begin's
Likud-party won election in Israel.
(http://begincenterdiary.blogspot.com/2007/05/another-avner-article-great-emancipator.html)
1977 Jun 21, Menachem Begin became
Israel's sixth prime minister at the head of a Likud coalition.
(AP, 6/21/97)(WSJ, 4/29/98, p.A22)
1977 Sep 26, Israel announced a
cease-fire on Lebanese border.
(HN, 9/26/99)
1977 Nov 19, Egyptian Pres. Anwar
Sadat became the first Arab leader to visit Israel. Peace talks began
in the Middle East with Sadat going to Israel.
(TMC, 1994, p.1977)(AP, 11/19/97)
1977 Nov 20, Egyptian President
Anwar Sadat became the first Arab leader to address Israel's
parliament.
(AP, 11/20/97)
1977 Dec 25, Israeli PM Menachem
Begin met Egyptian Pres. Sadat (1918-1981) in Egypt.
(www.washington-report.org/backissues/1098/9810083.html)
1977 Ariel Sharon was elected to
parliament and was appointed minister of agriculture in the Begin
government.
(SFC, 10/10/98, p.A8)
1977 More Israeli civilians were
allowed to move into the army installations in Gaza, and new
settlements were established.
(AP, 8/15/05)
1978 Jan 8, The Israeli government
voted to "strengthen" settlements in occupied Sinai.
(www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/1978)
1978 Mar 11, Palestinian Arab
terrorists led by Dalal Mughrabi killed 37 people in an attack along
the Tel Aviv coastal highway. The terrorists were identified as
belonging to Fatah; 9 were killed and two captured.
(AP,
3/11/98)(www.palestinefacts.org/pf_1967to1991_terrorism_1970s.php)
1978 Mar 14, An Israeli force of
22,000 invaded south Lebanon, hitting the PLO bases.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_South_Lebanon_conflict)
1978 Mar 19, Israeli army took
control of almost all of Lebanon south of Litani River.
(AP, 3/19/03)
1978 Mar 19, The UN Security
Council adopted Resolution 425 demanding that Israel withdraw from
Lebanon.
(SFC, 5/24/00, p.A15)
1978 Mar 23, UNIFIL forces arrived
in Lebanon setting up headquarters in Naqoura. In response to Israel’s
invasion, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 425 and Resolution
426 calling for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon. The UN
Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) was created to enforce this mandate,
and restore peace and sovereignty to Lebanon.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_South_Lebanon_conflict)
1978 Mar, Wadia Haddad, a
Palestinian wanted for airplane hijackings, died in Iraq showing only
symptoms of leukemia but no signs of poisoning. In 2006 Aaron Klein
authored "Striking Back," which for the first time gave details of the
killing. Klein said Mossad agents had fed Haddad poisoned Belgian
chocolate over six months.
(AP, 5/7/06)
1978 Jun 13, Israelis withdrew the
last of their invading forces from Lebanon.
(HN, 6/13/98)
1978 Jul 18, Cyrus Vance
(1917-2002), US Sec. of State, met with the Egyptian and Israeli
Foreign Ministers at Leeds Castle, England.
(www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/trvl/ls/13038.htm)
1978 Aug 20, Gunmen opened fire on
an Israeli El Al Airline bus in London.
(MC, 8/20/02)
1978 Sep 5-17, Sep 5-17, US Pres.
Carter, Menachem Begin of Israel and Anwar Sadat of Egypt met at Camp
David, Md.
(WUD, 1994, p.1691)(TL, 1988, p.119)(SFC, 6/2/97,
p.D5)
1978 Sep 17, US Pres. Carter,
Menachem Begin of Israel and Anwar Sadat of Egypt signed agreements at
Camp David, Md. Israel promised to withdraw gradually from Sinai and to
establish some form of autonomous Palestinian territory on the West
Bank. Sadat's astrologer, Hasan al-Tuhami, was the only person Sadat
trusted. In the Camp David Accord "Israel was the winner and Egypt the
Loser." Thus wrote Boutros Boutros-Ghali in his 1997 book: "Egypt’s
Road to Jerusalem: A Diplomat’s Story of the Struggle for Peace in the
Middle East."
(WUD, 1994, p.1691)(TL, 1988, p.119)(SFC, 6/2/97,
p.D5)(SFC, 4/24/98, p.A17)
1978 Sep 25, Jacobo Timerman was
released by Argentina’s ruling junta under international pressure. His
citizenship was stripped, his newspaper confiscated and he was put on a
plane for Israel.
(SFC, 11/12/99, p.D6)
1978 Sep 28, The Israeli Knesset
endorsed the Camp David accord.
(http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761590224/Camp_David_Accords.html)
1978 Oct 12, Representatives of
Israel and Egypt opened talks in Washington.
(www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/time70s.html#1978)
1978 Oct 22, Negotiators for Egypt
and Israel announced in Washington they had reached tentative agreement
on the main points of a peace treaty.
(AP, 10/22/98)
1978 Oct 27, Egyptian President
Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin were named
winners of the Nobel Peace Prize for their progress toward achieving a
Middle East accord.
(AP, 10/27/97)
1978 Dec 8, Golda Meir (80), PM of
Israel from 1969 to 1974, died of cancer in Jerusalem.
(AP, 12/8/97)
1978 The UN Interim Force in
Lebanon (UNIFIL) was created to confirm Israel's withdrawal from
Lebanon.
(SFC, 5/24/00, p.A15)(AP, 7/28/06)
1979 Mar 21, The Egyptian
Parliament unanimously approved a peace treaty with Israel.
(AP, 3/21/99)
1979 Mar 22, The Israeli
parliament approved a peace treaty with Egypt.
(www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Peace/begin_closing.html)
1979 Mar 26, The Camp David peace
treaty was signed by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian
President Anwar Sadat at the White House. [see Sep 5-17, 1978]
(AP,
3/26/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_David_Accords)
1979 Mar 31, The Arab League
suspended Egypt following its treaty with Israel.
(www.safarix.com/0131900048/ch08)
1979 Apr 2, Israeli PM Menachem
Begin visited Cairo, Egypt, and met with Pres. Sadat.
(www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/time70s.html#1979)
1979 Apr 22, Samir Kantar (b.1962)
and 3 PLF terrorists killed three Israelis in the northern city of
Nahariya.
(AP,
10/25/04)(http://shlemazl.blogspot.com/2006/07/hezbollah-about-to-strike-syria.html)
1979 May 1, Elton John and Ray
Cooper performed the first of 5 concerts in Israel. They performed 3
times in Jerusalem and twice in Tel Aviv ending in Tel Aviv on May 6.
(www.vex.net/~paulmac/elton/ej1979.html)
1979 May 25, Israel began to
return Sinai to Egypt.
(www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/time70s.html)
1979 Sep 22, A 2-3 kiloton
thermonuclear device was set off in the waters off Bouvet Island, a
little-visited possession of Norway located between the bottom of South
Africa and the Prince Astrid Coast of Antarctica. The list of suspects
quickly narrowed to South Africa and Israel.
(SFCM, 9/25/05,
p.6)(www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/israel/nuke-test.htm)
1979 Oct 21, Moshe Dayan, Israeli
minister of foreign affairs, submitted his resignation.
(http://tinyurl.com/33p82s)
1979 Nov 25, Israel returned the
Alma oil field in A-Tour to Egypt.
(www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/time70s.html)
1979 In Israel the 1st class of
cadets entered Talpiot, a government sponsored program for science
study to be followed by 6 years of paid service in the military. The
cadets were charged with improving the armed services through
technology.
(WSJ, 1/6/07, p.A6)
1980 Jan 26, Israel and Egypt
established diplomatic relations, in accord with PM Begin’s agreement
with Pres. Sadat on Jan 10 at Aswan.
(http://tinyurl.com/2mk9zf)
1980 Feb 26, Egypt and Israel
exchanged ambassadors for the 1st time.
(http://tinyurl.com/2rsjax)
1980 Jul 30, The Israeli Knesset
passed a law reaffirming all of Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish
state.
(AP, 7/30/00)
1980 Aug 19, Otto Frank (b.1889),
the father of Anne Frank, died in Switzerland.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Frank)
1980 Aug 20, UN Security Council
condemned (14-0, US abstains) Israeli declaration that all of Jerusalem
is it's capital.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_478)
1980 Dec 31, A bomb blast wrecked
the Jewish-owned Norfolk Hotel in Nairobi, Kenya, killing 16 people and
wounding more than 80.
(www.emergency-management.net/bombings.htm)
1980 Israel’s government allowed
settlers to expand their presence in the Arab area of Hebron after a
Palestinian attack killed 6 Jews returning from prayer at Abraham’s
tomb.
(SFC, 12/4/08, p.A27)
1980 Luz International was founded
in Israel. It became the first company to implement solar thermal
technology on a commercial scale. Luz began building solar-thermal
power stations in California’s Mojave desert in the mid 1980s.
(Econ, 6/6/09, p.23)
1981 Jun 7, Israeli F-16
fighter-bombers destroyed a nuclear power plant in Iraq at Osirak,
Iraq, before it went into operation, a facility the Israelis charged
could have been used to make nuclear weapons. Ilan Ramon (d.2003) flew
the last of the 8 planes that bombed the reactor. In 2004 Rodger W.
Claire authored “Raid on the Sun.”
(WSJ, 7/23/96, p.A22)(AP, 6/7/97)(HN, 6/7/99)(SFC,
2/3/03, p.A7)(WSJ, 6/1/04, p.D8)
1981 Jun 30, Elections for the
tenth Knesset were held in Israel. Despite last minute polls suggesting
a victory for Shimon Peres' Alignment, Menachem Begin's Likud won by
just one seat. Voter turnout was 77.8%.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_legislative_election,_1981)
1981 Jun, The First World
Gathering of Holocaust survivors took place in Israel. It was organized
by Auschwitz survivor, Ernest Michel. Lani Silver (d.2009 at 60), a
professor at San Francisco State Univ. returned from the meeting and
founded the Bay Area Holocaust Oral History Project.
(www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/78/a3011978.shtml)(SFC, 1/31/09,
p.B5)
1981 Oct 16, Israeli war hero
Moshe Dayan died in Tel Aviv at age 66.
(AP, 10/16/01)
1981 Dec 14, Israel annexed the
Golan Heights, seized from Syria in 1967. The parliament approved the
annexation of the Golan Heights with legislation in one day.
(SFC,12/11/97, p.C2)(AP, 12/14/97)
1981 Daniel Halevi Bloom,
American-Jewish author, invented the characters Bubbie and Zadie,
Yiddish for grandma and grandpa, as an alternative to Santa Claus. In
1985 he wrote “Bubbie and Zadie Come to My House” and invited Jewish
children to respond with letters.
(SFC, 12/22/06, p.A1)
1981 Ariel Sharon was appointed
defense minister in the Begin government.
(SFC, 10/10/98, p.A8)
1981 Israel promised Canada that
the Mossad spy agency would not use Canadian passports.
(WSJ, 10/3/97, p.A1)
1981 In Iran Ayatollah Khomeini
declared the celebration of “Al-Quds Day,” the Arabic name for
Jerusalem Day, to be held on the last day of Ramadan as an annual
denunciation of Israeli control of the holy city.
(WSJ,2/13/97, p.A18)(www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15343184/)
1981 Prince Fahd of Saudi Arabia
proposed an 8-point peace plan to end the Arab-Israeli conflict. It was
adopted by the Arab League after some controversy.
(Econ, 8/6/05, p.71)
1982 Apr 11, In Israel Alan
Goodman opened fire on Palestinians praying at the Temple Mount, the
site of Islam’s third-holiest shrine. He killed 2 and was sentenced to
life in prison. He was released to the US in 1997 after agreeing to
spend the next 8 years in the US.
(SFC,10/27/97, p.A9)
1982 Apr 25, In accordance with
Camp David agreements, Israel completed the Sinai withdrawal. Ariel
Sharon, as defense minister, directed the dismantling of Israeli
settlements in the Sinai Peninsula. Nearly 5,000 residents and many
more sympathizers were dragged off roofs and bundled onto buses.
(HN, 4/25/98)(AP, 2/21/04)
1982 Jun 3, Israel's ambassador to
Britain, Shlomo Argov (1929-2003), was shot and critically wounded
outside a London hotel. Israel's invasion of Lebanon followed the
assassination attempt. The attack was blamed on Abu Nidal’s Palestinian
Fatah group.
(WSJ, 8/20/02, p.A18)(NYT, 10/8/04, p.A12)(AP,
6/3/07)
1982 Jun 4, Israel attacked
targets in south Lebanon one day after the attempted assassination of
the Israeli ambassador in London.
(www.adl.org/israel/advocacy/glossary/lebanon_war.asp)
1982 Jun 6, Israeli Defense
Minister Ariel Sharon ordered his forces to invade southern Lebanon to
drive Palestine Liberation Organization fighters out of the country.
Israeli Gen. Rafael Eitan (d.2004) had convinced defense minister Ariel
Sharon to invade southern Lebanon to clean out the PLO bases there. A
70-day siege by 30,000 Israeli troops left up to 14,000 Lebanese and
Palestinian civilians dead. Islamic radicals, including Naim Qassem,
formed Hezbollah (Hizbullah, i.e. Party of God) in response to Israel’s
attack. The Israelis withdrew in June 1985. Hezbollah was formed with
Iranian help as a radical offshoot of Amal, a Shiite Muslim movement.
In 2005 Naim Qassem authored “Hizbullah: The Story from Within.”
(WSJ, 11/17/95, p.A-10)(SFC, 4/17/96, p.A-10)(AP,
6/6/97)(SFC, 6/15/98, p.A10)(SFC, 5/24/00, p.A15)(Econ, 12/4/04,
p.88)(Econ, 4/23/05, p.79)
1982 Jun 9, Israel wiped out
Syrian SAM missiles in Bekaa Valley.
(www.adl.org/ISRAEL/Record/lebanon.asp)
1982 Aug 12, Israel staged heavy
bombardment of Beirut. The UN Security council expressed its most
serious concern about continued military activities in Lebanon,
particularly in and around Beirut.
(www.pierretristam.com/Bobst/Archives/CN072106.htm)(http://tinyurl.com/3ddtqm)
1982 Sep 8, Abu Nidal gunmen made
a machine gun attack on diners at the Jo Goldenberg restaurant on rue
de Rosiers in Paris. 6 people were killed and 22 wounded.
(WSJ, 8/20/02, p.A18)
1982 Sep 15, The Israeli army
reoccupied Beirut.
(SFC, 5/24/00,
p.A15)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabra_and_Shatila_massacre)
1982 Sep 16-1982 Sep 18, The
massacre of some 1,500 Palestinian men, women and children by Lebanese
Christian militiamen began in west Beirut's Sabra and Chatilla
(Shatilla) refugee camps. Elie Hobeika (d.2002), Christian militia
chieftain, led the massacre of Palestinian refugees in the camps.
Israel’s defense minister, Ariel Sharon, was held responsible and lost
his top post. The massacre triggered peace rallies in Israel with some
400,000 demonstrating in Tel Aviv. In 2001 survivors lodged a complaint
in Belgium against Sharon.
(AP, 9/16/97)(SFC, 10/10/98, p.A8)(SFC, 5/24/00,
p.A15)(SFC, 6/19/01, p.A8)(SFC, 1/25/02, p.A10)(WSJ, 8/1/06, p.A10)
1982 Sep 24, US, Italian and
French peacekeeping troops began arriving in Lebanon. Some 400,000
Israelis gathered at the first of many demonstrations to protest the
Lebanon War.
(www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/usmnf.htm)(http://tinyurl.com/2o8vkl)
1982 Jacobo Timerman (d.1999 at
76) published "The Longest War: Israel in Lebanon."
(SFC, 11/12/99, p.D6)
1982 The Jewish town of Misgav was
built on land seized from the Palestinians over 3 decades. Its 7,000
Jewish residents have jurisdiction over 183,000 dunams (a
quarter-acre), while the area’s 200,000 Arabs reside on 200,000 dunams.
(MT, Fall. ‘97, p.16)
1982 In 2005 Karin Linstad, a
leading Norwegian pro-Palestinian activist, said she infiltrated the
Israeli intelligence agency Mossad as a double agent in the 1980s. The
Oslo newspaper Aftenposten said Mossad had been skeptical of Linstad's
offer to act as an agent but was drawn in by her claims of tight
contact with leading Palestinians. The newspaper, without citing
sources, said she provided information about Palestinians in Beirut,
Lebanon, ahead of Israel's 1982 invasion.
(AP, 10/6/05)
1983 Mar, Chaim Herzog (1918-1997)
was elected as the 6th president of Israel and served for 10 years.
(SFC, 4/18/97, p.E2)
1983 Apr 15, The costliest theft
in Israel's history saw 106 timepieces worth millions of dollars
disappear from the L.A. Mayer Museum for Islamic Art. Among them was a
pocket watch made for French queen Marie Antoinette that museum
officials valued at more than $30 million. In 2008 detectives blamed
Naaman Diller, a notorious Israeli thief, who fled to Europe and died
in the United States in 2004. Diller apparently confessed the crime to
his wife on his deathbed. When Israeli police and American law
enforcement officials arrived at Diller's wife's Los Angeles home to
question her, they found some more of the stolen clocks. Others were
later found in hidden locations in Israel and around the world. They
were put up for display again in 2009.
(AP, 11/4/08)(AP, 7/20/09)
1983 Aug 28, Israel’s PM Begin,
reportedly despondent over the death of his wife and the rising
casualty toll of Israeli troops in Lebanon, announced his intention to
resign as fighting continued in Lebanon with no apparent end in sight.
(www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3284684,00.html)(AP, 8/28/08)
1983 Sep 2, Yitzhak Shamir (68),
the Foreign Minister of Israel, was elected to succeed PM Menachem
Begin as leader of the governing Herut Party.
(http://tinyurl.com/36jznt)
1983 Sep 15, Israel’s premier
Begin (d.1992) resigned. He was replaced by Yitzhak Shamir.
(www.cnn.com/almanac/9809/15/)
1983 Oct 10, Israel's 20th
government was formed by Yitzhak Shamir.
(www.knesset.gov.il/govt/eng/GovtByNumber_eng.asp?govt=20)
1983 Nov 24, PLO exchanged 6
Israeli prisoners for 4,500 Palestinians and Lebanese.
(http://tinyurl.com/2lejkm)
1983 Nov 28, Israeli Prime
Minister Yitzhak Shamir met with President Reagan at the White House to
discuss ways to strengthen U.S.-Israeli military and economic ties.
(www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1983/112983b.htm)
1983 Dec 6, A bomb planted on a
bus in Jerusalem exploded and killed 6 Israelis.
(http://preview.tinyurl.com/3a3tyk)
1983 Amos Oz, novelist, published
"In the Land of Israel," a collection of essays.
(SFEC, 10/20/96, BR, p.4)
1984 Sep 13, Simon Peres formed an
Israeli government with Likud. A national unity government (Likud and
Labor) was formed.
(SFC, 4/24/98, p.A17)(http://tinyurl.com/2vs7e2)
1984 Abba Eban helped
prepare a 13-part television series about Jewish history called
"Heritage: Civilization and the Jews." He later wrote a book by the
same name.
(AP, 11/17/02)
1984 The Shas Party first ran for
the Knesset. This Israeli political party was founded prior to the
elections through the merger of regional lists established in 1983.
Shas, the religious party of Jews of Eastern descent, emerged as a
self-directed movement of Sephardic Jews. The name comes from the
Hebrew and means Sephardi Torah Guardians. It had begun as a small
faction on the Jerusalem City Council.
(SFEC,10/26/97, p.A18)(SFC, 7/20/99,
p.A10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shas)(SFC, 7/20/99, p.A10)
1984 In the "Bus 300 affair" Ehud
Yatom, Israeli member of the Shin Bet security agency, bludgeoned to
death 2 Palestinian bus hijackers.
(SFC, 6/16/01, p.A6)
1984-1990 Ariel Sharon served as the trade minister
in the national unity government headed by Yitzhak Shamir of Likud and
Shimon Peres of Labor. Avraham Shapira (d.2000 79) was an architect of
the national unity government, which united Israel’s 2 main opposing
parties to overcome the economic crises.
(SFC, 10/10/98, p.A8)(SFC, 6/27/00, p.A23)
1985 Jan 5, Israel’s 6-week
Operation Moses for the resettlement of 8,000 Ethiopian Jews ended. It
began Nov 18, 1984, but new was blacked out for security reasons.
(www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/ejhist.html)
1985 May 20, Israel exchanged
1,150 Palestinian prisoners for 3 Israeli soldiers. The exchange was
later referred to as the Jibril deal after the leader of the PFLP-GC,
Ahmad Jibril.
(www.passia.org/palestine_facts/chronology/19631988.htm)(http://tinyurl.com/6qrln3)
1985 Jun 10, The Israeli army
pulled out of Lebanon after 1,099 days of occupation.
(HN, 6/10/98)
1985 Jun, Israel pulled back to a
security zone in southern Lebanon to protect its border.
(SFC, 5/24/00, p.A15)
1985 Oct 1, Israeli forces staged
an air raid on PLO-headquarter at Tunis and 68 people were killed.
(MC, 10/1/01)
1985 Oct 7, Four Palestinian
Liberation Organization (PLO) gunmen hijacked the Italian cruise ship
Achille Lauro in the Mediterranean and demanded the release of 50
Palestinians held by Israel. 413 people were held hostage for 2 days in
the seizure that was masterminded by Mohammed Abul Abbas. American Leon
Klinghoffer was shot while sitting in his wheelchair and thrown
overboard. A case was filed against the PLO and settled in 1997. The
hijackers surrendered to Egyptian authorities and were turned over to
Italy which let Abbas slip out of the country.
(SFC, 8/12/97, p.A4)(AP, 10/7/97)(HN, 10/7/98)
1985 Nov 17, Olaf Palme stopped an
illegal shipment of 80 HAWK missiles through Sweden from Israel to
Teheran, as he mediated an end of the Iran-Iraq war for the UN.
(http://www.skog.de/writers/e040831.htm)
1985 Nov 21, Former U.S. Navy
intelligence analyst Jonathan Jay Pollard was arrested, and accused of
spying for Israel. Pollard was sentenced to life in prison in 1987.
(AP, 11/21/97)(WSJ, 1/28/98, p.A18)(SFC, 3/1/00,
p.A23)
1985 Dec 27, Palestinian
guerrillas opened fire inside the Rome and Vienna airports; a total of
twenty people were killed, including five of the attackers, who were
slain by police and security personnel. Abu Nidal was considered
responsible. President Reagan blamed Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.
(AP, 12/27/97)(SFC, 8/25/98, p.A6)(NYT, 10/8/04,
p.A12)
1985 Israel established a 440 sq.
mile security zone in southern Lebanon. The 9-mile wide zone was
abandoned by some 400,000 inhabitants and by 2000 only 100,000
remained.
(SFC, 4/18/96, p.a-14)(SFC, 3/10/00, p.A12)
1985 Abraham Mondrowitz (38) fled
to israel as NYC police investigated charges against him. In December
1984, New York police had charged that on two occasions in June of that
year, Mondrowitz abused a 10-year-old boy at his home. The US requested
Mondrowitz's extradition and Israel ordered his expulsion in 1987, but
it was unable to carry out the order as its extradition treaty with the
US did not cover sodomy.
(AP, 11/19/07)
1986 Mar 25, US Supreme Court
ruled that the Air Force could ban wearing of yarmulkes.
(MC, 3/25/02)
1986 May 24, The Union Jack was
flown in Israel for the first time in 38 years as Margaret Thatcher
became the first British prime minister to visit the Jewish state.
(AP, 5/24/06)
1986 Jun 4, Jonathan Jay Pollard,
a former Navy intelligence analyst, pleaded guilty in Washington to
spying for Israel. He was later sentenced a life prison term.
(AP, 6/4/97)(WSJ, 1/28/98, p.A18)
1986 Sep 6, An attack on the Neve
Shalom synagogue in Istanbul killed 22 people. The Palestinian Abu
Nidal group was blamed.
(NYT, 10/8/04, p.A12)
1986 Sep 11, Egypt's Pres Mubarak
received Israeli premier Peres.
(http://tinyurl.com/spu4y)
1986 Sep 30, Israeli Mossad agents
snatched Mordechai Vanunu in Rome. The Israeli nuclear technician had
recently divulged Israel's nuclear secrets to the London Sunday Times.
(SFC, 4/22/04, p.A3)
1986 Oct 10, Israel Prime Minister
Shimon Peres resigned.
(MC, 10/10/01)
1986 Oct 16, Ron Arad, an Israeli
airman, was the navigator in a plane that was shot down while bombing a
Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon. He was reportedly handed
over to a Lebanese Shiite group led by Mustafa Dirani. In 2004 it was
reported that Arad died in 1996 , sometime after he was handed by
Lebanese fighters to their Iranian sponsors. In 2008 a Hezbollah report
said Arad had escaped from a holding cell in 1988 and probably died
while trying to make his way home through difficult terrain.
(SFEC, 11/17/96, p.A14)(AP,
10/25/04)(http://tinyurl.com/yz3zza)
1986 Nov 9, Israel said it was
holding Mordechai Vanunu, a former nuclear technician who had vanished
after providing information to a British newspaper about Israel's
nuclear weapons program. He was lured from London by a blond female
Mossad agent called "Cindy." Vanunu was convicted of treason and
sentenced to 18 years in prison. Mordechai Vanunu was later convicted
of giving data on Israel’s nuclear program to a newspaper and put into
solitary confinement until Mar 12, 1988.
(WSJ, 3/13/98, p.A1)(AP, 11/9/99)(SFC, 11/25/99,
p.D2)
1986 Soviet dissident Anatoly B.
Sharansky was released from a Soviet prison as part of a prisoner
exchange between the East and West and soon moved to Israel. He changed
his name to Natan Sharansky and became head of the new-immigrants
party, Yisrael Ba-Aliya. He later became a deputy PM.
(AP, 7/14/98)(SFC, 5/4/02, p.A21)
1986-1991 Michael Bruno (1932-1996) was governor of
the Bank of Israel.
(SFC, 12/27/96, p.A24)
1986 Feb 27 John Demjanjuk (66), a
retired auto worker from Ohio, was extradited to Israel on charges of
being "Ivan the Terrible," a Nazi death camp guard who had killed tens
of thousands of people. He was later convicted, but the Israeli Supreme
Court overturned the ruling.
(AP, 4/25/98)(SFC, 2/22/02,
p.A3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Demjanjuk)
1987 Mar 29, Israeli Prime
Minister Yitzhak Shamir was re-elected chairman of the right-wing Herut
Party, the largest party in the Likud bloc governing Israel as part of
a coalition.
(AP, 3/28/97)
1987 Mar, Jonathon Pollard, a US
naval intelligence analyst convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage,
was sentenced to life in prison without parole. He had sought to share
US intelligence on Iraqi weapons with Israel and did so when after his
superiors disagreed.
(WSJ, 1/25/96, p.A-16)(WSJ, 1/28/98, p.A18)
1987 Apr 11, Primo Levi (b.1920),
Italian chemist, Auschwitz survivor and writer, died in Italy. In 2002
Carole Angier authored: "Primo Levi: A Biography." His books included
the 1947 memoir "If This Is a Man" and "The Periodic Table." In 2002
Carole Angier authored the biography "The Double Bond."
(SSFC, 5/26/02, p.M1)(WSJ, 6/14/02,
p.W10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primo_Levi)
1987 Apr 27, The US Justice
Department barred Austrian President Kurt Waldheim from entering the
US, saying he aided in the deportation and execution of thousands of
Jews and others as a German Army officer during World War II.
(AP, 4/27/97)
1987 May 12, Israeli Prime
Minister Yitzhak Shamir rejected Foreign Minister Shimon Peres'
proposal for an international Middle East peace conference, calling it
"perverse and criminal." Peres angrily accused Shamir of arrogance.
(AP, 5/12/97)
1987 Jul 12, For the first time in
20 years, a delegation of Soviet diplomats arrived in Israel for what
was described as a "technical mission" to document Soviet citizens and
make an inventory of Soviet property.
(AP, 7/12/97)
1987 Jul 27, Retired Ohio
autoworker John Demjanjuk, accused of being the sadistic Nazi guard
known as "Ivan the Terrible," testified at his trial in Jerusalem that
he was not "the hangman you're after." His subsequent conviction was
overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court.
(AP, 7/27/97)
1987 Sep 5, Some four-dozen people
were killed in an Israeli air raid on targets near the southern
Lebanese port town of Sidon.
(AP, 9/5/97)
1987 Dec 6, In Moscow security
agents roughed up Jewish activists and journalists during
demonstrations over Kremlin policy one day before the arrival of Soviet
leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev to the US, where hundreds of thousands of
demonstrators pressing for free emigration of Soviet Jews marched in
Washington.
(AP 12/6/97)
1987 Dec 8-1987 Dec 9, The first
Palestinian intefadeh (Arabic for uprising) began as riots broke out in
Gaza and spread to the West Bank, triggering a strong Israeli
counter-response.
(AP 12/8/97)(SFC, 4/24/98, p.A17)(AP, 12/9/07)
1987 Dec 19, The Palestinian
uprising in Israel's occupied territories spread to Arab east
Jerusalem.
(AP, 12/19/97)
1987 Dec 27, Scores of Palestinian
prisoners appeared before Israeli military courts in the first trials
of several hundred protesters arrested in the "intefadeh," or uprising,
in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
(AP, 12/27/97)
1987 Neil Folberg published "In a
Desert Land: Photographs of Israel, Egypt, and Jordan." It focused on
the Sinai Desert and was re-issued in 1998.
(SFEC, 4/26/98, BR p.6)
1987 Walter Laqueur (b.1921)
authored “A History of Zionism.”
(WSJ, 3/9/06, p.D7)
1987 In Jerusalem, Israel, an
ancient roadway was discovered that skirts the western foundation of
the Temple Mount. A 534-yard tunnel was constructed to follow the
roadway.
(SFC, 9/25/96, p.A1)
1987 Dec, Sheik Ahmed Yassin
founded Hamas, a Palestinian social welfare and military organization.
He urged the killing of Palestinians who collaborated with Israeli
authorities. Its military wing, called the Izzeddine al-Qassam, used
armed operations against Israel. In 2006 Matthew Levitt authored
“Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad.”
(SFC, 5/25/96, p.A12)(SFC,12/27/97, p.A12)(WSJ,
5/2/06, p.D8)
1987-1993 The Intifada, a stone-throwing revolt
against Israel, began in Gaza’s Jebaliya refugee camp. The Ansar-3
detention camp in the Negev Desert was one of a number established to
hold Palestinian men arrested in the uprising. In 1998 the documentary
film "Diogenes: Ansar 3" was produced by Hans Fels and Eitan Wetzler of
The Netherlands and Israel.
(SFC, 6/10/97, p.A12)(Cinemayyat, 2000)
1988 Jan 3, The Israeli Army
ordered nine Palestinian activists deported from West Beirut as part of
a controversial crackdown to stop the uprising in the occupied
territories. Israeli raids on Palestinian and Progressive Socialist
Party positions in the region of Saida make killed 21 persons and
wounded 11.
(AP, 1/3/98)(http://tinyurl.com/zz87m)
1988 Jan 5, The U.N. Security
Council voted unanimously to ask Israel not to deport Palestinians from
the occupied territories in the first council vote against Israel since
1981.
(AP, 1/5/98)
1988 Jan 15, In Jerusalem, riot
police charged into the Al Aqsa and Dome of the Rock mosques after
worshipers beat a policeman and stole his pistol during some of the
worst clashes seen on the revered Temple Mount.
(AP, 1/15/98)
1988 Jan 23, More than 50,000
Israelis demonstrated in Tel Aviv to protest the treatment of
Palestinians in the occupied territories.
(AP, 1/23/98)
1988 Jan 30, Israeli troops fired
on hundreds of demonstrators in the West Bank while protests also
rocked the Gaza Strip, shattering three weeks of relative quiet in the
occupied territories.
(AP, 1/30/98)
1988 Feb 1, Denying any
wrongdoing, US Attorney General Edwin Meese III said he didn't recall
part of a memo about a proposed Iraqi pipeline project that referred to
a plan to bribe Israeli officials.
(AP, 2/1/97)
1988 Mar 7, Three Israelis were
killed when three Arab gunmen hijacked a commuter bus in the Negev
Desert; the hijackers themselves were killed when Israeli forces
stormed the vehicle.
(AP, 3/7/98)
1988 Mar 14, Israeli Prime
Minister Yitzhak Shamir arrived in Washington, D.C., with what he
called new ideas for Middle East peace talks, despite maintaining a
hard-line on Israel's retention of the occupied West Bank and Gaza
Strip.
(AP, 3/14/98)
1988 Mar, Israel found Mordechai
Vanunu, former Israeli nuclear technician, guilty of divulging nuclear
secrets. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison.
(SFC, 4/22/04, p.A3)(http://tinyurl.com/mysea)
1988 Apr 3, Secretary of State
George P. Shultz arrived in Israel to launch a fresh U.S. peace
initiative, telling the Israelis that the Palestinians must be included
in negotiations.
(AP, 4/3/98)
1988 Apr 6, Tirza Porat (15), was
killed in a West Bank melee, becoming the first Israeli civilian to die
in the occupied territories since the start of the Palestinian
uprising. Although Arabs were initially blamed, the army concluded that
a Jewish settler accidentally shot the girl.
(AP, 4/6/98)
1988 Apr, Israeli agents killed
Abu Jihad (Khalil al-Wazir), a PLO military commander.
(SFC, 11/25/96, p.A3)
1988 Apr 16, Abu Jihad, [Khalil
al-Wazzir], PLO-leader, was murdered by Israeli assassins in Tunisia.
They left the chief strategist of the Palestinian uprising with 170
bullets in his body. The Palestine Liberation Organization accused
Israel of assassinating al-Wazir, a top PLO military figure.
Palestinians reacted angrily, and at least 14 were shot and killed by
Israeli troops during clashes in the occupied Gaza Strip and West Bank.
(AP, 4/16/98)(AP, 1/22/06)
1988 Apr 18, An Israeli court
convicted John Demjanjuk, a retired auto worker from Cleveland, of
committing war crimes at the Treblinka death camp. (However, Israel's
Supreme Court later overturned Demjanjuk's conviction.)
(AP, 4/18/98)
1988 Apr 25, "Nightline" went on
location to Jerusalem, Israel.
(SS, 4/25/02)
1988 Apr 25, To the cheers of
spectators, a judge in Jerusalem sentenced John Demjanjuk to death
after the retired Ohio autoworker was convicted of being "Ivan the
Terrible," a Nazi death camp guard who had killed tens of thousands of
people. Demjanjuk's conviction was later overturned.
(AP, 4/25/98)
1988 Jun 4, US Secretary of State
George Shultz flew to Jordan, where he met with King Hussein.
Afterward, Shultz said the Jordanian monarch was reluctant to engage in
peace talks with Israel unless Israel agreed to give up land on the
West Bank.
(AP, 6/4/98)
1988 Aug 18, Hamas published a
manifesto calling for a holy war to create an Islamic state from the
Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, including Israel. It challenged
the PLO's claim as the sole representative of the Palestinian people.
The Hamas charter declared that all Palestine is Islamic trust land,
can never be surrendered to non-Muslims and is an integral part
of Muslim world.
(SFC, 3/23/04,
p.A11)(www.mideastweb.org/hamashistory.htm)
1988 Sep 19, Israel succeeded in
launching a test satellite, the Ofeq ("Horizon") 1, over the
Mediterranean Sea.
(AP, 9/19/08)
1988 Oct 5, Israel banned Meir
Kahane's Kach Party on grounds of racism.
(http://tinyurl.com/zzkte)
1988 Oct 11, China agreed to the
opening of an Israeli Scientific Exchange office in Beijing.
(http://tinyurl.com/jatx9)
1988 Oct 17, Israel's supreme
court upheld a ban on Meyer Kahane's Kach Party as racist.
(www.washington-report.org/backissues/0799/9907081.html)
1988 Oct 19, Eight Israeli
soldiers were killed in a suicide car bomb attack in south Lebanon.
(AP, 10/19/98)
1988 Nov 1, Israeli voters went to
the polls in parliamentary elections that resulted in a narrow victory
for the right-wing Likud bloc, requiring the creation of a coalition
government.
(AP, 11/1/98)
1988 Nov 3, Israeli Prime Minister
Yitzhak Shamir, whose Likud bloc won a narrow victory in parliamentary
elections, began meeting with representatives of religious and rightist
parties, seeking support for a coalition government.
(AP, 11/3/98)
1988 Nov 3, The Soviet Union
agreed to allow the teaching of Hebrew.
(http://tinyurl.com/z5nps)
1988 Dec 2, The 5 gunmen, who
hijacked Soviet Aeroflot jet, surrendered in Israel.
(http://tinyurl.com/hkvkb)
1988 Dec 6, Arafat met prominent
American Jews in Stockholm, Sweden.
(http://openweb.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/1988-12/1988-12-06-NBC-15.html)
1988 Dec 13, PLO chairman Yasser
Arafat addressed the U.N. General Assembly in Geneva, where it had
reconvened after the United States refused to grant Arafat a visa to
visit New York. Arafat accepted UN Resolutions 242 and 338, which
recognized Israel's right to exist.
(AP, 12/13/98)(SSFC, 6/3/07,
p.E6)(www.mideastweb.org/arafat1988.htm)
1988 Dec 15, Yasser Arafat in
exile declared Palestinian independence. It was considered a symbolic
act and no state boundaries were delineated.
(SFC,11/15/97, p.A12)(WSJ, 11/15/00, p.A1)
1988 Dec 17, In his first public
statement since the US decided to open direct talks with the PLO,
Israeli PM Yitzhak Shamir expressed shock, calling the US decision a
"painful" blow.
(AP, 12/17/98)
1988 Dec 19, Israeli Prime
Minister Yitzhak Shamir agreed to a Likud-Labor coalition to govern the
Jewish state.
(AP, 12/19/98)
1988 Paul Johnson published "A
History of the Jews."
(WSJ, 4/29/98, p.A22)
1988 Israel repealed its
anti-sodomy laws. The laws had not been enforced for 30 years.
(www.tau.ac.il/law/aeyalgross/Danilowitz.htm)
1988 In Jordan soon after the
beginning of the "intifada," King Hussein renounced rights to the West
Bank and retained a role as guardian of Jerusalem's holy places.
(SFC, 2/6/99, p.A13)
1988-1991 Michael Bruno (1932-1996) as governor of
the Bank of Israel helped to formulate the government’s economic
stabilization policy.
(SFC, 12/27/96, p.A24)
1989 Jan 19, Israel’s Minister of
Defense Rabin proposed that Palestinians end the intifadah in exchange
for an opportunity to elect local leaders who would negotiate with the
Israeli government.
(www.country-data.com/cgi-bin/query/r-6685.html)
1989 May, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the
founder and spiritual leader of Hamas, was arrested by Israel and
sentenced to life in prison for involvement in attacks against
Israelis. He was released to Jordan in 1997.
(SFC, 10/2/97,
p.A12)(www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/yassin.html)
1989 Jul 6, A Palestinian grabbed
the steering wheel of an Israeli bus, causing a crash that claimed 15
lives.
(AP, 7/6/99)
1989 Jul 22, Nearly 200,000
Palestinian children returned to classrooms in the West Bank after the
Israeli army lifted an order that had kept their schools closed during
the Palestinian uprising.
(AP, 7/22/99)
1989 Jul 28, Israeli commandos
abducted a pro-Iranian Shiite Muslim Hezbollah cleric, Sheik
Abdul-Karim Obeid, from his home in south Lebanon.
(SFEC, 11/17/96, p.A14)(AP, 7/28/99)
1989 Sep, Israel outlawed Hamas as
a terrorist organization following dozens of shooting attacks that
killed Israelis.
(SFC, 3/23/04,
p.A11)(www.ict.org.il/inter_ter/orgdet.cfm?orgid=13)
1989 Dec 31, Israeli Prime
Minister Yitzhak Shamir fired Science Minister Ezer Weizman, accusing
him of meeting with officials of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
(AP, 12/31/99)
1989 In Israel Dov Moran founded
M-Systems, the original maker of USB flash drives (1999). He sold the
business to SanDisk in 2006 for $1.6 billion.
(www.twst.com/notes/articles/lzt068.html)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Systems)
1990 Feb 4, Nine people were
killed as guerrillas attacked a bus carrying Israeli tourists near
Cairo, Egypt.
(AP, 2/4/00)
1990 Mar 15, The Israeli
government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir lost a vote of confidence
in the Knesset after Shamir refused to accept a U.S. plan for
Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
(AP, 3/15/00)
1990 Apr 2, Saddam Hussein of Iraq
threatened to hit Israel with binary chemical weapons.
(http://tinyurl.com/oz5my)
1990 Apr 26, Israeli PM Yitzhak
Shamir, leader of the right-wing Likud bloc, was chosen to form a new
government after Labor Party leader Shimon Peres failed to form a
coalition.
(AP, 4/26/00)
1990 May 20, An Israeli opened
fire on a group of Palestinian laborers south of Tel Aviv, killing
seven; the gunman was sentenced to life in prison.
(AP, 5/20/00)
1990 May 21, Israeli soldiers shot
and killed three Palestinians in violence sparked by the slayings of
seven Palestinians by an Israeli civilian a day earlier.
(AP, 5/21/00)
1990 Jun 8, Israeli Prime Minister
Yitzhak Shamir announced he had succeeded in forming a new right-wing
coalition government, ending a three-month-old political crisis.
(AP, 6/8/00)
1990 Jun 13, Secretary of State
James A. Baker the Third, testifying before the House Foreign Affairs
Committee, urged Israel to accept a US plan for peace talks. Baker gave
out the telephone number for the White House switchboard, telling the
Israelis publicly, "When you’re serious about this, call us."
(AP, 6/13/00)
1990 Oct 5, Meir Kahane (58),
founder of Jewish defense league, was assassinated in NYC by an Arab
extremist.
(www.adl.org/extremism/jdl_chron.asp)
1990 Oct 7, Israel began handing
out gas masks to its citizens in case of attack by Iraq.
(http://openweb.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/1990-10/1990-10-07-CBS-6.html)
1990 Oct 8, Israeli police opened
fire on rioting Palestinians on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, killing
17.
(AP, 10/8/00)
1990 Oct 21, A Palestinian stabbed
three Israelis to death during a rampage in a Jerusalem neighborhood in
retaliation for the police killings of 17 Arabs on the Temple Mount.
(AP, 10/21/00)
1990 Dec 24, Saddam said Israel
would be Iraq's 1st target.
(MC, 12/24/01)
1990 Victor Ostrovsky, a former
agent of Mossad, published a book about the security agency.
(SFC, 2/25/98, p.A8)
1990 Avishai Raviv began working
as a minor agent for the Shin Bet security service. He was assigned to
work with right-wing activists.
(SFC,11/6/97, p.D2)
1990 In Israel Brig. Gen. Rami
Dotan (44), was convicted of embezzling $10 million while purchasing
military equipment from the United States during the 1980s. Dotan,
suffering from poor health, was released from jail in 2002.
(AP, 10/27/02)
1990 Israelis began investing in
Romania and by 2006 had put in as much as $2 billion, much of it routed
through 3rd countries in order to take advantage of tax deals.
(WSJ, 10/4/06, p.A1)
1990-1992 Ariel Sharon served as the housing minister
and presided over the settlement drive in the West Bank and the Gaza
Strip.
(SFC, 10/10/98, p.A8)
1991 Jan 17, The Persian Gulf War
began as Coalition planes struck targets in Iraq and Kuwait. The first
Iraqi Scud missile attacks on Israel were launched. There were reports
of death and injury, and possibly even chemical weapons being used. For
a few tense hours, it looked as though Israel would retaliate against
Iraq, causing the allied coalition to break up. Six months of
preparation and diplomacy might be undone by a few poorly aimed,
1950s-vintage ballistic missiles. Later that evening, U.S. Patriot
surface-to-air missiles were launched against the incoming Scuds, and
for the first time in history, a ballistic missile was shot down by
another missile. The use of Patriot missiles in Israel’s defense helped
to keep that country out of the Gulf War, thereby safeguarding the
integrity of the American-European-Arab coalition. Jeffrey Zahn became
the 1st US pilot shot down. Lt. Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher (33) was
shot down over western Iraq. In 1993 the ruins of his plane were found.
In 2009 his remains were found and positively identified.
(SFC, 9/4/96, p.A8)(SFEC,12/797, p.A1,16)(HN,
1/17/99)(AP, 8/2/09)
1991 Jan 18, Iraq fired more Scud
missiles at Israeli cities. Israel refrains from responding at the
request of President Bush.
(HN, 1/18/99)
1991 Jan 19, During the Gulf War,
Israel’s anti-missile force was boosted by additional Patriot missile
batteries and U-S crews. A second Iraqi missile attack caused 29
injuries in Tel Aviv. Allied forces began bombarding Iraq’s elite
Republican Guard.
(AP, 1/19/01)
1991 Jan 22, During the Gulf War,
Iraq fired six Scud missiles into Saudi Arabia; all were either
intercepted, or fell into unpopulated areas. However, in Tel Aviv, a
Scud eluded the Patriot missile defense system and struck the city,
resulting in three deaths.
(AP, 1/22/01)
1991 Jan 25, During the Gulf War,
military officials said Iraq had sabotaged Kuwait’s main supertanker
loading pier, dumping millions of gallons of crude oil into the Persian
Gulf. Missiles fired from western Iraq struck in the Tel Aviv and Haifa
areas, killing one Israeli and injuring more than 40 others.
(AP, 1/25/01)
1991 May 10, Alexander
Bessmertnykh became the first Soviet foreign minister to visit Israel
as he met with Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and Foreign Minister David
Levy.
(AP, 5/10/01)
1991 May 16, US Secretary of State
James A. Baker the Third wrapped up his latest Mideast visit in Israel
without an agreement for Arab-Israeli peace talks.
(AP, 5/16/01)
1991 May 25, Israel completed
"Operation Solomon," which had evacuated 15,000 Ethiopian Jews to their
promised land.
(AP, 5/25/01)
1991 Jun 9, Israeli Prime Minister
Yitzhak Shamir insisted his country have a say in the selection of
Palestinians who would attend a US-sponsored Middle East peace
conference.
(AP, 6/9/01)
1991 Jul 21, US Secretary of State
James A. Baker the Third met with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak
Shamir, trying to persuade the Israelis to agree to the talks.
(AP, 7/21/01)
1991 Aug 1, Israeli Prime Minister
Yitzhak Shamir accepted a US formula for Middle East peace talks with
the Arabs.
(AP, 8/1/01)
1991 Aug 4, Israeli Cabinet
members overwhelmingly backed a Middle East peace conference under
conditions set by Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir.
(AP, 8/4/01)
1991 Sep 11, In the Middle East
hopes grew for the release of Western hostages in Lebanon after Israel
freed 51 prisoners.
(AP, 9/11/01)
1991 Sep 19, Israeli Prime
Minister Yitzhak Shamir accused the United States of tilting toward the
Arabs in its eagerness to organize a Mideast peace conference.
(AP, 9/19/01)
1991 Oct 30, The Middle East peace
conference in Madrid, Spain, opened with addresses to the delegates by
President George Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev. The
Madrid Two conference was organized by the US.
(SFC, 6/24/96, p.A10)(WSJ, 9/19/01, p.A14)(AP,
10/30/01)
1991 Oct 31, On the second day of
the Middle East peace conference in Madrid, Spain, Israeli Prime
Minister Yitzhak Shamir and Arab delegates clashed bitterly over land
issues.
(AP, 10/31/01)
1991 Nov 1, The 3-day session of
the Middle East peace conference recessed in Madrid, Spain. The
conference led to Israeli deals with Jordan and the Palestinians and
established the principle of land for peace.
(AP,
11/1/01)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madrid_Conference_of_1991)(Econ,
5/24/08, p.68)
1991 Nov 3, Israeli and
Palestinian representatives held their first-ever face-to-face talks in
Madrid, Spain.
(AP, 11/3/01)
1991 Nov 3, Syria opened its first
one-on-one meeting with Israel in 43 years.
(AP, 11/3/01)
1991 Nov 5, Robert Maxwell (68),
media tycoon, was found floating dead near his yacht off the Canary
Islands. He was born in Czechoslovakia as Jan Hoch (Abraham Leib) and
lost his whole family in the Holocaust. He escaped at 16 through the
French Underground and got out of a British prison camp by volunteering
for the British army, who changed his name to Robert Maxwell. He
founded the Pergamon Press and went on to build a media empire. He
served in Parliament from 1964-1970. In the 1970s Israel recruited him
as a spy. He covertly sold Israeli computer software to the governments
of Russia, China, India and Egypt that contained secret trapdoors. In
2003 Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon authored Robert Maxwell, Israel’s
Superspy: The Life and Murder of a Media Mogul."
(Wired, 2/99, p.86)(AP, 11/5/01)(SSFC, 2/2/03, p.M4)
1991 Nov 27, Israel signaled its
anger with what it regarded as the high-handedness of the United States
by rejecting an invitation to attend Mideast peace talks in Washington
on Dec. 4.
(AP, 11/27/01)
1991 Israel ratified the
102-nation Convention Against Torture.
(SFEC, 5/11/97, p.C14)
1991 Hamas formed its military
wing, "Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades," for attacks against Israel.
(SFC, 3/23/04, p.A11)
1992 Jan 13, Israeli, Palestinian
and Jordanian negotiators began talks in Washington on Palestinian
autonomy.
(AP, 1/13/98)
1992 Jan 14, Historic Mideast
peace talks continued in Washington, with Israel and Jordan holding
their first-ever formal negotiations, and the Israelis continuing
exchanges with Palestinian representatives.
(AP, 1/14/02)
1992 Jan 28, A multinational
Middle East peace conference opened in Moscow.
(AP, 1/28/02)
1992 Feb 16, Israeli helicopters
attacked a convoy in Sidon, Lebanon, killing Sheik Abbas Musawi, leader
of the pro-Iranian group Hezbollah. Sheik Hassan Nasrallah (b.1960)
took over Hezbollah after the Israeli assassination of Sheik Abbas
Musawi. He has led the group since, controlling its operational
activities.
(AP, 2/16/02)(AP, 6/3/06)
1992 Feb 24, Secretary of State
James A. Baker III told a House subcommittee that Israel should stop
building settlements in the occupied territories, or forfeit $10
billion in U.S. loan guarantees. A fourth round of Mideast peace talks
began in Washington, D.C.
(AP, 2/24/02)
1992 Mar 4, Another round of
Middle East peace negotiations concluded in Washington, D.C., with
Israel rejecting a plan for Palestinian elections.
(AP, 3/4/02)
1992 Mar 7, An Israeli security
chief was killed in a car bomb attack in Ankara, Turkey. Islamic Jihad
claimed responsibility.
(NYT, 10/8/04, p.A12)
1992 Mar 9, Menachem Begin, former
Israeli Prime Minister (1977-80, 81-83, Nobel 1979) died in Tel Aviv at
age 78. In 1987 Amos Perlmutter (d.2001 at 69) authored "The Life and
Times of Menachim Begin."
(AP, 3/9/98)(SSFC, 6/17/01, p.A27)
1992 Mar 17, A truck bombing
at the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina, killed 29 people.
Iran denied any role. Hezbollah leader Imad Mughniyeh was suspected of
involvement. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility.
(AP, 3/17/97)(WSJ, 11/24/97, p.A1)(WSJ, 9/19/01,
p.A14)(NYT, 10/8/04, p.A12)
1992 Apr 6, Molly Picon (94),
Yiddish actress (Milk and Honey), died of Alzheimer's.
(MC, 4/6/02)
1992 Jun 23, Israel's Labor Party
upset the hard-line Likud bloc in parliamentary elections. Israeli
voters elected the Labor Party’s Yitzhak Rabin as prime minister.
(WSJ, 6/18/96, p.A17)(AP, 6/23/97)
1992 Jul 3, Rabbi Marc Tannenbaum,
the only Jew to attend Vatican II, died.
(MC, 7/3/02)
1992 Jul 19, US Secretary of State
James A. Baker III opened a fresh round of Mideast diplomacy, meeting
in Jerusalem with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and other
officials.
(AP, 7/19/97)
1992 Jul 21, Israeli Prime
Minister Yitzhak Rabin met in Cairo with Egyptian President Hosni
Mubarak, who said afterward that he'd accepted Rabin's invitation to
visit Israel.
(AP, 7/20/97)
1992 Aug 10, President Bush met at
his Kennebunkport, Maine, vacation home with Israeli Prime Minister
Yitzhak Rabin. Afterward, Bush announced that Mideast peace talks would
resume in two weeks in Washington, D.C.
(AP, 8/10/97)
1992 Sep 1, Ahmed Qatamesh was
jailed on suspicion of being a leader of the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine. He was held without trial for 5 1/2 years and
released in 1998.
(SFC, 4/16/98, p.A12)
1992 Oct 4, In the Netherlands an
Israeli El Al Jumbo Jet transport, enroute from New York to Tel Aviv,
crashed into an Amsterdam apartment complex and killed 43 people. Since
then scores of people complained of unidentified health problems. In
1998 it was revealed that the jet carried 50 gallons of dimethyl
methylphosphonate, a non-poisonous ingredient of sarin nerve gas,
destined for Israel. A report on the crash was released in 1999 and
said that the plane's ballast included carcinogenic depleted uranium.
(AP, 10/4/97)(WSJ, 4/22/99,
A1)(www.pacificnews.org/jinn/stories/5.03/990211-cargo.html)
1992 Dec 13, An Israeli border
guard was kidnapped near Tel Aviv and later killed by the Hamas
fundamentalist organization. The slaying prompted Israel to expel
hundreds of Palestinians, sending them into Lebanese territory. Abdel
Aziz Rantisi was among the 400 deported members of Hamas.
(AP, 12/13/97)(SSFC, 4/18/04, p.A18)
1992 Dec 17, Israel ordered the
deportation of 418 suspected Muslim fundamentalists from the occupied
territories.
(AP, 12/17/02)
1992 Dec 18, The U.N. Security
Council unanimously denounced Israel's deportation of more than 400
Palestinians to Lebanon and demanded their immediate return.
(AP, 12/18/97)
1992 Dec 19, More than 400
suspected Muslim fundamentalists deported by Israel were confined to a
makeshift refugee camp in a "no man's land" in Lebanon because of the
Lebanese government's refusal to accept them.
(AP, 12/19/97)
1992 Prof. Yizhar Hirschfeld
authored “The Judean Desert Monasteries.”
(SFC, 9/6/04, p.A4)
1992 In Norway the 1993 Oslo I
peace accord was begun in 1992 following a research project on
Palestinian living conditions by Terje Roed Larsen. Larsen arranged
discussions between Uri Savir of Israel and Ahmed Qureia (Abu Ala) for
Palestine.
(SFEC, 10/31/99, p.A21)
1992 The Israeli military
disclosed in 2003 that it had planned a daring assassination attempt
against Saddam Hussein in 1992. The plot would have involved landing
commandos in Iraq and firing sophisticated missiles at him during a
funeral, an Israeli legislator and media.
(AP, 12/16/03)
1992 Syria’s Pres. Assad allowed
many Syrian Jews to travel abroad freely after nearly 45 years of
official prohibition from leaving the country.
(SSFC, 6/28/09, p.A8)
1993 Jan 19, Israel recognized the
PLO as no longer criminal.
(www.jafi.org.il/education/jafi75/timeline8d.html)
1993 Jan 28, The Israeli Supreme
Court unanimously upheld the deportations of 400 Palestinians from the
occupied territories to Lebanon.
(AP, 1/28/98)
1993 Feb 1, Israeli Prime Minister
Yitzhak Rabin announced that his country would repatriate about 100
Palestinians deported to Lebanon, an offer rejected by the deportees.
(AP, 2/1/97)
1993 Mar 15, Israeli Prime
Minister Yitzhak Rabin met at the White House with President Clinton,
after which Rabin offered to negotiate the return of part of the Golan
Heights to Syria.
(AP, 3/15/98)
1993 Mar 24, Ezer Weizman was
elected Israel's seventh president.
(AP, 3/24/98)
1993 Mar 30, Israeli authorities
barred West Bank Palestinians from entering Israel after two traffic
police officers were shot to death.
(AP, 3/30/98)
1993 Apr 16, In Israel 20 soldiers
and civilians were injured in Hamas's first suicide attack against
Israelis. Shahar al-Nabulsi, detonated a car, rigged by bombmaker Yahya
Ayyash, between two buses at Mehola Junction. The blast killed
al-Nabulsi and a Palestinian who worked in the rest area.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehola_Junction_bombing)
1993 Apr 27, After a hiatus of
more than four months, Israeli and Arab delegates resumed Middle East
peace talks in Washington, D.C.
(AP, 4/27/98)
1993 Jul 25, Israel launched its
heaviest artillery and air assault on Lebanon since 1982 in an attempt
to eradicate Hezbollah and Palestinian guerrilla threats. Guerrillas
fired rockets into Israel. The fighting ended July 31 with a
U.S.-brokered cease-fire. Israel and Hezbollah then agreed not to
attack civilian targets, but the cease-fire was short lived.
(AP, 7/25/98)(SFC, 5/24/00, p.A15)
1993 Jul 27, Israeli guns and
aircraft pounded southern Lebanon in reprisal for rocket attacks by
Hezbollah guerrillas.
(HN, 7/27/98)
1993 Jul 29, The Israeli Supreme
Court acquitted retired Ohio autoworker John Demjanjuk of being Nazi
death camp guard "Ivan the Terrible," and threw out his death sentence.
Demjanjuk was set free.
(AP, 7/29/98)
1993 Aug 29, Negotiations
continued between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization,
with Israel reported on the verge of recognizing the PLO.
(AP, 8/29/98)
1993 Aug 30, Israel's Cabinet
approved a framework for Palestinian autonomy in the occupied
territories.
(AP, 8/30/98)
1993 Aug, Norwegian academic Terje
Roed-Larsen and other Norwegian mediators helped broker a secret peace
accord in which the Palestinians formally recognized Israel's right to
exist and Israel agreed to establish self-rule in the West Bank and
Gaza. The accord allowed thousands of PLO guerrillas to return to
Palestine without Israeli interference.
(SFC, 6/19/96, p.A8)(SFC, 6/4/98, p.C3)(AP, 11/12/04)
1993 Sep 9, PLO leaders and Israel
agreed to recognize each other, clearing the way for a peace accord.
(AP, 9/9/98)
1993 Sep 13, In a historic scene
at the White House, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO
chairman Yasser Arafat shook hands after signing an accord granting
limited Palestinian autonomy. It gave Arafat control of most of the
Gaza Strip and 27% of the West Bank. In 2002 Neal Kozodoy edited ""The
Mideast Peace Process: An Autopsy."
(AP, 9/13/97)(WSJ, 2/11/02, p.A1)(WSJ, 11/12/04,
p.A11)
1993 Sep 14, Israel and Jordan
signed a framework for negotiations, a day after the signing of a
PLO-Israeli peace accord.
(AP, 9/14/03)
1993 Sep 23, The Israeli
parliament ratified the Israel-PLO accord.
(AP, 9/23/98)
1993 Sep 24, The 1st Israeli was
killed by Islamics after PLO signed the peace accord.
(http://tinyurl.com/dcf7e)
1993 Oct 6, Israeli Prime Minister
Yitzhak Rabin and PLO chief Yasser Arafat held their first official
meeting in Cairo, Egypt, to begin work on realizing terms of the
Israeli-PLO accord.
(AP, 10/6/98)
1993 Oct 11, Yasser Arafat won
endorsement for his peace accord with Israel from the Palestine Central
Council.
(AP, 10/11/98)
1993 Nov 25, Violence broke out in
the Gaza Strip, a day after Israeli undercover soldiers killed Imad
Akel, the head of the military wing of Hamas.
(HN, 11/25/98)
1993 Dec 5, A Palestinian boarded
a bus and opened fire with an assault rifle in the first major attack
in Israel since the signing of a peace pact with the PLO; the gunman
killed a reservist before being gunned down.
(AP, 12/5/98)
1993 Dec 19, Israeli Foreign
Minister Shimon Peres and senior PLO officials ended two days of
closed-door talks in Oslo, Norway, in which they sought to break a
deadlock over Palestinian self-rule in the occupied territories.
(AP, 12/19/98)
1993 Dec 25, Full-fledged
Christmas celebrations returned to Bethlehem for the first time since
the Palestinian uprising began six years earlier.
(AP, 12/25/98)
1993 Dec 30, Israel and the
Vatican agreed to recognize one another. Pope John Paul II normalized
relations between the Vatican and Israel.
(SFC,12/25/97, p.A14)(AP, 12/30/97)
1993 Adel Darwish authored "Water
Wars," an examination of the water crises in the Middle East.
(SFC, 9/19/02, p.A12)
1993 Jerome Mintz (d.1997 at 67),
US anthropologist, published "Hasidic People: A Place in the New World."
(SFC,12/20/97, p.A21)
1993 Abdel Wahab al Miseri, author
of an encyclopedia on Zionism, authored "Secret Societies of the World:
the Protocols, Masonism, and Bahaism," in which he debunked "The
Protocols of the Elders of Zion."
(SFC, 10/31/02, p.A10)
1993 Benjamin Netanyahu published
his book "A Place Among Nations."
(SFC, 5/25/99, p.A6)
1993 A new Jewish Museum opened in
Vienna.
(USAT, 9/24/04, p.3D)
1993 Tel Aviv began hosting an
annual gay pride parade.
(SFC, 6/8/02, p.A12)
1993 Benjamin Netanyahu won the
leadership of the Likud party. He appointed his aid, Avigdor Lieberman,
to manage Likud.
(SFC,11/25/97, p.A8)
1993 In Israel Yoram Skolnick
fired 9 bullets and killed a captured and bound Arab militant, Moussa
Abu Sabha (21), who had been caught stabbing a Jewish settler. Skolnick
was sentenced to life in prison but was released in 2001.
(SFC, 2/19/01, p.A10)
1993 Erel Margalit (32) founded
Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP), an Israeli venture capital firm.
(Econ, 7/8/06, p.60)
1994 Jan 10, Talks between Israeli
and Palestinian negotiators resumed in Taba, Egypt.
(AP, 1/10/99)
1994 Feb 9, PLO leader Yasser
Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres initialed an agreement
on security measures that had been blocking a peace accord.
(AP, 2/9/99)
1994 Feb 25, In the Hebron
massacre, Jewish settler Dr. Baruch Goldstein opened fire on
Palestinians praying in the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron and killed
29 people. Some 100 others were wounded. Surviving Palestinians killed
him before he could reload.
(SFC, 6/18/96, p.A12)(SFC, 6/20/96, p.A8)(MT,
Fall/03, p.15)
1994 Mar 13, The Israeli Cabinet
outlawed two Jewish extremist groups, Kach and Kahane Lives, branding
them terrorist organizations.
(AP, 3/13/99)
1994 Mar 31, The PLO and Israel
agreed to resume talks on Palestinian autonomy, more than a month after
the Hebron mosque massacre.
(AP, 3/31/99)
1994 Apr 6, A car rigged with
explosives detonated next to a bus in Afula, Israel. 8 Israelis were
killed and 45 wounded in Hamas's 1st car bombing.
(WSJ, 3/6/96, p. A-15)(G&M, 7/31/97, p.A8)(AP,
4/6/99)(SFC, 3/23/04, p.A11)
1994 Apr 7, Pope John Paul II made
remarks at the conclusion of a concert in commemoration of the Shoah
(holocaust), in which he acknowledged the Nazi Holocaust killing of
Jews.
(http://tinyurl.com/c9vt8)
1994 April 13, A Palestinian blew
himself up on a bus in Hadera in central Israel. Six Israelis were
killed and 25 wounded. It was Hamas's 1st suicide bombing.
(WSJ, 3/6/96, p. A-15)(G&M, 7/31/97, p.A8)(SFC,
3/23/04, p.A11)
1994 Apr 20, Israeli and PLO
negotiators wrapped up an agreement transferring civilian government
powers to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and Jericho.
(AP, 4/20/99)
1994 Apr 29, Israel and the PLO
signed an agreement in Paris granting Palestinians broad authority to
set taxes, control trade and regulate banks under self-rule in the Gaza
Strip and Jericho.
(AP, 4/29/99)
1994 May 1, Israeli and PLO
delegates opened a final round of talks in Cairo, Egypt, on Palestinian
autonomy prior to the signing of an agreement on self-rule.
(AP, 5/1/99)
1994 May 4, Israeli Prime Minister
Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader Yasser Arafat signed a historic accord on
Palestinian autonomy that granted self-rule in the Gaza Strip and
Jericho.
(AP, 5/4/97)
1994 May 14, The West Bank town of
Jericho saw its first full day of Palestinian self-rule following the
withdrawal of Israeli troops, an event celebrated by Palestinians.
(AP, 5/14/99)
1994 May 16, Israel began its
final withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, shutting down the prison and
military headquarters where Israeli soldiers had been in charge since
the 1967 Middle East War.
(AP, 5/16/99)
1994 May 17, Drive-by shootings
left 2 people dead. In 1998 Atia Abu Asab was sentenced to 2 life terms
for this and another killing on Jul. 7.
(SFC, 8/14/98, p.D3)
1994 May 18, Israel's three
decades of occupation in the Gaza Strip ended as Israeli troops
completed their withdrawal and Palestinian authorities took over.
(AP, 5/18/99)
1994 May 21, Israeli commandos
swept into Lebanon’s eastern mountains and abducted Mustafa Dirani, a
Shiite Muslim guerrilla leader. Dirani was released in Jan 2004, as
part of a complex prisoner exchange between Hezbollah and Israel.
(AP, 5/21/04)
1994 Jun 15, Israel and the
Vatican established full diplomatic relations.
(AP, 6/15/97)
1994 Jun, An Israeli helicopter
gunship at Ein Darbara, Lebanon, killed at least 30 Hezbollah trainees.
(SFC, 12/5/96, p.C5)
1994 Jul 7, A 17-year-old Israeli
girl was killed. In 1998 Atia Abu Asab was sentenced to 2 life terms
for this and other killings on May 17.
(SFC, 8/14/98, p.D3)
1994 Jul 18, In Buenos Aires a
terrorist attack killed 86 (96) people at the city’s Jewish Center, the
Argentine Israelite Mutual Aid Society (AMIA). Some 300 people were
injured. In 1996 three senior policemen and a retired officer were
charged in connection to the bombing. Iran denied any role. Police
inspector, Juan Jose Ribelli, accepted a $2.5 million several days
before the attack for providing the car in which the bomb exploded. It
was later revealed that he and his colleagues sold protection to car
thieves in return for stolen goods. In 2000 Ahmad Behbahani (32) told a
60 Minutes journalist from a refugee camp in Turkey that Iran was
behind the 1994 bombing in Argentina. In 2002 it was reported that Iran
paid Pres. Menem $10 million to cover up Iran’s involvement. In 2004 a
federal court acquitted 5 men of being accessories to the bombing.
(SFC, 7/15/96, p.A12)(WSJ, 8/1/96 p.A1)(WSJ,
11/24/97, p.A1)(SFC,12/9/97, p.B10)(HN, 7/18/98)(SFC, 6/6/00,
p.A10)(SFC, 7/22/02, p.A1)(SFC, 9/3/04, p.A18)(NYT, 10/8/04, p.A12)
1994 Jul 19, A bomb ripped apart a
Panama commuter plane, killing 21, including 12 Jews, a day after a car
bomb destroyed a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, Argentina,
killing 95 people.
(AP, 7/19/99)
1994 Jul 25, Israeli Prime
Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Jordan's King Hussein signed a declaration
at the White House ending their countries' 46-year-old formal state of
war.
(AP, 7/25/97)
1994 Jul 26-1994 Jul 27, A car
bomb heavily damaged the Israeli embassy in London, injuring 14; hours
later, a second bomb exploded outside a building housing Jewish
organizations in north London.
(AP, 7/26/99)(NYT, 10/8/04, p.A12)
1994 Aug 8, Israel and Jordan
opened the first road link between the two once-
warring countries.
(AP, 8/8/99)
1994 Aug 24, Israeli and PLO
negotiators agreed on an accord to give the Palestinians control of
health care, taxation, education and other services in West Bank areas
still controlled by Israel.
(AP, 8/24/99)
1994 Sep 1, Morocco established
low-level diplomatic relations with Israel.
(AP, 9/1/99)
1994 Oct 9, Israeli soldier
Nachshon Wachsman (19) was kidnapped in Lod by 4 members of Hamas.
Hamas demanded the release of a jailed Hamas leader and 200 other
fundamentalist prisoners by Oct 14.
(SFC, 3/28/09, p.A9)
1994 Oct 14, The Nobel Peace Prize
was awarded to PLO leader Yasser Arafat, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak
Rabin and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.
(SFC, 10/12/96, p.A13)(AP, 10/14/99)
1994 Oct 14, Kidnapped Israeli
soldier Nachshon Wachsman was killed when Israeli commandos raided the
hideout of Islamic militants in Jerusalem. An Israeli soldier and 3
kidnappers were also killed in the ensuing firefight. In 2006 his
family files suit against Iran for providing training and support to
Hamas. In 2009 a US judge awarded a $25 million settlement to the
family.
(AP, 10/14/99)(SFC, 3/28/09, p.A9)
1994 Oct 17, Leaders of Israel and
Jordan initialed a draft peace treaty.
(AP, 10/17/99)
1994 Oct. 19, A Palestinian
suicide bomber killed 22 Israelis and wounded 48 in a bus explosion in
Tel Aviv. Hamas took responsibility.
(WSJ, 3/6/96, p. A-15)(G&M, 7/31/97, p.A8)
1994 Oct 26, Prime Minister
Yitzhak Rabin of Israel and Prime Minister Abdel Salam Majali of Jordan
signed a peace treaty in a ceremony attended by President Clinton.
(WSJ, 5/30/96, p.A4)(SFC, 6/15/96, p.A7)(SFC,
4/24/98, p.A17)(AP, 10/26/97)
1994 Nov 11, A suicide bomber
killed three soldiers at an Israeli military checkpoint in Gaza. The
Islamic Jihad took responsibility.
(AP, 11/11/99)
1994 Dec 10, Yasser Arafat, Shimon
Peres and Yitzhak Rabin received the Nobel Peace Prize, pledging to
pursue their mission of healing the anguished Middle East.
(AP, 12/10/99)
1994 Dec 25, A Palestinian suicide
bomber blew himself up on a bus in Jerusalem and wounded 12 Israelis.
Hamas took responsibility.
(WSJ, 3/6/96, p. A-15)(G&M, 7/31/97, p.A8)(AP,
12/25/99)
1994 Ali Salem, Egyptian
playwright, traveled across Israel and authored “My Drive to Israel.” I
sold some 60,000 copies and angered Egyptian intellectuals.
(SFC, 12/19/08, p.A24)
1994 Jordan and Israel signed a
peace treaty.
(WSJ, 5/30/96, p.A4)
1994 The Israelis abducted Mustafa
Dirani, the leader of a Lebanese Shiite group - the Believer's
Resistance, from his Lebanese home. In 2000 Dirani sued Israel with
charges of torture and sodomy.
(SFEC, 11/17/96, p.A14)(SFC, 3/14/00, p.A10)
1994 Israel established the elite
squad, Egoz (walnut in Hebrew), to track Shiite guerrillas in southern
Lebanon.
(SFC, 12/5/96, p.C5)
1995 Jan 22, Two Palestinians blew
themselves up at Beit Lid junction in central Israel and killed 21
Israelis. The Islamic Jihad took responsibility.
(WSJ, 3/6/96, p. A-15)(G&M, 7/31/97, p.A8)
1995 Feb 2, The leaders of Egypt,
Israel, Jordan and the Palestinians held an unprecedented summit in
Cairo to try to revive the Mideast peace process.
(AP, 2/2/00)(http://tinyurl.com/255pml)
1995 Mar 19, Palestinian gunmen
opened fire on a bus carrying Jewish settlers, killing two people.
(AP, 3/19/00)
1995 April 9, Two Palestinians
blew themselves up outside two Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and
killed seven Israeli soldiers and an American, Alisa Flatow (20). The
Islamic Jihad and Hamas took responsibility. In 1998 a US district
court judge ordered the government of Iran to pay $247 million in
damages to the family of Flatow.
(WSJ, 3/6/96, p. A-15)(G&M, 7/31/97, p.A8)
1995 Jul 24, A Palestinian suicide
bomber blew up a crowded commuter bus in Tel Aviv and killed six
Israelis and wounded 28. Hamas took responsibility.
(WSJ, 3/6/96, p. A-15)(G&M, 7/31/97, p.A8)(AP,
7/24/00)
1995 Aug 21, A Palestinian suicide
bomber blew up a bus in Jerusalem and killed 4 Israelis, 1 American,
and wounded more than 100 people. Hamas took responsibility.
(WSJ, 3/6/96, p. A-15)(G&M, 7/31/97,
p.A8)
1995 Sep 24, Israel’s Rabin and
the PLO under Arafat, signed a pact, Oslo II, in Taba, Egypt, ending
nearly three decades of Israeli occupation of West Bank cities. They
scheduled a 9/7/97 date for Israel’s departure from the West Bank,
except for Jewish settlements and certain military locations. A final
accord was scheduled for 5/7/99.
(SFC, 1/9/96, p.A10)(AP, 9/24/00)(SFC, 4/30/02, p.A8)
1995 Sep 28, Israeli Prime
Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat signed an accord
to transfer much of the West Bank to the control of its Arab residents.
(AP, 9/28/98)
1995 Sep, Adel Kaadan, an Arab
with Israeli citizenships, filed suit when he was not allowed to move
into a Jewish cooperative at Katsir.
(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.A15)
1995 Oct 10, Israel began a West
Bank pullback and freed hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.
(www.cnn.com/almanac/9710/10/)
1995 Oct, The Finance Minister was
Abraham Shohat.
(WSJ, 10/23/95, p.A-1)
1995 Nov 4, Israeli Prime Minister
Yitzhak Rabin, 73 years old, was killed by a right-wing, 27 year old
Israeli law student, Yigal Amir, at a Tel Aviv peace rally. Shimon
Peres assumed the post of acting Prime Minister. His wife, Leah,
published "Rabin: Our Life, His Legacy in 1997." It was later revealed
the Amir was working under the influence of Avishai Raviv, an agent of
the Shin Bet security service.
(WSJ, 11/6/95, p.A-1)(SFC, 4/21/97, p.A1)(AP,
11/4/97)(SFC,11/6/97, p.D2)
1995 Nov 6, Funeral services were
held in Jerusalem for assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak
Rabin. President Clinton led the US delegation; Arab dignitaries also
attended, including Jordan’s King Hussein and Egyptian President Hosni
Mubarak.
(AP, 11/6/00)
1995 Nov 9, Yasser Arafat made a
secret trip to Israel to offer condolences to the widow of assassinated
PM Rabin.
(SFC, 11/11/04, p.A18)
1995 Nov 12, Israel’s ruling Labor
Party unanimously approved Shimon Peres as its new leader, replacing
slain Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
(AP, 11/12/00)
1995 Nov 21, Israel granted
citizenship to jailed US spy Jonathan Jay Pollard.
(www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2501/is_n3_v18/ai_19129729/pg_6)
1995 Nov 22, Acting Prime Minister
Shimon Peres appointed Ehud Barak, a popular general, to the post of
foreign minister.
(WSJ, 11/22/95, p.A-1)
1995 Nov, Lebanese guerrillas of
the Hezbollah fired rockets into northern Israel. Israeli warplanes
retaliated by hitting rebel strongholds. Hezbollah or Party of God is
the Iranian-backed political and military group that is fighting to
dislodge Israeli soldiers from southern Lebanon.
(WSJ, 11/29/95, p.A1)(SFC, 4/14/96, p.1)
1995 Dec 21, The city of Bethlehem
passed from Israeli to Palestinian control.
(AP, 12/21/97)
1995 Dec, Israeli warplanes
retaliate against rocket attacks with strikes at Hezbollah strongholds
in Lebanon.
(WSJ, 11/29/95, p.A-1)
1995 Dec, US Ambassador Indyk
expresses pride in the $3 billion annual US grant aid to Israel and
complains of Israeli purchases from Europe.
(WSJ, 12/18/95, p.A-10)
1995 Binjamin Wilkomirski
published in Switzerland the memoir "Fragments," which purported to be
about his survival at the Majdanek concentration camp. In 2002 Blake
Eskin authored "A Life in Pieces" that told the story of how Bruno
Doessekker (b.1941) fabricated the story.
(WSJ, 2/5/02, p.A16)
1995 Miriam Ben-Porat, Israeli
comptroller, issued a report that said Shin Bet security routinely
mistreated Palestinian detainees between 1988 and 1992. The report was
not made public until 2000.
(SFC, 2/10/00, p.A10)
1995 Fathi Shakaki, leader of the
Islamic Jihad, was killed in Malta. Israel was blamed for the killing.
(LVRJ, 11/1/97, p.17A)
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