Timeline Palestine D 2010-2012
Return to home
2010 Jan 2,
Israeli warplanes struck and destroyed two tunnels under Gaza's border
with Israel. The Israeli military says Gaza militants had planned to
use the tunnels to enter Israel and carry out attacks.
(AP, 1/2/10)
2010 Jan 4, Israel approved
construction of four new apartment buildings in disputed east
Jerusalem, fueling tensions with the Palestinians at a time when the US
is laboring to get peace talks moving again.
(AP, 1/5/10)
2010 Jan 6, Palestinian work crews
broke ground on Rawabi, what they hope will be the first modern,
planned Palestinian city, a step that officials say will help build an
independent state in spite of the current deadlock in the peace process
with Israel. The $500 million project hinges on Israel's approval of a
short stretch of road.
(AP, 1/12/10)
2010 Jan 6, Egyptian security
forces and Palestinians clashed at the Gaza border over the delay of an
international aid convoy, killing one Egyptian border guard and
wounding 15 Palestinians. 3 gunmen in a car sprayed automatic gunfire
into a crowd leaving a church in the town of Nag Hamadi, about 40 miles
from the ancient ruins of Luxor. The lead attacker was identified as a
Muslim. 6 male churchgoers and one security guard were killed on the
Coptic Christmas Eve. The 3 suspects in the drive-by shooting gave
themselves up to police on Jan 8 after being surrounded by security
forces.
(AP, 1/6/10)(AP, 1/7/10)(AP, 1/8/10)
2010 Jan 7, Gaza militants fired
at least 10 mortar shells at Israel, causing no injuries or damage.
international activists delivered hundreds of tons of medicine and
humanitarian aid to Gaza. The convoy was led by maverick British
lawmaker George Galloway, who said the group "will be back with more
(aid) until this criminal siege imposed on the people of Gaza, to
punish them for how they voted in a free election, is lifted."
(AP, 1/7/10)
2010 Jan 8, Israeli airstrikes
against targets in Gaza killed three men in a smuggling tunnel along
the Gaza-Egypt border.
(AP, 1/8/10)
2010 Jan 18, Israeli police
arrested 9 people at a radical Jewish settlement in connection with the
Dec 11, 2009, torching of a West Bank mosque and other attacks on
Palestinian property.
(AP, 1/18/10)
2010 Jan 20, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh
(b.1960), one of the founders of Hamas' military wing, was poisoned and
electrocuted overnight in his hotel room in Dubai. Al-Mabhouh was
involved in the kidnapping and killing of two Israeli soldiers in 1989.
On Jan 29 Hamas accused Israeli agents of assassinating the veteran
operative.
(AP, 1/29/10)
2010 Jan 24, Israel's PM Netanyahu
declared that his country would retain parts of the West Bank forever,
a statement that infuriated Palestinians and could complicate the
year-old peace mission of visiting US envoy George Mitchell.
(AP, 1/24/10)
2010 Jan, Palestine’s Pres. Abbas
appointed Leila Ghanem (35) as governor of Ramallah, the first
woman to become a Palestinian governor. Ramallah is most important of
the West Bank's 10 Palestinian administrative districts.
(AP, 3/11/10)
2010 Feb 8, Israeli security
forces raided a Palestinian refugee camp in annexed east Jerusalem,
arresting 11 people in an operation police said was aimed at putting
"some order" in the area. Israel's Supreme Court ordered authorities to
release two foreign activists seized in a Palestinian-controlled part
of the West Bank. Ariadna Jove Marti of Spain and Bridgette Chappell of
Australia, had been in a pre-dawn raid on their apartment in the heart
of Ramallah.
(AFP, 2/8/10)
2010 Feb 10, An Israeli TV station
said it has uncovered evidence that Palestinian Authority officials
have stolen millions of dollars in public funds.
(AP, 2/10/10)
2010 Feb 11, Opponents of Israel's
contentious separation barrier in the West Bank scored a long-awaited
victory when the government began rerouting the enclosure to eat up
less of a Palestinian village that has become a symbol of anti-wall
protests and the site of frequent clashes. A Palestinian militant was
killed and two young girls wounded by Israeli fire in the Gaza Strip in
two separate incidents.
(AP, 2/11/10)(AFP, 2/11/10)
2010 Feb 12, Palestinian officials
rallied around Rafiq Husseini, the chief of staff to Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas, after a video surfaced showing him in the nude
in an alleged attempt to trade his influence for sex. Pres. Abbas fired
Husseini on April 7.
(AP, 2/12/10)(AP, 4/7/10)
2010 Feb 14, British documentary
filmmaker Paul Martin (55) was detained at a Gaza military tribunal
where he was to testify on behalf of a local man accused of
collaborating with Israel. Hamas officials said that he would detained
for 15 days. Martin was released on March 11.
(AP, 2/15/10)(AP, 3/11/10)
2010 Feb 15, Dubai police held a
stunning news conference and blamed the Jan 19 slaying of Mahmoud
al-Mabhouh on a team of 10 men and one woman carrying passports from
Britain, Ireland, France and Germany.
(AP, 2/16/10)
2010 Feb 16, Dubai police appealed
for an international manhunt after releasing names and photos of an
alleged 11-member European hit squad accused of stalking and killing a
Hamas commander on Jan 19 in a plot that mixed cold precision with spy
caper disguises such as fake beards and wigs.
(AP, 2/16/10)
2010 Feb 18, Dubai police directly
accused Israel's Mossad spy agency of orchestrating the Jan 19 hit
squad slaying of a Hamas commander as the number of suspects rose to 18.
(AP, 2/18/10)
2010 Feb 19, Hamas claimed that
two ex-officers from the rival Fatah organization were involved in the
Jan 20 assassination of a Hamas operative in Dubai, and Fatah shot back
by insinuating Hamas members were the ones who collaborated with the
killers.
(AP, 2/19/10)
2010 Feb 20, Israeli forces
wounded at least four Palestinians in a firefight in the southern Gaza
Strip and two more in the West Bank as they tried to cross into Israel.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade issued a joint statement saying their men had
"attacked four Israeli army jeeps with rocket-propelled grenades, and
they responded with machine-gun fire from an assault helicopter and
tank fire."
(AFP, 2/20/10)
2010 Feb 21, Israeli PM Benjamin
Netanyahu told his Cabinet that the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron
and Rachel's Tomb near Bethlehem are additions to the list of national
heritage sites. Israel's air force introduced a fleet of large unmanned
planes that can fly as far as Iran. Air force officials said the Heron
TP drones can fly 20 consecutive hours, and are primarily used for
surveillance and carrying payloads. Israeli shelling wounded five
Palestinian day laborers along the northern border of the Hamas-ruled
Gaza Strip.
(AP, 2/21/10)(AFP, 2/21/10)
2010 Feb 22, A crowd of
Palestinian youths in Hebron pelted Israeli soldiers with stones and
empty bottles, drawing tear gas and stun grenades in the most serious
violence to rock this volatile West Bank city in months.
(AP, 2/22/10)
2010 Feb 24, Dubai police linked
at least 15 more suspects carrying foreign passports to the Jan 19 hit
squad slaying of a Hamas commander that the police chief claimed was
likely carried out by Israel's Mossad secret service.
(AP, 2/24/10)
2010 Feb 28, Dubai police said
forensic tests show a Hamas operative, who was killed on Jan 19 in his
hotel room by an alleged Israeli hit squad, was drugged with a
fast-acting muscle relaxant and then suffocated with a pillow.
(AP, 2/28/10)
2010 Feb 28, In Israel 16 people
including two Israeli policemen were wounded in clashes at Jerusalem's
flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound, after police entered to arrest
Palestinians who had hurled rocks at visitors they believed were Jewish
extremists.
(AFP, 2/28/10)
2010 Mar 3, Arab nations gave the
green light for Palestinians to enter indirect negotiations with Israel
for a preliminary four-month period, a decision likely to break the
months-long deadlock over resuming Mideast peace talks.
(AP, 3/3/10)
2010 Mar 4, Gaza's Islamic
militant Hamas government banned men from working in women's hair
salons. The announcement came amid a Hamas campaign to impose Islamic
customs on Gaza's 1.5 million people.
(AP, 3/4/10)
2010 Mar 4, Israel's Supreme Court
reprimanded Jerusalem police for not permitting groups to protest the
eviction of Palestinians from their homes in favor of Jewish settlers.
(AP, 3/4/10)
2010 Mar 5, In Israel clashes
erupted between Muslim worshippers and Israeli riot police at a sacred
and disputed hilltop compound following a sermon on a recent Israeli
decision to include two West Bank shrines on a list of national
heritage sites.
(AP, 3/5/10)
2010 Mar 7, A skeptical
Palestinian leadership agreed to hold US-mediated peace talks with
Israel for four months, effectively ending a 14-month breakdown in
communications between the two sides.
(AP, 3/7/10)
2010 Mar 8, Israel said it has
given the green light for the building of 112 new homes in a Jewish
settlement in the occupied West Bank despite a partial moratorium on
such construction.
(AFP, 3/8/10)
2010 Mar 10, US Vice President Joe
Biden met Palestinian leaders, telling them Israel's decision to expand
settlement activity in east Jerusalem is undermining the peace efforts
he is promoting.
(AFP, 3/10/10)
2010 Mar 13, Several dozen
Palestinian women scuffled with Israeli troops on the outskirts of
Jerusalem amid rising religious and political tensions in the disputed
city.
(AP, 3/13/10)
2010 Mar 14, Israeli security
services overnight captured Maher Uda (47), a top Hamas commander, in
Ramallah. He had been on the run for more than a decade for his
implication in a series of suicide attacks in Israel which claimed 70
lives.
(AFP, 3/14/10)
2010 Mar 16, Hundreds of
Palestinians clashed with security forces in east Jerusalem as tension
boiled over in the city and a senior Hamas leader called for a new
"intifada," or uprising.
(AFP, 3/16/10)
2010 Mar 17, Israel lifted its
tight restrictions on Palestinian access to Jerusalem's holiest shrine
and called off an extended West Bank closure after days of clashes
between Palestinians and Israeli security forces.
(AP, 3/17/10)
2010 Mar 17, In Ramallah Brazil's
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva placed a wreath on the tomb of the
late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and sharply criticized Israeli
policies, leading Israeli officials to suggest he was not being
evenhanded. The visit came a day after Israel's hawkish foreign
minister, Avigdor Lieberman, said he boycotted meetings with Silva
because the Brazilian did not pay a similar visit to the grave of
Zionist founder Theodor Herzl.
(AP, 3/18/10)
2010 Mar 18, A rocket fired by
Palestinian militants from the Gaza Strip killed a Thai worker inside
Israel, in the first death from such an attack since Israel's Gaza
offensive last year. Israeli missiles hit smuggling tunnels and a metal
workshop in Gaza.
(AP, 3/18/10)(AP, 3/19/10)
2010 Mar 19, Palestinians in east
Jerusalem and the West Bank lobbed rocks at Israeli security forces,
set garbage bins and tires ablaze and torched an Israeli flag in a new
outbreak of violence over contested Jerusalem building plans and
unsubstantiated rumors about threats to the city's holiest shrine.
Israeli aircraft fired five missiles at Gaza's defunct airport and
nearby border tunnels, wounding at least 12 people.
(AP, 3/19/10)
2010 Mar 19, In Russia the
international Quartet for the Middle East met in Moscow in a bid to
revive the peace process despite tensions after Israel's announcement
of new settler homes and a deadly rocket attack.
(AFP, 3/19/10)
2010 Mar 20, UN chief Ban Ki-moon,
after getting a closer look at some of the Israeli enclaves scattered
across Palestinian-claimed territories, said Israeli settlement
building anywhere on occupied land is illegal and must be stopped.
(AP, 3/20/10)
2010 Mar 23, The Macro Centre for
Political Economics said in a report that spending on Jewish
settlements in the West Bank over the past 4 decades has totaled around
$17.4 billion. An Israeli air strike on the Gaza Strip overnight
injured four people.
(AP, 3/23/10)(AFP, 3/23/10)
2010 Mar 24, The Jerusalem
municipality said it has approved 20 new apartments for Jews in an Arab
neighborhood of east Jerusalem, in a move that could stir a new
diplomatic crisis with the United States just as Israel's leader is in
Washington on a fence-mending visit.
(AP, 3/24/10)
2010 Mar 24, Egyptian police
arrested 22 people suspected of involvement in smuggling goods into the
Gaza Strip as part of major crackdown.
(AFP, 3/26/10)
2010 Mar 26, Egyptian police said
they arrested 45 suspected smugglers over the past three days in an
intensified crackdown on the supply line to Gaza by way of hundreds of
cross-border tunnels. Among the suspects was a man accused of trying to
deliver $242,000 in Egyptian pounds and US dollars to Hamas in Gaza.
(AP, 3/27/10)
2010 Mar 26, Israel insisted it
would continue construction in contested east Jerusalem, taking an
uncompromising stance against US pressure following a tense visit by PM
Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington. Two Israeli soldiers and two
Palestinian militants were killed in a gunbattle in the Gaza Strip.
Palestinian medics said one civilian was killed and seven were wounded
in the fighting. Militants reported one wounded and one missing.
Israeli soldier withdrew the next day.
(AP, 3/26/10)(AP, 3/27/10)
2010 Mar 26, Tens of thousands of
Syrians and Palestinians gathered in a Damascus square in a
government-orchestrated "march of anger" against Israeli settlements in
east Jerusalem.
(AP, 3/26/10)
2010 Mar 28, Israel said it will
restrict access to its territory from the occupied West Bank starting
late today ahead of the week-long Jewish Passover holiday.
(AP, 3/28/10)
2010 Mar 29, Hamas seized $270,000
from a Gaza bank that had been frozen by the Palestinian government in
the West Bank, sparking new feuding between the Gaza militants and
their Western-backed rivals.
(AP, 3/29/10)
2010 Apr 1, An Israeli military
judge ordered the release of 10 Palestinians, including a senior Fatah
official, detained at a March 27 protest march through a West Bank
checkpoint.
(AFP, 4/1/10)
2010 Apr 4, Israel allowed the
first commercial shipment of clothes and shoes into the Gaza Strip
since 2008 but said its policy towards the territory's Hamas rulers had
not changed.
(AP, 4/4/10)
2010 Apr 8, In Lebanon heavy
clashes erupted in a Palestinian military camp in a remote eastern part
of the country as a result of infighting among Palestinian factions.
The camp is run by the Syrian-backed Popular Front for the Liberation
of Palestine-General Command.
(AP, 4/8/10)
2010 Apr 11, Israel's military
issued new orders that human rights groups warned could lead to the
expulsion of tens of thousands of Palestinians from the West Bank. The
orders have been posted on the Web site of the military prosecutor and
are to go into effect April 13.
(AP, 4/11/10)
2010 Apr 13, Gaza's Hamas rulers
ordered residents to shut smuggling tunnels along the border with Egypt
indefinitely, cutting off the economic lifeline for 1.5 million
Palestinians in the impoverished territory. An Israeli spokesman said
at least 2 Palestinian militants were killed and 2 wounded when Israeli
troops shot at them as they tried to plant explosives near the border.
(AP, 4/14/10)(SFC, 4/14/10, p.A2)
2010 Apr 15, The Hamas government
executed two men accused of collaborating with Israel. Mohammed Ismail
(36) was convicted of planting devices in the cars of militants,
presumably to help track them. Nasser Abu Freh (33), a former
Palestinian police captain before the Hamas takeover, allegedly started
receiving money to work with Israel in 1998. The bullet-riddled bodies
of the men, convicted by military tribunals in 2008 and 2009, were
dumped by armed men at Gaza City's main hospital before dawn. It was
the first time the death penalty has been carried out in Gaza since
Hamas violently seized power in the coastal area in 2007.
(AP, 4/15/10)
2010 Apr 16, Israeli troops killed
a Palestinian militant along the border fence between Israel and the
Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip as he planted a bomb along the fence.
Palestinian residents and the Israeli military said Jewish settlers
vandalized property overnight in the Palestinian village of Jen Safout
in the West Bank. Raed Hamad (27), a Palestinian prisoner, died in an
Israeli prison. he had been in solitary confinement for the last 18
months. Lawyer Tareq Barghouth said his client required psychological
help but none was provided during his five years in detention.
(AP, 4/16/10)(AP, 4/17/10)
2010 Apr 17, Hamas and Fatah
closed ranks to mark Palestinian Prisoners' Day to protest against
Israel for continuing to keep some 6,600 Palestinian militants in jail.
This was the first joint initiative by the bitter rivals since Fatah
was routed from Gaza in 2007.
(AFP, 4/17/10)(Econ, 5/1/10, p.48)
2010 Apr 19, Israeli Defense
minister Ehud Barak said Israel must recognize that the world will not
put up with decades more of Israeli rule over the Palestinian people.
(AP, 4/19/10)
2010 Apr 20, Gaza's Hamas rulers
burned nearly 2 million pills of Tramadol, a painkiller many Gazans
take recreationally because they say it relaxes them and provides
temporary relief from the territory's hardships.
(AP, 4/20/10)
2010 Apr 23, Palestinian President
Mahmoud Abbas rejected the establishment of a Palestinian state within
temporary borders, an idea he said was recently proposed for restarting
peace talks.
(AP, 4/24/10)
2010 Apr 24, Palestinian president
Mahmud Abbas called for an "open political dialogue" between
Palestinian groups and both Israeli and Jewish organizations around the
world.
(AFP, 4/24/10)
2010 Apr 26, Palestinian President
Mahmoud Abbas signed a law banning Palestinians from working in Israeli
settlements and selling settlement goods, with violators facing up to
five years in prison and stiff fines.
(AP, 4/26/10)
2010 Apr 26, Municipal officials
said the Israeli government has imposed a de facto freeze on new Jewish
construction in Jerusalem's disputed eastern sector. The decision was
made despite PM Benjamin Netanyahu's public insistence that building
would not be stopped in the face of US pressure. Israeli troops killed
Hamas activist Ali Sweiti, a wanted Palestinian militant in a raid on a
West Bank house. Sweiti was wanted in five shooting attacks, one of
which killed a paramilitary policeman in 2004.
(AP, 4/26/10)
2010 Apr 28, An Egyptian court
convicted 26 men of spying for the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah
and plotting attacks in Egypt, and gave them prison sentences ranging
from six months to life. A Hamas security official in charge of the
tunnel area along the border said Egyptians had filled a passage with
some type of crowd dispersal gas killing four Palestinians. The next
day Egypt denied the charges saying fires sparked by such explosions
could use up all the oxygen in the tunnel and people caught inside
could suffocate.
(AP, 4/28/10)(AP, 4/29/10)
2010 May 1, Arab nations endorsed
indirect peace talks between the Palestinians and Israelis, a move that
likely paves the way for the start of long-stalled US-brokered
negotiations.
(AP, 5/1/10)
2010 May 2, Hamas Deputy Finance
Minister Ismail Mahfouz denied that the Islamic militants are caught in
a cash crunch, but said Hamas is having trouble getting money into
blockaded Gaza.
(AP, 5/2/10)
2010 May 3, The leaders of Israel
and Egypt met to discuss the renewal of the Middle East peace process
ahead of US-backed indirect negotiations between the Palestinians and
the Jewish state.
(AP, 5/3/10)
2010 May 3, A team of Israeli,
Jordanian and Palestinian environmental scientists said large stretches
of the biblical Jordan River could dry up by 2011. In 1847, a US Naval
officer visiting the area reported on the "deafening roar of the
tumultuous waters."
(AP, 5/4/10)
2010 May 4, Fires ripped through a
mosque and an olive grove in two West Bank villages, and local
Palestinians accused Jewish settlers of deliberately setting the blazes.
(AP, 5/4/10)
2010 May 5, US mediator George
Mitchell launched Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations after a break
of more than a year, starting a shuttle mission between a hard-line
Israeli government and a Palestinian administration in control of only
part of its territory.
(AP, 5/5/10)
2010 May 6, Palestinian Pres.
Mahmoud Abbas accused Hamas of smuggling large amounts of weapons into
the West Bank as part of the militant group's efforts to undermine his
administration.
(AP, 5/6/10)
2010 May 8, Palestinian leaders
gave their backing for indirect peace talks with Israel, clearing the
way for the Obama administration's first sustained on-the-ground
Mideast peace effort. Mideast envoy George Mitchell will now shuttle
between the Israeli and Palestinian leaders for up to four months to
try to narrow the vast gaps on the terms of Palestinian statehood. Four
Palestinians were injured and four others went missing when a smuggling
tunnel on the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt collapsed.
(AP, 5/8/10)(AFP, 5/8/10)
2010 May 9, The Palestinians
announced the official start of indirect peace talks with Israel after
a 17-month breakdown, while Israel's leader urged a quick transition to
face-to-face negotiations to tackle the hardest issues. Israeli-Arab
leaders launched a boycott of 1000 companies that produce Jewish
settlement-made products, following Palestinian Authority Pres. Abbas’
call for a similar ban by West Bank Arabs.
(AP, 5/9/10)(SSFC, 5/9/10, p.A4)
2010 May 10, Israel said it will
press forward with construction of new housing for Jews in east
Jerusalem, drawing Palestinian accusations that the plans could
undermine newly relaunched peace talks. Israeli police said two Israeli
Arabs were under arrest on suspicions they spied for the Lebanese
Hezbollah guerrillas. Police detained Amir Makhoul, the brother of a
former member of Israel's parliament, on April 26 and the other suspect
on May 6.
(AP, 5/10/10)
2010 May 10, The Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) accepted Israel into its
ranks, capping a lengthy effort by the Jewish state to join the
exclusive club in the face of stiff opposition from the Palestinians.
(AP, 5/10/10)
2010 May 13, A Palestinian
teenager (16) was found dead from a gunshot wound near his village in
the West Bank. Palestinians said he was likely shot by an Israeli
settler while throwing stones at cars.
(AP, 5/14/10)
2010 May 15, Bitter Palestinian
rivals marched together in a rare show of unity as they marked 62 years
of displacement in the war surrounding Israel's creation. The Egyptian
border post at Rafah in southern Gaza was opened for the first time in
10 weeks. Some 300 Palestinians crossed the border and that 8,000
others were expected to follow during the opening due to last three
days.
(AP, 5/15/10)(AFP, 5/15/10)
2010 May 15, The Israeli army
gunfire killed farmer Fuad Abu Matar (75) and wounded another
Palestinian near northern Gaza's border with the Jewish state.
(AFP, 5/15/10)
2010 May 16, Hamas police wielding
clubs beat and pushed residents out of dozens of homes in the southern
Gaza town of Rafah before knocking the buildings down with bulldozers.
Gaza's militant Hamas rulers said the homes were built illegally on
government land. Residents said between 30 and 40 homes were torn down.
(AP, 5/16/10)
2010 May 18, Gaza's Hamas rulers
executed 3 convicted killers and dropped off their bullet-riddled
bodies at a hospital. One allegedly participated in the 2003 slaying of
a young woman whose body was later tossed in a garbage bin. The other
two men were accused of murdering money changers in two separate
incidents. Hamas began carrying out formal executions in April, and
today's killings brought the total number of prisoners put to death to
five.
(AP, 5/18/10)
2010 May 20, Israel released
Mohammed Abu Teir, a Hamas lawmaker. He was arrested nearly four years
ago following the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier by Gaza militants in
a deadly cross-border raid.
(AFP, 5/20/10)
2010 May 21, Two Palestinian
militants, Nader Abu Dakkar (17) and Hamdi Abu Hammad (17) infiltrated
Israel from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip but were killed in a firefight
with Israeli troops. The Israeli military launched aerial raids
overnight in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, following a rocket attack the
previous evening. No one was injured or killed in the sorties.
(AP, 5/21/10)(AFP, 5/21/10)(AFP, 5/22/10)
2010 May 23, In Gaza masked gunmen
stormed a UN-run Gaza summer camp early on Sunday and set it on fire,
threatening "harsh measures" against the Gaza director of UNRWA, the UN
agency for Palestinian refugees.
(AFP, 5/23/10)
2010 May 24, Israel's military
announced it plans to further ease restrictions on Palestinian travel
in the West Bank, delivering what appeared to be a first in a series of
gestures requested by the US as part of renewed peace talks.
(AP, 5/24/10)
2010 May 25, Eight ships carrying
10,000 tons of donated supplies and hundreds of pro-Palestinian
activists were making their way toward blockaded Gaza, and a likely
weekend showdown with the Israeli navy.
(AP, 5/25/10)
2010 May 26, Palestinian hospital
officials say 15 people were wounded in overnight Israeli airstrikes in
the Gaza Strip. The strikes came after the Israeli military reported
that Palestinian militants had blown up a donkey cart filled with
dynamite near the concrete wall that separates Gaza from Israel and
fired several mortar rounds into Israel. No Israelis were injured.
(AP, 5/26/10)
2010 May 27, Israel said a
flotilla of activist aid boats bound for Gaza was a "cheap political
stunt" as it unveiled a port facility where it intends to divert the
boats and detain those on board.
(AFP, 5/27/10)
2010 May 28, The Israeli army
reopened a key highway to Palestinian traffic after the supreme court
ordered the lifting of a 10-year-old ban which had turned Route 443
into an Israelis-only road.
(AFP, 5/28/10)
2010 May 29, Palestinian security
officials and witnesses said Israeli warplanes launched six overnight
raids on the Islamist-run Gaza Strip, adding that nobody was wounded in
the attacks. An Israeli military spokesman said only that two air raids
had taken place, and that they targeted a tunnel in the south linking
Gaza to Israel and a weapons workshop in the north.
(AP, 5/29/10)
2010 May 30, Hundreds of
pro-Palestinian activists set sail for the Gaza Strip from
international waters off the coast of Cyprus, edging closer to an
expected naval showdown with Israeli gunships determined to stop them.
(AP, 5/30/10)
2010 May 31, Israeli naval
commandos stormed a flotilla of ships carrying aid and hundreds of
pro-Palestinian activists to the blockaded Gaza Strip, killing 9
passengers in a predawn raid that set off worldwide condemnation and a
diplomatic crisis. At least 4 of the 9 dead were Turkish. A massive
protest broke out in Turkey, Israel's longtime Muslim ally, which
unofficially supported the mission. Ankara announced it would recall
its ambassador and call off military exercises with the Jewish state.
The flotilla of three cargo ships and three passenger ships carrying
10,000 tons of aid and 700 activists was carrying items that Israel
bars from reaching Gaza, like cement and other building materials.
Israeli police said 16 pro-Palestinian activists from the flotilla were
sent to jail following the deadly confrontation. Turkey sent three
planes to bring back some 20 Turks wounded during clashes that broke
out when Israeli commandos raided the Turkish vessel.
(AP, 5/31/10)(AP, 6/1/10)
2010 Jun 1, Pro-Palestinian
activists sent another boat to challenge Israel's blockade of the Gaza
Strip. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak ordered the opening of the
Rafah border crossing to allow humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip.
(AP, 6/1/10)
2010 Jun 1, Iranian-backed Islamic
Jihad in the Gaza Strip said three of its members have been killed in
an Israeli airstrike in northern Gaza. The Israeli military confirmed
it carried out an airstrike, and Gaza's chief medical examiner also
says there were three deaths. The fighters were killed shortly after
firing rockets into southern Israel. Israeli authorities said the
rockets landed in open areas and caused no injuries.
(AP, 6/1/10)
2010 Jun 2, Israel was deported
the last of the nearly 700 foreign activists detained in a deadly raid
on an aid flotilla bound for Palestinians in the blockaded, Hamas-ruled
Gaza Strip. Israel came under renewed pressure at an urgent session of
the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, as countries lined up to condemn
its interception of a Gaza-bound flotilla and urge an impartial probe.
(AP, 6/2/10)(AFP, 6/2/10)
2010 Jun 2, France's former top
anti-terrorism judge said the Turkish Islamic charity behind the
flotilla of aid ships that was raided by Israeli forces on its way to
Gaza had ties to terrorism networks, including a 1999 al-Qaida plot to
bomb Los Angeles International Airport.
(AP, 6/2/10)
2010 Jun 2, UN chief Ban Ki-moon
demanded that Israel lift its blockade of the Gaza Strip immediately in
the wake of its deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla.
(AP, 6/3/10)
2010 Jun 3, Israel rejected calls
from the UN and others for an international investigation of its deadly
raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla but left the door open to foreign
involvement. The Foreign Press Association demanded that Israel’s
military stop using the captured material without permission and
identify the source of the video already released. The material
appeared Wednesday on the army's YouTube site labeled as "captured."
(AP, 6/3/10)
2010 Jun 4, The Rachel Corrie
activist ship kept its course for a June 5 arrival in Gaza as world
anger simmered over Israel's deadly raid on an earlier blockade-busting
bid.
(AFP, 6/4/10)
2010 Jun 5, Israeli forces boarded
the Rachel Corrie after it ignored orders not to head for Gaza, but
there was no repetition of the bloody violence that erupted when
commandos stormed an aid boat earlier in the week.
(AFP, 6/5/10)
2010 Jun 7, An Egyptian security
official declared the blockade of Gaza a failure and said his country
will keep its border with the Palestinian territory open indefinitely.
(AP, 6/7/10)
2010 Jun 7, The Iranian Red
Crescent said that it will send three aid ships to Gaza in the latest
bid to break the blockade imposed on the Palestinian territory by
Iran's archfoe Israel.
(AFP, 6/7/10)
2010 Jun 7, The Israeli navy
killed 4 Palestinian militants in diver suits off the coast of Gaza
before dawn. Palestinian officials said Israel fired a missile at
Palestinian militants near the Gaza border, wounding one. The bodies of
two Palestinians killed by Israeli fire washed ashore a day later,
bringing to six the total number of alleged militants killed by the
navy raid.
(AP, 6/7/10)(AP, 6/8/10)
2010 Jun 9, Israel eased a
three-year blockade of Gaza to allow in some previously banned food
items in an effort to defuse the worldwide furor over its deadly raid
on a Gaza-bound international flotilla. But critics said the step falls
far short of what is needed in the impoverished Palestinian territory.
Vandals defaced a mosque in northern Israel, a day after Israeli troops
demolished unauthorized construction in a West Bank settlement.
(AP, 6/9/10)
2010 Jun 11, Israeli police said
an unidentified Palestinian man was shot dead after he struck two
Israeli police officers with his car in east Jerusalem.
(AP, 6/11/10)
2010 Jun 13, Amr Moussa, the head
of the 22-member Arab League, met with the top Hamas leader in Gaza, PM
Ismail Haniyeh, in a significant diplomatic boost for Hamas.
(AP, 6/14/10)
2010 Jun 14, Iran’s state radio
said Iran is sending aid ships to blockaded Gaza, a move likely to be
considered provocative by Israel which accuses Tehran of arming Hamas,
the Palestinian enclave's Islamist rulers.
(Reuters, 6/14/10)
2010 Jun 14, The Israeli Cabinet
approved an investigation into the deadly raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla
in an effort to counter international criticism as the EU pressed
Israel to lift the blockade of Gaza, deeming it "unacceptable."
Palestinian gunmen opened fire on a police vehicle in the West Bank,
killing an Israeli police officer and wounding two others. On July 19
the Shin Bet security service said five Palestinians, accused of being
members of a Hamas cell, have been arrested for killing the Israeli
policeman.
(AP, 6/14/10)(AP, 7/19/10)
2010 Jun 16, Israeli officials
they will significantly ease its bruising land blockade of the Gaza
Strip, in an effort to blunt the widespread international criticism
that has followed a deadly Israeli commando raid on a blockade-busting
flotilla. Israeli troops shot and killed a drug smuggler on the
Egyptian border. Egypt said he was among a group of seven armed men
trying to bring drugs into Israel.
(AP, 6/16/10)
2010 Jun 17, Israel agreed to ease
its three-year-old land blockade of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, hoping
to quell international outrage over its deadly raid on a flotilla bound
for the Palestinian territory.
(AP, 6/17/10)
2010 Jun 21, Lebanese authorities
granted permission for a blockade-busting ship with activists and aid
on board to sail first to the Mediterranean island of Cyprus.
(AP, 6/21/10)
2010 Jun 22, Iran's state
television says the country will send an aid ship to the blockaded Gaza
Strip with 1,100 tons of relief supplies.
(AP, 6/22/10)
2010 Jun 22, Israel's defense
minister criticized the approval by a Jerusalem planning body of a plan
to raze 22 Palestinian homes in the disputed eastern part of the city
to make room for an Israeli tourist center, saying it lacked "common
sense" and "a sense of timing."
(AP, 6/22/10)
2010 Jun 23, Israeli troops
overnight arrested four Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, among
them Shadi Amwasi (30), a former intelligence officer.
(AFP, 6/23/10)
2010 Jun 24, Noorsat, the operator
which handles the broadcasting of Al-Aqsa TV to parts of Europe and
throughout the Middle East, shut down the broadcasts of Al-Aqsa TV, a
Gaza-based television station accused of inciting hatred of Jews and
Israel.
(AFP, 6/25/10)
2010 Jun 25, Israeli warplanes
raided the Gaza Strip overnight killing a Palestinian and wounding
another.
(AFP, 6/25/10)
2010 Jun 26, An Iranian lawmaker
said the country's plan to send a blockade-busting ship from Iran to
Gaza has been canceled.
(AP, 6/26/10)
2010 Jun 28, In central Gaza 2
dozen masked men vandalized a UN summer camp for children, burning and
slashing tents, toys and a plastic swimming pool. It was the second
such attack in just over a month.
(AP, 6/28/10)
2010 Jul 6, Pres. Obama met with
Israel’s PM Netanyahu, who was accorded all the trappings of a visiting
head of state. Obama and Netanyahu dismissed talk of a rift as wildly
unfounded, and Netanyahu pledged concrete, "very robust" steps to
revive sluggish Mideast peace efforts with the Palestinians. One of the
main outcomes of the summit was the US push for a shift to direct talks
with Palestinians.
(AP, 7/6/10)(AFP, 7/7/10)
2010 Jul 7, Israel said that its
moves to ease its blockade on Gaza do not include relaxing regulations
on Palestinians looking to travel out of the enclave. Israel's military
released maps and aerial photographs showing what it described as a
network of Hezbollah weapons depots and command centers inside villages
in south Lebanon, near the Israeli border.
(AFP, 7/7/10)(AP, 7/7/10)
2010 Jul 8, In Israel police
arrested overnight a pair of ultra-Orthodox Jewish men suspected of
trying to smuggle $1 million of pure cocaine into Israel from Brazil.
More than 15,000 Israelis marched into Jerusalem and rallied at a park
downtown for the government to conclude a deal for the release of a
captive soldier held by Palestinian militants.
(AP, 7/8/10)(AP, 7/9/10)
2010 Jul 9, Libyan organisers said
a charity headed by Saif Al-Islam Kadhafi, the second son of Libyan
leader Moamar Kadhafi, is sending an aid boat from Greece to Gaza to
break the Israeli "siege." Organisers of the initiative had earlier
said the 25-year-old ship, owned by Piraeus-based ACA Shipping
Corporation, was called Hope. The ship set sail from Greece on July 10
and headed for Egypt.
(AFP, 7/9/10)(AFP, 7/10/10)
2010 Jul 13, Israeli bulldozers
destroyed six buildings, including at least three homes, in contested
east Jerusalem, resuming the demolition of Palestinian property after a
halt aimed at encouraging peace talks.
(AP, 7/13/10)
2010 Jul 13, An Israeli military
vessel confronted a Libyan aid ship trying to breach Israel's
three-year-old Gaza blockade and ordered it to divert to an Egyptian
port.
(AP, 7/13/10)
2010 Jul 14, A ship sent by a
Libyan charity to break Israel's naval blockade of the Gaza Strip
changed course in the Mediterranean Sea and docked at an Egyptian port
after agreeing to deliver its cargo of aid through Egyptian territory.
(AP, 7/14/10)(AP, 7/15/10)
2010 Jul 15, An Israeli lieutenant
colonel and one of his soldiers were convicted in a 2008 shooting of a
bound and blindfolded Palestinian demonstrator. Video taken by a local
resident showed the soldier firing a rubber-coated bullet from close
range at the feet of the Palestinian man, whose hands were tied behind
his back.
(AP, 7/15/10)
2010 Jul 17, Gaza's Hamas rulers
banned women from smoking water pipes in cafes, calling it a practice
that destroys marriages and sullies the image of the Palestinian people.
(AP, 7/18/10)
2010 Jul 19, Israeli forces
demolished a cluster of tents and shacks belonging to Palestinians in
the northern West Bank.
(AP, 7/19/10)
2010 Jul 21, Israel said it will
restrict its use of white phosphorus munitions and seek to limit
civilian casualties in future wars, in a report to the UN secretary
general released this week. Israeli fire killed two Palestinians and
wounded 10 in the northern Gaza Strip.
(AFP, 7/21/10)
2010 Jul 21, The leaders of Egypt
and Turkey met in Cairo to discuss stuttering international efforts to
coax Israeli and Palestinian leaders back to the negotiating table.
(AFP, 7/21/10)
2010 Jul 22, Egyptian security
officials said smugglers who sneak consumer goods, cash and weapons
into the blockaded Gaza Strip have cut hundreds of holes in an
underground steel wall Egypt is building along the border to try to
stop them.
(AP, 7/22/10)
2010 Jul 22, Israeli troops shot
and killed a Palestinian man entering a Jewish settlement in the West
Bank, drawing a Palestinian accusation that soldiers are too quick to
open fire.
(AP, 7/23/10)
2010 Jul 25, An Israeli military
spokesman said Gaza-based militants fired four rockets into southern
Israel over the weekend. None of them caused any casualties or damage.
(AFP, 7/25/10)
2010 Jul 26, France said it is
upgrading its diplomatic relations with the Palestinian Territories to
try to spur international efforts toward creating a Palestinian state.
(AP, 7/2610)
2010 Jul 29, Qatar's PM Sheik
Hamad bin Jassem Al Thani said the Arab nations have endorsed direct
Palestinian talks with the Israelis but left the timing to the
Palestinians themselves.
(AP, 7/29/10)
2010 Jul 30, Gaza militants fired
a rocket into the Israeli city of Ashkelon, a rare strike in a period
of relative quiet.
(AP, 7/30/10)
2010 Jul 31, Israeli warplanes
fired missiles killing Issa Batran (42), a senior commander of the
Hamas military wing, and wounding 11 people in five targets hit across
Gaza overnight. Hamas said 8 of its supporters and 3 civilians were
also wounded in the overnight airstrikes and vowed revenge.
(AP, 7/31/10)
2010 Aug 2, A string of
rockets was fired toward the Israeli resort city Eilat, and one hit in
neighboring Jordan, killing one person and wounding four. On Aug 3
Jordan said it has evidence that the rocket attack originated from
neighboring Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. After days of denials an Egyptian
official said the deadly rocket attacks were carried out by the
militant Palestinian Hamas group operating from Egypt.
(AP, 8/2/10)(AP, 8/3/10)(AP, 8/4/10)
2010 Aug 4, Israeli soldiers
killed a Gaza Strip militant was killed. The Israeli military said
soldiers saw a group of men approach Israel's border fence with Gaza
and launched an airstrike against them before dawn. 3 other militants
were wounded in the attack.
(AP, 8/4/10)
2010 Aug 7, The Gaza Strip's sole
power plant shut down for lack of diesel fuel.
(AFP, 8/7/10)
2010 Aug 9, Israeli photographer
Rafael Rafram Chaddad, jailed by Libya for five months, returned home
after an Austrian tycoon brokered a deal for his freedom that involved
the delivery of 20 prefabricated homes from a Libyan charity to the
Gaza Strip.
(AP, 8/9/10)
2010 Aug 11, The Islamist Hamas
movement released 100 prisoners in its Gaza enclave, including members
of the rival Fatah, in honor of the start of Ramadan.
(AFP, 8/11/10)
2010 Aug 16, Israeli troops killed
a Palestinian militant who the military said was planting a bomb along
the border.
(AP, 8/17/10)
2010 Aug 17, In Israel a
Palestinian who broke into the Turkish Embassy trying to take hostages
and demanding asylum was turned over to Israeli authorities. The next
day his lawyer claimed that Nadim Injaz was a former Israeli informer
who was seeking political asylum. 2 Israeli soldiers were lightly
wounded by a mortar shell fired from Gaza. Later in the day Israeli
warplanes struck targets including Hamas training facilities in five
locations in Gaza. No one was hurt.
(AP, 8/17/10)(AP, 8/18/10)(AFP, 8/18/10)
2010 Aug 17, Lebanon's Parliament
passed a law that for the first time grants the country's Palestinian
refugees the right to work in any profession.
(AP, 8/17/10)
2010 Aug 21, Israel and the
Palestinians accepted a US call to restart direct peace talks but
politicians on both sides have warned of the pitfalls ahead, saying
talks will be stillborn unless Israel halts building in West Bank
settlements. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak accepted an invitation to
attend the start of direct peace talks.
(AFP, 8/21/10)
2010 Aug 28, An Egyptian security
official said police in the Sinai desert have discovered two large
caches of weapons that were to be smuggled to Gaza. The find included
anti-aircraft weaponry.
(AP, 8/28/10)
2010 Aug 31, A West Bank gunman
opened fire on a passing vehicle in Hebron, killing all four Israeli
passengers inside, two men and two women from settlements in the area.
The dead included a married couple with five children.
(AP, 9/1/10)
2010 Sep 1, Palestinian security
forces arrested more than 250 Hamas members in an overnight sweep
throughout the West Bank after the Islamic militant group claimed
responsibility for shooting dead four Israelis on the eve of new
Mideast peace talks.
(AP, 9/1/10)
2010 Sep 2, Israeli and
Palestinian leaders met in Washington and cleared the first hurdle in
what promises to be difficult negotiations, vowing to try to settle
core differences within a year and meet every two weeks. Neither leader
addressed the sensitive question of whether Israel would extend a
moratorium on settlement building in the West Bank due to expire on
September 26. The next round of talks was set for September 14-15 in
Egypt.
(AFP, 9/3/10)
2010 Sep 4, Two Palestinians were
killed and another three were wounded in Israeli air strikes carried
out after a rocket attack from Gaza. This was the first exchange of
fire since the relaunch of Middle East peace talks last week. Two raids
targeted smuggling tunnels along the border with Egypt, causing a
tunnel to collapse on the two men, and a third struck a former base
used by the militant Hamas movement.
(AFP, 9/5/10)
2010 Sep 8, The Palestinian
Authority said it has arrested an unspecified number of Hamas activists
believed to be responsible for two shooting attacks in the West Bank
last week, one of which left four Jewish settlers dead. Palestinian
militants fired a mortar round from the Gaza Strip narrowly missing a
kindergarten in a kibbutz in southern Israel.
(AFP, 9/8/10)
2010 Sep 10, Militants in Gaza
fired a projectile into southern Israel just hours after Israeli
warplanes carried out a series of raids across the coastal strip.
Overnight, two Gazans in the Hamas security forces were wounded in Gaza
City when Israel launched a series of retaliatory air strikes after an
earlier rocket attack.
(AFP, 9/10/10)
2010 Sep 12, Israeli PM Benjamin
Netanyahu reiterated his demand for the Palestinians to recognize
Israel as a Jewish state, in remarks ahead of a second round of
US-backed peace talks. A rocket fired by Palestinian militants in the
Hamas-run Gaza Strip struck Israel without causing any casualties or
damage. A burst of Israeli tank fire killed three civilians in the
northern Gaza town of Beit Hanun, a man (91), his grandson (17) and
another man (20). A senior commander on Sep 14 said the killing
was a mistake.
(AFP, 9/12/10)(AFP, 9/14/10)
2010 Sep 14, Three Palestinians
were wounded by Israeli tank fire in a clash along the volatile Gaza
border. On Sep 25 Hamas reported that one died as the result of his
wounds.
(AFP, 9/25/10)
2010 Sep 15, Israeli and
Palestinian leaders held peace talks in Jerusalem with US Secretary of
State Hillary Rodham Clinton. A Qassam rocket and six mortar rounds hit
southern Israel. Israeli jets bombed smuggling targets along the
Gaza-Egypt border. Hamas officials said one person was killed and four
wounded.
(AP, 9/15/10)(AFP, 9/15/10)
2010 Sep 17, Israel reiterated its
refusal to extend curbs on settlement building that expire this month,
despite US pressure and Palestinian threats to walk out of peace talks.
Israeli troops killed Abu Shilbaya (37), a Hamas militant and local
leader of its armed wing, during a raid in the northern West Bank town
of Tulkarm. Some 3,000 Hamas loyalists gathered to march in Abu
Shilbaya's funeral.
(AFP, 9/17/10)(AP, 9/17/10)
2010 Sep 19, Egyptians officials
said Mohammed Dababish, a top Hamas security official, was arrested at
Cairo airport for using falsified travel documents.
(AP, 9/19/10)
2010 Sep 22, An Israeli guard shot
dead a Palestinian after rocks were thrown at his car, setting off
clashes with police. Crowds of Palestinian youths violently rampaged in
a tense neighborhood in annexed Arab east Jerusalem following the
shooting death of a local man. This clouded fragile peace efforts even
as the Palestinian president signaled he may back away from threats to
quit negotiations if Israel resumes West Bank settlement construction.
(AFP, 9/22/10)(AP, 9/22/10)
2010 Sep 23, The Palestinian
militant Hamas group said its military court has convicted and
sentenced Omar Kawari to death by a firing squad. The Gaza man was
convicted on charges of spying for Israel.
(AP, 9/23/10)
2010 Sep 25, In New York US
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Palestinian president Mahmud
Abbas met for a second day of talks, after failing to break the
deadlock between Israelis and Palestinians. The talks were overshadowed
by the end of an Israeli moratorium on settlement building.
(AFP, 9/25/10)
2010 Sep 25, Hamas, in a statement
from the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, said "Mahmud al-Ahmarine (21) has
died as the result of wounds inflicted by an Israeli tank on September
14 east of Gaza City."
(AGFP, 9/25/10)
2010 Sep 25, In Syria leaders of
the two rival Palestinian movements Fatah and Hamas held reconciliation
talks in Damascus and said they wanted the discussions to continue.
(AFP, 9/25/10)
2010 Sep 26, A boat carrying
Jewish activists from Israel, Europe and the US set sail from Cyprus
bound for Gaza, in a bid to run Israel's blockade of the Palestinian
territory.
(AFP, 9/27/10)
2010 Sep 27, Settlement building
resumed across the West Bank just hours after a 10-month freeze
expired, but Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas held back on a threat
to quit peace talks with Israel over the move. Abbas said he would wait
at least a week before deciding whether to quit Mideast peace talks,
giving US mediators precious time to broker a compromise.
(AFP, 9/27/10)
2010 Sep 28, Israeli naval forces
intercepted a catamaran carrying nine Jewish activists toward the Gaza
Strip, encountering no resistance as they took control of the sailboat
and escorted it to shore.
(AP, 9/28/10)
2010 Oct 2, Senior Palestinian
politicians backed President Mahmoud Abbas' demand to link peace talks
to restrictions on Israeli settlement building, delivering a new
setback to bogged down US efforts to salvage the negotiations.
(AP, 10/2/10)
2010 Oct 3, Egypt backed the
Palestinians' refusal to negotiate with Israel as long as it continues
to build West Bank settlements, even as officials urged for continued
diplomacy to salvage the month-old talks.
(AP, 10/3/10)
2010 Oct 3, An Israeli
military court convicted two soldiers of using a Palestinian child as a
human shield by forcing him to check for booby traps on Jan 15, 2009,
during the 2008-2009 Gaza war. Israeli police shot and killed Izzedine
Qawasmeh (35), a father of five and a construction worker from the West
Bank village of Sair, after he used a rope to scale a towering wall
meant to keep Palestinians from sneaking into Israel. On Nov 21 the two
soldiers received suspended sentences and demotions.
(AFP, 10/3/10)(AP, 10/3/10)(AP, 11/21/10)
2010 Oct 4, Arsonists torched a
mosque in a Palestinian village in the West Bank, scrawling "revenge"
on a wall in Hebrew and charring copies of the Muslim holy book in a
blaze that threatened to stoke new tensions over deadlocked Mideast
peacemaking.
(AP, 10/4/10)
2010 Oct 7, A top Palestinian
negotiator says the Palestinians have accepted a US proposal calling on
Israel to extend a West Bank settlement slowdown for another two months.
(AP, 10/7/10)
2010 Oct 8, Israeli troops killed
two senior Hamas militants in an early-morning raid in the West Bank
city of Hebron, raising tensions as peace talks remain stuck over
Israeli settlement building. The two gunmen were wanted in connection
with the killing of four Israelis near Hebron on Aug. 31. An incident
captured on film and widely broadcast showed two masked boys standing
in the road among a group throwing stones when a car driven by David
Beeri, the local leader of Elad, drove round the corner and ploughed
into them. One boy was thrown into the air and bounced off the car's
windscreen before crashing to the ground. The car stopped briefly
before driving off.
(AP, 10/8/10)(AFP, 10/11/10)
2010 Oct 9, Palestinian President
Mahmoud Abbas urged Arab leaders to press the United States to
recognize a unilateral declaration of statehood if peace talks with
Israel collapse. Extremist Jews ripped off branches and cut the roots
of Palestinian olive trees in the West Bank village of Burin, as the
yearly 45-day harvest of the important crop began.
(AP, 10/9/10)
2010 Oct 11, The Israeli
government endorsed a bill requiring a national referendum be held
before any withdrawal from occupied east Jerusalem or the Golan
Heights. PM Netanyahu spelled out recognition of Israel as a Jewish
state as his price for a renewal of a ban on construction in the
occupied West Bank. The offer was rejected out of hand by the
Palestinians, who said it had "nothing to do with the peace process."
(AFP, 10/11/10)(AFP, 10/12/10)
2010 Oct 13, The Palestinians
called on the US administration and Israel to define Israel's borders
after Washington invited proposals to get peace talks back on track.
(AFP, 10/13/10)
2010 Oct 15, Israel signed off on
the construction of 238 homes in Jewish neighborhoods in east
Jerusalem, bringing an end to an unofficial building freeze in the
traditionally Arab sector of the city and further complicating peace
talks stuck over the broader fate of West Bank settlements. A report
released by aid organization Oxfam said attacks and other acts of
harassment by Jewish settlers against Palestinian olive farmers "are
common and often increase during the time of the harvest." The Israeli
army says it does all it can to protect Palestinian olive growers. So
far this year there have been no casualties at least. But neither have
the police made any arrests.
(AP, 10/15/10)(AFP, 10/16/10)
2010 Oct 17, Two Palestinians were
killed and a third wounded in a pre-dawn Israeli air strike north of
Gaza City. The Israeli military said the air force had struck a "squad
of terror operatives who were preparing to fire rockets from the
northern Gaza Strip into Israel."
(AFP, 10/17/10)
2010 Oct 20, Palestinians said
Jewish settlers set fire to a girls school near the northern city of
Nablus. A powerful explosion ripped through a Hamas military compound
in the Gaza Strip, wounding more than a dozen people, including women
and children.
(AP, 10/20/10)
2010 Oct 25, A senior Israeli
settler official said that work has begun on up to 600 new homes in
West Bank settlements since Israel lifted its curb on such construction
Sep 26. Palestinian Pres. Mahmoud Abbas has said he will only resume
talks once building restrictions are reimposed, arguing there is no
point negotiating while Israel continues to build on land the
Palestinians want for a future state.
(AP, 10/25/10)
2010 Oct 27, Jewish settlers said
Israel's defense minister is holding up construction on 4,300
apartments that could be built immediately in the West Bank. Dozens of
Jewish extremists hoisting Israeli flags defiantly marched through the
Arab-Israeli town of Umm el-Fahm, chanting "death to terrorists" and
touching off clashes between rock-hurling residents and police who
quelled them with tear gas. An Israeli court convicted Amir Makhoul, a
prominent Arab-Israeli activist, of spying for the Lebanese militant
group Hezbollah in a plea bargain that will send him to prison for up
to 10 years.
(AP, 10/27/10)
2010 Oct 28, Israeli officials
said that the military-grade armaments seized at a shipping terminal in
Nigeria came from Iran and were bound for the Hamas-controlled Gaza
Strip. On Oct 30 an international shipping company said the weapons
cache originally came from Iran. Last week, the Iranian shipper filed a
request for the containers to be picked up again and this time shipped
to the West African nation of Gambia. On Feb 1, 2011, Azim Aghajani of
Iran and his alleged accomplice, Nigerian national Usman Abbas Jega,
both maintained their innocence against three charges over the
shipment.
(AP, 10/28/10)(AP, 10/30/10)(AP, 2/1/11)
2010 Oct 29, Tens of thousands of
Palestinians turned out for a rally in the Gaza Strip to mark the 23rd
anniversary of the founding of the hardline militant group Islamic
Jihad.
(AFP, 10/29/10)
2010 Oct 31, Walid Husayin (26), a
Palestinian blogger, was arrested in the West Bank. He had set off an
uproar in the Arab world by sarcastically claiming he was God and
hurling insults at the Prophet Muhammad. He was caught in a sting that
used Facebook to track him down. Husayin later posted the letter on his
blog in hopes of winning release.
(AP, 11/12/10)(AP, 12/6/10)
2010 Nov 3, A car exploded outside
the police headquarters of Gaza's Hamas rulers, killing a Palestinian
militant (27) and wounding a second man. Ihab Ghussein, spokesman for
the Hamas-controlled Interior Ministry. The Israeli military said the
target was Mohammed Namnam (25) of the Army of Islam group.
(AP, 11/3/10)
2010 Nov 6, Palestinian militants
in the Gaza Strip fired a rocket into southern Israel on Saturday but
caused no casualties or damage.
(AP, 11/6/10)
2010 Nov 8, Israel said it is
moving ahead with plans to build 1,300 new apartments in disputed east
Jerusalem. The new $11 million performing arts center opened in Ariel,
an Israeli enclave of 19,000 people. In August, more than 60 Israeli
actors and playwrights signed a letter saying they would not perform in
the new cultural center.
(AP, 11/8/10)
2010 Nov 9, Representatives of
Hamas and the Fatah party of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas started
a meeting in Damascus for reconciliation talks.
(AFP, 11/10/10)
2010 Nov 10, Israeli forces
arrested senior Hamas MP Mahmud al-Ramahi at his home in the West Bank
city of Ramallah overnight. Omar Abdul Razek, a senior Hamas official
in the West Bank, said Ramahi's arrest appeared to be an attempt by
Israel to undermine the reconciliation talks between Hamas and the
Fatah party that had just begun in Damascus.
(AFP, 11/10/10)
2010 Nov 15, In Palestinian Gaza
Strip Hamas freed 80 prisoners on the eve of the Muslim festival of Eid
al-Adha. Over the past week, Hamas has ordered the release of 284
prisoners in the run-up the four-day festival.
(AFP, 11/15/10)
2010 Nov 17, An Israeli airstrike
killed two senior members of the Army of Islam. An Israeli statement
said the men targeted were "part of a terror cell that planned to
kidnap and kill Israelis" in the Sinai peninsula.
(AP, 11/19/10)
2010 Nov 18, Southern Israel
received 2 mortar shells fired from the Gaza Strip. There were no
casualties or damage.
(AFP, 11/18/10)
2010 Nov 19, Israel's military
condemned the publication of names and photographs of 200 Israeli
soldiers on a website that called them "war criminals." It was put up
earlier this week by anonymous activists in Britain and hosted by a
US-based Web service, which took it down by today citing "breach of
terms." Militants in Gaza fired rockets at southern Israel, causing no
casualties. Retaliatory Israeli air strikes wounded at least 6
Palestinians.
(AP, 11/19/10)(SFC, 11/20/10, p.A2)
2010 Nov 21, Palestinian president
Mahmud Abbas said that he will not return to the negotiating table with
Israel without a settlement freeze that includes annexed Arab east
Jerusalem. Thousands of young Jewish settlers held a mass demonstration
outside Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu's offices in Jerusalem in protest
at plans for a new ban on settlement building.
(AFP, 11/21/10)
2010 Dec 3, Palestinian president
Mahmud Abbas threatened to dissolve the Palestinian Authority if Israel
does not stop building settlements on occupied land.
(AFP, 12/4/10)
2010 Dec 3, Outgoing Brazilian
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva announced recognition of a
Palestinian state within the 1967 borders in a public letter addressed
to Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas. This was made public by Brazil's
foreign ministry.
(AP, 12/4/10)
2010 Dec 6, Argentina announced
that it recognizes the Palestinian territories as a free and
independent state within their 1967 borders, a step it said reflects
frustration at the slow progress of peace talks with Israel.
(AP, 12/6/10)
2010 Dec 8, Israel decided to
allow increased exports from the Gaza Strip, further easing its
blockade of the territory run by the militant Palestinian Hamas group.
(AP, 12/8/10)
2010 Dec 8, The Middle East peace
process lay in tatters after Washington admitted defeat in its efforts
to secure an Israeli freeze on settlement building, the Palestinians'
condition for resuming talks.
(AFP, 12/8/10)
2010 Dec 9, The Israeli air force
bombed four sites in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, causing no casualties.
The air raids came after Palestinian militants fired several mortars
into southern Israel from Gaza the previous day.
(AFP, 12/9/10)
2010 Dec 14, Israel barred a group
of Palestinian firefighters who helped battle the country's worst
wildfire from attending a ceremony in their honor, the latest in a
series of embarrassments over Israel's handling of the blaze.
(AP, 12/14/10)
2010 Dec 16, Palestinian
negotiator Nabil Shaath said he has asked representatives of several EU
countries to recognize the truce lines before the 1967 Mideast war as
the borders between Israel and a Palestinian state.
(AP, 12/16/10)
2010 Dec 17, In Israel Christine
Luken (44), female American tourist, was stabbed to death. Her body was
found on Dec 19 bound and with multiple stab wounds near a road outside
Jerusalem. Her friend, Kaye Susan Wilson, told police the two had been
hiking in a nearby forest when they were assaulted by two Arab men.
She, too, was bound and stabbed, but managed to escape her assailants.
On Jan 26, 2011, Palestinians Kifah Ghneimat and Iyad Fatafa were
indicted for Luken’s murder.
(AP, 12/19/10)(AP, 1/26/11)
2010 Dec 17, Maltese Foreign
Minister Tonio Borg promised during a visit to the Gaza Strip to donate
funds to the United Nations agency caring for Palestinian refugees.
(AFP, 12/17/10)
2010 Dec 18, An Israeli airstrike
killed five Gaza militants in the deadliest attack against the coastal
strip in months. The Israeli military says the men were about to launch
a rocket attack against southern Israeli communities when they were
struck.
(AP, 12/18/10)
2010 Dec 19, Palestinian President
Mahmoud Abbas hosted dozens of Israeli legislators and activists, and
urged them to relay a simple message to the Israeli public — he is
serious about negotiating a peace deal and that the Palestinians will
never again resort to violence.
(AP, 12/19/10)
2010 Dec 20, Palestinian militants
in Gaza fired seven mortar shells into southern Israel that fell on
open ground and caused no casualties.
(AP, 12/20/10)
2010 Dec 21, The Israeli air force
hit seven suspected militant sites in the Gaza Strip in an unusually
large operation. Palestinian militants retaliated by sending a rocket
crashing down near a kindergarten in southern Israel. Israel's military
chief confirmed the Palestinian use of Kornet missiles. This marked a
new milestone for Gaza militants, who have steadily built up their
arsenal from a collection of crude, homemade rockets to include more
menacing imported weapons. Israeli defense officials said the
laser-guided Kornet came from Iran. Israel's answer, called Trophy, was
the first-of-its-kind Israeli-made system carried by tanks that is
designed to shoot down missiles like the Kornet.
(AP, 12/21/10)(AP, 12/22/10)
2010 Dec 22, Bolivia sent a letter
to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declaring its recognition of an
independent and sovereign state of Palestine.
(AP, 12/22/10)
2010 Dec 23, Israel's Peace Now
movement said Israeli settlers have illegally begun work on at least
100 homes in the occupied West Bank since the end of a freeze on
settlement construction.
(AFP, 12/23/10)
2010 Dec 24, The Ecuadorean
government recognized Palestine as a sovereign state.
(AP, 12/25/10)
2010 Dec 26, Israel and
Palestinian militants traded threats amid fresh skirmishes along the
tense Gaza Strip border in which two Islamic Jihad fighters were
killed. Nine French activists were arrested during a pro-Palestinian
demonstration at a major Israeli checkpoint in the West Bank.
(AFP, 12/26/10)
2010 Dec 28, Project developer
Bashar Masri said about 20 Israeli suppliers will help build Rawabi,
the first modern Palestinian city in the West Bank, but only after
promising they will not use products or services from Israeli
settlements.
(AP, 12/28/10)
2010 Dec 29, Palestinian president
Mahmud Abbas traveled to Brazil to lay the symbolic foundation stone of
a Palestinian embassy in Brasilia.
(AFP, 12/29/10)
2010 Dec 30, Israeli troops seized
Khalil al-Rabai, a Hamas member of the Palestinian parliament, the
fifth to be rearrested recently after serving previous prison terms.
With Rabai's arrest the number of Hamas MPs in Israeli custody is now
believed to be 13.
(AFP, 12/30/10)
2010 Dec 31, Palestinian president
Mahmud Abbas laid the first stone of what will become a Palestinian
embassy in Brazil, the most important Latin American country to
recognize a sovereign Palestinian state.
(AFP, 12/31/10)
2011 Jan 1, Jawaher Abu Rahma
(36), a Palestinian woman, died one day after allegedly inhaling
massive amounts of tear gas fired by the Israeli military at a West
Bank demonstration. On Jan 20 Israel's military said Rahma was the
victim of a medical error and was not killed by tear gas.
(AFP, 1/3/11)(AP, 1/20/11)
2011 Jan 2, Israel's PM Netanyahu
said that he's ready to sit down with the Palestinian president for
continuous one-on-one talks until they reach a peace deal. Israeli
troops shot dead a Palestinian at a checkpoint near the West Bank city
of Nablus. Palestinian security sources said Mohammed Daraghmeh was
trying to pass through the checkpoint on his way to work at a West Bank
settlement and a row broke out with troops when they refused him
passage.
(AP, 1/2/11)(AFP, 1/2/11)(AFP, 1/3/11)
2011 Jan 3, In Lebanon Ahmed
Yamani (86), one of the founders of the radical Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine, died in Beirut after a stroke. The PFLP was
launched by the late Palestinian leader George Habash in December 1967,
six months after the Arabs lost the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Syria's
Golan Heights to Israel.
(AP, 1/4/11)
2011 Jan 5, Israeli troops killed
two Palestinians along the Israel-Gaza border. Troops opened fire at
two men trying to cross the border fence into Israel.
(AP, 1/6/11)
2011 Jan 7, Chile recognized
Palestinian statehood, joining other South American nations in a push
for Palestinians and Israelis to keep negotiating toward a lasting
peace in the Middle East.
(AP, 1/8/11)
2011 Jan 7, Israeli troops
mistakenly shot and killed Omar Kawasmeh, a 65-year-old Palestinian
man, during a predawn raid to arrest a Hamas militant in the West Bank.
The raid targeted one of six Hamas fighters released from prison a day
earlier by the Western-backed Palestinian Authority. 5 of the freed
militants, including the target of the raid in which the man was
killed, were arrested overnight.
(AP, 1/7/11)
2011 Jan 8, Israeli soldiers shot
and killed a Palestinian who tried to throw explosives at a West Bank
checkpoint. A mortar attack from Gaza wounded 2 Thai workers in
southern Israel.
(AP, 1/8/11)(SSFC, 1/9/11, p.A5)
2011 Jan 9, Israeli organizers
said at least 165 professors have declared a boycott against a
contentious Israeli college in the West Bank, deepening an internal
rift in Israel over the expansion of West Bank settlements. They said
Ariel University Center is an "illegal settlement" intended to prevent
Palestinians from establishing an independent state. Bulldozers
demolished a wing of the Hotel Shepherd in Jerusalem to make way for a
new Israeli enclave in the heart of a Palestinian neighborhood.
(AP, 1/9/11)(Econ, 1/15/11, p.50)
2011 Jan 10, Israeli troops shot
dead a Palestinian farmer (65) in the northern Gaza Strip.
(AFP, 1/10/11)
2011 Jan 11, An Israeli military
court extended the jail term of Palestinian activist Abdullah Abu Rahma
by 16 months. Rahma has already served over a year in prison for
organizing protests against Israel's security barrier.
(AP, 1/11/11)
2011 Jan 11, The Palestinian Hamas
movement in Gaza urged militants to halt their attacks, saying that
continued violence would only invite Israeli reprisals. An Israeli
airstrike killed a person riding a motorcycle in the Gaza Strip.
(AP, 1/11/11)
2011 Jan 13, A Palestinian
minister said Gaza's Hamas rulers will ensure a truce on rocket fire
against Israel is protected, a day after militant factions agreed to a
period of calm.
(AFP, 1/13/11)
2011 Jan 13, Guyana recognized
Palestinian statehood, joining a string of other South American nations
in a push for Palestinians and Israelis to negotiate a peace deal.
(AP, 1/13/11)
2011 Jan 14, An Israeli newspaper
reported that the army is to begin collecting weapons from Jewish
settlers as a result of the calm in the West Bank and over fears they
may be used against Palestinians.
(AFP, 1/14/11)
2011 Jan 16, Israeli authorities
said they are moving ahead with a new proposal to build 1,400
apartments in a contested part of Jerusalem, enraging Palestinians who
denounced the plan as another settler land grab.
(AP, 1/16/11)
2011 Jan 18, Palestinians welcomed
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to the West Bank. Medvedev gave a
political boost to the Palestinians, backing their claim to east
Jerusalem as a capital and their demand that Israel must freeze all
settlement construction before peace talks can resume.
(AP, 1/18/11)
2011 Jan 18, Israeli forces killed
a Palestinian on the Gaza border after militants set off a bomb.
(AP, 1/19/11)
2011 Jan 20, A Palestinian man
opened fire at an Israeli guard post in the West Bank and soldiers
returned fire, killing him.
(AP, 1/20/11)
2011 Jan 21, Dozens of
Palestinians, enraged by France's sympathy for an Israeli soldier held
by Gaza militants, ambushed the French foreign minister's motorcade in
the Gaza Strip, pelting it with eggs and hurling a shoe that narrowly
missed hitting her.
(AP, 1/21/11)
2011 Jan 24, Palestinian
protesters smashed windows and sprayed graffiti outside the
headquarters of the Al-Jazeera TV channel in the West Bank. Al-Jazeera
the previous evening had aired what it said were leaked documents
showing that Palestinian leaders agreed to deep concessions on two of
the thorniest issues in negotiations with Israel: Jerusalem and the
fate of Palestinian refugees.
(AP, 1/24/11)
2011 Jan 24, Israel's foreign
minister confirmed that he has drawn up a plan for the creation of an
interim Palestinian state with temporary borders in the absence of a
full peace agreement.
(AP, 1/24/11)
2011 Jan 24, Peru joined a growing
number of South American countries in recognizing an independent and
sovereign Palestinian state. The decision does not recognize
Palestine's borders pre-dating the Six-Day War of 1967. Peru also
recognized Israel's indisputable right to exist without any threats to
its people.
(AP, 1/24/11)
2011 Jan 25, Ireland said it is
upgrading its diplomatic relations with the Palestinian territories in
recognition of progress being made by the Palestinian Authority. The
decision recognizes Ireland's long-standing support for Palestinian
statehood, but does not involve any recognition of a Palestinian state.
(AP, 1/25/11)
2011 Jan 28, An Israeli settler
shot and critically wounded a Palestinian teenager in the West Bank, in
the second such shooting in two days. The teenager from the village of
Beit Safa was shot in the head during a clash with settlers near the
city of Hebron.
(AP, 1/28/11)
2011 Feb 1, The Palestinian
Cabinet in West Bank said it would hold long-promised municipal
elections "as soon as possible."
(AP, 2/1/11)
2011 Feb 1, Suriname’s President
Desi Bouterse expressed his country's support for Palestinian national
rights and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, the
latest Latin American country to do so.
(www.israel-palestinenews.org/2011/02/surinam-recognizes-palestinian-state.html)
2011 Feb 7, In Israel Jerusalem
officials pushed forward plans to build new Jewish housing in an Arab
neighborhood in the city's eastern sector, drawing swift condemnation
from Palestinians who see it as encroaching on land they seek for a
future state.
(AP, 2/7/11)
2011 Feb 8, The Palestinian
Authority set long-overdue local council elections for July 9 in both
the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the government spokesman said. The rival
Hamas government that rules Gaza promptly rejected the move.
(AP, 2/8/11)
2011 Feb 9, Israeli aircraft
overnight carried out retaliatory airstrikes in the Gaza territory
after militants launched rockets into Israel on Feb 8. The airstrikes
lightly wounded 8 Palestinians.
(AP, 2/9/11)
2011 Feb 10, India and Pakistan
announced they would resume wide-ranging peace talks that were frozen
after the 2008 terrorist attacks in the Indian city of Mumbai, which
were blamed on Pakistan-based militants.
(AP, 2/10/11)
2011 Feb 14, Palestinian PM Salam
Fayyad dissolved his Cabinet in an emergency meeting in what appeared
to be a gesture inspired by unrest rocking the Arab world. This gave
him six weeks to name a new Cabinet.
(AP, 2/14/11)
2011 Feb 14, In Israel Jerusalem's
municipal council approved the construction of 120 new homes in the
Jewish settlement neighborhood of Ramot in occupied east Jerusalem.
(AFP, 2/14/11)
2011 Feb 17, Israeli forces shot
dead three Palestinians along the tense border with the Gaza Strip
before dawn. Soldiers fired on the men after they were spotted planting
an explosive device in a no-go zone along the border between 2 and 3 am.
(AP, 2/17/11)
2011 Feb 18, The Obama
administration vetoed a UN Arab-backed Security Council resolution that
would have condemned Israel for continuing to build Jewish-only
settlements in the West Bank.
(AP, 2/19/11)
2011 Feb 19, Dirar Abu Sisi (42),
a Palestinian engineer, went missing "under unknown circumstances"
after boarding a train in the Ukraine city of Kharkiv bound for the
capital Kiev. The UN refugee agency later confirmed his wife's fears
that he is being held in prison by the Israeli secret service. Sisi's
Ukrainian wife, Veronika (32), alleged the Israeli secret service
Mossad carried out the abduction in order to sabotage a key electric
power plant in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip where he worked as a
senior manager.
(AP, 3/10/11)
2011 Feb 20, Palestinian PM
Salam Fayyad angrily denounced the US veto of a United Nations
resolution condemning Israel's West Bank settlements and offered to
form a unity government with the rival Hamas militant group.
(AP, 2/20/11)
2011 Feb 21, The Palestinian
Center for Human Rights said that five male hairdressers were
interrogated in Gaza and forced to sign declarations that they wouldn't
work in women's salons.
(AP, 2/21/11)
2011 Feb 23, Israeli tank fire
wounded 11 people in the Gaza Strip, including at least six militants.
The military said it opened fire after the militants detonated a bomb
targeting a passing Israeli patrol near the border and then fired
mortars at the soldiers.
(AP, 2/23/11)
2011 Feb 26, Israeli warplanes
bombed militant training camps in the Gaza Strip for a second time,
wounding four people, including a toddler. The raids came after
pre-dawn strikes against two other training camps of the hardline
Islamic Jihad group.
(AFP, 2/26/11)
2011 Feb 27, A rocket fired from
the Gaza Strip hit Israeli territory, raising Israel's alert level but
causing no damage or casualties.
(AFP, 2/27/11)
2011 Feb 28, Hamas moved swiftly
to break up a small demonstration in Gaza City where people called for
Palestinian reconciliation. Hamas police arrested a protest organizer,
seizing a tape from a German TV crew showing a security official
slapping the man.
(AP, 3/1/11)
2011 Feb 28, Israeli police
demolished two structures at an unauthorized West Bank outpost. This
was followed by new hints from PM Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel could
soon be forced to curb construction in the settlements.
(AP, 3/1/11)
2011 Mar 1, Suspected Jewish
settlers smashed the windows of 7 Palestinian cars and threw a fire
bomb at a Palestinian house in the West Bank.
(AP, 3/1/11)
2011 Mar 2, Jerusalem officials
approved new housing for Jews in the heart of an Arab neighborhood,
infuriating Palestinians who see the growing Jewish presence in the
city's war-won eastern sector as undermining their aspirations to
statehood. Israel closed the Karni Crossing east of Gaza City citing
security concerns. This left only the Kerem Shalom checkpoint for
commercial crossing.
(AP, 3/2/11)(SFC, 3/3/11, p.A2)
2011 Mar 7, Palestinian president
Mahmud Abbas travelled to Britain for a one-day visit to discuss the
stalled peace process with Israel.
(AFP, 3/7/11)
2011 Mar 8, Palestinian women took
to the streets to call for unity and an end to the Israeli occupation
in a series of rallies called to mark International Women's Day.
(AP, 3/8/11)
2011 Mar 8, Israeli PM Benjamin
Netanyahu vowed that Israeli troops would remain on the border between
Jordan and the West Bank under any future peace deal with the
Palestinians.
(AFP, 3/8/11)
2011 Mar 12, An Israeli family of
five, including two young children and a baby, were knifed to death
overnight as they slept at Itamar West Bank settlement.
(AP, 3/12/11)
2011 Mar 13, Israel said it has
approved the building of 300 to 500 apartments and settler homes. They
would take place in major West Bank settlement blocs that Israel
expects to hold on to in any final peace deal.
(AP, 3/13/11)
2011 Mar 15, Palestinian president
Mahmud Abbas proposed holding elections "as soon as possible" in order
to end the divide within the national movement. Thousands of
Palestinians thronged major squares in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank
to deliver an impassioned appeal to their leaders to end the
long-running feud that has divided the Palestinian people between two
rival governments.
(AFP, 3/15/11)(AP, 3/15/11)
2011 Mar 15, The Israeli navy
intercepted an Egyptian-bound ship carrying a large delivery of weapons
off the Mediterranean coast, saying the arms had been sent by Syria to
Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip. PM Netanyahu said the source
of the weaponry was Iran.
(AP, 3/15/11)
2011 Mar 15, Uruguay said it has
joined a string of South American nations in recognizing an independent
Palestinian state.
(AP, 3/16/11)
2011 Mar 16, Dozens of Hamas
police and security forces entered Gaza City's Al Azhar university and
began beating up students heading out for a protest.
(AFP, 3/16/11)
2011 Mar 16, Israeli aircraft
fired rockets at a Hamas training ground in the Gaza Strip, killing two
militants from the Islamist group.
(AFP, 3/16/11)
2011 Mar 19, Palestinian militants
in Gaza fired 54 rockets into Israel, the heaviest barrage in two
years. A Hamas official was killed and four civilians were wounded when
Israel hit back with tank fire and air strikes. The Israeli army opened
fire on two men who were spotted moving suspiciously toward a frontier
"no-go" zone. The bodies of Salah Abu Attwa and Imad Faraj, both 17,
were found the next day.
(AP, 3/19/11)(AFP, 3/20/11)
2011 Mar 20, Palestinian militants
fired a rocket into southern Israel, while Israeli troops killed two
Palestinians in a fresh wave of violence along the volatile border with
Gaza.
(AP, 3/20/11)
2011 Mar 22, The Israeli military
struck a series of Palestinian militant targets in the Gaza Strip,
damaging smuggling tunnels and suspected weapons sites. Palestinian
officials said 19 people were wounded. The shelling killed 3 children
and their uncle and wounded 13 other family members as they played
soccer in a backyard.
(AP, 3/22/11)(SFC, 3/23/11, p.A2)
2011 Mar 23, The Israeli
parliament approved a pair of laws that critics said were
discriminatory and aimed against the country's Arab minority. Arabs
made up roughly one-fifth of Israel's 7.7 million people. A bomb
exploded at a bus stop in central Jerusalem, killing a British woman
(59) and wounding 38 people in what appeared to be the first militant
attack in the city in several years. Two Grad rockets slammed into the
Israeli city of Beersheva, as Gaza militants vowed to strike deep into
the Jewish state after raids killed eight Gazans.
(AP, 3/23/11)(AFP, 3/23/11)(SFC, 3/24/11, p.A5)(SFC,
3/25/11, p.A3)
2011 Mar 23, South Africa’s
University of Johannesburg voted to sever ties with Israel's Ben-Gurion
University, acting on calls from hundreds of South African academics
and intellectuals for an academic boycott in a growing campaign to
isolate Israel for its attacks on Palestinians in Gaza. It will end a
25-year relationship on April 1, but professors can continue to work
individually with Ben-Gurion.
(AP, 3/24/11)
2011 Mar 24, Israeli aircraft
struck the Gaza Strip in response to militant rocket and mortar
attacks, stoking concerns that a grave new round of hostilities will
fill the vacuum left by an impasse in Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking.
At least 10 rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip.
(AP, 3/24/11)(SFC, 3/25/11, p.A3)
2011 Mar 25, A Palestinian was
shot and wounded by Israeli police after he injured a soldier in the
West Bank.
(AP, 3/25/11)
2011 Mar 25, Israel deployed
its newly developed "Iron Dome" rocket defense system for the first
time to defend its southern communities from attacks by Gaza militants
after a bloody week of Palestinian strikes and Israeli reprisals.
(AP, 3/25/11)
2011 Mar 26, Gaza militants fired
over 50 mortar shells into southern Israel. One rocket damaged a house.
(SSFC, 3/27/11, p.A2)
2011 Mar 27, Israel deployed a
cutting-edge rocket defense system on the outskirts of Beersheba. “Iron
Dome” is expected to be fully operational in a matter of months.
Israeli aircraft struck a Palestinian rocket squad in the Gaza Strip,
killing two militants as the military activated a new defense system to
shoot down incoming rockets.
(AP, 3/27/11)(SFC, 3/28/11, p.A2)
2011 Mar 29, India and Pakistan
agreed to set up a "terror hotline" to warn each other of possible
militant attacks, a move to build trust as the two nuclear foes get
their peace process back on track. India and Pakistan said they have
agreed to host Indian investigators looking into the 2008 Mumbai terror
attacks blamed on Pakistan-based militants.
(AFP, 3/29/11)(AP, 3/29/11)
2011 Mar 30, An Israeli aircraft
attacked a pair of Palestinian militants riding on a motorcycle in the
Gaza Strip, killing one and wounding the other.
(AP, 3/30/11)
2011 Apr 2, Israeli aircraft
killed 3 Palestinian militants who were planning to abduct Israelis
over the upcoming Jewish festival of Passover.
(AP, 4/2/11)
2011 Apr 4, An Israeli court
indicted Dirar Abu Sisi, a Palestinian engineer captured on Feb 19 in
Ukraine, on charges he was a senior Hamas operative who developed
sophisticated rockets for the Islamic militant group.
(AP, 4/4/11)
2011 Apr 4, Israel asked Facebook
to pull down a page with 350,000 “fans” calling for “the third
Palestinian uprising.” Facebook at first refused, but took the page
down a day later.
(SSFC, 4/10/11, p.F9)
2011 Apr 4, In the northern West
Bank Juliano Mer-Khamis, a well-known actor and theatre director born
of Jewish and Arab parents, died when a gunman opened fire on his car
in the Jenin refugee camp as he was driving home with his infant son
and the babysitter.
(AFP, 4/5/11)
2011 Apr 5, Palestinian
authorities said Mohammed Shalha (21) was killed by Israeli fire along
Gaza's volatile border. Relatives of Shalha said he was collecting
gravel along the border. The Israeli military said the man was armed,
and that soldiers opened fire after spotting him.
(AP, 4/5/11)
2011 Apr 6, Israeli aircraft
attacked two targets in the Gaza Strip, wounding four people, among
them a pregnant woman. A group of prominent Israelis, many of them
former defense chiefs, launched a new peace plan calling for the
establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.
(AFP, 4/6/11)
2011 Apr 6, Human Rights Watch
criticized Palestinian security forces in the West Bank and Gaza Strip
for what it said was an increase in attacks on local journalists,
including arbitrary detentions and abuse.
(AP, 4/6/11)
2011 Apr 7, Israeli tanks quickly
retaliated after an anti-tank missile fired from the Gaza Strip struck
a school bus in southern Israel, wounding two people, including one
child critically. The missile attack came hours after Israel carried
out a series of airstrikes against tunnels it says are used by
militants to smuggle weapons under the Egyptian border and carry out
attacks. The tank fire killed a 50-year-old man and wounded 7 other
people.
(AP, 4/7/11)
2011 Apr 8, Israeli aircraft and
ground forces struck Gaza, killing 9 Palestinians including 5 militia
fighters, in a surge of fighting sparked by a Palestinian rocket attack
on an Israeli school bus the day before.
(AP, 4/8/11)(SFC, 4/9/11, p.A3)
2011 Apr 9, Palestinian militants
fired over 30 rockets at southern Israel. Israeli warplanes killed 5
militants in the Gaza Strip.
(SSFC, 4/10/11, p.A4)
2011 Apr 10, A Palestinian
official said Israel and militant groups in Gaza have agreed to a
truce, as cross-border violence abated.
(Reuters, 4/10/11)
2011 Apr 11, Israel’s PM Benjamin
Netanyahu asked a government panel to put off final approval of 2,500
new apartments in east Jerusalem.
(AP, 4/11/11)
2011 Apr 12, Four Palestinians
suffocated while trying to repair a Gaza smuggling tunnel hit in an
Israeli airstrike last week. Human rights groups say about 160 workers
have been killed in the tunnels over the past three years.
(AP, 4/13/11)
2011 Apr 14, Britain's Guardian
newspaper published a statement by the co-authors of a scathing UN
report on Israel's conduct during its 2008-2009 offensive in Gaza. They
said they stand by their work, hitting back at critics who've pushed to
have its findings withdrawn after the report's lead author, Richard
Goldstone, aired doubts about one of its central conclusions.
(AP, 4/14/11)
2011 Apr 15, Italian activist
Vittorio Arrigoni (36) was found hanged in a Gaza apartment just hours
after he was abducted by an al-Qaida-inspired group. Hamas soon
arrested 4 people in connection with the killing, and sought others.
(AP, 4/15/11)(AP, 4/16/11)
2011 James Carroll authored
Jerusalem, Jerusalem: How the Ancient Ignited Our Modern World.”
(SSFC, 3/13/11, p.G7)
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