Timeline of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict
The neutrality of this article is disputed. The reader should keep in mind that the timeline below gives only a partial account of events.
This is a incomplete timeline of events in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. See also Israeli-Palestinian conflict external references for news stories.
Hilltop 26, an illegal Israeli settlement near the city of Hebron, is peacefully dismantled by the Israel Defence Force.
Rachel Corrie, an American member of the International Solidarity Movement is crushed by an Israel Defence Forces bulldozer, becoming the first ISM member to die in the conflict. Eyewitnesses allege murder, while Israel calls it a "regrettable accident".
Six Palestinians were killed and about 50 injured as Isreali forces entered the refugee camp Rafah in southern Gaza strip. A 12 year old boy and two elderly women were among the casualties. The incident started when armed Palestinians opened fire on a Isreali bulldozer, according to the news agency AP.
Isreali soldiers killed two Palestinian boys and Palestinians killed one Israeli soldier in a shooting in Nablus. In Gaza a Palestinian man was killed as Isrealis answered to an ambush.
At least three Palestinians killed as Isreali helicopters open fire on two cars in the city of Gaza.
Marwan Barghouti, captured April 15, was indicted in a civilian Israeli court.
Israeli forces killed 6 Palestinians in response to the attacks of August 4. Israeli undercover soldiers killed four Palestinian militants and wounded three in a gun-fight in Tulkarm. An Israeli sniper killed Hussam Hamdan, a member of Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Israeli troops and 30 tanks pushed into northern Gaza, killing a Palestinian policeman.
A Palestinian suicide bombing claimed 9 lives, near Safed; a shooting attack in Jerusalem killed two; an attack upon a Israeli settlement family killed the parents. Not all of the victims of these attacks were Israeli Jews; some were Israeli Arabs and Druze.
In an interview with the British newspaper the Independent, Yasser Arafat's chief political representative in Jerusalem, Professor Sari Nusseibeh, condemned suicide bombings as "immoral". He said that the Palestinians have a right to resist the Israeli occupation but that violence was not the way. "The use of violence as a means of solving problems is demeaning to us as human beings", he said. "Attacking civilians of any kind anywhere is totally unacceptable". While this is only a minority view, commentators considered it significant that a senior representative of the PLO denounced all violence against civilians, including against Israeli settlers. No other Palestinian leader declared support to a non-violent conclusion of the conflict.
Fifteen Palestinians (including nine children) were killed, by an American-built F-16 Israeli jet which bombed a densely populated residential area of Gaza City. Among the innocent children killed, Mohammed al-Huwaiti was aged 4, his brother Subhi was aged 3, Ayman Mattar was only 1 and little Dunya Rami Mattar only 3 months. The victims included Salah Shehade (the leader of Hamas's military wing, the Izz ad-Din el-Qasam Brigades), and more than 100 others were wounded. The United Nations condemned this as a flagrant violation of international law. Two days later, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, Israel's minister of defense, claimed that Shehade had been "engaged" in planning an act of "mega-terror", involving the blowing-up of a truck loaded with a ton of explosives and capable of leading to hundreds of Israelis dead.
Although Ariel Sharon described Shahade's death, as "one of our biggest successes", some claim that it did not serve Israel's interest so well, as it came a few hours after the spiritual leader of Hamas, Ahmed Yassin, offered to halt all suicide attacks in exchange for full Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, in effect to the 1967 borders. However, shortly after the strike, masked Hamas militants vowed to wreak revenge on Israel, so it seemed unlikely that his offer still stood. It is not clear to what extent Yassin was committed to his offer.
9 people killed (one of them an infant born immediately after the attack) in a shooting attack near the settlement of Emmanuel. A similar attack, also fatal, happened at the same place just 7 months earlier. A day later, three civilians killed in a suicide bombing on the Tel-Aviv Old Bus Station.
A mother, her three sons and a neighbor coming to her rescue killed in an infiltration into the Itamar settlement.
19 people killed and 74 injured in a suicide bombing on the 32A bus in Jerusalem. The next day, 7 more killed in a suicide bombing on a crowded bus stop in the French Hill area.
14.5-year-old girl killed in a suicide bombing in the coastal city of Herzliya.
A civilian, a couple and their unborn baby all killed in an infiltration into the Karmei Zur settlement.
17 people killed and 38 injured on a suicide bombing (by the means of a kamikaze-driven car) of the 830 bus on the Megiddo junction.
Three high school yeshiva students killed in an infiltration into the Itamar settlement.
Two people killed in a suicide bombing in Rishon le-Zion. Five days later, an infant and her grandmother killed in a suicide bombing in Petah Tikva.
A suicide bomber disguised as an Israeli soldier kills at least two Israelis and wounds more than 50 in Netanya.
Shin Bet officials announces they have arrested six Israelis for conspiring to bomb Palestinian schools in April, including Noam Federman, a leader of the Kach movement of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, and Menashe Levenger, son of Rabbi Moshe Levenger, a founder of the Hebron settlement.
Muhammad al-Madani, governor of Bethlehem, leaves the Church of the Nativity.
Israel calls up additional reserve forces and moves tanks into position for an expected incursion into Gaza in retaliation for the most recent suicide bombing.
A palestinian suicide bomber badly injures himself near Megiddo, southeast of Haifa, when the explosives he was carrying go off prematurely.
A Palestinian suicide bomber kills 15 and wounds 58 in a billiards and gambling club in Rishon le Zion at approximately 11 pm local time, while Ariel Sharon is meeting with President Bush in Washington D.C.
In April, a total of 311 Palestinians and 58 Israelis were killed, most during Israel's West Bank offensive.
A suicide bomber kills 4 Israelis and 2 Chinese workers at the entrance to the Mahaneh Yehuda market in Jerusalem.
A bus bombing kills 8 Israelis in Haifa.
Israeli troops occupy Bethlehem. Dozens of armed Palestinian gunmen, many of whom Israel has identified as terrorists, occupy the Church of the Nativity and hold the church and its clergy hostage.
Israeli troops exchange gunfire with guards of Yasir Arafat in Ramallah. A suicide bomber identified as Shadi Tubasi, a resident of the refugee camp Jenin, kills 15 and wounds more than 40 in an Arab-owned restaurant in Haifa. Later, a suicide bomber wounds four members of an intensive care unit, one critically, in a paramedics' dispatch station in Efrat. In the past 18 months, according to the Associated Press, 1262 people have been killed on the Palestinian side and on 401 on the Israeli side; in March, 259 Palestinians and 130 Israelis were killed.
A suicide bomber explodes in My Coffee Shop, a Tel Aviv café at around 9:30 PM local time, wounding 32 people. President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell (USA) call on Yasir Arafat to condemn the wave of suicide bombings in Arabic, to his own people. Israeli spokespeople make similar demands. Arafat goes on television and swears in Arabic that he will "die a martyr, a martyr, a martyr". Members of Arafat's personal Al-Aqsa brigade state that they will refuse any form of cease-fire, and that they will continue suicide bombings of civilians in Israel.
Israeli forces begin Operation Defensive Shield, an incursion into the West Bank.
At the start of Passover, a suicide bomber kills 28 and injures more than 100 in the Park Hotel in Netanya during seder.
A bus bombing kills 7 Israelis at the Musmus junction in Umm el-Fahm.
Israeli forces continue the raid on Ramallah and other West Bank towns. A helicopter attack near Tulkarmkills Mutasen Hammad and two bystanders. A bomb in Gaza destroys an Israeli tank which was escorting settlers, killing 3 soldiers and wounding 2. A taxi in Tulkarm explodes, killing 4 Palestinians. Palestinians execute two accused collaborators in Bethlehem, planning to hang one of the corpses near the Church of the Nativity until Palestinian police stop them.
A. Raffaele Ciriello, an Italian photographer, is killed by Israeli forces in Ramallah.
The U.S. pushes through the passage of U.N. Resolution 1397 by the Security Council, demanding an "immediate cessation of all acts of violence" and "affirming a vision of a region where two states, Israel and Palestine, live side by side within secure and recognized borders".
Israeli forces invade the Jabaliya refugee camp and Ramallah, killing at least 17 residents and wounding 45.
A suicide bomber kills 11 Israelis at Cafe Moment in Jerusalem, across the street from the official residence of Ariel Sharon.
A suicide bomber kills 9 Israelis in an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood in Jerusalem.
Tourism Minister Rechavam Ze'evy is assassinated in Jerusalem by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Ariel Sharon is elected Prime Minister.
Prime Minister Ehud Barak resigns.
Israeli Opposition Leader Ariel Sharon visits the Temple Mount which is administered by a Muslim organization. The visit results in violent confrontations between Muslims and Israeli Police.
The Camp David Summit between Ehud Barak and Yassir Arafat demonstrates both parties' unwillingness to make futher comprimizes.
The Israeli Army withdraws from southern Lebanon, in compliance with U.N. Resolution 425.
Ehud Barak is elected Prime Minister.
Benjamin Netanyahu and Yassir Arafat sign the Wye River Memorandum at a summit in Maryland hosted by Bill Clinton.
Benjamin Netanyahu is elected Prime Minister.
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated in Tel Aviv by Jewish extremist Yigal Amir. Shimon Peres assumes the position of acting Prime Minister.
Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip signed in Washington, DC.
Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Yassir Arafat are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Israeli forces withdraw from Jericho and Gaza City in compliance with the Oslo accords.
Yassir Arafat and Yitzak Rabin sign the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government in Oslo.
Yitzak Rabin elected Prime Minister.
Tel Aviv is hit by 40 Scud missles lauched by Iraq during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
The First Intifada begins. Violence continues until the 1993 Oslo Accords.
The Israeli Army withdraws from most of Lebanon.
Israel enters southern Lebanon to remove PLO forces.
Heavily armed PLO forces move into southern Lebanon, which they use as a base for attacks against Israel.
Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and sign the Camp David Accord, with Israel agreeing to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula and to a framework for future negotiation over the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Menachem Begin is elected Prime Minister.
The Yom Kippur War. Syria and Egypt attack Israeli forces in the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula.
The Six-Day War. Israel launches a pre-emptive strike agaist the Egyptian Air Force on suspicion that Egypt and Syria are plannig to invade. Israel defeat the combined forces of Egypt, Syria and Jordan and capture the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip from Egypt, East Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria.
The Palestine Liberation Organization is founded in Cairo with Yassir Arafat as its leader.