January 3: US Mideast envoy General Anthony Zinni returns to the Middle East. January 3: Israel says it will begin to pull out of parts of the West Bank, but Palestinian officials condemn the announcement as empty propaganda. Palestinians say Israeli tanks remained stationed with 100 meters of the Palestinian Authority's headquarters in Ramallah. January 3: Israel Defense Forces (IDF) navy and air force units capture a Palestinian Authority-owned freighter loaded with 50 tons of weapons. The Israeli government accuses the Palestinian Authority of being behind the arms shipment, which includes Katyusha rockets, rifles, mortar shells, mines and a variety of anti-tank missiles. The ship is captured in the Red Sea about 300 miles south of the Israeli port of Eilat January 4: Israel issues a West Bank security plan. January 9: Four Israeli soldiers and two Palestinians die in a firefight between Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen at a fortified Israeli army post near where the borders of Israel, Gaza, and Egypt converge. January 10: Israeli bulldozers destroy 32 homes in the Rafah refugee camp, the home of the two militants shot dead the day before following their attack on an Israeli army post. January 13: Israeli missiles fired from the sea hit Palestinian naval targets near Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat's office in Gaza City. January 13: Fifty-eight homes are demolished and 511 people are left homeless in the Rafah refugee camp, located in southern Gaza. The house demolitions spark a debate in the Cabinet. January 14: Raed Mahmed Raef Karmi, leader of the Al-Aqsa Brigade in Tulkarm, is assassinated. January 14: An Israeli soldier is killed near the Shavei Shomron settlement west of Nablus. January 15: One person is killed and another wounded in a shooting attack against an Israeli vehicle near the Givat Zeev patrol station north of Jerusalem. January 17: A bombing attack takes place in a banquet hall in Hadera. Six people are killed and 26 wounded. January 18: Israeli F-16 fighter jets drop eight missiles on the compound of the Palestinian governor of Tulkarem. January 18: Israeli troops blow up the building housing the headquarters of the Voice of Palestine radio service and some Palestinian television studio facilities. January 21: Israeli troops take control of Tulkarm and occupy almost one-third of Ramallah. January 22: Two Israelis are killed and 36 wounded in a shooting attack in downtown Jerusalem. January 23: Hearings in Belgium into whether Ariel Sharon should stand trial for war crimes draw to a close as the Israeli prime minister's lawyers argue that their client is innocent. January 23: Hezbollah guerrillas fire missiles from Lebanon at Israeli outposts in the disputed Shebaa Farms area. January 24: A Hamas activist is killed and two other Palestinians are seriously wounded when an Israeli helicopter gunship attacks their car in southern Gaza. January 25: 25 people are wounded in a suicide bomber attack outside a cafe on a pedestrian mall near Tel Aviv's old bus station. January 25: Israeli fighter planes strike Palestinian security installations in Gaza and the West Bank. January 26: Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat renews his call for a cease-fire with Israel, but promises to resist increasing Israeli and U.S. pressure on the Palestinian Authority. January 27: A resident of Jerusalem is killed and over 150 people are injured in a suicide bombing on Jaffa Road, in the center of Jerusalem. January 28: European Union foreign ministers urge Israel to regard Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as a "partner" to work towards peace in the Mideast. January 28: Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat Monday dismisses a top security official and issues arrest warrants for two other Palestinian officials in connection with the arms shipment. January 29: Israeli forces arrest a senior Islamic Jihad activist and two other Palestinians suspected of terrorist activity in the West Bank village of Irthas, south of Bethlehem. January 30: Two members of the Israeli security service are lightly wounded in an attack by a suicide bomber in the central town of Taibeh, near the West Bank. January 31: Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer sends a message through Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak Wednesday saying that if Syria drops its support for Hezbollah guerrillas, Israel will be willing to resume talks. February 1: In an interview with the Jerusalem daily newspaper Ma'ariv, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon says he regrets that Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat was not killed when Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, but says Arafat can still be a partner for peace. February 3: Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat condemns terror attacks against Israeli civilians and calls for peace talks "as partners, not as subjects" with the Jewish state. In a column published on the op-ed page of New York Times he details what he calls "the Palestinian vision of peace." February 4: Violence continues in the Middle East as five members of a Palestinian militant group are killed in car blast near Rafah in southern Gaza. February 5: Three people are killed in a shooting attack in the Jewish settlement of Hamra in the West Bank. February 6: Israel launches an airstrike against a target in the Palestinian city of Nablus. February 8: In a series of operations, the Israel Defense Forces sweep into Palestinian towns and villages, arresting at least three people and tightening the encirclement of the West Bank town of Nablus. February 10: French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine presents an outline of a plan that calls for the immediate declaration of a Palestinian state and Palestinian elections, even before a cease-fire is reached in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. February 11: Israel launches a series of airstrikes in Gaza and an armored incursion into the West Bank in response to the firing of a Palestinian-built Qassam-2 rocket into Israel the day before. February 13: Israeli troops launch the as yet most extensive military operation in the Gaza Strip in 16 months of fighting, a midnight raid on three Palestinian towns and a refugee camp. February 14: The international court of justice rules that past and present government leaders cannot be tried for war crimes by a foreign state, ending the possibility that a Belgian court can try Ariel Sharon. February 15: Israeli forces enter Palestinian towns in northern and central Gaza and hold them for 24 hours in response to the firing of two Palestinian-built Qassam-2 rockets into Israel from Gaza. February 15: The head of an Israeli commando unit is killed after a wall collapses next to a bulldozed house and Palestinian militants blow up a tank. Israeli jets attack the Jabalya refugee camp in retaliation, killing a policeman. February 16: Two teenagers are killed and about 30 people are wounded when a suicide bomber blows himself up at a pizzeria in the Karnei Shomron shopping mall in Samaria. A third person subsequently dies of his injuries. February 17: Israeli police shoot and kill a Palestinian in a gun battle near an army base in northern Israel, and another Palestinian dies nearby when a car explodes. February 18: A Bedouin policeman from the Galilee is killed by a suicide bomber whom he stops for questioning on the Ma'ale Adumim - Jerusalem road. February 18: Israeli air force F-16s attack the Palestinian police building in Ramallah. February 19: Eight Palestinians are killed in missile strikes, bombing raids and gun battles. February 19: The Israeli Supreme Court issues a restraining order forbidding the army from destroying 20 Palestinian houses in Gaza until the court rules on the issue. February 19: An influential group of around 1,000 top-level reserve generals, colonels and security officials calls on the Israeli government to get out of Gaza, dismantle 50 Jewish settlements, recognize a Palestinian state, and redeploy troops along a border between Israel and the Palestinians. February 20: Non-Orthodox Jews both inside and outside Israel celebrate a historic court ruling recognizing Reform and Conservative conversions as valid and binding upon the Jewish state. February 20: Six Israeli soldiers are killed in a commando-style raid by Palestinian guerillas on an Israeli army checkpoint at Ein Ariq, near Ramallah. Reprisal strikes leave 16 Palestinians dead. February 21: Prime Minister Ariel Sharon addresses the nation. He announces his government will set up buffer zones aimed at achieving "security separation" to protect Israelis from Palestinian attacks. February 22: Israeli troops pull out of positions in the Gaza Strip, but as tensions appear to ease a motorist is shot dead and details emerged of a foiled suicide bombing in the West Bank. February 22: A poll conducted for the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, Israel's largest Hebrew daily, shows that 61% of Israelis are dissatisfied with Prime Minister Sharon's performance. February 24: Israel grants Yasser Arafat permission to travel in Ramallah. February 25: A policewoman is killed and ten civilians are wounded in a shooting attack in Neve Yaakov, Jerusalem. February 25: A 15-year-old Palestinian girl wielding a knife is shot dead at an Israeli checkpoint near the West Bank town of Tulkarm. February 26: Israel discusses the Saudi Peace Proposal. February 27: A Palestinian suicide bomber blows herself up at the Maccabim roadblock on the Jerusalem - Modi'in highway, injuring three policemen. February 27: Europe's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, meets Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to explore the peace initiative. February 27: The owner of the Bashkevitz factory in Atarot, Jerusalem, is killed by one of his Palestinian employees. February 28: An additional commercial television channel, Channel 10, is introduced. February 28: The Israeli army storms the Balata refugee camp, the biggest in the West Bank, strafing it from the air, a mountain top and other strategic positions. A simultaneous invasion of the Jenin refugee camp marks the most concerted effort to crush Palestinian militants on their home terrain since the uprising began. March 1: Israel launches its largest assault on Palestinian refugee camps since the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict began. The Israeli assaults targeted two camps -- one in Balata, near Nablus; and another in Jenin. Helicopters and tanks are involved in the attacks, but much of the fighting is being done on foot in the camps, which are crisscrossed by narrow alleys. The Israel Defense Forces say the camps "are central bases for terrorist factors responsible for the murder of scores of Israeli civilians." March 2: Eleven people are killed and over 50 are injured in a suicide bombing near a yeshiva in the ultra-Orthodox Beit Yisrael neighborhood in the center of Jerusalem where people have gathered for a bar mitzvah celebration. March 3: Ten Israelis - including seven soldiers - are shot dead by a lone Palestinian sniper. Another Israeli soldier is killed and four others injured in an attack in the Gaza Strip. March 4: Seventeen Palestinians, including five children, are killed in Ramallah as Israel steps up military pressure. Six Palestinians, including two children, die when a car belonging to a Hamas leader is hit. Fighting in the Jenin and Rafah refugee camps that claims 11 lives. March 5: Three Israelis are killed in a shooting attack in the "Seafood Restaurant" in Tel Aviv. March 5: A resident of Upper Nazareth is killed and a large number of people are injured, when a suicide bomber explodes in an Egged bus as it enters the Afula central bus station. March 5: Palestinians fire rockets at the Israeli town of Sderot, near Gaza, injuring two children. March 6: Seven Palestinians are killed as Israel shells the Gaza Strip in one of the most intense assaults on the territory since the current intifada began. March 7: A suicide bomber blows himself up in the lobby of a hotel in the commercial center on the outskirts of Ariel in Samaria. 15 people are injured. March 8: In the deadliest day of fighting since the intifada began 18 months ago, Israeli troops kill 40 Palestinians in an assault on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Earlier, a Palestinian militant had opened fire on a military academy in the Jewish settlement of Atzmona in the Gaza Strip, killing five teenage officer cadets were killed and wounding another 24. March 9: 11 people are killed and 54 injured when a suicide bomber explodes in the crowded Moment Cafe at the corner of Aza and Ben Maimon streets in the Rehavia neighborhood in the center of Jerusalem. March 9: A gun and grenade attack in the Margoa Hotel in Netanya kills two people and wounds 50. March 11: Israeli tanks and troops storm a Palestinian refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, unleashing a ferocious firefight in which 17 Palestinians are killed and more than 50 wounded. March 12: 20,000 Israeli troops invade refugee camps in the Gaza Strip and reoccupy the West Bank town of Ramallah. At least 31 Palestinians are killed and hundreds more ordered out of their homes. Seven Israelis are killed when a Palestinian gunman opens fire on a kibbutz near the border with Lebanon. March 12: The United Nations security council endorses for the first time an independent Palestinian state, and the UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, accuses Israel of "illegal occupation" of Palestinian land. March 13: In Ramallah, Israeli machine gun fire claims the life of a 42-year-old Italian photographer, Raffaele Ciriello, 42. He is the first foreign journalist killed in the 18-month intifada. March 14: US envoy General Anthony Zinni arrives in Israel in the hopes of restarting the peace process after a week of unprecedented violence. March 17: A suicide bomber blows himself up near an Egged bus at the French Hill junction in northern Jerusalem. 25 people are lightly injured March 18: The US vice president, Dick Cheney, arrives for talks with Ariel Sharon, and makes a qualified offer to meet later with Yasser Arafat. March 20: Seven people are killed and about 30 wounded in a suicide bombing of an Egged bus traveling from Tel Aviv to Nazareth near Afula. March 21: Three people are killed and 86 injured in a suicide bombing on King George Street in the center of Jerusalem. March 25: US President George Bush asks Israel to release Yasser Arafat from his confinement in Ramallah to allow him to attend the Arab League meeting. March 26: Yasser Arafat announces he will not attend the Arab summit as Ariel Sharon makes new demands, including asking the US to sanction his permanent exile if there are further terrorist attacks while he is in Beirut. March 27: 30 people are killed and 140 injured in a suicide bombing in the Park Hotel in Netanya, in the midst of the Passover holiday seder with 250 guests. March 28: The Arab League summit comes to a final agreement: it promises Israel peace, security and normal relations in return for a full withdrawal for Arab lands occupied since 1967, the establishment of a Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital and a "fair solution" for the 3.8 million Palestinian refugees. March 29: Two people are killed and 28 injured when a female suicide bomber blows herself up in the Kiryat Yovel supermarket in Jerusalem. March 29: Israeli tanks and bulldozers attack Yasser Arafat's Ramallah compound, the Palestinian leader is confined to the basement and vows that he would rather die than surrender. It is first stage of what the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, says would be a "long and complicated war that knows no borders". March 30: US president, George Bush, urges Yasser Arafat - still under siege - to do more to clamp down on terrorism, but urges Israel to remember that a peaceful solution must be found to the crisis. The US also backs a UN security council resolution calling on Israel to withdraw from the Palestinian territories. March 30: One person is killed and about 30 are wounded in a suicide bombing in a cafe on the corner of Allenby and Bialik streets in Tel Aviv. March 31: 15 people are killed and over 40 injured in a suicide bombing in the Matza restaurant in Haifa. March 31: An MDA paramedic is seriously injured along with three other people in a suicide bombing at the emergency medical center in Efrat, in the Gush Etzion bloc south of Jerusalem. March: The Union of European Football Associations prohibits teams from playing in Israel after a terrorist attack rocks a restaurant the night before an important match between Hapoel Tel Aviv and Milan. April 1: A police officer is killed in Jerusalem when a suicide bomber heading toward the city blows himself up in his car after being stopped at a roadblock. April 1: Tanks are put outside Tulkarem and Bethlehem, Palestinian collaborators are lynched by militants and, in an ominous sign, Iranian-backed Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon fired a Katyusha rocket into Israel. Yasser Arafat spends his fourth day under siege, with George Bush calling on him to do more to "denounce" terror. April 2: Israeli warplanes, armour and infantry launch a huge attack on Bethlehem. Gunships fire missiles into a number of targets around Manger Square and the Church of the Nativity with witnesses describing desperate close quarter fighting in the old part of Bethlehem. April 3: The attack on Bethlehem and siege of Ramallah continue as diplomatic tensions grow. The Vatican denounces the military operation on the West Bank and Egypt limits its ties with Israel. More rockets are fired into northern Israel by Hezbollah fighters on the Lebanese border and Syria announces it is to deploy 20,000 troops in the country. April 4: US president, George Bush, tells Prime Minister Sharon to end the West Bank occupation and blames Palestinian leader Arafat for failing to halt a wave of suicide bombings. There are fears of wider conflict as the army pushes on to Nablus, the Bethlehem standoff goes on and troops enter Hebron. April 5: Against a backdrop of continuing gun battles in major West Bank towns, General Zinni, the US envoy, becomes the first international representative to meet Palestinian leader Arafat since he was confined to his Ramallah headquarters last week. West Bank residents are once more forced to stay indoors. April 6: The Guardian publishes an open letter signed by 120 university professors, including 90 from Britain, calling for a moratorium on cultural and research links with Israel at a European or national level, "unless and until Israel abides by UN resolutions and opens serious peace negotiations with the Palestinians, along the lines proposed in many peace plans..." April 6: President Bush calls on Israel to withdraw "without delay" from the West Bank cities. He reinforces the message with a 20-minute phone call to the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon. Meanwhile, bloody fighting rages between Israeli forces and Palestinians and Israel launches artillery attacks and air raids in southern Lebanon. April 8: Ariel Sharon, says he will complete his military operation against Yasser Arafat's "regime of terror", a move that directly defies US calls to pull troops out of the West Bank immediately. Israeli soldiers open fire on Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity. US Secretary of State, Colin Powell,is publicly rebuked by the Moroccan leader, King Mohammed VI, for his week-long delay in going to Israel. April 9: Thirteen soldiers are killed in a West Bank battle, the Israeli army's single biggest loss of life since the fighting began. The men are killed in a booby-trapped building during an assault on Palestinian militants in the Jenin refugee camp. April 10: Eight people are killed and 22 injured in a suicide attack on an Egged bus en route from Haifa to Jerusalem. April 10: An Armenian Orthodox monk is shot and seriously wounded at Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity compound, where more than 200 Palestinian gunmen are besieged by the Israeli army. In the worst violence in the area since Israel withdrew from south Lebanon two years earlier, Hezbollah guerrillas exchange fire with Israeli troops and war planes along the Lebanese border. Hundreds of Palestinians surrender in al-Ayn refugee camp after 13 days of intense battles with Israeli troops. April 11: Israeli forces sweep into two towns and a refugee camp in the West Bank but pull out of 24 other villages, sending mixed signals ahead of the arrival of Colin Powell. US Secretary of State Colin Powell, insists that a negotiated settlement to the Middle East conflict is the only way to secure lasting peace in the region. April 12: Six people are killed and 104 wounded when a woman suicide bomber detonates a powerful charge at a bus stop on Jaffa Road at the entrance to Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda market. April 14: Prime Minister Ariel Sharon offers Palestinian gunmen trapped in an armed standoff in Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity the choice of surrendering and being tried in an Israeli military court, or going into exile "forever". April 15: The leader of the Palestinian intifada, Marwan Barghouti, is seized by Israeli special forces from a house not far from Yasser Arafat's compound in Ramallah. Meanwhile journalists enter the Jenin refugee camp, seeing a "silent wasteland". April 17: Colin Powell leaves the Middle East with neither a truce nor any evidence that Israel is ending its siege of Palestinian cities in the West Bank. April 18: Israel gives its fullest account of its soldiers' conduct in Jenin so far, admitting 10% of the buildings in the city's refugee camp had been leveled during the fighting, but denying in the strongest terms that they had overseen a "massacre". April 19: George Bush calls for a probe into civilian casualties in the assault on the Jenin refugee camp. April 20: Israel says it has nothing to hide from a UN investigation into Palestinian accusations of a massacre in the camp. April 21: Israeli tanks and armour redeploy around the cities of Nablus and Ramallah as Ariel Sharon says the first stage of the offensive has ended. April 22: The International Committee of the Red Cross accuses Israel of breaching the Geneva conventions by recklessly endangering civilian lives and property during its assault on the Jenin refugee camp. April 23: Three 14-year-old Palestinian classmates are shot dead by Israeli soldiers after they try to mount a suicide attack on a Jewish settlement in Gaza. April 23: Talks begin to end the siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. Meanwhile Israel blocks a proposed UN investigation into the fighting in the Jenin refugee camp and three suspected informers are killed by Palestinian militants in Hebron. April 25: Yasser Arafat moves to end his month-long incarceration within his Ramallah headquarters by putting on trial and sentencing four Palestinian militants wanted by Israel for assassinating a cabinet minister last year. Nine young Palestinians leave the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem. April 26: Israeli forces raid the West Bank city of Qalqiliya, defying fresh calls from George Bush to complete their pullout from reoccupied Palestinian areas. April 27: Two Palestinian guerrillas, reportedly dressed in Israeli army uniforms, shoot dead four Israelis, including a child, in a settlement near Hebron. April 28: Prime Minister Ariel Sharon bows to intense pressure from George Bush to end the stand-off in Ramallah and backs down from his previous position that the six wanted militants in Yasser Arafat's compound must be handed over to Israel. Instead he accepts a plan putting them under US and British guard in a Palestinian prison. But the impasse grows over the proposed UN mission to Jenin. April 29: British and American experts begin talks with Palestinian officials in Ramallah to arrange the transfer of six prisoners to joint UK and US custody in return for Israel lifting its month-long siege of Yasser Arafat's headquarters. In Hebron nine Palestinians, including six civilians, are killed when Israel attacks a security compound in the city. Israeli snipers kill a Palestinian in the Church of the Nativity. April 30: Israel again refuses to cooperate with the UN inquiry into the fighting in the Jenin refugee camp. Meanwhile, 27 Palestinians leave the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. May 1: Yasser Arafat's five-month imprisonment in his Ramallah headquarters draws to an end as the Palestinians hand over six high-profile prisoners to Anglo-American custody. May 5: A deal to end the siege of the Church of the Nativity is brokered - the fighters will be released with the allegedly most hardened going into exile in Italy and the others to Gaza. May 7: The deal stalls as it emerges Italy has not agreed to the exile plan. May 7: 16 people are killed and 55 wounded in a crowded game club in Rishon LeZion, when a suicide bomber detonates a powerful charge in the 3rd floor, causing part of the building to collapse. May 9: A new deal to end the Bethlehem siege is drawn up by EU negotiators that would see the fighters exiled in several countries after first flying to Cyprus. Ending the siege is widely seen as a precursor to an Israeli military offensive in Gaza in retaliation for the suicide attack on the snooker hall. May 10: The siege ends. Thirteen Palestinian fighters are flown to Cyprus. May 12: Mr Sharon loses a Likud vote to his rival Benjamin Netanyahu: after hours of debate the prime minister's party rejects forever the setting up of Palestinian state in land currently occupied by Israel. May 12: It is revealed that Israel has thwarted a Jewish extremist plot to blow up a Palestinian hospital and a girls' school in Arab east Jerusalem, arresting the bombers as they attempted to install their high-powered explosives. May 14: A report by an Israeli human rights group says the Jewish state has secretly grabbed 42% of Palestinian land in the West Bank for illegal settlement activity. May 15: In a speech to the Palestinian assembly Palestinian leader Arafat promises reform and elections in an attempt to win over his people and end criticism at home and abroad of his corruption-riddled administration. May 17: Israel makes a new raid on the Jenin refugee camp. May 19: Three people are killed and 19 injured when a suicide bomber, disguised as a soldier, blows himself up in the market in Netanya. May 20: A suicide bomber kills himself after Border policemen approach him for questioning at a bus stop. There are no other injuries. May 20: Israel claims that the Palestinian Authority has been diverting almost ten million dollars a month from money provided by international donors. Papers seized during raids on its buildings purports to show that money received in dollars from the EU and Arab countries was converted by the PA into shekels at an exchange rate that was well adrift of the normal official rate. May 21: Prime Minister Sharon fires four ultra-orthodox ministers from his coalition government after they failed to back his austere budget cuts in parliament. May 22: Two people are killed and about 32 wounded when a suicide bomber detonates himself in the Rothschild Street downtown pedestrian mall in Rishon LeZion. May 23: A bomb explodes underneath a fuel truck at the Pi Glilot fuel depot north of el Aviv. The truck bursts into flames, but the blaze is quickly contained. May 24: A security guard opens fire on a terrorist attempting to ram a car bomb into the Studio 49 Disco in Tel Aviv. The terrorist is killed and five Israelis are slightly injured when the bomb explodes prematurely. May 27: A grandmother and her infant granddaughter are killed and 37 people are injured when a suicide bomber detonates himself near an ice cream parlor outside a shopping mall in Petah Tikvah. May 31: Israeli troops enter the West Bank city of Nablus, while the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is reported to have signed a law reform package which is a framework for a Palestinian constitution. May: Rabbi Shlomo Amar, a close associate of the Shas Party's spiritual leader, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, and recently named chief rabbi of Tel Aviv, visits Ethiopia to check the Jewishness of the Falash Mura, people who once had been Jews or whose ancestors had been Jewish. June 5: 17 people are killed and 38 injured when a car packed with a large quantity of explosives strikes an Egged bus traveling from Tel Aviv to Tiberias at the Meggido junction near Afula. June 6: A six-hour wrecking mission by Israeli tanks flattens Yasser Arafat's Ramallah headquarters. No building in the compound remains intact - not even Arafat's bedroom, which sports a large crater in the wall. June 7: Tanks return to Jenin and Israeli forces also patrol the southern edge of Bethlehem but do not enter the town. June 10: Israeli tanks and troops make a pre-dawn raid on Ramallah and declare a curfew. US President George Bush backs Israel's demand that the Palestinian leadership be overhauled before meaningful peace talks can begin. Bush says he will not lay down a timetable for the creation of a Palestinian state. June 11: A 14-year-old girl is killed and 15 others are wounded when a Palestinian suicide bomber sets off a pipe bomb at a shwarma restaurant in Haifa. June 17: A Palestinian suicide bomber blows himself up near a group of Israeli border police, killing himself but causing no injury to bystanders. June 18: 19 people are killed and 74 injured in a suicide bombing at the Patt junction in an Egged bus traveling from Gilo to the center of Jerusalem. June 19: Seven people are killed and 50 injured when a suicide bomber blows himself up at a crowded bus stop and hitchhiking post at the French Hill intersection in northern Jerusalem. June 20: Yasser Arafat orders his people not to attack Israeli civilians. He said recent suicide bombs "have given the Israeli government the excuse to reoccupy our land". June 21: Four civilians who inadvertently broke a curfew in Jenin are "mistakenly" shot dead by the Israeli army. Hours earlier five Israeli settlers were killed in the West Bank. June 25: US President Bush says he supports a two-state solution to the conflict but demands the Palestinians reform their institutions, set up a western-style democracy and replace their leader. There is, however, no clear timetable for the creation of a Palestinian state, no call for Israel to withdraw from the West Bank and no move to send international monitors. (Full speech.) June 27: The Israeli army warns Palestinian fighters sheltering in a Hebron compound - a former British military base - to come out or face a raid by its soldiers. The compound is already under attack from machine guns and helicopter gunships. June 28: Israeli troops attempt to demolish the building with a bulldozer. June 29: An explosion destroys the building. Israel says that the 15 men it believes to be inside are dead. June 30: Israeli security forces begin the removal of two illegal Jewish settler outposts in the West Bank after Defense Minister, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, vows to dismantle the communities. July 1: Hamas vows to redouble its suicide bombing attacks after a raid by Israeli special forces kills its most senior bomb-maker. July 2: Yasser Arafat fires two of his most senior security chiefs - Jibril Rajoub, effectively head of security in the West Bank, and Ghazi Jibali, the police chief in Gaza. July 9: The government moves to silence a Palestinian peace activist who endeared himself to Israelis late last year when he suggested Palestinians give up the right of return for refugees as part of a peace deal. Dr Sari Nusseibeh, a philosopher and negotiator at the Madrid peace conference, has boxes of files, student and personnel records and research carted away from al-Quds University in east Jerusalem. July 16: Nine people are killed and 20 injured in a terrorist attack on a Dan bus traveling from Bnei Brak to Emanuel in the West Bank. An explosive chart is detonated next to the bullet-resistant bus. The terrorists wait in an ambush, wearing IDF uniforms and opening fire on the bus. July 17: Five people are killed and about 40 are injured in a double suicide bombing near the old central bus station in Tel Aviv. July 17: Israel bombs what the army says was an arms factory in Gaza and Israeli soldiers kill one of the militants suspected of the West Bank bus ambush. A soldier is also killed during the gun battle. July 19: The Israeli army rounds up 21 relatives of suspected militants for exile and blows up their homes. July 23: Salah Shehade, prominent Hamas leader is killed, when Israel drops a one-ton bomb on his home in Gaza. 14 other people are killed in the attack. July 23: Ariel Sharon hails the raid as a great success as international condemnation mounts. It emerges that Palestinian militants linked to Tanzim and Fatah were on the brink of an announcing an end to attacks on Israeli civilians. Hamas promises to retaliate. July 25: Palestinian guerrillas kill a Jewish settler and wound another in what they described as the "first and simple answer" to the Gaza bombing. July 26: Four settlers are killed in two separate attacks on a road near Hebron. July 28: Settlers on the West Bank kill a 14-year-old Palestinian girl on their return from a soldier's funeral in Hebron. July 27: Amy Ayalon and Dr. Sari Nusseibeh sign "HaMifkad HaLeumi" - "The National Census" - a new, broad-based civil initiative whose founders recognize that a way exists to bridge the intolerable impasse between Israelis and Palestinians. July 30: Five people suffer injuries in a suicide bombing at a falafel stand on Hanevi'im Street in the center of Jerusalem. July 31: Nine people are killed and 85 wounded when a bomb explodes in the Frank Sinatra student center cafeteria on the Hebrew University's Mount Scopus campus. July 31: The government orders the first expulsion of a relative of a Palestinian militant from the West Bank. August 1: A UN report into the fighting at the Jenin refugee camp in April disputes Palestinian claims of an Israeli massacre but accuses both sides of endangering civilian lives and criticizes the Israeli army for the widespread destruction of property. August 2: Israeli troops enter the old city of Nablus to capture the men responsible for the university bombing. At least three Palestinians are reported killed in the fighting. August 4: Nine people are killed and some 50 are wounded in a suicide bombing in an Egged bus traveling from Haifa to Safed at the Meron junction. August 4: The Israeli army bulldozes the home of families of nine suicide bombers. Hamas stops releasing its bombers' names to prevent retaliation. August 5: A bomb explodes in a car at the Umm al-Fahm junction, killing the terrorist and wounding the driver, an Arab Israeli resident of Nazareth. August 5: Israel announces a total ban on Palestinian travel in much of the West Bank and seals off a chunk of the Gaza Strip with tanks. August 6: Israel's interior minister, Eli Yishai, reveals plans to strip two Israeli Arabs of their citizenship. August 7: Seven Palestinians are killed in Israeli incursions into the West Bank and Gaza Strip. August 10: Israel and Jordan launch a global campaign to save the Dead Sea. August 11: Fearing 21,000 Ethiopian Jews awaiting immigration will not be allowed into the country, hundreds of Ethiopians Jews demonstrate in front of the Prime Minister's office in Jerusalem. August 14: Marwan Barghouti, credited with being a key organizer of the intifada, attends a 20-minute hearing in a small Tel Aviv courtroom to hear a seven-count indictment filed against him. He tells the court Israel will only have security when it withdraws from Palestinian lands. August 14: Israeli forces fire rockets into a house in the West Bank, killing a disabled Hamas military leader. August 25: Cabinet Minister, Danny Naveh, admits that plans for a gradual Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza have been "frozen". The cease-fire plan, called "Gaza-Bethlehem first", is undermined by violence. August 28: Talks on the further withdrawal of Israeli forces from Palestinian territory are shelved after violence erupts in the Gaza Strip. Israeli tanks shell a village near Gaza City, killing four Palestinians, including a mother and her two children. September 3: Israel's supreme court rules in favor of sending relatives suspected of helping a Palestinian, alleged to have planned a bombing, into internal exile - despite protests from human rights groups that the action contravenes international law. September 5: The trial of Marwan Barghouti begins in a Tel Aviv court. September 5: The Palestinians end a month-long lull with a series of attacks that leave two Israeli soldiers dead and an attempted car bomb that contains 650kg of explosives. September 9: Yasser Arafat uses his first appearance before the Palestinian parliament in 18 months to condemn "every act of terror against Israeli civilians", although he stops short of calling for a specific ban on suicide bombings. September 10: Fatah announces a unilateral halt to attacks on Israeli civilians and says it will try to prevent other militant Palestinian groups carrying out suicide bombings and other such attacks. September 11: Yasser Arafat suffers one of the biggest humiliations of his up-and-down career when his government is forced to resign to avoid a parliamentary vote of confidence. September 18: A police sergeant is killed and three people are wounded in a suicide bombing at a bus stop at the Umm al-Fahm junction. September 18: In New York, Israeli negotiators reject a Palestinian proposal to suspend attacks on civilians in Israel as the first stage in a complete cease-fire. The quartet of international negotiators - the US, UN, EU and Russia - however back a "roadmap" to peace that will see a provisional Palestinian state in 2003 ahead of a final settlement in 2005. September 19: Six people are killed and about 70 wounded when a terrorist detonates a bomb in a Dan bus on Allenby Street opposite the Great Synagogue in Tel Aviv. September 19: Israeli troops attack Yasser Arafat's Ramallah compound and demand the handing over of 20 men on its wanted list who are believed to be inside. September 20: Israeli tanks and bulldozers smash their way through Yasser Arafat's compound in Ramallah, destroying half of the last building still under his control. September 21: Israeli troops haul down the Palestinian flag from the Palestinian headquarters. September 24: The UN security council passes a resolution demanding Israel withdraw from Palestinian towns and end the destruction of Palestinian property. British Prime Minister Tony Blair calls for an international conference to revive the peace process. September 26: Hamas threatens retaliation "everywhere" in Israel for an airstrike in Gaza that it says killed two of its members. The raid's target, Mohammed Deif, is described by Israel as one of the group's main bombmakers. He survives the attack. September 27: Ariel Sharon says he will ignore American objections and respond with force against Iraq if any Israeli civilians are killed or weapons of mass destruction are used against the Jewish state. September 29: Israel pulls its tanks and soldiers out of Yasser Arafat's West Bank headquarters under intense American pressure to end the 11-day siege that has undermined US attempt to win Arab and other international support for an attack on Iraq. October 1: Israeli troops reoccupy three buildings near Yasser Arafat's headquarters just two days after ending a siege of his compound. October 2: It emerges that the former head of Israel's intelligence service held secret talks with a senior Palestinian official six weeks earlier in an attempt to curb the violence. Ephraim Halevy, the former Mossad chief who heads the country's national security council, met a "dissident" Palestinian official to lay the ground for peace talks that bypass Yasser Arafat. October 7: Israeli troops make an early morning raid on the Gaza Strip. Ten Palestinians die as an Israeli helicopter fires into a crowd. October 10: A resident of Ramat Gan is killed and about 70 are wounded when a suicide bomber blows himself up while trying to board a Dan bus across from Bar Ilan University on the Geha highway. October 14: Jewish settlers use security concerns as a cover to plunder olives and force Palestinians from the land. October 21: 14 people are killed and some 50 wounded when a car bomb containing about 100 kilograms of explosives is detonated next to an Egged bus from Kiryat Shmona to Tel Aviv, while traveling along Wadi Ara route toward Hadera. October 24: President Bush's Middle East envoy, William Burns, tells Palestinian leaders that they have no hope of renewing negotiations for an independent state until they take decisive action to stop "terrorism and violence". He also warns Ariel Sharon that his government should swiftly end the suffering and humiliation of the Palestinians. October 25: Hundreds of Israeli troops seize control of Jenin in response to the bus suicide attack. October 27: Two IDF officers and a non-commissioned officer are killed and about 20 people are wounded in a suicide bombing at the Sonol gas station at the entrance of Ariel in the West Bank. November 4: Two people are killed and about 70 are wounded in a suicide bombing at a shopping mall in Kfar Sava. October 30: The Israel coalition government collapses as Benjamin Ben-Eliezer leads his minister's out of Ariel Sharon's cabinet. October 31: Prime Minister Ariel Sharon begins the task of patching together rightwing support for his fragile Likud administration by appointing former army chief of staff, Shaul Mofaz, minister of defense. November 5: Prime Minister Ariel Sharon accepts he cannot regain a parliamentary majority after Labor ministers quit his government of national unity. He calls for elections within 90 days. November 9: The Israeli army kills the head of Islamic Jihad in Jenin. November 10: A Palestinian gunman opens fire on a kibbutz near the West Bank, killing five Israelis, including a mother and her two young sons. November 12: The Israeli army raids the West Bank town of Tulkarem and lays siege to Nablus. A two-year-old Palestinian child is shot dead. November 15: Palestinian gunmen kill 12 Israelis after opening fire on a group of settlers making a weekly pilgrimage to a holy site in Hebron. November 17: Abba Eban, former foreign minister and diplomat, dies. November 18: A 23-year-old Israeli Arab attempts to hijack an El Al flight to Istanbul. No one is hurt. November 21: Eleven people are killed and some 50 wounded by a suicide bomber an an Egged bus on Mexico Street in the Kiryat Menachem neighborhood of Jerusalem. November 22: Iain Hook, the British director of UN operations in Jenin refugee camp, and an 11-year-old Palestinian boy die after Israeli soldiers storm a Jenin refugee camp. November 27: German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder announces Germany will give Israel the Patriot anti-missile system and Fuchs tanks to defend against a potential Iraqi assault. November 28: Nine Kenyans and three Israelis die in a suicide bomb attack on an Israeli-owned hotel near Mombasa, Kenya. Terrorists make an almost simultaneous attempt to shoot down an Israeli passenger jet taking off from Mombasa. November 28: Three Palestinians open fire on Likud headquarters during the party's leadership election. Six Israelis die in the attack. November 29: Ariel Sharon wins the Likud leadership contest. December 1: Ariel Sharon repudiates an unprecedented statement by Israel's ambassador to the United Nations which accepted that Palestinians should have their own state. December 4: The Israeli army kills a 95-year-old Palestinian woman near Ramallah after opening fire at a minibus taxi. December 5: Ariel Sharon lays out his terms for Palestinian independence with a vision of an emasculated and demilitarized state built on less than half the land of the occupied territories, and without Yasser Arafat as its leader. December 6: Palestinians in the Gaza Strip accuse the Israeli army of indiscriminately killing civilians after an army raid on a refugee camp left 10 people dead. December 8 - 10: President Moshe Katsav visits Germany. December 22: Yasser Arafat's cabinet calls off next month's election for a Palestinian president and legislature because it says the Israeli military occupation of West Bank cities makes a free ballot impossible. December 26: The Israeli army kills at least seven Palestinians in a series of "targeted assassinations" in the West Bank. December 30: The Knesset begins proceedings to bar three Arab members and their parties from next month's general election because of their support for the Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation. Recognition of the central role that local authorities play in ushering in a sustainable future has led the Ministry of the Environment, the Heschel Center for Environmental Leadership and the Center for Participatory Democracy of the Zippori Community Education Center (in cooperation with other governmental and non-governmental stakeholders) to launch a Local Agenda 21 initiative. Israeli filmmaker Eytan Fox directs "Yossi & Jagger". Israeli filmmaker Nir Bergman directs "Knafayim Shvurot" - "Broken Wings." |