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Chairman of the Jewish Agency: Simcha Dinitz.

January 1: The first direct flight between Israel and the Soviet Union takes place. It takes actors of the Tel Aviv Habimah Theater to Moscow and brings back 125 immigrants to Tel Aviv.

January 23: In a speech in the predominantly Russian neighborhood of Neve Yaakov, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir speaks about the need for "a large and strong Jewish people in a large and strong state." many observers see this remark as a call to immigrants to settle in the occupied territories, and as an assertion that Israel must keep the territories in order to absorb the new immigrants. Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze at once ends the direct flights because, he says, Israel will not guarantee that the new immigrants will not settle in the occupied territories.

January: Israeli officials acknowledge they paid Nicolai Ceausescu's government 2,000 to 3,000 Dollar for each Jew allowed to emigrate over the past two decades. Chief Rabbi Moses Rosen would not confirm the human trade but states: "I suppose it is true."

March: The flow of immigrants from the Soviet Union intensifies.

April: Immigration from the Soviet Union increases. Over 10,000 arrive during the month of April.

June 12: The 50,000th immigrant of the year arrives.

July 8-18: The rise in immigration, with attendant governmental measures to provide housing for the newcomers, prompts protests by native-born homeless families who demonstrate by setting up tent camps in the centers of various cities.

July: Over 17,000 immigrants arrive during the month of July.

July: It is reported that about 15,000 Ethiopian Jews are stranded in Addis Ababa. About 500 Jews per month had been allowed to leave for Israel. In the last several months exit visa have been held up as a way to encourage Israel to supply more military assistance in the war against insurgents. Israeli officials say the suspension is a joint decision as Israel is concerned that non-Jews are among those seeking to emigrate.

September 11: The 100,000th immigrant of the year arrives.

December: Eleven Jewish families from Albania immigrate to Israel, the first such immigration in decades.

In 1990 a total of 185,227 Jews leave the Soviet Union for Israel.

New immigrants in 1990: 199,516.

January 1-6: A wave of letter bombs reaches Israel from Cyprus and Greece. No casualties are caused.

January 4: The Habimah theater performs the play "The Sunset" by Isaac Babel in Moscow to acclaim.

January 30: The Knesset discusses the Second Channel TV Law.

February 4 : Terrorists attack a tour bus carrying about 30 Israeli tourists near Cairo, killing 11 Israelis and wounding 17.

February: The US State Department annual report on human rights says that 432 Palestinians were killed in 1989 compared to 366 in 1988 by Israeli security forces or settlers, 128 were killed by other Palestinians compared to 13 in 1988, and 13 Israelis were killed by Palestinians in the territories, compared to 11 previously killed since the Intifada began. The report concludes that Israeli soldiers continued to violate rights of Palestinians, causing "avoidable deaths and injuries."

February 26: The first legal cable TV broadcasting station begins operations in Rishon LeZion.

February 27 : Poland and Czechoslovakia resume diplomatic relations with Israel after a 23-year break.

February: Nelson Mandela, South African anti-Apartheid leader, meets PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat in Zambia. Mandela says Arafat "is fighting against a unique form of colonialism, and we wish him success in his struggle."

March 1: US Secretary of State James A. Baker links aid to Israel to a halt in Jewish settlement in the occupied territories and demands of Israel

March: Israel and Bulgaria announce they will resume diplomatic relations after a break of 23 years.

March: At a news conference, US President George Bush states: "The United States does not believe there should be new settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem." After protests by US Jewish leaders, the administration issues a statement that reiterates the long-standing US policy on Jerusalem - that it must be a united city and its final status should be determined through negotiations. It does not disavow Bush's statement.

March 11: A government crisis develops over demands by the US regarding the composition of the Palestinian delegation to the peace talks.

March 13: The cable station MTV begins broadcasting in Israel.

March 15 : The 15-month-old coalition government collapses in a dispute over Arab peace talks. It is the first Israeli government to fall as a result of a no-confidence vote. Labor party leader and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Likud leaders could not agree on a peace plan. The Israeli Knesset dissolves the government. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir will head the caretaker government.

March: Former US president Jimmy Carter visits Syria and then Israel. He says Syrian President Hafiz al-Assad authorized him to advise Israeli leaders that Syria was willing to open peace talks and negotiate the future of the Golan Heights. Carter accuses Israel of violating Palestinian rights in the territories. Israeli officials say he privately told them not to settle Soviet Jews in Jerusalem.

April: President Saddam Hussein of Iraq says Iraq has advanced nerve gas weapons and threatens to destroy "half of Israel" if it attacks his country. He denies Iraq has nuclear weapons.

April 2 : Israel launches its second experimental satellite, "Ofek II". It can last about two months before it falls back to earth.

April 7 : 150,000 Israelis rally in order to demand a change in the electoral system.

April 10: Yasser Arafat makes a statement in a Lebanese newspaper: "I want to say clearly, open fire on the new Jewish immigrants, be they Soviet, Falasha or anything else. It would be disgraceful of us if we were to see herds of immigrants conquering our land and settling our territory and not raise a finger. I want you to shoot, on the ground or in the air, at every immigrant who thinks our land is a playground and that immigration to it is a vacation or a picnic. I give you explicit instructions to open fire. Do everything to stop the flow of immigration."

April 22: Two IDF helicopters crash in midair over the Jordan Valley, resulting in seven fatalities.

April 25: Czechoslovakian President Vaclav Havel arrives in Israel on a state visit.

April: 150 Jewish settlers rent the St. John's Hospice, unoccupied buildings owned by the Greek Orthodox church in the Christian Quarter of Jerusalem's Old city. Palestinian and Christian clerics close holy sites in protest. After a denial, the government acknowledges that it secretly cofinanced the rental. The Israeli Supreme Court will order the settlers to leave the buildings.

April: Acting Prime Minister and Likud leader Yitzhak Shamir is asked by President Chaim Herzog to form a government after Labor party leader Shimon Peres fails to do so.

April: President Chaim Herzog calls for changes in the nation's electoral system. "How can citizens watch calmly the present political phenomena revealing a total contempt for the principles of democracy?"

May 16: The Israeli and Soviet Union soccer teams face each other for the first time after a break of 34 years. Israel wins in a game in Ramat Gan, 3:2.

May 20 : Ami Popper, an Israeli gunman who was dishonorably discharged from the army, kills 7 Arabs laborers and wounds 11 in Rishon LeZion. He is apprehended, and Israeli leaders condemn the attack. Riots erupt in the territories and more Arabs are killed.

May 28: An explosive device planted in the Mahane Yehuda market in Jerusalem causes 1 fatality and 9 wounded.

May 30: The navy foils a major terrorist attack when it detects the approach to the Israeli shore of two boats carrying 16 terrorists. Four of the terrorists are killed and the rest captured in a battle at the Nitzanim shore.

May: At an Arab summit meeting held in Baghdad, President Saddam Hussein of Iraq threatens to use "weapons of total destruction" in response to an Israeli attack against Arabs. The main item on the summit agenda is immigration of Soviet Jews to Israel, which is denounced as a grave threat to Arab security. Syria and four other Arab states do not attend the meeting.

May: Greece establishes full diplomatic relations with Israel.

June: At a Bush-Gorbachev press conference, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev threatens to halt the immigration from the Soviet Jews to Israel unless he is assured they will not be settled in the occupied territories. Israel responds by saying it has no plans to settle Soviet Jews in the territories. However, acting Prime Minister Shamir says a democracy cannot restrict where people live.

June 11 : Yitzhak Shamir succeeds in forming a new Israeli government. With 62 votes in the 120-member Knesset, he forms the first right-wing government since 1984, supported by the religious parties. Shas leader, Arye Deri, remains Minister of the Interior. Rabbi Yitzhak Peretz is reappointed Minister of Immigrant Absorption. David Levy is foreign minister, Moshe Arens is defense minister, and Ariel Sharon is minister of construction and housing.

June 13 : US Secretary of State James A. Baker criticizes conditions for peace talks advanced by Israel's new government. Testifying before Congress, he says, "everybody over there should know that the telephone number of the White House is 1-202-456-1414. When you are serious about peace, call us."

June: US President George Bush suspends the 18-month dialogue with the PLO. He declares the US to be ready to resume talks "any time" the PLO more clearly condemns the May 30 attempted attack on the Tel Aviv beaches and disciplines those responsible.

June 20: The Habimah theater performing in East Germany for the first time, presents "Else" by Motti Lerner, a play about German-Jewish poet Else Lasker-Schüler.

July 1: Israel announces that it will free 416 Palestinians security prisoners as a goodwill gesture in honor of the Muslim holiday of Id al-Fitre.

July 6-9: Israeli planes attack Hizbollah targets in Lebanon. The US censures the act.

July 22: Shimon Peres beats Yitzhak Rabin in the Labor Party nomination for prime minister in the next elections.

July 28: An explosive device planted on the Tel Aviv beach kills a tourist from Canada.

August 2: Iraq invades and seizes Kuwait. Israel is on full alert.

August 3: Approximately 200 Jewish children from Chernobyl, Ukraine, site of the nuclear reactor explosion in 1986, are brought to Israel under the patronage of the Habad Hasidic movement.

August 4: Palestinian terrorists kidnap two teenage boys on the Ramot road in Jerusalem. Their bodies are found on 6 August. Several Jews attack Arabs in Jerusalem in response.

August 9: The first test launch of the Israeli Arrow anti-missile missile is carried out. The missile self-destructs seconds after the launching.

August 12 : Saddam Hussein says Iraq will withdraw from Kuwait if Israel agrees to withdraw from the West Bank and Syrian from Lebanon. The US and Israel reject the "linkage". 300 Egyptian soldiers arrive in Saudi Arabia.

August 30: Iraq threatens to attack Israel. Prime Minister Shamir warns: Whoever attacks Israel will regret it.

September: Dr. George Habash, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, cuts his ties with Syria and moves his base to Iraq as a result of Syria's anti-Iraq stance in the Persian Gulf crisis.

September 5 : An appellate court in New York State denies a request of the Israeli government to halt publication and sale of "By Way of Deception: A Devastating Insider's Portrait of the Mossad", a book written by Victor Ostrovsky, a former Mossad agent. Israel alleges that book would disseminate information that "could endanger the lives of various people in the employ of the State of Israel." The court actions spurs book sales.

September 18 : US officials advise Israel that any attack on Israel by Iraq would result in a vigorous American response in support of Israel. Among other things, they promise to deploy two Patriot anti-missile missile launchers in Israel.

September 20: A reserve soldier, Amnon Pomerantz, loses his way in the al-Bureij refugee camp in the Gaza Strip while driving to his post and is brutally murdered by a crowd.

September: Israel and the Soviet Union agree to establish formal consular ties.

October 1 : Israel announces plans to distribute gas masks and other chemical warfare gear to the Israeli public.

October 7: A trial distribution of gas masks is carried out in Yokneam, Ofakim, and Kfar Yona. Nationwide distribution is scheduled for October 15.

October 8: Dozens of Arabs are killed and over 200 wounded as Israeli police open fire on rioting Palestinians after they hurled stones from the Temple Mount in Jerusalem onto thousands of Jews gathered below at the Western Wall to celebrate the festival of Sukkot.

October 13 : The US gives its support to a proposed UN resolution condemning Israel for the killing of Arabs on the Temple Mount and calls for a UN investigation of the event. The US rebukes Israel for not acting "with more restraint."

October 21: A Palestinian stabs and kills a woman soldier, a policeman, and a civilian in Jerusalem.

October 28: Brig. Gen. Rami Dotan of the air force is arrested for accepting bribes.

October: Saddam Hussein threatens to attack Israel, implying that the attack would be carried out with long-range missiles.

October: The US joins the rest of the UN Security Council in deploring Israel's refusal to cooperate with an investigation by the secretary-general of the Temple Mount killings.

October: The Israeli government-appointed panel investigating the Temple Mount killings blames Muslim clerics for inciting the riot and justifies the use of live ammunition by the police. However, it criticizes the police for not averting the violence.

October: General Mikhail A. Moiseyev, Chief of the Soviet General Staff, in an interview at the "New York Times" to discuss the Persian Gulf Crisis says that Israel's bombing of the Iraqi reactor at Osiraq in 1981 was understandable. "There was reason for taking the action Israel undertook."

November 1 : UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, reacting to the Temple Mount killings, suggests a meeting of the 164 nations that signed the Fourth Geneva Convention to discuss means of protecting Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

November: Israel rejects a UN report suggesting that 164 signatories to the Fourth Geneva Convention meet to discuss protection of Palestinians in the territories, saying, "For the 40 years since the Fourth Geneva Convention was signed there have been dozens of wars with millions killed and wounded. The international community has not found reason to convene the signatories even once."

November 2-4: Violent confrontations occur between Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the IDF. According to Palestinian sources, over 150 are wounded.

November 5 : Meir Kahane, 58-year-old founder of the Jewish Defense League and of the Kach Party in Israel, is assassinated while speaking in New York. The assassin is alleged to be Egyptian-born El Sayyid A. Nosair.

November 12: A Palestinian terrorist from Jordan infiltrates into an IDF outpost in the Jordan Valley and kills the commanding officer.

November: Israel invites Jean-Claude Aimee, a senior UN official, to visit Israel and investigate the Temple Mount killings.

November 25 : An infiltrator slips across the Egyptian border into Israel and ambushes a bus and three military vehicles, killing four and wounding 27 Israelis. Two days later, five Israeli soldiers are killed during fighting in southern Lebanon.

November 27: Five Givati Brigade soldiers are killed in an encounter with terrorists at Mount Dov on the Lebanese border.

December: Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir meets with US President George Bush in Washington, D.C., to discuss the Persian Gulf Crisis. At the conclusion of the two-hour meeting, Shamir states Bush told him: "There will not be any deal at the expense of Israel."

December 2: Three Hamas terrorists stab and kill one passenger and wound three others on a bus traveling from Petah Tikvah to Tel Aviv.

December 13: A crash of the light IDF plane flying over the Negev results in the death of four IDF pilots and a woman officer aboard.

December 14 : Three Israelis are stabbed and killed by Arabs at an aluminum factory in Jaffa.

December 24: Threats by Iraq against Israel continue. Defense Minister Moshe Arens warns that if Israel is attacked it will respond by force.

December 29: At the end of a turbulent day in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinians report 5 dead and 250 wounded in clashes with IDF forces.

December: US President George Bush states he is convinced the US-led coalition of Western and Arab nations would not fall apart if Iraq attacked Israel. He also praises Israel for its "low profile position" in the crisis. "It's not easy. They have their security they feel could well be at stake from some radical act of Saddam Hussein."

December: The US supports a unanimous UN Security Council resolution criticizing Israel for the deportation of Palestinians. The text includes Jerusalem in the "Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967."

December: Israeli sources report that after three years of Intifada, Palestinian casualties total 13,017 wounded, 628 killed by Israelis, and 368 killed by Palestinians. Israeli casualties are 2,880 soldiers wounded, 10 soldiers killed, 1,189 civilians wounded, and 12 civilians killed. Palestinians held in administrative detention without charges number 1,076. Palestinians in prison for Intifada crimes number 9,840.

Inflation for 1990 drops to 17.6%.

A golden calf that was an object of worship dating from the 2nd millennium BCE is unearthed by Harvard University archaeologists excavating Canaanite ruins near the ancient port city of Ashkelon.

The four-volume "Encyclopedia of the Holocaust" published by Yad Vashem in Jerusalem is edited by Israel Gutman. The editor of the English edition is Geoffrey Wigoder.

February: Austria concludes an agreement with the Committee for Jewish Claims of Austria which will pay nearly 200 million dollar in social insurance benefits to about 5,000 Jews who were 8 to 14 years old when the Nazis annexed the country. The average pension will be about 3,500 dollar per year and will be paid for an average of 10 years. In 1987, legislation was enacted making Jews who were over 14 at the annexation eligible for such pensions.

February: Czechoslovakia appoints Rita Klimova ambassador to the US and Rudolf Slansky ambassador to the Soviet Union. Both are Jews, and Slansky is the son of Rudolf Slansky, former general secretary of the Czech Communist party, who was hanged in 1952 after a Stalinist show trial.

April: Over 20,000 Jews celebrate Siyum HaShas, or completion of the Talmud, at New York's Madison Square Garden. Sponsored by Agudat Israel, it celebrates the completion of 71/2 years of a page-a-day study of Talmud by Jews around the world.

April: East Germany's first freely elected democratic government apologizes for the Holocaust, ending 40 years of official denial. It accepts joint responsibility for Nazi crimes, expresses willingness to pay reparations to victims, and seeks diplomatic ties with Israel.

April: A survey of 506 adults in the Moscow area reveals that antisemitism in the Soviet Union is on the rise. Sponsored by the American Jewish Committee, it is the first survey to be conducted since the 1920s.

May: French President François Mitterand joins about 200,000 silent marchers in Paris who protest antisemitism and the desecration of 34 graves at a Jewish cemetery in Capentras, in southern France.

May: An English-language weekly edition of the "Forward" begins publication in New York.

May: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America and YIVO establish a Jewish studies program at the Moscow State Institute of History and Archives. Its purpose is to train Soviet students, Jewish and non-Jewish, in skills necessary to understand and catalog the vast quantities of Jewish manuscripts now being found in the Soviet Union.

May 16: American "all-around" entertainer Sammy Davis Jr., wjo converted to Judaism in 1954, dies.

June: The Prince of Asturias Foundation, a private foundation linked to the Spanish royal family, grants its annual Concord Prize to the 700,000 Sephardic Jews around the world. It is an effort at reconciliation 500 years after the expulsion of Jews from Spain.

August: West Germany indicts Josef Schwammberger in the deaths of 3,000 people, mostly Jews, in Poland during WWII while a commandant of concentration camps. A fugitive for nearly 40 years, he was extradited in May from Argentina.

October: A Moscow city court sentences a leader of Pamyat, a Russian nationalist group, to two years in jail fro disrupting a writers' forum and shouting, "Kikes, go home to Israel." He was found guilty of fanning interethnic enmity in violation of a new law. He sentence will be appealed.

October: An international commission of experts established to determine the fate of Raoul Wallenberg, Swedish diplomat missing since 1945, believes he may still be somewhere in the Soviet Union's vast penal system. They are certain, he did not die in July 1947 of a heart attack in Lubyanka Prison, as was claimed in February 1957 by the then Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko.

December: Poland's Roman Catholic bishops issue a document condemning antisemitism and acknowledging that some Poles assisted Nazis in killing Jews during World War II. The document is to be read at all masses said on 20 January 1991.

"Das schreckliche Mädchen" ("Nasty Girl"), a German film written and directed by Michael Verhoeven, is a fictional depiction inspired by the factual experience of Anja Rosmus, who set out to learn what happened in her hometown, Passau, during the Nazi era, and the ostracism and harassment she encountered. The film wins an award at the Berlin Film Festival.

Harry A. Markowitz, professor of finance at Baruch College of the City University of New York, and Merton H. Miller, of the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business Administration, are tow of three American winners of the Nobel Prize in economics.

Jerome I. Friedman, US physicist, is one of three to win the Nobel Prize in Physics.