On October 6th, President Mohammed Anwar el Sadat of Egypt was murdered by Islamic fundamentalist gunmen in Cairo. The shooting happened at 1 p.m. during the annual military parade to commemorate the beginning of the Egyptian attacked in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. A lorry in the procession stopped in front of the rostrum where the President and other luminaries were watching a fly-past of Egyptian Air Force jets. Armed men climbed out and ran towards Sadat, hurling grenades and opening fire with automatic weapons. The President and seven others fell, mortally wounded . Sadat was flown to the Maadi military hospital where he died an hour and 40 minutes later. Sadat's funeral on October 10th was attended by only one Arab head of state. He had isolated himself in the Arab world by the rapprochement with Israel which had won him and Menachem Begin the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978 and led to a peace treaty between the two countries in 1979. Iraq, Libya, Syria and the Palestinian Liberation Organization openly applauded his assassination.

Israel bombs PLO headquarters, which had been located in a civilian area of Beirut and caused more than 300 civilian deaths. This led the United States to broker a shaky cease-fire between Israel and the PLO.

June 6, 1982

Israel launches Operation Peace for Galilee into southern Lebanon. Israel claims the invasion was in order to remove PLO forces after several violations of a cease-fire, and most notably an assassination attempt against Israel's ambassador to the United Kingdom, Shlomo Argov, by Fatah - Revolutionary Council. Israel is allied with the Lebanese Christian army against the PLO, Syria, and Muslim Lebanese. As a result of the war, the PLO leadership is driven from Lebanon and relocates to Tunis.

Israeli troops remained in southern Lebanon, however, and the cost of the war and subsequent occupation drained the already troubled Israeli economy.

Some of the 1,500 Palestinian fighters forced to leave the war-torn city of Beirut give victory signs to supporters gathered to greet them at the harbour gate in Larnaca , Cyprus. In further attempts to destroy guerrillas bases, Israeli jets had bombed Moslem West Beirut, despite appeals for restraint from the US government. The guerrillas were allowed to go with one gun each, leaving behind grenade-launchers and other sophisticated weaponry .

The Sabra and Shatila massacre was carried out in September 1982 by Lebanese Maronite Christian militias against refugee camps. The Maronite forces stood under the direct command of Elie Hobeika, who would later become a longtime Lebanese parliament member and in the 1990s also a cabinet minister. The number of victims of the massacre is estimated at 700-3500.

The camps were externally surrounded by Israeli soldiers throughout the incident, although the Israeli military personnel who were there claimed they had no idea of what was going on inside.

On September 1, the expulsion of the PLO fighters from Beirut was completed. Two days later, Israel deployed its armed forces around the refugee camps. The next day Ariel Sharon, Israeli Defense Minister at the time, stated that 2,000 PLO fighters had remained in Beirut. This claim was disputed by Palestinians. The Israeli Premier Menachem Begin met Gemayel in Nahariya and strongly urged him to sign a peace treaty with Israel. According to some sources, he also demanded continuing the presence of South Lebanon Army in southern Lebanon under control of Major Saad Haddad and action from Gemayel to move on the Palestinian fighters Israel claimed had remained hidden in Lebanon. Gemayel refused Israel's demands to sign the treaty or to authorize operations to seek out remaining PLO militants.

On September 14, 1982, Gemayel was assassinated in a massive explosion which demolished his headquarters. Eventually, the culprit who confessed to the crime turned out to be a member of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party and an agent of Syrian intelligence. The Palestinian and Muslim leaders denied any connection. In response, the next day, on September 15, the Israeli army reoccupied West Beirut. Estimates place casualties as high as 88 dead and 254 wounded. This Israeli action breached its agreement with the United States not to occupy West Beirut; the US had also given written guarantees that it would ensure the protection of the Muslims of West Beirut. Israel's occupation also violated its peace agreements with Muslim forces in Beirut and with Syria.

Ariel Sharon and Rafael Eitan then invited Lebanese Phalangist militia units to enter the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps to clean out the PLO fighters. Under the Israeli plan, Israeli soldiers would control the perimeters of the refugee camps and provide logistical support while the Phalangists would enter the camps, find the PLO fighters and hand them over to Israeli forces.

The Israeli military had completely surrounded and sealed off the camps and set up observation posts on the roofs of nearby tall buildings on September 15. The next day Israel announced that it controlled all key points in Beirut. The Israeli military met throughout the day with top Phalangist leaders to arrange the details of the operation.

For the next two nights, from nightfall until late into the night, people reported seeing illuminated flares above the camps, allegedly fired by the Israeli military. On the evening of September 16, 1982, the Phalangist militia, under the command of Elie Hobeika, entered the camps. For the next 36 to 48 hours, the Phalangists massacred the inhabitants of the refugee camps, while the Israeli military guarded the exits and allegedly continued to provide flares by night. A unit of 150 Phalangists was assembled at 4:00 p.m. These militiamen armed with guns, knives and hatchets entered the camps at 6:00 p.m. A Phalangist officer reported 300 killings, including civilians, to the Israeli command post at 8:00 p.m., and further reports of these killings followed through the night. Some of these reports were forwarded to the Israeli government in Jerusalem and were seen by a number of Israel's senior officials. Israeli soldiers surrounding the camps turned back Palestinians fleeing the camps, as filmed by a Visnews cameraman.

Later in the afternoon, a meeting was held between the Israeli Chief of Staff and the Phalangist staff. According to the Kahan Commission's report, the Chief of Staff concluded that the Phalange should "continue action, mopping up the empty camps south of Fakahani until tomorrow at 5:00 a.m., at which time they must stop their action due to American pressure." He claimed that he had "no feeling that something irregular had occurred or was about to occur in the camps." At this meeting, he also agreed to provide the militia with a tractor, supposedly to demolish buildings.

On Friday, September 17, while the camps still were sealed off, a few independent observers managed to enter. Among them were a Norwegian journalist and diplomat Gunnar Flakstad, who observed Phalangists during their cleanup operations, removing dead bodies from destroyed houses in the Shatila camp". The Phalangists did not exit the camps at 5:00 a.m. on Saturday as ordered. They forced the remaining survivors to march out of the camps, randomly killing individuals, and sending others to the stadium for interrogations; this went on for the entire day. The militia finally left the camps at 8:00 a.m. on September 18. The first foreign journalists allowed into the camps at 9:00 a.m. found hundreds of bodies scattered about the camp, many of them mutilated. The first official news of the massacre was broadcast around noon.

Ethiopia in 1985 forced the Israeli government to stop its covert airlift of Falasha - Ethiopian Jews - to Israel. Since beginning the airlift in 1974 (when persecution of the Falasha increased after the fall of Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie), Israel had airlifted some 12,000 members of the ancient Jewish sect, which had existed in isolation from the rest of the Jewish world since about the second century BC. Israel resumed the airlift in 1989, and within $a few years most of the approximately 14,000 remaining Falasha had emigrated.

October 1, 1985

After three Israeli civlians were killed on their yacht off the coast of Cyprus by Force 17 PLO, the Israeli Air Force carries out Operation Wooden Leg and strikes the PLO base in Tunis, killing 60 PLO members.

Palestinian uprising refers to a series of violent incidents between Palestinians and Israelis between 1987 and approximately 1990.

On December 8, 1987, an uprising began in Jabalya where hundreds burned tires and attacked the Israel Defense Forces stationed there. The uprising spread to other Palestinian refugee camps and eventually to Jerusalem, the eastern part of which was and is occupied by Israel. On December 22, the United Nations Security Council condemned Israel for violating Geneva Conventions due to the number of Palestinian deaths in these first few weeks of the Intifada.

Much of the Palestinian violence was low-tech; dozens of Palestinian teenagers would confront patrols of Israeli soldiers, showering them with rocks. However, at times this tactic gave way to Molotov cocktail attacks, over 100 hand grenade attacks and more than 500 attacks with guns or explosives. Many Israeli soldiers were killed this way. The IDF, in contrast, possessed the latest weaponry and defense technologies.

In 1988, the Palestinians initiated a nonviolent movement to withhold taxes collected and used by Israel to pay for the occupation of territories. When time in prison didn't stop the activists, Israel crushed the boycott by imposing heavy fines while seizing and disposing of the equipment, furnishings, and goods from local stores, factories, and even homes. On April 19, 1988, a leader of the PLO, Abu Jihad, was assassinated in Tunis. During the resurgence of rioting that followed, about 16 Palestinians were killed. In November of the same year and October of the next, the United Nations General Assembly passed resolutions condemning Israel.

As the Intifada progressed, Israel introduced various riot control methods that had the effect of reducing the number of Palestinian fatalities. Another contributor to the high initial casualties was Yitzhak Rabin's aggressive stance towards the Palestinians (notably including an exhortation to the IDF to "break the bones" of the demonstrators). His successor Moshe Arens subsequently proved to have a better understanding of pacification, which perhaps reflects in the lower casualty rates for the following years.

Attempts at the peace process in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were made at the Madrid Conference of 1991.

On 15th of November 1988, Jordan gave up the West Bank, in favour of the Palestinian people.

West Bank had still a strong majority of Palestinians.

The West Bank was also under boundless Israeli control, which it had been since the occupation of 1967.

On 15-11-1988 , The PNC meeting in Algiers declared the State of Palestine as outlined in the UN Partition Plan 181 , and a flag for the new state is presented. The new state is recognized only by states that have not recognized Israel.

On 14-04-1988 , Abu Jihad, Palestinian leader, was gunned down in his home in Tunis by the Israeli Mossad.

On 09-12-1988 , British Junior Foreign Minister William Waldegrave met with Bassam Abu Sharif President Arafat's adviser, thus upgrading Britain's relations with the PLO.

Following the US government refusing President Arafat a visa to enter the US, the UN General Assembly held a special session on the question of Palestine in Geneva.

On June 28, 1989 , EEC Madrid Conference issued a new declaration calling for the PLO to be involved in any peace negotiations.

On August 3, 1989 , Fateh, the mainstream PLO organization, at their 5th Conference endorsed the PLO strategy adopted at the PNC in Algiers in November 1988.

Arafat addressed the UN Security Council In Geneva after the massacre in which he called for the deployment of a UN emergency force to provide international protection for Palestinian .

The US vetoed a motion which called for the Security Council to send a fact finding mission to the area. At the end of their hunger strike, Palestinian leaders in the Occupied Territories decided to boycott the US.

The Arab Summit in Baghdad pledged support fort he Palestinian Intifada and strongly denounced the settlement of Soviet Jews with in the Occupied Territories.

On 20-05-1990 , Seven Palestinian workers from Gaza were massacred by an Israeli gunman near Tel Aviv.

On 20-06-1990 , The US suspended its dialogue with the PLO after the PLO refused to denounce a military operation in the sea by the PLF.

On 26-06-1990 , The EEC in Dublin issued a new declaration on the Middle East which condemned Israeli human rights violations and the settlement of Soviet Jews in the Occupied Territories. It also doubled its economic aid programme to the Occupied Territories.

On August-1990 , The Gulf Crisis erupted.

On 20-12-1990 , UN Security Council adopted Resolution 681.

Several days before the events of the massacre began, the "Temple Trustees" group distributed a statement to the media on the occasion of a religious festival of theirs which they call "the Throne Festival". In the statement the organization announced that it intended to stage a march to the Temple Mount (or so they call it). The statement called upon Jews to participate in this march since, according to the statement, it would involve the decisive act of placing the foundation stone for what is called "the Third Temple." In addition, the founder of the organization, Ghershoun Salmoun, announced that "the Arab-Islamic occupation of the temple area must come to an end, and the Jews must renew their profound ties to the sacred area." The march, in which 200,000 Jews took part, headed toward al-Aqsa Mosque in order for "the foundation stone" of the so-called "Third Temple" to be put in place.

On Monday, October 8, 1990 at 10:00 A.M., half-hour before the beginning of the massacre, Israeli occupation forces began placing military barriers along various roads leading to Jerusalem in order to prevent Palestinians from getting to the city. They also closed the doors of the mosque itself and forbid Jerusalem residents to go in. However, thousands had already gathered inside the mosque before this time in response to calls from the imam of the mosque and the Islamic movement to protect the mosque and to prevent the "Temple Trustees" from storming it.

When the Muslim worshippers began resisting the Israeli group to prevent them from placing the "foundation stone" for their so-called temple, Israeli occupation forces began carrying out the massacre, using all the weapons such as poison gas bombs, automatic weapons, military helicopters, etc. The soldiers and Jewish settlers where firing live ammunition in the form of a continuous spray of machine-gun fire. The result was that thousands of Palestinian worshippers of various ages found themselves in a mass death trap. Twenty-three Palestinians were killed, and 850 others were wounded to varying degrees. The Israeli soldiers began firing at 10:30 A.M. and stopped 35 minutes later.

The Madrid Conference was hosted by the government of Spain and co-sponsored by the USA and the USSR. It convened on October 30, 1991 and lasted for three days. It was an early attempt by the international community to start a peace process through negotiations involving Israel and the Arab countries including Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and the Palestinians. In the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, US President George H.W. Bush and his Secretary of State James Baker formulated the framework of objectives, and together with the Soviet Union extended a letter of invitation, dated October 30, 1991 to Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and the Palestinians.

The Palestinian team, due to Israeli objections, was initially formally a part of a joint Palestinian-Jordanian delegation and consisted of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza without open PLO association like Saeb Erekat, Faisal Husseini, Hanan Ashrawi and Haidar Abdel-Shafi, who were however in constant communication with the PLO leadership in Tunis.

The purpose of the conference was to serve as an opening forum for the participants and had no power to impose solutions or veto agreements. It inaugurated negotiations on both bilateral tracks and on multilateral tracks that also involved the international community. The Syrian and Lebanese negotiators agreed on a common strategy.

The first-ever public bilateral talks between Israel and its neigbbors (except Egypt) were aimed at achieving peace treaties between the 3 Arab states and Israel, while the talks with the Palestinians were based on a 2-stage formula, the first consisting of negotiating interim self-government arrangements, to be followed by permanent status negotiations. (This formula was essentially followed in the later Oslo process.) They opened immediately following the conference on November 3, 1991 in Madrid, and were followed by over a dozen formal rounds in Washington, DC from December 9, 1991 to January 24, 1994

The bilateral Israeli-Palestinian negotiations were upstaged and eventually replaced by initially secret negotiations that finally led to the exchange of letters of 9 and 10 September 1993 and the subsequent 13 September 1993 signing on the lawn of the White House of the Declaration of Principles, which however were essentially based on terms which the Madrid round Palestinian negotiators had earlier rejected.

After Likud lost the parliamentary election of June 1992, Labor party leader Yitzhak Rabin formed a new government .

In Jan'93 , Israel deported 415 Palestinian mento a buffer zone in southern Lebanon on Dec. 17, 1992. This occurred during Israel's peace talks with Arab states and led to a temporary breakdown in the negotiations.

Southern Lebanon had frequently been a staging area for attacks on Israel's northern settlements. The deported Palestinians were said by Israeli authorities to be active members of the militant Islamic resistance movement known as Hamas. Late in January, Israel's High Court ruled that the deportation was legal. The government of Israel nevertheless announced that all the deportee would be allowed to return home within a year.

Events in the Middle East took a surprising turn in 1993. After secret negotiations, Prime Minister Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat flew to Washington, D.C., and agreed to the signing of an historic peace agreement.

Israel agreed to allow for Palestinian self-rule, first in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho, and later in other areas of the West Bank that are not settled by Jews .

In Sept,93 , At a ceremony in Washington, D.C., representatives of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) signed an agreement designed to end 45 years of confrontation between the Israelis and Palestinians. The actual signing was done by Israel's foreign minister, Shimon Peres, and PLO foreign policy spokesman, Mahmoud Abbas. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel and PLO leader Yasser Arafat met and shook hand on the White House lawn, as President Bill Clinton of the United States and 3,000 guests looked on. The agreement was limited in scope; it provided for transfer of the Gaza Strip and Jericho to Palestinian rule within a few months. But the accord was regarded as a first step in resolving years of violent conflict between Jews and Palestinians. The agreement had been worked out secretly in Oslo, Norway, with the mediation of Norway's foreign minister, Johan Jorgen Holst. Following the signing, a long process of negotiation began on the means of transferring power in the occupied lands.

In Feb.1994 , An American-born Jewish settler in Hebron , Baruch Goldstein , opened fire in a al-Haram al-Ebrahime crowded mosque, killing 29 Muslims and wounding 150 more. Additional Muslims were crushed to death in the panic to flee the mosque and in rioting that followed. The attacker used an assault rifle to shoot at more than 400 Muslims, who were in the mosque for early morning prayers during the holy month of Ramadan. The mosque itself was part of a complex of buildings sacred to both Jews and Muslims, because it was believed to contain the 4,000-year-old burial tomb of Abraham & his wife Sarah.As such, the place had long been a site for religious confrontations. News of the massacre immediately led to riots in Hebron and the rest of the occupied territories. The crime called into question the possibility of continuing the peace talks between Israel, the Palestinians, Jordan, and Syria. In late 1993 Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization had signed an agreement designed to bring peace between the two group.

In May'94 , At a ceremony in Cairo, Egypt, attended by 2,500 guests, Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and Yitzhak Rabin, prime minister of Israel, signed the final version of the Declaration of Principles that had been signed in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 13, 1993.

The accord was regarded as a start toward bringing peace between Israelis and Palestinians after 45 years of conflict. Within 24 hours of the signing, Israeli military forces were scheduled to leave the Gaza Strip and Jericho, ending 27 years of occupation of those territories. A Palestinian police force was ready to move into the areas to keep order. Among the foreign visitors at the ceremony were Secretary of State Warren Christopher of the United States, Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev of Russia, and Foreign Minister Koji Kazikawa of Japan. In spite of the accord, Jewish and Palestinian extremists in Israel vowed to prevent its full implementation.

In July PM Mr. Rabin & King Hussein of Jordan signed a peace agreement ending 46 years of war and strained relations, signed at the White House in the presence of U.S. President Bill Clinton.

In July 1, Yasser Arafat, head of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), returned to Palestine for the first time in 33 years. Israel's control of Palestine had prevented his visiting the region because he was a sworn enemy of Israel and, in turn, was regarded by Israelis as a terrorist. The agreement between Israel and the PLO, signed in September 1993, had made possible Arafat's return. He went first to Gaza City in the Gaza Strip , he was welcomed by a crowd estimated at 200,000. Three days later he flew by helicopter to the city of Jericho.Both areas had been granted Palestinian rule by the treaty.

In Oct.14 , The Nobel Committee in Oslo, Norway, announced that the peace prize was being awarded to Israel's Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and to Yasser Arafat ,leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The award came one year after a peace agreement was signed between Israel and the PLO following decades of mutual hostility and violence. There was some controversy among members of the committee making the award: committee member Kare Kristiansen resigned, saying Arafat's violent past should have disqualified him from receiving the award.

In Feb.2 , In an effort to make progress in the stalled Middle East peace talks, Egypt invited representatives from Israel, Jordan, and the Palestine Liberation Organization to a summit meeting in Cairo. The meeting was the first regional summit in which an Israeli official participated. After nearly six hours of talks, the leaders issued a joint statement in which they agreed to forge ahead with efforts for peace, condemned political violence, and called for more international assistance for the Palestinian Authority, the governing body in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The peace talks, which began in 1992, had been threatened by increasing Islamic militant attacked against Israelis.

In Sept. 24 , Israeli and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) officials meeting in Taba, Egypt, finalized agreement on the second stage of eventual Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian lands. Under the pact, which was officially signed on September 28 in Washington, D.C., Israeli forces were scheduled to be removed from six Arab cities and 400 villages in the West Bank by early 1996, after which elections would be held for a 82-member Palestinian council, which would possess legislative and executive power in the West Bank and Gaza.

Special arrangements were agreed upon for the West Bank city of Hebron, where Israeli soldiers will remain to protect the 450 Jewish settlers living there. Disagreement over the status of Hebron almost scuttled the agreement, and it took almost a week of non-stop negotiations between PLO leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres to resolve the issue.

The pact was the second stage in a three-step process agreed upon in the Declaration of Principles, a framework for eventual Palestinian autonomy signed by the PLO and Israel in September 1993. The first phase in the process was finalized in May 1994, when an accord was signed in Cairo, Egypt, for the pullout of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho and the handing over of administrative duties to the Palestinian National Authority, led by Arafat. The third stage will tackle such contentious issues as the status of Jerusalem, the fate of Israeli settlers, and the final borders between Israel and the Palestinian state that many analysts believe is close to becoming a reality. Negotiations concerning the last phase of the peace process were scheduled to begin in May 1996, with any agreement to be implemented before the end of the century.

In Nov.4 , Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, was assassinated in Tel Aviv by a right-wing extremist who considered Rabin's crusade for peace a betrayal of the Jewish state. The prime minister was shot three times as he was getting into his car to leave a peace rally 9:30 PM local time . He was rushed to nearby Ichilov Hospital but had no heartbeat or blood pressure when admitted to the emergency room. Doctors tried without success to revive Rabin, but he was pronounced dead at 11:10 PM. Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres took over leadership of the Labor government upon Rabin's death.