January 05, 2006 - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, sedated and on a respirator, clung to life on Thursday after a massive stroke that is likely to create a huge vacuum in Israeli politics and the Middle East peace process.

January 06, 2006 Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, fighting for his life after a massive stroke, was rushed into emergency surgery on Friday to try to stem fresh bleeding in his brain.

January 10, 2006 - Doctors pressed ahead on Tuesday with efforts to revive Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon from an induced coma, further reducing his sedation to assess brain damage from a severe stroke.

January 25, 2006 - Palestinians voted on Wednesday in their first parliamentary election in a decade, a ballot that could bring Hamas into the government and further dim prospects for peacemaking with Israel.

January 26, 2006 - The Islamic Hamas movement swept to victory over the long-dominant Fatah faction on Thursday in Palestinian parliamentary polls.

January 26, 2006 - Hamas activists embraced in the streets, fired guns in the air and handed out sweets on Thursday as they celebrated victory in Palestinian elections.

January 27, 2006 - International peace diplomacy in the Middle East was plunged into turmoil on Friday by Hamas's shock Palestinian election win and a U.S. vow not to deal with the Islamic group until it renounced violence against Israel.

January 30, 2006 - Hamas appealed on Monday to foreign donors to lift threats to cut vital aid to a Palestinian government which the Islamic militant group is expected to form but rejected their calls to renounce violence against Israel.

January 31, 2006 - Israel said on Tuesday it expected to suspend monthly tax payments to the Palestinian Authority, a severe financial blow to the cash-strapped government a week after Hamas's shock election victory.

February 01, 2006 - Israeli riot police clashed with stone-throwing settlers trying to block the demolition of part of an unauthorized Jewish outpost in the West Bank in violent scenes reminiscent of Israel's Gaza pullout.

February 03, 2006 - Defying international pressure, the militant Islamic group Hamas said on Friday it will never recognize Israel but might be willing to negotiate terms for a temporary truce with the Jewish state.

February 07, 2006 - A leader of the Islamist Hamas group said on Tuesday it was very likely that one of its members would become Palestinian prime minister after winning parliamentary elections last month.

February 21, 2006 - President Mahmoud Abbas will ask Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Tuesday to form a new Palestinian government and to pursue his peace agenda, but the Islamist militant group said talks with the Jewish state would be a waste of time.

February 27, 2006 - International envoy James Wolfensohn said the Palestinian Authority faces financial collapse within two weeks now that Israel has cut off tax transfers in response to Islamist Hamas's election victory.

March 09, 2006 - Interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he plans to impose permanent Israeli borders by 2010 through pullouts from parts of the occupied West Bank, unless Hamas recognizes the Jewish state and renounces violence.

March 14, 2006 - Israeli forces on Tuesday raided a West Bank prison to demand the handover of a top Palestinian militant accused of killing an Israeli minister, blasting their way in after U.S. and British monitors withdrew.

March 16, 2006 - Israeli soldiers and Palestinian gunmen fought each other in the West Bank city of Jenin on Thursday, hours after gunmen shot and wounded two Israeli motorists near a Jewish settlement.

March 22, 2006 - Hamas leader-in-exile Khaled Meshaal said on Wednesday the Palestinian militant group will continue to fight Israel and told the United States that its Middle East policy would fuel terrorism.

March 28, 2006 - Israelis voted on Tuesday in an election seen as a referendum on uprooting some West Bank settlements while enlarging others to impose Israel's final borders if peacemaking with the Palestinians stays frozen.

March 29, 2006 - Interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert began building a coalition on Wednesday after winning Israel's election on plans to impose final borders with the Palestinians by uprooting many West Bank settlements.

March 31, 2006 - A car explosion outside a Gaza mosque killed a top Palestinian militant on Friday, triggering a street gunbattle after fighters loyal to him accused Palestinian security forces of collaborating with Israel in the attack.

March 31, 2006 - Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh ruled out any talk of the Hamas-led government he heads recognizing Israel or ending the fight against the Jewish state until Israel commits to withdrawing from Palestinian land.

April 18, 2006 - Israel blamed the Hamas-led Palestinian government on Tuesday for a Tel Aviv suicide bombing but acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert decided against a proposed military offensive for the time being.

June 26, 2006 - Three Palestinian militants groups in Gaza kidnapped and Israeli soldier and killed two others.

June 26, 2006 - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Monday he had put the army on standby for a major military offensive against Palestinian militants in Gaza as officials tried to secure the release of a kidnapped soldier.

June 27, 2006 - Israeli tanks and troops massed near Gaza on Tuesday for a threatened offensive against Palestinian militants as the government said it would target Hamas leaders if an abducted soldier was not freed.

June 28, 2006 - Israeli tanks backed by helicopter gunships and artillery pushed into the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, stepping up pressure on Palestinian militants to release an abducted soldier.

June 29, 2006 - Israel arrested one-third of the Hamas-led Palestinian cabinet on Thursday in what the Islamist group called a bid to topple its government, as the Israeli army prepared to expand a Gaza offensive to free an abducted soldier.

June 29, 2006 - Palestinian militants involved in the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier taunted the Jewish state on Thursday by saying the conscript could be dead or alive.

June 30, 2006 - Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh told Israel on Friday to halt its Gaza offensive if it wanted to free a captured soldier and said his Hamas-led government would not give way under force.

July 03, 2006 - Palestinian militants who abducted an Israeli soldier gave Israel less than 24 hours on Monday to meet their demands to release Palestinian prisoners, threatening unspecified consequences if it refused.

July 12, 2006 - Hizbollah guerrillas captured two Israeli soldiers and killed up to seven Israelis in an operation on other side of the Lebanese border on Wednesday, further inflaming Middle East tensions.

July 12, 2006 - An Israeli air strike destroyed the office of Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar on Thursday in an attack that signaled Israel would pursue its Gaza offensive while fighting along a second front in Lebanon.

July 13, 2006 - Israel struck Beirut airport and blockaded Lebanese ports on Thursday, expanding reprisals that have killed 52 civilians in Lebanon since Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight a day earlier.

July 14, 2006 - Israel bombed the offices of Hamas lawmakers, destroyed a bridge and fired a tank shell that killed one Palestinian on Friday as part of a Gaza Strip offensive aimed at forcing militants to release a captured soldier.

July 14, 2006 - Israel struck Beirut airport again on Friday and bombed Lebanese roads, power supplies and communication networks in a widening campaign after Hizbollah guerrillas seized two Israeli soldiers and killed eight.

July 18, 2006 - Israeli warplanes battered Lebanon on Tuesday, killing 26 people, and more Hizbollah rockets hit the Israeli city of Haifa, with no sign that diplomacy would halt the week-old conflict any time soon.

July 27, 2006 - Israeli attacks killed three people in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, a day after fighting that left 24 Palestinians dead.

August 24, 2006 - Israeli forces killed a Palestinian man and seized his brother, a senior member of the ruling Hamas movement, during a raid in southern Gaza early on Thursday.

September 05, 2006 - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will hold his first peace summit with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas if gunmen in the Gaza Strip release a captive Israeli soldier.

September 22, 2006 - Hamas said on Friday it would not join any Palestinian unity government that recognized Israel, rebuffing President Mahmoud Abbas who told the United Nations any future coalition would do so and also renounce violence.

04.10.2006 Three masked men shot and killed a Hamas leader as he left a mosque in the West Bank, witnesses said, a day after gunmen from a rival Palestinian faction threatened to kill senior Hamas members.

11.10.2006 An Israeli missile hit the Gaza Strip home of a well known woman lawmaker Mariam Farhat from Hamas. There were no reports of casualties in the strike in Gaza on the building of Mariam Farhat, better known as Umm Nidal, who has often voiced pride at the death of three of her six sons during a Palestinian uprising. Israeli forces shot dead two Palestinians in separate incidents at the border with Gaza and in the occupied West Bank.

20.10.2006 Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas was unhurt in an attack on his convoy in central Gaza. The convoy came under heavy gunfire. One of the vehicles in the convoy was torched. Haniyeh had just finished making a speech at a Gaza mosque.

01.11.2006 Israel killed six Palestinians and wounded 45 people in a series of air strikes and gun battles in the northern Gaza Strip. The raid was one of the biggest since Israel launched an offensive in Gaza to press for the release of a soldier captured by Palestinian gunmen on June 25 in a cross-border attack and to halt militant rocket fire into the Jewish state. One Israeli soldier was killed in a gun battle.

01.11.2006 The town of Beit Hanoun has been under the very tight control of a large force of tanks and troops who have ordered the tens of thousands of local people to stay off the streets for all but very brief periods. The Israelis destroyed Beit Hanoun, they destroyed the infrastructure, cut the water pipes and the telephone lines. Hundreds of men have been rounded up and questioned, and some have been taken away to Israel. The entire town of Beit Hanoun remains under Israeli control and troops have ordered residents to stay indoors.

03.11.2006 Two women have been killed as Israeli troops opened fire on a crowd of women gathered to help besieged gunmen flee a mosque in Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza. In the dramatic mosque rescue, Hamas radio issued an appeal to local women when a tense stand-off developed between Israeli forces surrounding the Mosque and up to 15 militants who had taken refuge inside. The Israeli occupation forces were firing heavily at women with their machine guns. The women entered the mosque and indeed we got all the resistance men out.

07.11.2006 Israel's army says it has pulled out of the town of Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip, after a six-day operation targeting rocket-firing militants. Witnesses confirmed Israeli troops had left. The army says it has taken up positions in surrounding areas. Some 60 Palestinians, majority of civilians, were killed.

08.11.2006 At least 18 Palestinians have been killed and 40 wounded by Israeli tank fire in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun. Palestinian officials said a barrage of tank shells hit civilian homes, and women and children were among the dead. Palestinian hospital officials said 13 of the dead belonged to the same family, and two of them were women and six were children. TV footage from Beit Hanoun showed the victims being taken to hospital in their sleeping clothes, some with terrible injuries. Sources counted about eight impacts. They confirmed that the shells appear to have landed roughly in a straight line, starting in the fields at the end of the street and hitting houses on either side of it.

09.11.2006 Tens of thousands of Gazans were set to march at mass funerals for 18 people killed by Israeli shelling, an event Palestinians said would be marked in history as a "Black Day" of massacre. The bodies of the dead were expected to be picked up from hospital morgues at mid-morning for a traditional march through the streets and then to mosques. Militants frequently accompany corteges, firing weapons into the air.

11.11.2006 The United States vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning an Israeli attack in Gaza that killed 18 Palestinian civilians and urging a quick withdrawal of Israeli forces from the area. Nine of the council's 15 members voted for the measure, while four abstained: Britain, Denmark, Japan and Slovakia.

15.11.2006 A rocket fired by Palestinian gunmen from Gaza killed a 58-year-old woman in an Israeli border town, prompting an angry reaction from Israel which said militants would "pay a heavy price". It was the first time since July 2005 that rockets have killed Israelis in towns and villages along the Gaza frontier. Medical officials said two people were badly wounded in the attack on Sderot, including a security guard who works at the home of Defense Minister Amir Peretz, a resident of the town.

15.11.2006 An Israeli helicopter gunship fired two missiles at a house belonging to a Palestinian militant in the Gaza Strip after warning his family to get out. Residents said the owner of the home in Shathi refugee camp is a leader of the Popular Resistance Committees, a coalition of Palestinian militant groups. One person outside the building was treated for wounds.

16.11.2006 Spain, France and Italy agreed to work on a joint plan to try to resolve the Middle East conflict, calling for a total ceasefire and suggesting they could send truce monitors to the area. It was not clear how the European initiative would fit in with existing peace plans for the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including the stalled U.S.-backed "Road Map".