Hello,

I'd appreciate if you'd provide a chronological list of events that
were globally recognized as facts that happened in israel &
palestinian territory of today(including significant terrorist attacks,
assasinations and massacres) since 1940s.

the more event the more appreciated.

Thanks,
hackan-ga

Hello Hackan~

The Israeli/Palestine conflict has deep roots and is complex, to say
the least. However, here is a basic timelines for the conflict:

1947: Great Britain handed over responsibility for solving ?the
Zionist-Arab problem? to the UN. At this time, the conflict was
intense, and Jewish immigrants were about a third of the population,
owning 6% of the land. Many were fleeing the Nazis. The UN split the
territory into separate Jewish and Palestinian states; the Jews
accepted this proposal, the Palestinians did not.
1948: On May 14th, The State of Israel was declared. Palestinians
called the day "al-Nakba" (the Catastrophe). During this year, Jewish
and Arab armies attacked each other on territory supposedly held by
the other side; Jewish armies were able to seize not only land that
was supposed to be theirs, but also Palestinian territory. Irgun and
Lehi, militant groups on the Jewish side, massacred the village of
Deir Yassin on April 9. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians ran to
Egypt.
1964: Since 1948, Arab nations had wanted to lead an Arab response to
the creation of a Jewish state. In January of 1964, they created the
PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization), which remained mostly under
their control, not Palestinian control.

1967: Six days of battle began on June 5 and ended on June 11. Israel
overtook Gaza, much of Sinai. Israel also forced Jordanians troops
from the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The land controlled by Israel
was doubled. The UN issued Security Council Resolution 242, which
noted the ? inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war.?

1969: Yasser Arafat took over chairmanship of the PLO, wanting to give
Palestinians more control over the organization.

1968: Arafat's Fatah organization inflicted heavy casualties on
Israeli troops in Jordan.

1972: Throughout the 1970s, the PLO (led by Yasser Arafat) and other
militant groups attacked Israel. One of these attacks was at the
Munich Olympics, in 1972. Eleven Israeli athletes were killed.

1973: Israel had not released sections of Egypt and Syria seized in
1967; in response, Syria and Egypt attacked Israel on the Day of
Atonement (Yom Kippur). This was called the ?Ramadan War.? In the end,
Israel seized land beyond their 1967 ceasefire lines, going in beyond
the Golan Heights and to the western side of the Suez Canal. (They
later handed back some of this land.) The U.S., Soviet Union, and the
UN all stepped in to diplomatically bring about ceasefire agreements.
Soon, Saudi Arabia initiated a petroleum embargo against the U.S. for
their support of Israel, causing serious fuel shortages throughout the
United States.

1974: Arafat appeared at the UN, offering a ?peaceful solution.? He
had strong words against the Jews, but claimed: ?Today I have come
bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter's gun. Do not let the
olive branch fall from my hand." This speech initiated sympathy for
the Palestinian movement?perhaps for the first time coming from
nations other than Arab.

1977:  The Herut party won the Israeli election, overtaking the
left-wing Labour Party; this was party was ?heir? to the earlier Irgun
and Lehi militant groups. The Herut?s (later called the Likuds) were
intent on expanding Israel to the entire ?greater Israel? of biblical
times. Ariel Sharon lead the movement to create more Israeli
settlements along the West Bank and Gaza. Egyptian president Anwar
Sadat made a speech to the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem on November
19. He was the first Arab leader to recognize Israel.
1978: Egypt and Israel signed the Camp David accords in September;
this gave a ?framework for peace in the Middle East,? and included
?limited autonomy? for Palestinians.

1979: An Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty was signed by Sadat and Israeli
Prime Minister Menachem in late 1978, and took effect in March 1979.
The Sinai Peninsula was returned to Egypt. Arab nations boycotted
Egypt for negotiating with Israel.

1981: Sadat was assassinated by Islamist groups in the Egyptian army
who felt their should be no peace with Israel.

1982: An attempted assassination was made against Shlomo Argov,
Israeli ambassador to London, by the Palestinian group Abu Nidal. The
Israeli army began ?Operation Peace for Galilee,? with the intent of
eliminating Palestinian guerrillas near Israel?s northern border and
persisting into Beirut to expel the PLO. On September 15, the leader
of the Christian Phalange militia, Bashir Gemayel, was killed by a
bomb. The next day, the Israeli army occupied West Beirut. The
Phalangists were Israeli allies, and from September 16 to 18, they
massacred hundreds of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee
camps.

1983: Sharon resigned as defense minister when an Israeli inquiry
concluded he?d should have prevented the massacre of 1982.

1987: An uprising against the Israeli occupation began in Gaza and
spread to the West Bank. This included acts of civil disobedience,
military strikes, boycotts on Israeli products, and stone-throwing
demonstrations against occupying troops. The troops responded, killing
many Palestinians.
1988: The Palestinian National Council met in Algeria in November and
voted to accept a ?two state solution,? based on the 1947 UN partition
resolution; they renounced terrorism, and called for Israel to
withdraw from certain territories. Israel regarded them as a terrorist
organization with whom they wouldn?t negotiate.

1991: After the Gulf War, the PLO was severely weakened financially.
Peace seemed appealing, and the U.S. tried to help bring it about.
U.S. Secretary of State James Baker arranged for a meeting in Madrid.
Syria and Jordan agreed to come. But Israeli prime minister Yitzhak
Shamir refused to talk to ?PLO terrorists.? Therefore, prominent
Palestinian figures, not part of the PLO, were chosen to attend. The
summit began on October 30.

1992: The left-wing Labour party was elected back into office. 

1993:  Israel lifted a ban on PLO participants. U.S. talks were
leading nowhere, so beginning on January 20, the "Oslo track" was
secretly set forth.  The Palestinians consented to recognize Israel if
the Israelis would begin ending their occupation. The end result was
the Declaration of Principles, signed on the lawn of the White House.

1994: On May 4, Israel and the PLO agreed to the practical
implementation of the Declaration of Principles. Israel was to
withdraw from most of the Gaza Strip (excluding any Jewish
settlements), and from Jericho. Negotiations almost came to a halt on
February 25, when a Jewish West Bank settler fired on praying Muslims,
killing 29. The agreement called for additional withdrawals over a
five year period; much of the difficult negotiations were left for a
later date.

1995: This was the first year of Palestinian self-rule, and it was
plagued by bombings by Palestinian militants, who killed many
Israelis. In response, Israel assassinated many militants. Militant
and religious groups on both sides opposed the agreement. Peace talks
fell behind schedule. On September 24, the Oslo II agreement was
signed, which divided the West Bank into three zones: one zone (7% of
the territory) went into Palestinian control; the second zone (21% of
the territory) went under joint Israeli-Palestinian control; and the
third zone stayed in Israeli hands. Israel also released Palestinian
prisoners. A Jewish extremist assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak
Rabin on November 4. Shimon Peres became prime minister.

1996: A series of suicide bombings followed in 1996, conducted by the
Islamic group Hamas; Israel attacked Lebanon for three weeks. Peres
lost the Mary 29 election, to Binyamin Netanyahu, who campaigned
against the Oslo peace deals. Netanyahu lifted the freeze on new
Jewish settlements, and incited Muslim hatred by allowing an
archaeological tunnel to be opened under one of Islam?s most holy
sites.

1997-99: With U.S. pressure upon him, Metanyahu handed over 80% of
Beron in January, and signed the Wye River Memorandum on October 23.
This document specified further withdrawals from the West Bank. He
lost elections on May 18, to Ehud Barak, who vowed to ?end the
100-year conflict? within a year.

2000: Peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians were going
nowhere. Barak focused on making peace with Syria, but he was
unsuccessful. Israel withdrew with Lebanon in May. On September 28,
Ariel Sharon (who was the Likud leader) toured the Temple Mount
complex in Jerusalem; Palestinian demonstrations followed, and turned
into an uprising. Barak resigned on December 10.

2001: Ariel Sharon was elected prime minister. Sharon perused the
assassination of enemy militants and ordered air strikes against the
Palestinians. Palestinian militants increased their suicide bomb
attacks in Israeli cities.

2002-2003: In March, Israel re-occupied most of the West Bank.
Throughout 2002, Palestinian cities were attacked and under almost
constant curfew. In April, Israeli forces captured a refugee camp in
the northern West Bank. The Palestinians claimed it had been a
massacre, but the Israeli army said they?d been met with organized
resistance, had heavy losses, and that only 52 Palestinians had been
killed.  The UN stated that there had been no massacre, while Amnesty
International claimed Israel had committed war crimes. In May, a
standoff that lasted five weeks occurred at Bethlehem?s Church of the
Nativity; Palestinian troops took shelter in the church when Israeli
troops appeared in the city. The standoff ended by the militants being
sent into exile. In June, the U.S. called for  Palestinians to replace
their leader with one not "compromised by terror.?





This information has been culled from several timelines:

The best is probably from the BBC, ?A History of Conflict:?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/world/2001/israel_and_palestinians/timeline/
The timeline actually goes back to the 19th century, but gives plenty
of information on events from the 1940s forward.

?Timeline of Palestinian Israeli History and the Israel-Arab Conflict?
at MidEast Web: http://www.mideastweb.org/timeline.htm

and ?Israeli-Palestinian Conflict? at Bryn Mawr School Libraries:
http://library.brynmawrschool.org/israeli-palestinianconflict.htm

Regards,
Kriswrite

KEYWORDS USED:
Israeli Palestine timeline

Hackan --

Many consider the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry in 1946 as a
seminal event in the history of the region.  Indeed the U.S.
government's National Archives note its recommendations -- later
disregarded -- here:
http://www.archives.gov/digital_classroom/lessons/us_recognition_of_israel/us_recognition_of_israel.html

Failing to heed the recommendations of the committee is believed by
some to have set up the conditions for the ongoing conflict.

Interestingly, there was a question asked here a few months ago about
William Phillips, who sat on that committee:
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=355300

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA

This chronology is severly flawed and anti-Israel. (The author's lack
of neutrality is evident by calling the "1973 War" the "Ramadan War" -
as it is known only in Arab and Muslim world.)

For starters, a complete chronology should at least go back to WW I
(though the question did stipulate 1940s), but I haven't the time to
do this let alone make a point-by-point refutation of all the above.
For now, I'll focus only on some of the larger events:

> Jewish immigrants were about a third of the population, owning 6% of the land.

This makes it sound as if all the Jews were immigrants and that none
of the Arabs and Muslim populace were themselves recent immigrants.

Land ownership is similarly misleading. The vast majority of land was
public and not privately owned. In the area allocated to the Jewish
state in the UN partition, 8.6% was owned by Jews and only 3.3% by
resident Arabs.

> During this year [1948], Jewish and Arab armies attacked each other
on territory supposedly held by the other side

The Arab attacks on the Jewish community began in early December,
1947, following the Arab rejection of the UN compromise resolution (29
Nov 1947).

Trygve Lie, the UN Secretary General (writing in his book, "In The
Cause of Peace"):

|| "From the first week of December 1947, disorder in Palestine had
begun to mount. The Arabs repeatedly had asserted that they would
resist partition by force. They seemed to be determined to drive that
point home by assaults upon the Jewish community of Palestine."

The UN Palestine Commission reported to the Security Council on 16 Feb. 1948:

|| "Powerful Arab interests, both inside and outside Palestine, are
defying the resolution of the General Assembly and are engaged in a
deliberate effort to alter by force the settlement envisaged therein."

Jamal Husseini didn't attempt to hide the known truth when he
addressed the Security Council:

|| "The representative of the Jewish Agency told us yesterday that
they were not the attackers, that the Arabs had begun the fighting. We
did not deny this. We told the whole world we were going to fight."

John Bagot Glubb, the British Commander of the Arab Legion:

|| "Early in January, the first detachments of the Arab Liberation
Army began to infiltrate into Palestine from Syria.... They were in
reality to strike the first blow in the ruin of the Arabs of
Palestine."

Omnivorous' source writes:

|| On May 15, 1948, the first day of Israeli Independence..., ARAB
ARMIES INVADED ISRAEL and the first Arab-Israeli war began.


Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet delegate, told the Security Council on 29 May 1948:

|| "This is not the first time that the Arab states, which organized
the invasion of Palestine, have ignored a decision of the Security
Council or the General Assembly."

kriswrite also neglects to mention that following the armistice
agreements that ended the war, the Arabs refused to make peace with
Israel and later writes:

> 1967: Six days of battle began on June 5 and ended on June 11.

Not mentioned is the sabre-rattling and threats of a "war of
annihilation" in Cairo and Damascus, Egypts expulsion of UN
peacekeepers on the border, and the positioning of troops on Israel's
borders.

Are we really to believe that the fighting was just a "spontaneous combustion"?

> The UN issued Security Council Resolution 242, which noted the ?
inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war.?

A referecne that can be interpreted to mean that the Egyptian,
Jordanian and Syrian acquisition of territory in their aggressive war
of 1948 was not legitimate.

In contrast, Israel's acquisition was through a defensive war
(students of history will recognize that following WW II, Axis nations
lost territory).

More importantly, UNSCR 242 did not call for a unilateral Israeli
withdrawal, nor even a complete withdrawal (the pre-1967 lines were
the temporary Armistice lines of 1949). It called on negotiations and
established the "land for peace" formula - as part of a comprehensive
solution.

Israel accepted 242, the Arab League rejected it.

> 1973: Israel had not released sections of Egypt and Syria seized in
1967; in response, Syria and Egypt attacked Israel

This makes it sound as if Syria and Egypt were justified in their
surprise attack (on Judaism's holiest day of the year). The reality is
different. They had rejected negotiations and peace and once again
attempted to use military force to resolve the problem.

> 2000: Peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians were going nowhere.

Primarily due to one man, Yasser Arafat, who at Camp David rejected
the Clinton idea and the paradigm of compromise itself. This was
repeated at Taba, where Arafat vetoed a plan for Israeli withdrawal
from a net 97% of the disputed territories, including Arab
neighborhoods of Jerusalem, and a US$30 Billion aid package to
compensate or resettle refugees and their descendents in a nascent
Palestinian Arab state.

> Palestinian troops took shelter in the church when Israeli troops
appeared in the city

Not Palestinian "troops" but terrorist militants, responsible for
attacks against innocent Israeli civilians, which is why Israeli
troops "appeared". These Muslim fighters forced their way into the
Christian church and effectively held as hostages those Christians who
were in their church (some were symmpathetic, others were not).


If one is to characterize the last 60+ years, it could be done by
saying that the Arab parties have repeatedly rejected compromise and
peace, instead pursuing violence, war and terrorism in an effort to
achieve objectives they couldn't accomplish through negotiations.

Please visit the following site in order to have a very clear picture
of Israel-Palestine conflict:

http://pilger.carlton.com/palestine

I would like to bring the following correction to your attention:

The use of the term "Palestinian" in Kriswrite's answer is misleading.
Prior to the 1960s, the term "Palestinian" referred to the Jewish
inhabitants
of Palestine. Hence, the UN-mandated partition plan envisioned
separate Jewish and Arab- NOT "Palestinian"- states. By extension, the
plan was rejected, not by the "Palestinians," but by the Arabs.

The term "Palestinian" was adopted and exported by the Arab world for
polemical purposes, especially after the Israeli victory in the Six
Day War. Prior to 1967, the Arabs of Palestine were regarded as
members of the larger Arab Nation. This was clearly reflected in the
rhetoric of Nasser, and of Yasser Arafat. Please see the following:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-Arabism

http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/P/PanA1rabi.asp

It bears repeating that, prior to the Israeli victory in 1967, the
Arabs in the West Bank (living under Jordanian sovereignty) and Gaza
(living under Egyptian sovereignty) did not claim an independent
national identity as "Palestinians."

The use of the term "Palestinian" to designate the Arabs of Palestine
prior to the 1960s, is therefore very misleading, and distorts the
extent to which said national identity is a recent construct.

Also, the people who call themselves Palestinians demosntrated
throught their actions that it is not self rule that they desire, but
rather Israel's land.

In 1948, Portions of West Palestine (remember Transjordan was
origionally part of plestine)now known as the West Bank and Gaza were
taken over by the Jordanianszionoil.org
Transjordanians and Egyptians respectively.  As of then, the
Palestinian Arabs were under Egyptian and Transjordanian occupation. 
There were no attemps to fight this occupation.  The palestinian Arabs
were OK with it.
When This territory was lost to Israel, and the quality of life
avaliable to the Palestinian Arabs potentially rose, only then did the
Palestinian Arabs reject occupation.

The Palestinian Arabs were occupied by Arabs and then Jews.  It could
have been much better under Jewish Rule with rights and freedom of
speech and so on.  However, they must have had some vendetta against
the Jews and tried to kill them.