January 1996, pgs. 118-119

Facts for Your Files: A Chronology of U.S.-Middle East Relations

Compiled by Janet McMahon

Nov. 1: Presidents Alija Izetbegovic of Bosnia, Franjo Tudjman of Croatia and Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia met together, for the first time since 1991, as U.S.-sponsored Balkan peace talks opened at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base outside Dayton, OH.

Nov. 2: In separate attacks, believed to be in retaliation for the assassination of Islamic Jihad leader Fathi Shiqaqi in Malta the previous week, two Palestinian car bombers blew themselves and their vehicles up near two Israeli buses in the Gaza Strip. The attackers were killed and 11 Israelis were slightly wounded.

—French authorities arrested a 28-year-old Algerian student, Boualen Bensaid, and 14 other Algerians or French-born Algerians suspected of a wave of terrorist bombings which have killed seven people and wounded 160 others.

Nov. 3: Bosnian Serb authorities announced they had arrested Christian Science Monitor reporter David Rohde, missing since he set out for Bosnian Serb territory five days earlier. Rohde had written in August of his discovery of evidence of mass graves of Muslims in Serb-occupied territory outside Srebrenica.

Nov. 4: Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated as he was leaving a peace rally in Tel Aviv by Yigal Amir, a right-wing law student at Bar Ilan University.

—The tomb of Queen Nefertiti, who died in the 13th century B.C., was opened to the public for the first time since its 1904 discovery in Luxor's Valley of the Queens.

Nov. 6: President Bill Clinton delivered a euology at the funeral of slain Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, joining Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Jordan's King Hussein and dozens of world leaders who traveled to Jerusalem to pay their respects.

—Yigal Amir, who had admitted killing Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, said at a court hearing "the murder was my obligation according to religious law." Meanwhile, Israeli police announced they were holding Amir's brother, Hagai, as a possible accomplice.

Nov. 7: Acting Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres announced that planned Israeli troop withdrawals from West Bank towns would continue on schedule.

Nov. 8: Israeli police arrested Avishai Raviv, leader of the right-wing group Ayal to which Rabin assassin Yigal Amir belonged, and were searching for Raviv's deputy, Natan Levi. The Amir family issued a letter of apology "to the Rabin family and all the people of Israel."

—U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry and Russian Defense Minister Pavel Bachev announced that their two countries had reached an agreement whereby Russian troops would participate in the Bosnian peacekeeping operation as part of a U.S. armored division independent of direct NATO command.

—American journalist David Rohde was freed by Bosnian Serbs after being held for nine days.

Nov. 9: Palestinian National Authority President Yasser Arafat, on his first known visit to Israel, called on Leah Rabin, widow of the slain prime minister, to offer his condolences. Meanwhile, Israeli police, calling the assassination the result of an apparent conspiracy, arrested two more suspects and said they had uncovered a weapons cache at the home of Yigal Amir.

—The International War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague indicted three senior Serbian army officers, Gen. Mile Mrksic, Maj. Vaselin Sljivancanin and Capt. Miroslav Radic, on charges related to the 1991 killing of 260 men from the Croatian town of Vukovar.

—Following two attacks on passenger trains in southern Egypt, the militant Islamic Group threatened to renew attacks on foreign tourists.

Nov. 10: An agreement to strengthen the Muslim-Croat federation in Bosnia was announced after 10 days of negotiations in Dayton, OH. In Sarajevo, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights John Shattuck urged Bosnian Serb leaders in Banja Luka to allow international war crimes investigators into their territory to search for some 1,400 missing Muslim men.

Nov. 12: At the Dayton peace talks, Serbian President Milosevic and Croatian President Tudjman reached an agreement whereby the Eastern Slavonia region would be returned to Croatia.

—Israel's internal Shin Bet security service acknowledged it had received information on religious-nationalist agitator Yigal Amir, the assassin of Yitzhak Rabin, prior to the assassination.

—Voter registration began Gaza and the West Bank in preparation for Palestinian elections scheduled in January.

Nov. 13: In the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh, a car bomb destroyed a Saudi national guard building used by U.S. civilian and military personnel engaged in weapons-training for Saudi guardsmen. Five Americans and a Filipino were killed in the blast, and some 60 people, including more than 30 Americans, were wounded.

—Israeli troops completed their withdrawal from the West Bank city of Jenin.

—In a letter to House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA), President Clinton argued on behalf of sending U.S. peacekeeping troops to Bosnia, estimating the cost of a one-year operation at some $1.5 billion.

—The International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague charged six Bosnian Croat leaders with war crimes and crimes against humanity for having "effectively destroyed or removed almost the entire Muslim civilian population in the Lasva Valley" in central Bosnia.

Nov. 14: Acting Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres toured areas of the West Bank from which Israeli occupation forces had recently withdrawn.

Nov. 15: In presidential elections boycotted by major Islamist and secular groups, Algerian voters elected President Liamine Zeroual, appointed president in January 1994 by the country's military-dominated governing council, to a five-year term.

—Palestinian police in Gaza arrested five Abu Nidal followers on suspicion of plotting to kill PNA President Yasser Arafat.

—Bosnian peace talks in Dayton, OH were reported to be stalled over control of the towns of Zepa and Srebrenica and the fate of Bosnian Serb leaders and indicted war criminals Radovan Karadzic and Gen. Ratko Mladic.

Nov. 17: By a vote of 243-171 largely along party lines, the House of Representatives voted to bar President Bill Clinton from sending U.S. troops to Bosnia without congressional approval. Meanwhile, American and U.N. officials said the Yugoslav (Serbia and Montenegro) army was helping to rebuild Bosnian Serb forces.

Nov. 19: As the Israeli cabinet vowed to crack down on Jewish extremists in the wake of the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Palestinian supporters of Hamas in Gaza announced they would form a political party to participate in January elections.

—An explosives-laden truck blew up the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, killing at least 15 people, wounding more than 80, and demolishing the embassy building. Three militant Egyptian organizations, including the Islamic Group, claimed responsibility for the attack.

Nov. 21: President Clinton announced that an agreement had been reached at the Balkan peace talks in Dayton, OH. The accord calls for the preservation of Bosnia-Herzegovina as a single state comprising a Bosnian-Croat federation and a Bosnian Serb republic, with Sarajevo as the capital.

—Interior Minister Ehud Barak announced that Israel would grant citizenship to convicted spy Jonathan Jay Pollard, the former U.S. naval counterintelligence officer currently serving a life sentence in the U.S. for spying on behalf of Israel.

Nov. 22: The U.N. Security Council voted to suspend immediately economic sanctions on Yugoslavia and gradually lift the arms embargo on all six former Yugoslav republics, including Bosnia.

—Upon being formally sworn in as prime minister of Israel, Shimon Peres challenged Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad to make peace with Israel and lead the way toward a comprehensive Middle East peace.

—Following completion of a commission of inquiry, Israeli Police Minister Moshe Shahal said that confessed assassin Yigal Amir and his brother Hagai were the only two people involved in the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Nov. 23: Bosnian Serb leaders, after meeting with Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, agreed to abide by the Dayton accord.

—A week before scheduled parliamentary elections, an Egyptian military court sentenced 54 Islamic activists to jail terms of up to five years.

Nov. 25: As President Clinton pressed his case with Congress for sending U.S. peacekeeping troops to Bosnia, Bosnian Serbs in Sarajevo and its suburbs demonstrated against the loss of Serb areas to the Muslim-Croat federation and, in Croatia, residents living near the Adriatic port of Dubrovnik protested the planned turnover of a nearby coastal strip to Bosnian Serbs.

Nov. 26: Senior U.S. administration officials said the Dayton peace agreement will not be altered because of Bosnian Serb demands regarding Sarajevo.

Nov. 27: In a televised address, President Clinton outlined his argument for sending U.S. peacekeeping troops to Bosnia.

Nov. 28: Hezbollah guerrillas in southern Lebanon fired Katyusha rockets into the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shemona, saying the attack was in retaliation for the Israeli army's demolition of several Lebanese homes and the Israeli navy's refusal to allow Lebanese fisherman to fish off the southern Lebanese coast.

—The Organization of the Islamic Conference, meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, vowed to keep seeking the establishment of Jerusalem as the capital of an independent Palestine.

Nov. 29: Egypt's ruling National Democratic Party swept to victory in nationwide parliamentary elections marred by charges of fraud and incidents of violence and arrests of opposition members.

—Russia agreed to drop its demand for control of a separate Bosnian peace force, agreeing to join the 16 NATO member states in a "consultative committee" where it could air its views.

—Rebel Taliban militia planes bombed residential areas of the Afghan capital of Kabul, killing 37 people and wounding more than 140.

Nov. 30: Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole (R-KS) said he would ask the Senate to support President Clinton's decision to send 20,000 U.S. peacekeeping troops to Bosnia.

—Saudi King Fahd was hospitalized in Riyadh following a stroke.