January/February 1997, pgs. 107-109

Facts for Your Files

A Chronology of U.S.-Middle East Relations

Compiled by Janet McMahon

Oct. 1: Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu refused to soften his position at an emergency summit convened by President Bill Clinton to address the crisis caused by Israel’s opening of a tourist tunnel adjacent to the Haram al-Sharif in East Jerusalem. PNA President Yasser Arafat and King Hussein also attended the summit, which was boycotted by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who cited “a lack of adequate preparations” and harshly criticized Israel’s “obstinate acts” and Netanyahu’s “discouraging” statements.

The Pentagon announced that 5,000 U.S. soldiers will be sent to Bosnia as a “covering force,” remaining there until mid-March despite earlier pledges that all U.S. troops would leave the former Yugoslav republic by the end of the year.

Oct. 2: The two-day White House Mideast summit ended with no substantive agreement except for “continuous negotiations” between Israel and the Palestinian National Authority.

In response to a U.S. threat to cut off weapons supplies and other military aid, Bosnian Muslims and Croats announced a plan to create a joint defense ministry and agree on a commander for the combined army.

Oct. 3: Yugoslavia, now comprising the former republics of Serbia and Montenegro, agreed to exchange ambassadors with Bosnia, fulfilling a key component of the Dayton peace accord.

Baghdad took its mobile air-defense units off “ambush” status in northern Iraq.

Oct. 5: Bosnian Serb leaders, refusing to swear allegiance to Bosnia, boycotted the swearing-in ceremony for the legislators and three-member presidency of the new unity government.

Oct. 6: Some 75 percent of eligible Kuwaiti men voted in the country’s second parliamentary elections since 1992.

Oct. 8: Israeli negotiators at virtual round-the-clock negotiations with the PNA demanded adjustments to the Oslo accords signed by the previous Labor government.

For the second straight day, the U.S. strongly criticized Turkish Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan’s visit to Libya, characterizing as “untrue…off base and…unwarranted” Erbakan’s criticism of the U.S. and Israel and his description of Libya as a victim of terrorism. In Turkey, controversy erupted over Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi’s call for a Kurdish homeland.

Taliban leader Mullah Amir Khan Mutaqi rejected U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s appeal for moderation by the 12-day-old Afghan government.

Oct. 9: The Israeli human rights group B’tselem issued a report criticizing Israeli police for using live ammunition and excessive force in response to Palestinians demonstrating against the opening of a tourist tunnel adjacent to the Haram al-Sharif.

Oct. 10: PNA President Arafat said four days of negotiations on Israeli withdrawal from Hebron “have achieved nothing,” and that Palestinians should be prepared “to confront all possibilities.”

Following a blistering attack by King Hussein on the policies of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, Israeli President Ezer Weizmann announced he would visit the Jordanian monarch in an attempt to salvage the relationship between the two neighboring countries.

Rival Afghan military commanders Gen. Abdul Rasheed Dostam and Ahmed Shah Masoud formed an alliance to fight the Taliban and establish a non-fundamentalist government in the nine northern provinces they control.

Western officials accused Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who ostensibly had renounced all political activity, of blocking the Serb members of Bosnia’s new unity government from attending the inaugural ceremonies.

The State Department said plans to evacuate Iraqi relief workers from Kurdish areas of northern Iraq were delayed because of fears of possible security risks.

Oct. 11: German authorities arrested a German woman and a Palestinian man for the 1986 bombing of a Berlin nightclub which killed three people, including two U.S. soldiers, and in retaliation for which then-President Ronald Reagan ordered a U.S. attack on Tripoli, killing an adopted daughter of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi. Arrest warrants also were issued for four Libyans implicated in the nightclub bombing.

Oct. 13: PNA President Arafat and former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres met in the West Bank city of Nablus to discuss the threatened peace process.

In northern Iraq, Patriotic Union of Kurdistan forces, reportedly assisted by Iranian Revolutionary Guards, retook the city of Sulimaniyeh, captured in August by the Iraqi government-backed Kurdistan Democratic Party.

Oct. 14: Israeli President Ezer Weizmann traveled to Cairo to reassure Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak that Israel would “continue and do its best to achieve peace with the Palestinians.”

A “senior defense official” said Iraq rebuilt its fixed anti-aircraft missile system within two weeks of U.S. cruise missile attacks on Sept. 2 and 3.

Oct. 15: In a show of support, Jordan’s King Hussein made his first visit to the West Bank in 30 years to meet with PNA President Arafat in Jericho, thereby becoming the first Arab leader to travel to the Palestinian autonomous area.

Completing their scheduled year-long peacekeeping mission, the first American troops to be deployed began withdrawing from Bosnia.

Afghan forces opposing the recently victorious Taliban opened a second front east of Kabul.

Oct. 16: PNA President Arafat termed “racist, aggressive,” and a tragedy an Israeli proposal to divide the West Bank town of Hebron into Arab and Jewish sectors. “This blows up the agreement,” Arafat said, angrily rejecting the proposal.

The Israeli army confirmed that, in an unprecedented move, the Shin Bet security service had ordered troops to appear without their weapons during a visit by Prime Minister Netanyahu the previous week. Meanwhile, leading strategic analyst Ze’ev Maoz was quoted as saying that a coup was possible because of the anger of top generals at being left out of the policy- and decision-making process.

Leaders of the Afghan Taliban militia met with Gen. Abdul Rasheed Dostam to discuss broad-based peace talks aimed at demilitarizing the capital of Kabul and the formation of a central government. At the United Nations, the former government of President Burhanuddin Rabbani called for a cease-fire as well.

Oct. 17: On a visit to Washington, Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri said “Neither Syria nor Lebanon will sign a peace treaty with Israel without the other,” and pressed for a lifting of the U.S. travel ban to Lebanon.

Oct. 18: As the U.S. announced plans to evacuate several hundred Iraqis linked to CIA covert operations in northern Iraq, the Iraqi government-backed Kurdistan Democratic Party recaptured the town of Kol Sanjaq near Irbil.

Oct. 19: Muslim members of the new Bosnian parliament refused to participate in a Christian-oriented oath of office ceremony arranged by the Serb-dominated legislature.

French President Jacques Chirac received a tumultuous welcome in Damascus on the first leg of a Middle East tour to bolster European influence on the peace process.

Oct. 20: U.S. and Israeli sources confirmed that, during a September visit to Washington, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu claimed that Iraq had enough fissile material for a nuclear bomb, a charge his government later was unable to substantiate.

The advancing forces of Ahmed Shah Masoud, military commander of the ousted Afghan government, launched a rocket attack on the Kabul airport.

Oct. 21: U.S. special coordinator for the Middle East Dennis Ross announced he was returning to Washington having failed to secure an agreement on Israeli withdrawal from Hebron.

Oct. 22: Following a speech at Haifa University during which he called for “a recognized Palestinian state” and the return of the Golan Heights to Syria, French President Chirac lashed out at Israeli security forces escorting him on a walking tour of Jerusalem’s Old City, calling their behavior toward Palestinian bystanders “a provocation.” Prime Minister Netanyahu later apologized for the incident.

U.S. negotiator Dennis Ross decided at the last minute to remain in Israel amid reports of significant progress in Israeli-Palestinian talks on Hebron.

The U.S. and Israel issued their first joint stamp, commemorating the Jewish celebration of Hanukkah.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe postponed for a second time Bosnian municipal elections, scheduled for Nov. 23.

Oct. 23: Rival Kurdish factions agreed in principle to a U.S.-brokered cease-fire ending two weeks of fighting in northern Iraq.

Oct. 24: The U.S. delayed a scheduled shipment of tanks and weapons to Sarajevo until Bosnian Deputy Minister of Defense Hasan Cengic, reported to have close ties to Iran, resigned or was removed from office.

Fighting between the Taliban and rival militias intensified outside Kabul as Taliban MiG fighter jets attacked Jamaat-i-Islami positions north of the capital.

Oct: 27: The Clinton administration denied reports it was planning to retain U.S. forces in Bosnia through 1997 as part of the NATO peacekeeping operation.

Oct. 28: As Israeli-PNA talks on Hebron reached an impasse, Israeli soldiers in the West Bank fired tear gas and rubber bullets at Palestinian demonstrators protesting the previous day’s clubbing to death of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, Hilmi Shawash, by Nahum Korman, security chief of the Jewish settlement of Hadar Beitar.

Oct. 30: Officials of American relief organizations charged the U.S. government with abandoning more than 4,000 Kurdish relief workers who worked with Western agencies in northern Iraq.

Shi’i leaders in Saudi Arabia said the government had arrested scores of members of Saudi Hezbollah, a Shi’i organization advocating violent opposition to the Saudi monarchy, following the June car bombing of a U.S. military housing compound in Dhahran.

Nov. 1: Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu removed Maj. Gen. Oren Shahor from the negotiating team on Hebron after the senior army officer met with Labor Party officials including former Prime Minister Shimon Peres.

Nov. 2: A U.S. F-16 jet patrolling Iraq’s southern “no-fly” zone fired a missile at an Iraqi air-defense battery when the pilot mistakenly believed he had been targeted.

More than 100,000 Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv to mark the one-year anniversary of the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Nov. 3: Visiting Hebron, British Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind said Israel must honor its commitment to withdraw from the last occupied city in the West Bank.

President Slobodan Milosevic’s Serbian Socialist Party was victorious in Yugoslavia’s first national election since the Dayton peace accord.

Nov. 4: For the second time in three days, a U.S. jet fighter fired at an Iraqi air defense site.

Nov. 5: Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and her government were dismissed on charges of corruption and misrule by President Farooq Leghari, a Bhutto protégé, who named Miraj Khalid interim prime minister and scheduled elections for Feb. 3.

Nov. 6: At a news conference at her residence, where she was being held under “protective custody,” ousted Pakistani Prime Minister Bhutto denied the charges against her and Prime Minister Leghari’s authority to dismiss her govenment. Alluding to conspiracies against her family, she demanded that her detained husband be allowed to see a lawyer.

Nov. 7: As Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu told Jewish settlers he would personally oversee the expansion of settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, PNA President Yasser Arafat appealed to newly re-elected President Bill Clinton for stronger U.S. involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Following a seven-month investigation, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that the Clinton administration broke no laws by ignoring Iranian arms shipments to Bosnia.

Nov. 9: Four days following her meeting with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State John Shattuck, Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plasvic dismissed indicted war criminal Gen. Ratko Mladic and his entire general staff.

Nov. 10: Israeli troops shot in the back and killed Palestinian landowner Atallah Amira and wounded 12 others as some 200 Palestinians protested the expansion of Kiryat Sefer, an illegal Jewish settlement near the West Bank village of Deir Qadis. In Hebron, Israeli police placed under administrative detention for two months Noam Federman, a leader of the outlawed anti-Arab Kach movement.

U.S. officials said nearly $20 million in surplus U.S. military equipment was about to be sent to Ethiopia, Eritrea and Uganda—three “frontline” states bordering Sudan and committed to the overthrow of the Islamist regime in Khartoum.

Bosnian Serb army officers said Gen. Ratko Mladic was defying orders for his dismissal.

Nov. 11: On what was expected to be his last trip to the Middle East as secretary of state, Warren Christopher arrived in Jerusalem to attempt to achieve an agreement on Israeli withdrawal from Hebron.

Shooting broke out between Bosnian Muslims attempting to return to their homes near the town of Koraj in northeastern Bosnia, and the Bosnian Serbs who now control the area.

Nov. 12: Secretary of State Christopher, having failed to break the deadlock in Israeli-Palestinian talks on Hebron, flew to Cairo for the opening of the third annual U.S.-sponsored Middle East and North African Economic Conference.

In the worst midair plane crash in history, a Saudi jumbo jetliner and a Kazak Airlines cargo plane collided near New Delhi, killing all 351 passengers and crewmembers on both planes.

Nov. 13: As Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak warned that Israel must make clear its intention to honor the Oslo agreements, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu cancelled a visit to the U.S. in order to take charge of negotiations on Hebron.

Nov. 14: Israel’s Supreme Court reversed its temporary injunction of the previous day and ruled that Shin Bet security police had the right to use coercion in interrogating Mohammed Hamadan, suspected of belonging to Islamic Jihad and having information on possible terrorist attacks.

As the U.S. and European countries formally notified Bosnia’s ethnic groups that economic aid would be cut off in two years if peace were not fully in place by then, Bosnia’s three-member presidency reaffirmed its commitment to the Dayton peace accord. In northeastern Bosnia, U.S. peacekeeping troops trying to separate Bosnian Muslims seeking to return to their homes and Bosnian Serbs trying to block them seized a cache of weapons from the Bosnian army and clashed with rioting Muslims.

Nov. 15: President Clinton announced his decision “in principle” to keep a scaled-down contingent of U.S. peacekeeping troops in Bosnia until mid-1998.

Nov. 17: Supporters of dismissed Bosnian Serb military commander Gen. Ratko Mladic seized a television tower in the Bosnian Serb capital of Pale, blocking broadcasts to most of Bosnian Serb territory.

Nov. 18: As a military court sentenced four Israeli soldiers to one hour in jail, suspended, and a fine of one agora, worth about one-third of a U.S. cent, for killing a Palestinian passenger at a roadblock, the Israeli government approved the construction of an additional 1,200 apartments in the illegal West Bank Jewish settlement of Emmanuel.

Meeting in Brussels, NATO ministers unanimously approved deployment of a reduced multinational force to supervise the truce in Bosnia following the Dec. 20 departure of the current peacekeeping troops.

Nov. 19: The Bosnian government dismissed Deputy Minister of Defense Hasan Cengic, who was unacceptable to the U.S. because of his alleged ties to Iran.

Two Israeli border police were arrested on charges of aggravated assault and abuse of authority after an amateur videotape broadcast on national television showed their hour-long beating of six Palestinian workers attempting to enter Israel without permits near the Ar Ram checkpoint north of Jerusalem.

Pakistan’s Supreme Court dismissed Prime Minister Bhutto’s petition for reinstatement, calling it “irrelevant and scandalous.”

Nov. 21: The first delivery of U.S.-made weapons, including 45 battle tanks and 80 armored personnel carriers, was made to Bosnia’s joint Muslim-Croat army.

Nov. 24: A court controlled by Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic voided the first opposition electoral victory by Democratic Party leader Zoran Djindjic in Belgrade municipal elections.

Nov. 25: The United Nations and Iraq agreed on terms for the long-delayed Iraqi sale of oil for food and humanitarian supplies.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Israel would “continue with the policy of construction in existing [Jewish] settlements.”

The U.S. agreed to evacuate and resettle in the U.S. an additional 4,000 to 5,000 Kurds who worked for American charities in northern Iraq.

Nov. 26: The Movement for Islamic Change, a radical Saudi group, threatened to attack U.S, forces in that country unless imprisoned Islamists are freed by the end of Ramadan in mid-February.

President Slobodan Milosevic’s government lowered the print run of Yugoslavia’s largest independent newspaper, Blitz, the only major newspaper to report on massive anti-Communist demonstrations in Belgrade.

Nov. 27: Tens of thousands of angry Yugoslavs returned to the streets in Belgrade, where most voters boycotted repeat municipal elections called for by the government after its poor showing in the original vote.

Bosnian Serb military leader Gen. Ratko Mladic, who had been resisting his Nov. 9 dismissal by President Plavsic, announced he was resigning from office and named his deputy, Gen. Manojlo Milovanovic, who also had been dismissed, as his successor.

Turkey cancelled plans to purchase 10 Bell AH-1 Super Cobra helicopters because of “Washington’s months-long stalling.”

Nov. 28: Defense Secretary William Perry said joint U.S.-Saudi intelligence efforts resulting in preventive arrests had helped prevent new terrorist attacks on American troops stationed in the Kingdom.

Amid charges of voting fraud, Algerians approved a new constitution banning Islamist political parties, restricting parliamentary authority and granting additional powers to the president.

Nov. 29: Defense Secretary Perry said U.S. radar-evading F-117 jet fighters sent to Kuwait in September would remain there indefinitely, but that 4,200 U.S. ground troops would be withdrawn in December as scheduled.

In its first verdict, the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague convicted a Croat former member of Bosnian Serb forces, Drazen Erdemovic, of crimes against humanity for his admitted role in the massacre of Bosnian Muslim men and boys near Srebrenica, sentencing him to 10 years in prison.

Nov. 30: Following his meeting with King Fahd, Defense Secretary Perry said Saudi Arabia would support improved protection and living conditions for U.S. troops stationed there.