July 1989, Page 24

For Your Files: A Chronology of US-Mideast Relations

May 1: Secretary of State James Baker said that he would urge President Bush to withhold US financial support from any UN agency that grants full membership to the Palestinian state proclaimed by the PLO.

May 2: PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat declared "null and void" Article 15 of the Palestine National Charter that calls for elimination of "the Zionist presence from Palestine." In a press conference following his meeting with French President Francois Mitterrand, Arafat's first official visit to a Western member of the UN Security Council, the PLO chairman used the French term 'Vest caduc" to describe the controversial article.

*Director General of the World Health Organization Hiroshi Nakajima asked the PLO to withdraw its membership application to the organization, following a US threat to end financial support.

May 3: Lebanese Army Maj. Gen. Michel Aoun, commanding Christian forces in East Beirut, agreed to suspend his blockade of Muslim militia ports at the request of Arab League cease-fire mediators.

* PLO Chairman Arafat clarified his statement of the previous day by saying the Palestine National Charter had been "superceded" by the recognition of Israel's right to exist by the Palestine National Council at its November 1988 meeting in Algiers.

May 4: An Israeli military inquiry into the killing of five Palestinians in the West Bank town of Nahalin last month concluded that Israeli Border Police opened fire without restraint before trying other means to subdue demonstrators, terming the episode "an aberration from standard operating procedure ' ' '

May 5: Iranian Parliamentary Speaker Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani called on Palestinians to kill five Westerners for every Palestinian killed by Israeli forces during the intifada.

May 6: Israeli soldiers shot and killed three Palestinians and wounded more than 138 during the most violent day of rioting in the Gaza Strip since the intifada began.

May 7: Israeli troops confined over 450,000 Palestinians to their homes in the occupied territories the day after violent clashes in Gaza.

*PLO Chairman Arafat rejected Iranian Parliamentary Speaker Rafsanjani's May 5 call to kill five Westerners for every Palestinian killed during the intifada.

May 9: The PLO formally applied for full membership in UNESCO, despite US warnings earlier that it would cut off financial support to any UN agency that admitted the PLO.

May 10: Iranian Parliamentary Speaker Rafsanjani retracted his call for Palestinians to kill five Westerners for every Palestinian killed by Israelis, saying "I really do not advise this ... Terrorism is a scourge of the people."

May 11: Israeli officials confirmed that Secretary of State Baker had sent a letter to Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Arens pressing Israel for specifics on its election plan, and reiterating US support for exchanging land for peace in the West Bank and Gaza.

May 12: The World Health Organization postponed until next year its decision on a Palestinian application for membership. The United States had earlier threatened to stop its financial contribution if the application was accepted.

May 14: The Israeli cabinet voted 20 to 6 to approve Prime Minister Shamir's plan for elections in the West Bank and Gaza to choose Palestinian representatives who would negotiate an interim plan for limited autonomy.

May 15: The PLO called the Israeli plan for elections in Israeli-occupied territories "deceitful ' " The Executive Committee said the plan did not "concern the Palestinian people" because it did not "recognize their national existence." Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin warned the Palestinians that if they did not accept the election plan, he would order the military to deal more harshly with the intifada.

May 16: The leading Sunni Muslim cleric in Lebanon, Sheik Hassan Khaled, and 21 other people were killed by a bomb explosion while Khaled's motorcade drove along a main Beirut street. Sheik Hassan Khaled had been a leading voice for moderation in Lebanon. No group claimed responsibility.

*Israeli authorities ordered thousands of Gazans to leave their jobs in Israel and ordered all Gaza residents to be confined to their houses for the second straight day.

May 17: The Israeli Knesset approved Prime Minister Shamir's election plan 43 to 15 with 11 abstentions; 51 legislators were absent during the vote

*PLO Chairman Arafat said he would be willing to name Palestinians in the occupied territories to a provisional government if that would help break the impasse over Israeli unwillingness to negotiate with the PLO.

*Mohammad Ali Hamadei was sentenced to life in prison by a West German court for the 1985 hijacking of a TWA jet and the murder of a passenger, 23-year-old American navy diver Robert Stethem.

May 19: In one of the bloodiest days of dashes since the intifada began, Israeli troops shot dead eight Palestinians, three during a gun battle in which an Israeli soldier was killed. The gun battle, which took place when Israeli soldiers stopped Palestinians apparently planning to assassinate an Arab informer, was the first armed clash between Arabs in the occupied territories and Israeli forces since the beginning of the intifada.

May 21: Israeli Prime Minister Shamir threatened to resign if his Likud Party failed to support his election plan for the West Bank and Gaza.

* Leaflets distributed in the West Bank and Gaza in the name of the Unified National Leadership of the Uprising called on Palestinians to kill an Israeli soldier or settler for each Palestinian killed. The PLO and intifada leaders denounced the leaflets as forgeries and a provocation.

May 22: Secretary of State Baker called on the Israeli government to abandon its "unrealistic vision of a Greater Israel" that would incorporate the West Bank and Gaza, during an address to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). He also called on Palestinians to accept the Israeli plan for elections and amend the Palestine National Charter call for the elimination of Zionism from Palestine.

May 23: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak addressed an Arab summit meeting in Casablanca, Morocco, marking an end to Egypt's 10-year exclusion from the Arab League. Mubarak urged Arab League support for Palestinians under Israeli occupation and for an end to the fighting in Lebanon.

* Israeli Prime Minister Shamir rejected Secretary of State Baker's call for Israel to give up the vision of a Greater Israel, terming it "useless. "

May 25: An Israeli military court acquitted four soldiers of manslaughter charges, but found them guilty of brutality in the beating death of a Palestinian man in the occupied territories last year.

May 26: The Arab League ended a four-day summit in Casablanca without persuading Syria to withdraw its 40,000 soldiers from Lebanon. League participants agreed, however, on readmission of Egypt and support for the PLO's strategy of pursuing a peaceful settlement with Israel.

May 27: Turkey rebuffed a plea to allow US military officials to examine an advanced MIG-29 Soviet fighter plane flown into the country by a defecting pilot, according to US administration officials. The plane was returned to Soviet authorities. The pilot, Capt. Aleksandr Zuyev, requested political asylum.

May 28: Two Palestinian guerrillas were killed in a shoot-out with Israeli troops and militiamen of the South Lebanon army near the village of Marjayoun in the Israeli-proclaimed security zone in Lebanon. During the clash, the guerrillas fired rockets into northern Israel, the first such attack this year.

May 30: At least 20 Jewish settlers were detained in connection with the killing of a 14-year-old girl during a May 29 rampage through the village of Kifl Harith, south of Nablus, by Israeli settlers who set fires and fired submachine guns, apparently in reprisal for an earlier stone-throwing incident.

May 31: The Jewish settlement of Ariel in the Israeli-occupied West Bank ordered Palestinian workers to wear identity badges labeled "foreign worker" in Hebrew, while working in the settlements.