July 1996, pgs. 113-116

Facts For Your File: A Chronology of U.S.-Middle East Relations

Compiled by Janet McMahon

April 1: Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres said he would subject any final Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement to a public referendum.

Bosnian Croat Gen. Tihomir Blaskic, charged with killing Muslim civilians, including children who appeared to have been burned alive, surrendered to the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague.

April 2: The Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, called for a resumption of suicide bombings in response to increased crackdowns on Islamists by Israel and the PNA.

April 3: PNA President Yasser Arafat, in Ramallah to attend a session of the Palestinian Leislative Council, was jeered by Palestinians angry at the PNA’s recent crackdown, including a raid on Al-Najah University in Nablus.

Following a meeting in Cairo with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, American Defense Secretary William Perry said the U.S. would not permit Libya to complete an underground chemical weapons plant and would not rule out a military attack against it.

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown and 33 others on a trade mission to Bosnia and Croatia were killed when their U.S. military plane crashed in bad weather while seeking to land at Dubrovnik, Croatia.

April 5: Republican congressional leaders, including Senate Majority Leader and presidential candidate Robert Dole, demanded hearings be held on reports, confirmed by White House officials, that the Clinton administration had turned a blind eye to clandestine Iranian arms shipments to Bosnia.

April 7: Palestinian officials and leaders of Jewish settlers confirmed that they had held a series of unauthorized meetings to discuss problems of coexistence.

Egypt and Syria criticized a recent agreement between Israel and Turkey whereby Israeli warplanes are allowed to use Turkish airspace in exchange for state-of-the-art military equipment. The agreement also calls for intelligence sharing, the establishment of a joint security council, and joint military exercises scheduled to begin within weeks and marking the first such joint maneuvers between Israel and a Muslim country.

April 9: President Clinton, responding to reporters’ questions, said his administration “did nothing improper” in giving tacit approval to Iranian shipments of arms to Bosnia.

A day after an explosion killed a teenager and wounded three people in southern Lebanon, including two children, Hezbollah guerrillas fired Katyusha rockets at the northern Israeli town of Qiryat Shemona, wounding 36 people. Israeli warplanes and artillery subsequently attacked the Lebanese village of Khirbet Silm, wounding two civilians and damaging water and electricity installations.

Austrian police turned former Bosnian Croat prison camp commander Zdravko Mucic, accused of several counts of murder and rape, over to the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague.

April 10: Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic called on members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference to provide military and economic aid to his country to help defend it after NATO forces withdraw at the end of the year.

The U.S. demanded that Ahmad Yousif Mohamed, second secretary at Sudan’s mission to the U.N., leave the country because of his alleged involvement in 1993 plots to bomb the United Nations and assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on a visit to New York.

Responding to criticism of its recent agreement with Israel, Turkey said the deal “focused solely on military training” to be conducted without weapons, ammunition or electronic surveillance equipment and does not allow the use of either country’s military bases.

April 11: Attacking Beirut for the first time since its 1982 invasion, Israeli Apache helicopters fired rockets at Hezbollah headquarters in the city’s southern suburbs. Elsewhere in Lebanon, Israeli warplanes attacked a guerrilla depot in the eastern Bekaa region and a Hezbollah ammunition depot in southern Lebanon, while Israeli ships pounded the region, following the killing of an Israeli soldier and the wounding of three others in Israel’s occupation zone in Lebanon.

April 12: Israeli warplanes, helicopters and gunboats intensified their attacks on Lebanese targets, killing a dozen people, including a Syrian soldier, and forcing hundreds of thousands of people to flee some 40 targeted villages in southern Lebanon.

April 13: Despite protests by the commander of UNIFIL’s 4,500 peacekeeping troops against Israeli air attacks on nearby villages, the Israeli army said it had fired thousands of artillery rounds at villages in southern Lebanon. The assault included an Israeli helicopter rocket attack on a Lebanese ambulance which killed two women and four girls, and a blockade by Israeli gunboats of Lebanese ports, including Beirut. Four Katyusha rockets fired by Hezbollah guerrillas into northern Israel injured four Israelis, one seriously.

A U.N.- and EU-sponsored meeting in Brussels of 55 donor countries and international agencies, boycotted by Bosnian Serbs, pledged to commit the remaining $1.2 billion in promised aid to Bosnia for 1996, while at the same time restricting the flow of funds to Bosnian Serbs so long as they are led by indicted war criminals Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic.

April 14: After the Israeli-controlled South Lebanon Army’s radio station warned every Lebanese citizen living south of the Litani River to evacuate by 11 a.m., the number of refugees doubled to 400,000. Israeli attacks on Beirut, the Bekaa Valley and southern Lebanon also continued, bringing the four-day toll of “Operation Grapes of Wrath” to 29 Lebanese killed and 109 wounded, with no Israeli fatalities.

April 15: U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher, while continuing to blame Hezbollah for Israeli attacks on Lebanon, called several Mideast leaders in an effort to halt the fighting as international peace efforts intensified. Israel began attacking power stations and infrastructure targets in Lebanon, where support for Hezbollah strengthened.

Under the terms of a recent agreement, Israeli F-15s began a week of joint training exercises in Turkey.

April 16: Israel halted its air and artillery attacks on Lebanon for two minutes to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.

A Libyan airliner flew hajj pilgrims to Jeddah, in violation of U.N. sanctions.

April 17: As Israeli jets made 55 raids on villages in southern Lebanon and pounded them with 600 artillery shells, Hezbollah rejected a U.S. peace proposal calling for the extension and Syrian guarantee of a 1993 oral agreement with Israel, saying the U.S. “is not fit to launch any initiatives because it provides the political, moral and military cover for the Israeli aggression.” The Lebanese government, which earlier had requested assistance from France, said the proposal would perpetuate the Israeli occupation and violate the basic tenets of the Middle East peace process.

The White House announced that Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE had agreed to provide $100 million worth of military equipment to help train and equip the Bosnian army.

April 18: The Israeli army shelled a U.N. peacekeeping camp at Qana where southern Lebanese villagers had taken refuge, killing 92 civilians, including two brothers from Michigan visiting their grandmother, and wounding more than 100. Israel called the attack a “grave error.” President Clinton, refusing to criticize the Israeli action, called for a cease-fire, which Israeli Prime Minister Peres said he would implement if Hezbollah agreed to halt attacks on Israeli occupation troops and northern Israeli towns.

PNA President Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Peres, meeting in Jerusalem, agreed to a May 4 resumption of peace talks, which had been suspended after a series of suicide bombings in Israel.

In Cairo, 18 people were killed and 21 wounded when militant Islamic Group gunmen fired at a group of Greek tourists who had come to Egypt from Jerusalem and were staying at a hotel near the Pyramids known for accepting Israeli tourists.

Reversing an earlier decision, the British government agreed to allow Saudi dissident Mohammed Masari to remain in the country for at least four more years.

April 20: As Israeli gunboats fired on civilian cars on the main coastal highway south of Beirut, closing the road and thereby isolating major southern cities, U.S. Secretary of State Christopher met in Damascus with Syrian President Assad in an attempt to reach a cease-fire agreement in southern Lebanon.

April 21: At a joint Jerusalem news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Peres, U.S. Secretary of State Christopher urged Russia and France and other European countries to let the U.S. take the lead in brokering a cease-fire in southern Lebanon. Both countries had criticized Israeli attacks on Lebanon as excessive and proposed Israeli withdrawal from its self-declared “security zone” as part of a cease-fire agreement.

Egypt’s militant Islamic Group and an offshoot of Jihad, which assassinated the late President Anwar el-Sadat, threatened to kidnap American citizens and target worldwide U.S. and Israeli interests. Similar threats were voiced by radical groups in Lebanon and the Israeli-occupied territories since Israel began its latest attacks on Lebanon.

A week before Indian parliamentary elections, a Kashmiri and a Sikh separatist group jointly claimed responsibility for a bomb explosion in central New Delhi which killed at least 17 people and wounded some 30 more.

April 22: PNA President Arafat, saying, “We have to respect our commitment,” urged the 600 members of the Palestine National Council who convened in Gaza for the PNC’s first meeting since 1991 to delete clauses from the PLO charter calling for the destruction of Israel.

Syria and Lebanon expressed support for a French proposal to halt the Israeli assault on Lebanon which called for a “critical dialogue” with Iran and an international monitoring committee as part of any workable agreement.

Four Saudi Arabian men, charging that they had been influenced by exiled Saudi dissidents Mohammed Masari and Hassan al-Sarai, confessed to the Nov. 13 bombing of a U.S.-run military training center in Riyadh which killed five Americans and two Indians, and wounded some 60 people.

April 23: Israeli government spokesman Uri Dromi acknowledged that more 120-mm Katyusha rockets had been fired from southern Lebanon into northern Israel since “Operation Grapes of Wrath” began April 11 than the 450 previously fired since 1968 when Israel started keeping count.

U.S. Undersecretary of State Peter Tarnoff, testifying before the House International Relations Committee, defended the Clinton administration’s decision not to block Iranian arms shipments to the Bosnian government.

Chief Iraqi negotiator Abdul Amir Anbari charged that the U.S. and Britain were trying to sabotage U.N.-Iraqi talks on the limited sale of Iraqi oil to purchase food and humanitarian supplies by raising objections to Baghdad’s proposals for food distribution and financing arrangements.

April 24: Meeting in Gaza, the Palestine National Council voted 504 to 54 to repeal all provisions of the PLO charter denying Israel’s right to exist.

Following a meeting in Damascus with Syrian President Assad, U.S. Secretary of State Christopher travelled to Beirut to try to persuade Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri to support an American plan for a cease-fire in southern Lebanon. In Washington, Lebanese President Elias Hrawi met with President Clinton at the White House.

The U.N. and Iraq temporarily suspended talks on allowing limited Iraqi oil sales.

The Turkish parliament voted to investigate charges of corruption against former Prime Minister Tansu Ciller.

April 25: In response to the PNC vote amending the PLO charter, Israel’s ruling Labor party dropped its formal opposition to the establishment of a Palestinian state.

The U.N. General Assembly voted 64-2 (the U.S. and Israel voting no), with 65 members abstaining, to condemn Israel’s continuing assault on southern Lebanon.

On the eve of his latest visit to Washington, Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres was reported to be planning to urge that the U.S. military spend $50 million, with Israel contributing $20 million, to develop the Nautilus Tactical High-Energy Laser as a defense against Katyusha rockets. No funds for the missile were included in the Pentagon’s latest budget.

The Pentagon said that U.S. and other peacekeeping troops in Bosnia would remain for at least one month beyond the originally scheduled departure date of Dec. 20.

April 26: U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher, at a joint news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Peres, announced a written cease-fire agreement barring attacks on civilian targets or from civilian areas in southern Lebanon by Israeli occupation troops, its client SLA militia, or Hezbollah guerrillas. The new agreement was virtually the same as the oral one in effect prior to Israel’s “Grapes of Wrath” campaign against its northern neighbor.

April 28: U.S. President Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Peres, lavishly praising each other, appeared together at the annual convention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in Washington, DC. Earlier in the day, Peres appeared at a joint news conference with U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry. They announced that the Clinton administration had agreed to provide Israel with nearly instantaneous satellite intelligence in the event of a ballistic missile attack and to spend tens of millions of dollars to develop the Nautilus laser weapons system on Israel’s behalf. Peres said he was “surprised in a very welcome way” at the amount of U.S. assistance being offered.

Some 300,000 villagers, of an estimated total of half a million refugees, returned to their homes and buried their dead in southern Lebanon, as the cease-fire ending “Operation Grapes of Wrath,” which killed 162 people and wounded 339, mostly Lebanese civilians, took effect. In northern Israel, nearly 20,000 people returned to their homes.

April 29: In the town of Trnovo 18 miles south of Sarajevo, Serbs attacked busloads of Bosnian Muslims seeking to return home, killing three and wounding dozens more.

April 30: At the White House, President Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Peres signed a formal anti-terrorism agreement under which the two countries will share intelligence, resources, technology and anti-terrorism training.

The quasi-official Jewish Agency, which has brought 630,000 Soviet Jews to Israel since 1989, announced in Jerusalem that Russian authorities had revoked its accreditation and banned it from operating in Russia.

By a vote of 99-0, the Senate passed a nonbinding resolution introduced by Alfonse D’Amato (R-NY) urging the Justice Department to seek the extradition of Abu Abbas, head of the Palestine Liberation Front and alleged mastermind of the Achille Lauro hijacking, who recently returned to the Gaza Strip as a member of the Palestine National Council.

May 1: Meeting at the White House for the first time without an Israeli leader present, and following the deletion from the PLO charter of language calling for the destruction of Israel, PNA President Arafat discussed U.S. aid and the Israeli closure of the West Bank and Gaza with President Clinton. The two leaders agreed to establish a joint Palestinian-American commission to handle relations.

In Hebron, from which Israeli forces have yet to withdraw, a Palestinian stabbed and wounded a Jewish settler.

Binyamin Netanyahu, Likud leader and candidate for prime minister in Israel’s upcoming election, attacked in parliament Prime Minister Shimon Peres’ “cynical attempt to use U.S.-Israeli relations for political” benefit.

May 2: Becoming the first of the former Yugoslav republics to do so, the Bosnian government detained two of its citizens, Hazim Delic and Esad Landzo, indicted for war crimes by the international tribunal in The Hague.

May 3: Israeli Prime Minister Peres said he would “coordinate” with the PNA a limited Israeli withdrawal from Hebron, but set no firm date for the final withdrawal of Israeli troops.

May 5: Israeli-Palestinian “final status” negotiations, scheduled for completion by May 1999, formally opened in the Egyptian resort of Taba.

A Syrian government statement said U.S. “bias” toward Israel and its refusal to criticize Israel’s 17-day assault on Lebanon “contradicted its role as a basic sponsor of the peace process in the region.” In Cairo, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak complained to a European Union delegation about American favoritism for Israel. Following the meeting, the delegation leader, Italian Foreign Minister Susanna Agnelli, agreed that “not enough was done when there was the attack on Lebanon. It was not treated in the same way as the attacks on Israel.” She said that Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon was essential to achieving a lasting peace.

The Israeli army said its attack on the U.N. peacekeeping compound at Qana, Lebanon which killed more than 100 civilian refugees, was the result of a mapping error.

May 6: A fourth round of U.N.-Iraqi negotiations on allowing Baghdad to sell oil to obtain food and humanitarian supplies opened hours after the Security Council unanimously extended sanctions against Iraq for 60 days.

May 7: A U.N. investigation into the Israeli shelling of the U.N. peacekeeping compound at Qana found that the attack did not appear to be a mistake. The report cited the pattern of shelling and the targeting of antipersonnel shells with proximity fuses on the base. By contrast, impact shells designed to destroy equipment were fired at the nearby site from which Hezbollah mortars had been launched at Israeli troops. Israel rejected the report’s findings and the U.S. objected to the report’s tone and timing.

The International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague began its first trial, of Bosnian Serb policeman Dusan Tadic, charged with 31 counts of persecution, killing, rape and torture of Bosnian Muslims in and around Serb-run prison camps near Prijedor.

May 8: A federal judge in New York ruled that alleged Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook, detained since he tried to re-enter the U.S. in July, could be extradited to Israel.

The Israeli election campaign officially opened, with voting scheduled for May 29.

Turkish troops, backed by U.S.-made Cobra helicopter gunships, were reported to be pursuing Kurdish guerrillas into northern Iraq.

May 10: The Clinton administration decided not to impose sanctions on China for allegedly shipping $70,000 worth of ring magnets to Pakistan.

May 12: At a one-day summit conference in Cairo, King Hussein of Jordan and Presidents Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Yasser Arafat of the PNA called for a peace “based on the principle of land for peace, withdawal from all occupied Arab territory, renunciation of concepts of expansion, superiority, and domination, and commitment to the national rights of the Palestinian people.”

Hezbollah guerrillas attacked an Israeli patrol and outpost in southern Lebanon, wounding five Israeli soldiers.

May 13: Israeli helicopter gunships attacked Hezbollah guerrillas attempting to infiltrate Israel’s self-declared “security zone” near the southern Lebanese village of Sojod.

Near the West Bank settlement of Beit El, gunmen fired on a bus carrying Jewish settlers and on people waiting at a nearby bus stop, killing an American-born seminary student and seriously wounding another student.

May 14: The chief of staff of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe’s mission in Bosnia, former U.S. Army Major William Steubner, resigned amid reports that he wanted to delay elections scheduled for September because of fears that an early vote might serve to legitimize “ethnic cleansings” carried out by Bosnian Serbs. Meanwhile, under U.S. pressure, Bosnia’s Muslim-Croat federation agreed to establish a joint military command.

An initial contingent of 32 international observers arrived in Hebron from Norway to monitor Israel’s redeployment from the West Bank city, scheduled after Israel’s May 29 elections.

Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that Yigal Amir, the convicted assassin of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, was eligible to vote in upcoming national elections.

Iran and Turkmenistan celebrated completion of the final link of a railroad along the former “Silk Road” linking China and Asia with Turkey and the West.

The U.S. ordered Sudanese diplomat Elsadig Bakheit Elfaki Abdalla to leave the country by the end of the week and Ambassador Mahdi Ibrahim and the remaining diplomats at Sudan’s embassy and U.N. mission to provide the State Department 48 hours’ notice of any travel planned outside a 25-mile radius of Washington or New York.

May 15:Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic dismissed moderate Bosnian Serb Prime Minister Rajko Kasagic, who had cooperated with Western officials and NATO-led troops in implementing the Dayton peace accord.

Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic fired central bank governor Dragoslav Avramovic, whose stringent economic policies had significantly reduced inflation and made him popular with the Serbian public.

May 17: India’s newly elected Hindu nationalist government said it would seek “the best of relations with Pakistan.”

May 18: Turkish President Suleyman Demirel escaped an assassination attempt in Ankara by gunman Ibrahim Gumrukcuoglu, who said he had attacked to protest the government’s recent agreement with Israel.

Israeli army officials said they had captured Hassan Salameh, who allegedly helped organize three recent suicide bombings, following a shootout and pursuit in Hebron.

The Bosnian Serb parliament elected former Health Minister Gojko Klickovic, a hard-liner and nominee of Radovan Karadzic, as new prime minister, replacing Rajko Kasagic, who has refused to step down.

May 19: Israel resumed shelling southern Lebanese villages following a Hezbollah attack on Israeli occupation troops.

May 20: Iraq and the U.N. signed an agreement allowing Baghdad to sell limitied quantities of oil to buy food and medicine.

May 21: International war crimes tribunal chief prosecutor Richard Goldstone said that the refusal of NATO troops to arrest indicted Bosnian Serb leaders was undermining peace in the region.

May 23: India sent thousands of troops to Kashmir, where they forced Muslim residents to cast votes to fill the six allotted Kashmiri seats in the Indian parliament.

Algeria's Armed Islamic Group said it had killed seven French monks kidnapped two months ago.

May 24: Tumult erupted at the first session of India’s newly elected parliament when the formerly ruling Congress Party objected to a ruling BJP proposal for a total ban on the slaughter of cows, which are consumed by Muslims but considered sacred by Hindus.

May 26: Former Turkish Prime Minister Tansu Ciller withdrew from her party’s coalition with the rival Motherland Party, causing the coalition government formed in opposition to the majority Islamist Refah party to collapse.

May 29: Election-day results of the first direct Israeli election for prime minister were too close to declare either Labor Prime Minister Shimon Peres or Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu the winner. Parliamentary results showed both major parties losing seats to smaller parties and a newly formed Russian immigrant party.

The trial of Ramzi Ahmed Youssef, who elected to defend himself, on charges of plotting to blow up U.S. airliners over the Pacific opened in New York.

May 31: Challenger Binyamin Netanyahu, of the right-wing Likud Party, was declared to have won election as Israeli prime minister by 50.4 percent to 49.6 percent, a margin of less than 30,000 votes.Within minutes of the official announcement, U.S. President Clinton called Netanyahu to congratulate him on his victory and invite him to the White House as soon as a new cabinet was selected.

Israeli jets attacked suspected Hezbollah targets in eastern Lebanon following the killing of four Israeli soldiers in occupied southern Lebanon.

An ethnic Croat who fought for the Bosnian Serb army pleaded guilty to crimes against humanity before the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

Four Saudi nationals convicted of the Nov. 13 bombing of a U.S.-run national guard training center in Riyadh, in which five Americans and two Indians were killed, were beheaded.