August 1988, Page 30

Facts For Your Files: A Chronology of US-Mideast Relations

June 7:

Israeli-appointed Mayor Hassarn Tawil, 73, of the West Bank town of El Bireh, was stabbed and critically wounded. The assassination attempt followed repeated calls by Palestinian militants for Tawil and three other Israeli-appointed Palestinian mayors to resign.

June 9:

A special Arab summit meeting adjourned in Algiers with a pledge to support the Palestinian uprising with "all possible means." Although the Arab League did not close the door on the US Middle East peace initiative, it reiterated the 1974 Arab summit resolution affirming the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.

PLO spokesman Bassani Abu Sharif issued an article saying the PLO is willing to recognize Israel and accept a two-state solution. The statement said in part: "We believe that all peoples—the Jewish and the Palestinians included—have a right to run their own affairs, expecting from their neighbors not only non-belligerence but the kind of political and economic cooperation without which no state can be truly secure."

The uprising entered its seventh month with continued violence between Palestinians and Israeli troops, resulting in four more Arab deaths.

In their first meeting ever, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze conferred at the United Nations, indicating Moscow's willingness to support an international Middle East peace conference with all parties in Israel's political spectrum.

June 12:

Israeli officials said the uprising had taken on a dangerous new twist with arson that was sweeping through Israel's and forests and farmland. More than 25,000 acres of land have been destroyed.

June 13:

Mubarak Awad, the Jerusalem-born US citizen who advocates non-violent resistance to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, was deported to the United States from Israel.

In response to a wave of firebomb attacks, senior Israeli government officials announced that members of the public are justified in shooting on sight anyone seen carrying a firebomb.

June 16:

Former Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban, was dropped from Israel's Labor Party slate. Eban blamed his defeat on secret deals made among party interest groups and his outspoken opposition to the hard-line policies of Yitzhak Rabin in suppressing Palestinian unrest.

The Reagan administration formally informed Congress that it wants to sell Kuwait $1.9 billion worth of arms, including sophisticated missiles for use on F-18 fighter-bombers.

Pakistani President Zia ul-Haq decreed that Islamic law is "the supreme source and fountainhead of law in Pakistan."

June 17:

The UK expelled Arie Regev, an Israeli diplomat it said was involved in an anti-PLO spy operation mounted without the knowledge of the British government. The British government also deported Zaki Hrwa, a PLO official said to be a member of Force 17, an elite PLO military unit, and reportedly a double agent reporting to Regev.

A federal magistrate in Brooklyn ruled that Mahmoud AI-Abed, a Palestinian American accused of taking part in an attack on an Israeli passenger bus in the West Bank in 1986, could not be extradited to Israel because his alleged acts were a "political offense."

June 18:

An escaped convict shot and slightly wounded Turkish Prime Minister Turgut Ozal moments after Ozal urged his country to reject violence.

June 19:

Israel's Cabinet voted to force Soviet Jews emigrating with Israeli visas to travel directly from the East Bloc to Israel to prevent them from settling elsewhere. The change stipulated that Israeli visas should be picked up from the Israeli Embassy in Bucharest, Rumania.

The mujaheddin alliance of seven Afghan guerilla groups named a transitional Cabinet of Islamic fundamentalists and moderates it would like to see replace the Soviet-backed regime of Afghan leader Najibullah.

June 23:

Khaled AI-Hassan, senior aide to PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, declared the PLO will no longer deal with the US through intermediaries. He noted the Reagan administration had yet to respond to an article written by Arafat spokesman Bassani Abu Sharif, which expressed Palestinian willingness to recognize Israel and accept a two-state solution.

The Reagan administration urged the Soviet Union to help mediate the Arab-Israeli conflict. The new emphasis on bringing Moscow into the peace process followed the failure of US Secretary of State George Shultz to bring Israel, Jordan, Syria, and the Palestinians into a new round of peace talks.

June 24:

Five people, including an Egyptian lieutenant colonel, were accused by the US of conspiring to smuggle to Egypt US missile materials.

June 25:

In its fourth offensive since last April, the Iraqi army recaptured the oil-rich region known as the Majnoon Islands, in Iraq's southern marshlands. It was the latest in a succession of Iranian military setbacks that began in April when Iraqi troops recaptured the Fao Peninsula.

June 27:

US State Department spokeswoman Phyllis Oakley said that although an article by PLO spokesman Bassarn Abu Sharif represented a softening of PLO positions, it lacked authoritative support from the group's leadership. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir said the statement contained nothing new.

President Reagan and Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin announced in Washington that Israel and the United States would sign an agreement for Israeli development of an anti-missile missile. The announcement said the project is an outgrowth of research on the US Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI).

June 30:

Fifteen prominent American Jews welcomed a statement by PLO spokesman Bassain Abu Sharif accepting a two-state solution, but called upon Yasser Arafat to endorse it officially.

A federal judge ruled that the US government could not force closure of the PLO's observer mission in New York, and required the US to "refrain from impairing the function" of the PLO's mission.

Four Israeli leftists who met with PLO officials were sentenced to six months in jail for meeting with the group. The four can serve their sentences by doing community service work.

July 1:

Iraq accused the United States of disclosing to Iran details of Baghdad's military plans to attack the Iranian-held Majnoon Islands a week earlier. Senior State Department officials denied that the US had provided intelligence information to Iran before the latest Iraqi offensive.

July 3:

An Aegis missile cruiser, the USS Vincennes, firing at Iranian gunboats in the Persian Gulf, mistook an Iranian civilian jetliner for an attacking Iranian F-14 fighter plane and shot it down, killing all 290 people aboard the aircraft. President Reagan expressed regret and ordered an investigation.

An attempt by Israeli religious authorities to excavate an ancient tunnel set off a clash between police and Palestinians near the site of the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa mosque.