Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, August/September 1997, pgs. 111-114

Facts For Your Files

A Chronology of U.S.-Middle East Relations

Compiled by Janet McMahon

April 1: As President Bill Clinton and Jordan's King Hussein met in Washington to discuss the crisis caused by Israel's plan to build the Jewish-only Har Homa settlement at Jabal Abu Ghneim, Israeli police killed two Palestinians in the West Bank, and two Palestinians were killed in separate explosions in Gaza.

The radio station of Israel's proxy South Lebanon Army reported that it would be receiving new advanced weapons from Israel and training for commando operations outside Israel's self-declared nine-mile-deep "security zone."

In the first of three votes required to become law, the Israeli Knesset approved a bill giving official recognition only to conversions performed by Orthodox rabbis.

Newly elected Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif won parliamentary approval for the repeal of Pakistan's Eighth Amendment to the constitution, which gave the country's appointed president the authority to dismiss the elected prime minister. Sharif's previous government, as well as the two previous administrations of his predecessor, Benazir Bhutto, had been dismissed under the Eighth Amendment clause.

April 2: Former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker, at the United Nations to assume his new duties as special envoy to the Western Sahara, criticized the Clinton administration for its veto of two recent Security Council resolutions calling on Israel to halt construction plans for the Har Homa settlement. "When you have settlement activity such as we are now witnessing," Baker said, "you foreclose the possibilities for negotiation and you make a mockery of Resolution 242 and 338."

Fahad Shereri, one of two Saudi men being held by Canadian immigration authorities on suspicion of terrorist activities, was cleared of involvement in the bombing of the Khobar Towers military residence complex in Dhahran that killed 19 U.S. airmen.

April 3: Following a meeting between Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai and U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen, the Pentagon announced pledges of increased U.S. funding for Israel's Arrow anti-ballistic missile and the Nautilus anti-missile laser programs.

Citing concerns over "security and the prevention of terrorist attacks," Israel dropped its nearly two-year-old request for the extradition of Hamas political leader Mousa Abu Marzook, who has been held in a U.S. prison as an "excludable alien" since Israel initially made the request, citing the same concerns.

April 4: On the eve of his visit to Washington to address the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and to meet with President Bill Clinton on the crisis caused by his decision to construct the Har Homa settlement, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu proposed a Camp David-like summit to arrive at a final Israeli-Palestinian agreement, bypassing the six-month interim period.

The Federation of Egyptian Industries reinstituted a ban on direct trade with Israel which had been discontinued following the 1979 Camp David accords.

April 5: In a letter to President Clinton, PNA President Yasser Arafat said that any U.S. peace initiative would have to include a freeze on Israeli settlement-building on Palestinian land.

Hani Abdel-Rahim Hussein al Sayegh, the Saudi dissident being held by Canada for suspected involvement in the Khobar Towers bombing, reportedly admitted having been a member of the Saudi Hezbollah organization thought to be responsible for the blast.

April 6: An Israeli human rights activist with the Association of the Friends of Prisoners in Nazareth said that four Iranian diplomats believed to be dead since 1982 had been seen by a Palestinian prisoner at Atlin prison in northern Israel in the late 1980s.

April 7: During a two-hour White House meeting, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu rejected President Clinton's request that Israel cease building Jewish settlements on "disputed" land.

April 8: House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA), speaking to the annual AIPAC convention, accused the Clinton adminstration of "undermin[ing] Israel's security" by treating "with moral equivalence Palestinian violence and Israeli housing."

In Hebron, two armed Jewish yeshiva students opened fire on Palestinians, killing a 24-year-old man and setting off five hours of protests, during which residents threw "everything that wasn't nailed down" at Israeli soldiers, who responded with tear gas and rubber-coated steel bullets and killed two more Palestinians and wounded some 100 other protesters. Five Israeli soldiers and nine Palestinian police officers also were wounded.

Oman refused to grant visas to two Israeli diplomats and rejected an Israeli request to participate in a telecommunications exhibit.

April 9: Apologizing for its errors, the CIA released a report revealing that it knew in 1986 that the Kamisiyah ammunition depot in southern Iraq, which was blown up by American troops following the Gulf war, contained thousands of weapons filled with mustard gas, but that it failed to include the site on a list of possible chemical weapons depots provided to the Pentagon prior to the war.

State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns responded to a European Union move to revive the stalled Mideast peace process by saying it was "important to remind everybody" that the "United States has the central role in the Middle East peace negotiations."

Despite efforts by Palestinian police to separate demonstrators from Israeli troops, some 30 Palestinians were hurt in confrontations with Israeli soldiers following the funeral of a Palestinian killed the previous day in Hebron.

The foreign ministers of India and Pakistan met and agreed to continue talks on Kashmir and other disputed issues.

Defying a U.N. air embargo imposed after the Gulf war, an Iraqi aircraft flew 104 elderly and infirm hajj pilgrims to Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia.

April 10: A high-level Palestinian delegation including senior negotiator Saeb Erekat and Education Minister Hanan Ashrawi met with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and pledged to continue "exerting more than 100 percent effort to stop the cycle of violence." Ashrawi earlier had described the Clinton administration as acting like a "spectator," and said Palestinians would welcome a more active EU role.

Israeli and Palestinian security officials working together broke up a six-member Hamas military cell based in the West Bank villages of Tsurif and Dura which was allegedly responsible for killing 11 Israelis in terrorist attacks, including the March 21 café bombing in Tel Aviv.

The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service granted legal resident status to Aiad Barakat and Naim Sharif, two members of the L.A. Eight whom the federal government has been trying to deport for the past decade on charges of being affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Following a German court ruling that the "political leaders of Iran gave the order" for the murders at a Berlin restaurant of four Kurdish dissidents, including exiled Iranian Democratic Party of Kurdistan leader Sadegh Sharafkandi, Germany expelled four Iranian diplomats and Tehran, calling the ruling "unjust and biased," retaliated by recalling its ambassador to Germany and expelling four German diplomats.

The 14-party coalition government of Indian Prime Minister Deve Gowda fell after 10 months in power when the Congress Party withdrew its support.

April 12: U.S. and Saudi intelligence reports linked Brig. Ahmad Sherifi, a top official in Iran's Revolutionary Guard, with the bombing of the Khobar Towers military residence in Dhahran.

As Israeli soldiers, intervening between stone-throwing Jewish settlers and Palestinians, shot and wounded six Palestinians in Hebron, the Netanyahu government announced it would ease its closure of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and allow 20,000 Palestinian workers to enter Israel.

Hours after explosives were unearthed along his route into Sarajevo, Pope John Paul II, greeted by thousands of well-wishers, began a two-day visit to the Bosnian capital.

April 13: More then 100,000 people marched on the German Embassy in Tehran to protest the German court ruling implicating Iranian leaders in the murder of four exiled Kurdish dissidents.

April 14: As Palestinians looked on, Jewish settlers in Hebron threw stones, eggs and tomatoes at Israeli soldiers stringing chicken wire above a gate outside their compound. In Washington, the State Department announced that special envoy Dennis Ross would be returning to the region to try and revive stalled peace negotiations.

April 15: In Saudi Arabia, a fire driven by high winds swept through a tent compound housing thousands of hajj pilgrims, killing hundreds and wounding over a thousand people, most of whom were from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

April 16: Israeli police investigators formally called for the indictment of Prime Minister Netanyahu "on charges of fraud and breach of trust" stemming from the appointment of Roni Bar-On as attorney general, allegedly in return for support of the Hebron agreement by indicted Shas Party head Aryeh Deri.

April 17: Declaring, "The truth will triumph," Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu vowed to remain in office.

Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Colin Powell, testifying before the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, said he never received information from the CIA that "there were known stockpiles of any chemical weapons" at Iraqi sites blown up by U.S. troops following the Gulf war.

April 19: Former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres said that until Prime Minister Netanyahu's legal status is resolved, "there is no basis for a national unity government."

As hundreds of ultra-Orthodox Jews demanding the Sabbath closure of a downtown Jerusalem street clashed with Israeli police, PNA President Arafat ordered Palestinian security forces to resume cooperating with their Israeli counterparts.

April 20: Israeli prosecutors announced they were dropping the criminal probe into the activities of Prime Minister Netanyahu because, despite "tangible suspicion," they lacked sufficient evidence admissible in court, but that the investigation of Shas Party leader Ariyeh Deri and Netanyahu aide Avigdor Lieberman would continue.

The Israeli daily Ha'aretz reported that Israel helped the apartheid government of South Africa develop nuclear weapons in the early 1980s.

Former Foreign Minister I.K. Gujral was named India's new prime minister.

April 22: Armed Islamic militants massacred 93 Algerians, including 43 women and 3 children, in the village of Haouch Mokhfi, 12 miles south of Algiers.

April 24: Testifying before a House Government Reform subcommittee and contradicting Defense Department and CIA findings, former State Department arms specialist Jonathan B. Tucker said evidence suggested "that Iraq deployed chemical weapons" during the Gulf war.

Newly appointed U.N. envoy for Western Sahara James A. Baker III met in Rabat with Moroccan politcal leaders to discuss the U.N. peace plan for the region.

April 25: The U.N. General Assembly voted 134 to 3 (the U.S., Israel and Micronesia) to demand that Israel cease construction of the Jewish-only Har Homa settlement at Jabal Abu Ghneim.

April 26: Following the resignation of two cabinet ministers and a crisis meeting between Turkey's political and military leaders, Islamist Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan reiterated his pledge, first made two months ago, to implement a list of 18 anti-Islamist measures presented by the army.

April 27: Yemen held its first national parliamentary elections since the country's two-month civil war in 1994.

April 29: The European Union member states decided not to resume high-level contacts with Iran but to have their ambassadors return to Tehran, after having recalled them following a German court's ruling that prominent Iranian officials had approved the assassination of four exiled Kurdish dissidents in Berlin.

April 30: Jordan agreed to accept "on humanitarian grounds" Mousa Abu Marzook, the Hamas political leader jailed in the U.S. pending extradition to Israel, which recently dropped its request.

Convicted spy and former U.S. Navy counterintelligence specialist Jonathan Pollard petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court to order Prime Minister Netanyahu to publicly name Pollard as an Israeli agent and specify efforts being made to secure his release from a U.S. federal prison, where he is serving a life sentence. Pollard's petition also accused the Israeli government of "breach of promise" for refusing to continue financing his defense and supporting his wife.

In its annual report on terrorism, the State Department named Iran as the chief sponsor of international terrorism in 1996, and also cited Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Syria, Cuba and North Korea.

Tajikistan's President Emomali Rakhmonov survived an assassination attempt when a grenade was thrown at him as he was emerging from his car in Khodzhen, the seat of his political rivals. A university student and teacher were killed in the explosion, which wounded Rakhmonov in the legs.

May 1: Marwan Kanafani, spokesman for PNA President Yasser Arafat, said Palestinians were prepared to resume talks with Israel, focusing on the "reasons that led to the present crisis."

May 2: The Palestinian Authority jailed Gaza lawyer Naim Salameh for wondering, in an article on the Israeli police investigation into the corruption charges against Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyah, "when we will see such examples applied in Palestinian Authority territory."

May 3: Following a five-hour cabinet meeting on the deteriorating peace process, PNA President Arafat said, "There is no way of getting out of this crisis without international intervention."

Days after House Speaker Newt Gingrich said that, if Iranian involvement in the bombing of Khobar Towers is proven, Tehran should "wake up each morning wondering exactly what was going to happen," the English-language daily Tehran Times threatened Iranian closure of the Strait of Hormuz "if Iran feels that its security is threatened."

May 4: Egypt's militant Gamaa al-Islamiya threatened to kill American officials if Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, whose health was reported to be deteriorating, dies in a U.S. prison.

May 5: After 21 months in a U.S. prison, Hamas political leader Mousa Abu Marzook was released and flown to Jordan aboard a U.S. military jet

The Palestinian Authority announced that Palestinians who sell land to Israelis will face execution.

The U.S. protested to Israel "at the highest level" over reports of threats to confiscate the American passports of Palestinian-Americans who do not give up their Jerusalem residency permits.

A Palestinian from Gaza, Ibrahim Halabi, said he had been recruited by Shin Bet, the Israeli security service, to recruit Palestinian Muslim militants to carry out suicide bomb attacks in Israel.

A Canadian judge ordered the deportation of Hani Abdel Rahim Sayegh, a Saudi citizen being held for suspected involvement in the bombing of Khobar Towers, because of his involvement in international terrorism.

May 6: The Washington Post reported that, following an intercepted phone call between a senior Israeli intelligence official in Washington and his superior in Tel Aviv, the FBI has been investigating the possibility that a high-level U.S. official, code-named "Mega," has been passing highly sensitive information to the Israeli government.

After meeting with PNA President Arafat at the Erez Crossing on the Gaza Strip border, Israeli President Ezer Weizman announced that "talks will be renewed between the security chiefs of the Palestinian Authority and Israel." PNA negotiator Yasser Abed Rabbo added, however, that "none of the basic issues were resolved during the meeting." In Hebron, Israeli soldiers demolished four Palestinian homes.

At the United Nations, an Iraqi spokesman said "it seems that the U.S. is involved" in "serious and deliberate delays" of delivery of aid authorized by the Iraqi-U.N. oil-for-food agreement.

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati flew to Cairo to invite Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who had accused Iran in 1995 of trying to assassinate him, to a December Islamic summit meeting in Tehran.

May 6: Addressing a U.S.-EU conference in Washington, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott said that excluding Turkey from the EU would be "quite wrong and potentially quite dangerous."

Israeli businessman Nahum Manbar was indicted in Tel Aviv District Court on charges of selling mustard and nerve gas ingredients to Iran from 1990 to 1994.

May 7: Responding to the report of an FBI investigation into the existence of an American informant code-named "Mega," Netanyahu aide David Bar-Ilan said, "Israel does not indulge in any activity that is improper or illegal in the United States."

The U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague convicted Bosnian Serb police reservist Dusan "Dusko" Tadic of 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, clearing him of 10 other counts because of insufficient evidence, including the charge that he ordered a Bosnian Muslim prisoner in the Omarska detention camp to bite off the testicles of another prisoner.

Israel defended its use of "moderate physical pressure" in interrogating Palestinian prisoners before a U.N. human rights committee monitoring the practices of signatories to the Convention Against Torture. Prof. Bent Sorenson, a torture expert from Denmark who recalled his country's assistance to Jews escaping Nazi Germany, said, "It it nearly unbelievable that Israel is the only nation in the world that allows torture."

Iran's ruling mullahs selected four candidates to run in the May 23 election to succeed President Hashemi Rafsanjani, who by law is ineligible for a third four-year term.

May 9: The U.N. Committee Against Torture ruled that Israeli interrogation practices amounted to torture and should be halted immediately.

In Ramallah, a Palestinian accused of selling Arab homes and land to Israelis was found dead of a blow to the back of his head, with his hands tied behind his back.

The U.S. said it was sending 116 large artillery weapons to the Bosnian Federation as part of its train-and-equip program and in preparation for the withdrawal of American forces by July 1998.

The German Interior Ministry said the U.S. had agreed to take in 5,000 Bosnian refugees whose right to stay in Germany had expired but who could not return home.

At least 13 Iraqi refugees who had helped the CIA in its failed attempt to undermine the regime of Saddam Hussain were reported to be in jail and facing deportation because of INS charges that they were "a danger to the security of the United States."

May 10: Pope John Paul II arrived in Beirut to a tumultuous welcome by Lebanon's Christians and Muslims.

May 11: A senior Israeli official told the Tel Aviv newspaper Ma'ariv that Prime Minister Netanyahu intends to keep under Israeli control "about 60 percent, not 45 or 50" of the West Bank.

A major earthquake, the second in 10 weeks, struck northeastern Iran, destroying 200 villages, killing some 2,400 people and injuring 5,000.

May 12: While attending the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation summit, Prime Ministers I.K. Gujral of India and Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan held the first such bilateral meeting in four years, agreeing on some confidence-building measures but failing to achieve progress of the "core issue" of Kashmir.

May 13: Israel's Labor Party defeated a proposal to create the special post of party president for former Prime Minister Shimon Peres, signaling the end of Peres' party leadership.

May 14: Some 10,000 Turkish troops backed by warplanes, tanks and helicopter gunships crossed into northern Iraq in an operation aimed at the separatist Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), in conjunction with the Iraqi Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP).

Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met for the first time since Israel broke ground for the Jewish-only Har Homa settlement two months ago, although no progress was reported in the talks, held at the home of U.S. Ambassador Martin Indyk.

May 15: State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns confirmed that the U.S. is considering transferring to Jordan $50 million in aid currently going to Israel and Egypt.

May 16: After refusing to meet with U.S. special envoy Dennis Ross, Palestinian President Arafat wrote a letter to President Bill Clinton declaring the latest Ross mission a failure and saying, "This is the moment to save the [peace] process. We expect you to intervene to protect it." Following a meeting between Ross and Palestinian negotiators, who accused the U.S. mediator of pushing "an Israeli agenda," Arafat invited Ross to Nablus for a meeting, which a Western diplomat described as "very useful for clearing the air."

In its first formal explanation of an intercepted phone call referring to a high-level U.S. government informant code-named "Mega," Israel said the name referred to the Israel desk officer of the CIA, an above-board source of information. Meanwhile, in a letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Eliahu Ben-Elissar complained that embassy phones were being tapped, adding, "If we do not respond in a harsh fashion we will look as if it doesn't matter to us."

The Israeli Supreme Court deferred a decision on overriding government prosecutors and filing charges of fraud and corruption against Prime Minister Netanyahu.

May 17: Abdel Rahim al-Sayegh, the Saudi citizen being held in Canada on suspicion of involvement in the Khobar Towers bombing, indicated he might cooperate with American authorities investigating the bombing if he is permitted to enter the U.S.

The European Union and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan called on Turkey to end its four-day-old incursion into northern Iraq, in which Turkey said more than 900 Kurdish guerrillas had been killed to date.

May 18: A second Palestinian land dealer known for selling land to Israelis was found murdered in the West Bank.

May 20: U.S. officials confirmed reports that their figures indicated a 25 percent vacancy rate in Jewish-only West Bank settlements, and a 50 percent vacancy in such settlements in the Gaza Strip.

Bethlehem Mayor Elias Freij, 80, announced he was retiring after 25 years in office to write his memoirs and spend time with his more than 20 grandchildren.

May 21: Ramallah police chief Col. Firas Ameleh placed under arrest Palestinian-American journalist Daoud Kuttab, whose live television broadcasts of the Palestinian legislative debates critical of the Arafat government have been jammed by the PNA.

Turkish Supreme Court chief prosecutor Savas Vural, saying "the Welfare Party wants to change the constitution because it is against secularism," filed 18 pages of charges seeking to outlaw the ruling Islamist party, which two days earlier had survived a no-confidence measure in parliament by six votes.

May 22: Palestinian security police arrested six West Bank Palestinians on suspicion of selling land to Israelis. Mean-

while, Palestinian officials dismissed as a ploy Israel's announcement that it would build 3,400 Arab homes in a village adjacent to Jabal Abu Ghneim, site of the Jewish-only Har Homa settlement.

The U.S. imposed economic sanctions on two Chinese companies and five Chinese citizens for selling chemical weapons materials to Iran.

In a speech in New York, Secretary of State Albright said the U.S. was committed to the Bosnian peace process and the ending of ethnic strife in the former Yugoslav republic.

May 23: In presidential voting in Iran, moderate candidate Mohammed Khatemi won a landslide victory over arch-conservative speaker of parliament Ali Akbar Nateq-Nouri.

In a major victory, Afghanistan's Taliban militia captured the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif, the admistrative headquarters of Gen. Abdul Rasheed Dostam, whose top-level commander had defected to the Islamist Taliban.

U.N. Under Secretary-General for humanitarian affairs Asushi Akashi said that, despite the supplies obtained by Iraq under the oil-for-food agreement, "the conditions of sick people, particularly children, continue to be deplorable."

May 24: An audit ordered by Palestinian President Arafat reported the misuse of $326 million in public funds during the past year.

Following the first visit by a Syrian delegation since the Gulf war, Iraqi Minister of Information Hamid Yousif Hummadi said that Baghdad would not object to opening the Abu Shamat border crossing, closed for 17 years, between the two countries.

May 25: Prior to a Cairo meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Egyptian President Mubarak, Israeli Housing Minister David Bar-Ilan said the army would cease demolitions of illegally built Palestinian homes in the West Bank. The previous day, Prime Minister Netanyahu had vowed to continue building the Har Homa settlement at Jabal Abu Ghneim.

Iran rejected U.S. charges that it had received chemical weapons materials from China.

May 26: Palestinian human rights activist Bassam Eid, founder of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, held a press conference in Jerusalem at which he denounced the Palestinian Authority and President Arafat for "torture on a large scale."

Noting that "since the peace process started, the Palestinians have been losing 10 percent in their living standard every year," Peter Hansen, director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), said his agency was "technically bankrupt" and needed an infusion of $25 million to meet its $312 million 1997 budget.

Following a meeting with Prime Minister Erbakan, Turkey's Supreme Military Council announced a purge of pro-Islamist officers.

May 27: Palestinian-American journalist Daoud Kuttab was released by Palestinian authorities after having begun a hunger strike during his week-long detention for broadcasting the proceedings of the Palestinian Legislative Council.

Egyptian President Mubarak and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu held a cordial but inconclusive meeting at Sharm al-Sheikh on the Sinai peninsula.

May 28: Four days after taking control of Mazar-e Sharif, the Taliban militia of Sunni ethnic Pashtuns was driven from the northern Afghan city dominated by Uzbeks, Tajiks, and Shi'i Hazaris.

Visiting the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague en route to the former Yugoslavia, Secretary of State Albright said that Croatian and Serbian cooperation in the arrest of alleged war criminals was "a prerequisite for U.S. assistance."

The CIA said it had lost or destroyed documents on its role in the 1953 overthrow of Iran's democratically elected government and the re-installation of pro-American Shah Mohammed Rezi Pahlavi.

May 29: Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu appointed former American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) deputy director Leonard Davis as deputy chief of mission at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, having decided not to replace current Ambassador Eliyahu Ben-Elissar with former Ambassador Zalman Shoval.

Anti-Taliban forces claimed to have driven the Islamist militia from all of Afghanistan's northern provinces.

May 31: In meetings in Zagreb and Belgrade, Secretary of State Albright warned Croatian President Franjo Tudjman and Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic that they needed to do more to comply with the Dayton peace agreement.

A third Palestinian land dealer who sold land to Israelis was found shot to death near Ramallah.

Conceding that they had lost the key town of Jabal-us-Siraj near Kabul to the rival militia forces of Ahmed Shah Masoud, Afghanistan's Taliban militia launched aerial attacks against Mazar-e Sharif and Jabal-us-Siraj.

In a five-hour closed-door meeting, Turkey's military National Security Council questioned Prime Minister Erbakan on his promised efforts "to curb anti-regime, radical Islamic activities."