December 30, 2002 The Israeli Supreme Court rules that Israel Defense Forces reservists may not refuse to serve in the West Bank and Gaza. Coming during the deadly violence of the Second Intifada, the ruling…
August 7, 2002 The Palestinian Authority Cabinet agrees to a truce deal proposed by Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer to withdraw the Israel Defense Forces from Palestinian-controlled parts of the Gaza Strip and from the…
May 7, 2002 Prime Minister Ariel Sharon flies home to Israel, cutting short a visit to the United States, after a suicide bomber kills 15 Israelis and wounds 55 others in a pool hall in…
April 11, 2002 U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell calls for an immediate West Bank ceasefire during a press conference in Madrid before he flies to Jordan to meet with King Abdullah II the day…
March 31, 2002 Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declares Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat “the enemy of Israel and the enemy of the free world” in an angry, five-minute, mid-Passover address to the nation after…
In September 2000, following the breakdown of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians at Camp David, the Palestinians launch the Second Intifada. Operation Defensive Shield is an Israeli military operation devised to curtail violence associated with the Second Intifada.
Israeli commandos overtake a weapons ship, the Karine-A, and seize fifty tons of Iranian weapons, including a number of long-range rockets.
December 2, 2001 Maher Habashi, a 21-year-old Palestinian plumber from Nablus, boards a No. 16 Egged bus driving from Neve Sha’anan to the Giborim bridge in Haifa just after noon and, moments after paying for…
Yehuda Amichai, the poet laureate of Jerusalem, dies from lymphoma at the age of 76.
July 19, 1999 Stella Levy, who commanded the Women’s Corps of the Israel Defense Forces in the 1960s and briefly served in the Knesset, dies. She was born in French Mandatory Syria in 1924 and…
May 28, 1999 The Israeli submarine Dakar, which disappeared in January 1968, is discovered between Crete and Cyprus almost 9,800 feet (nearly two miles) beneath the surface of the Mediterranean Sea. The diesel-electric Dakar, originally…
April 6, 1999 An Israel Defense Forces medical mission flies to Macedonia (now North Macedonia) to care for refugees from sectarian violence in Kosovo. The 70-person mission includes 12 physicians of various specialties, most of…
A collision of helicopters ferrying troops and supplies to southern Lebanon kills 73 Israeli military personnel.
April 18, 1996 Israeli artillery fire strikes a U.N. compound where at least 800 Lebanese civilians are sheltering in the village of Qana in southern Lebanon. At least 13 shells hit the compound, killing 106…
March 4, 1996 Abdel-Rahim Ishaq, 24, a Palestinian resident of Ramallah, detonates a 45-pound bomb packed with nails outside the Dizengoff Center in Tel Aviv, killing himself and 13 Israelis. Later identified by a caller…
January 5, 1996 Hamas bomb maker Yahya Ayyash is killed in Gaza City when his cellphone explodes during his weekly phone call to his father in the West Bank. It is a targeted assassination by…
Matti Shmulevitz, a member of the underground Lehi and an advisor to Menachem Begin, passes away at the age of 75 one day after collapsing during a chess game in Tel Aviv.
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, a prominent actor in virtually all of Israel’s modern history, is assassinated by Yigal Amir at a peace rally in Tel Aviv.
Hamas terrorists abduct Israeli soldier Nachshon Wachsman from the Bnai Atarot junction in central Israel by offering him a ride while wearing kippot, playing Hasidic music and carrying a prayer book.
Maj. Gen. Aharon Remez, who led Israel’s Air Force in its early years and served as ambassador to Great Britain, dies in Jerusalem at 74.
After nine months of secret contacts mediated by Norwegian diplomats, the PLO and Israel recognize each other’s existence.
Ezer Weizman is elected President by the Knesset on the second ballot in a narrow vote of 66 to 53.
May 12, 1992 Doron Erel, the 33-year-old son of Holocaust survivors who made aliyah on the Exodus 1947, becomes the first Israeli to reach the summit of Mount Everest in an expedition with 13 other…
August 12, 1991 Yeruham Cohen, an Israeli intelligence officer known for his friendship with Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, dies at age 75. Cohen was born into a Yemeni family in Tel Aviv in 1916 and…
