Palestine 4

Jan. 1995 Martyr bombs kills 19 in Israel.

April 1995 Six killed in Gaza Martyr bombing.

July 1995 Martyr bomb in Tel Avivi.

Aug. 1995 Martyr bomber kills five in Jerusalem.

Sept. 1995 Israeli and PLO officials meeting in Taba, Egypt, finalized agreement on the second stage of eventual Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian lands. Special arrangements were agreed upon for Hebron, where Israeli soldiers will remain to protect the 450 Jewish settlers living there.

Nov. 1995 Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, was assassinated in Tel Aviv by a right-wing extremist.

Jan. 1996 PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat elected Presendant of the Palestinian National Authority.

June 1996 Right-wing Likud Party leader, Benjamin Netanyahu become the new Prime Minister of Israel.

June 1996 Arab summit discuss the new Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's peace plans.

Dec. 1996 Israeli authorities release plans to expand the Jewish settlements in Arab east Jerusalem, which causes outrage among Palestinians.

Jan. 1997 Israel and the Palestinian Authority reached an agreement for an Israeli redeployment from the West Bank city of Hebron.

Oct. 1997 Sheik Ahmed Yassin (61-year-old) founder of the militant Islamic group Hamas was released from Israeli prison, as part of a prisoner swap touched off by a failed Israeli assassination attempt in Amman, the capital of Jordan.

Oct. 1998 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat signed at peace-for-land agreement at the conclusion of negotiations in the U.S. the agreement calls for Israel to relinquish control of portions of the West Bank in return for active measures to be taken by Palestinians against terrorism.

Nov.1998 Palestinian President Yasser Arafat inaugurated Gaza International Airport.

Dec. 1998 President Clinton stood witness as hundreds of Palestinian leaders renounced a call for the destruction of Israel. Clinton urged "legitimate rights for Palestinians, real security for Israel."

May 1999 Winning a crushing victory over hard-line Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak promised to forge a secure peace with the Palestinians, pull troops out of Lebanon in a year and heal the deep divisions among Israelis.

Sep. 1999 An agreement has been reached with Israel concerning the release of Palestinian prisoners. Such release was a major point of contention in negotiations concerning the implementation of the Wye River peace accord.

Oct.1999 Israel and the Palestinians agreed to establish the first open land link between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip so-called "safe passage".

Mar.2000 Kissing Palestinian earth and warmly welcomed byYasser Arafat, Pope John Paul II made a prayerful pilgrimage to the town of Jesus' birth.

2000 Al-Aqsa Intifada fire

The Middle East Peace Summit at Camp David of July 2000 took place between United States President Bill Clinton, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat. It was an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to negotiate a "final status settlement" to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

President Clinton announced his invitation to Barak and Arafat on July 5, 2000, to come to Camp David to continue their negotiations on the Middle East peace process. Building on the positive steps towards peace of the earlier 1978 Camp David Accords where President Jimmy Carter was able to broker a peace agreement between Egypt, represented by President Anwar Sadat, and Israel represented by Prime Minister Menachem Begin. The Oslo Accords of 1993 between the later assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian Liberation Organisation Chairman Yasser Arafat had provided that agreement should be reached on all outstanding issues between the Palestinians and Israeli sides - the so-called final status settlement - within five years of the implementation of Palestinian autonomy. However, the interim process put in place under Oslo had not fulfilled Palestinian expectations.

On July 11, the Camp David 2000 Summit convened. The summit ended on July 25, without an agreement being reached.

On September 28, 2000 the Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon, with a Likud party delegation, and surrounded by hundreds of Israeli riot police, visited the mosque compound of the Al-Haram Al-Sharif (Temple Mount) in the Old City of Jerusalem. The mosque compound is the first Qibla of Muslims and the third holiest site in Islam. It also contains the area for the most holy site in Judaism. The pretext for Sharon's visit of the mosque compound was to check complaints by Israeli archeologists that Muslim religious authorities had vandalized archeological remains beneath the surface of the mount during the conversion of the presumed Solomon's Stables area into a mosque.

A group of Palestinian dignitaries came to protest the visit, as did three Arab Knesset Members. With the dignitaries watching from a safe distance.Palestinians saw Sharon's visit as an assault on the Al-Aqsa Mosque. For this reason, the whole conflict is known as the Al-Aqsa Intifada. On September 29, 2000, the day after Sharon's visit, following Friday prayers, large uprising broke out around Old Jerusalem during which several Palestinian demonstrators were shot dead. Already in the same day, the September 29, 2000, demonstrations broke out in the West Bank. In the days that followed, demonstrations erupted all over the West Bank and Gaza.