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January 1: European Union's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, prepares to hold meetings on Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. He seeks to persuade the two leaders to accept the latest peace proposals put forward by U.S. President Bill Clinton. Solana is joined by EU Middle East envoy Miguel Moratinos.
January 1: A car bomb explodes near a bus stop in the shopping district in the center of Netanya. About 60 people are injured, most lightly.
January 2: Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat meets US President Bill Clinton. There are also meetings with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Arab ministers to discuss the American peace proposal.
January 3: An Israeli army frontier post is targeted by mortar bombs fired from Lebanon. Israeli forces return artillery fire in the disputed Shebaa Farms area.
January 4: Israeli chief negotiator Gilad Sher hands a document to US officials detailing Israel's response and reaction to the US peace proposal.
January 7: U.S. CIA Director George Tenet, senior Palestinian and Israeli negotiators hold a low-profile meeting near Cairo.
January 8: Thousands of people gather at the Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem to protest a U.S.-brokered peace proposal between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
January 8: Bill Clinton's last-ditch formula for a permanent settlement is rejected by the Palestinians. The President will leave the White House in 12 days, his dream of Middle East peace unfulfilled.
January 10: The Israeli Peace Now movement accuses the government and security forces of running a policy of selective assassination of Palestinian leaders deemed to be security threats. There have been ten such killings so far.
January 12: Fierce clashes erupt despite the renewal of the Israeli-Palestinian talks.
January 12: The US State Department issues a travel warning for Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
January 13: Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat meet in Gaza.
January 14: Hopes fade for a breakthrough agreement before President Clinton leaves office on January 20.
January 16: Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami and Palestinian Parliament Speaker Ahmed Qureia hold talks.
January 19: US President Bill Clinton addresses an open letter to the Israelis and the Palestinians.
January 20: George W. Bush is inaugurated a new US president. The Israeli Cabinet considers new proposals from Palestinian Authority President Arafat. The Cabinet agrees to marathon talks with the Palestinians.
January 21: A Jewish settler who clubbed an Arab child to death with a rifle butt is sentenced to six months' community service. Human rights organizations are outraged by the sentence.
January 21: President Moshe Katsav visits the Ukraine.
January 21: The peace talks in Taba start.
January 22: The marathon peace talks in Taba enter the second day.
January 23: Some progress is made at the Taba talks.
January 24: Likud candidate for prime minister, Ariel Sharon, says he "is the one man who can bring both peace and unity" to Israel.
January 25: The Taba talks resume after the funerals of two Israelis killed in the West Bank.
January 25: An Israeli is killed in a shooting attack against his van near the Atarot industrial park in Jerusalem.
January 26: Israeli and Palestinians discuss the issue of the Palestinian refugees.
January 27: Israeli and Palestinian negotiators end six days of talks in Taba without an accord ending the conflict between them, but with hopes that they could complete their negotiations after next month's Israeli election. A joint statement is issued.
January 28: Israeli Likud prime minister candidate Ariel Sharon dismisses the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks as a failed campaign ploy by a desperate Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Sharon leads voter polls by a wide margin.
January 28: Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
January 30: Prime Minister Ehud Barak calls off peace contacts with the Palestinians until after the election on February 6.
January 31: A general strike, that has brought most of the public sector to a standstill and virtually has halted imports and exports for the past ten days, is settled when the Finance Ministry and the Histadrut come to an agreement to give public sector workers a one time payment plus a rise in their monthly wage of 3.6%. The Histadrut trade federation further agrees not to strike again for the next six months.
February 1: Operation Helping Hand begins: A delegation of IDF soldiers and field hospitals is dispatched to India to help earthquake victims.
February 3: Palestinian Cabinet Minister Nabil Sha'ath calls for Israelis to vote for peace in the election for prime minister and cast their ballots to stop the ongoing violent conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.
February 4: In the last Cabinet meeting Prime Minister Ehud Barak reaches out to the Israeli Arabs. He takes responsibility for all what happened in the country, including the death of 13 Israeli Arabs during the clashes at the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Intifada.
February 6: Ariel Sharon wins a landslide victory in the special elections for prime minister. (More on the elections 2001.)
February 6: Palestinian leaders pledge to work with Ariel Sharon. They also express fears that Sharon's election will irrevocably alter the peace process.
February 8: A car bomb explodes in the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Mea Shearim in Jerusalem, wounding two.
February 8: Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon begins coalition talks.
February 11: Outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Barak says that his successor will not be bound by peace offers made so far to the Palestinians.
February 12: The coalition talks take place amid new clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinians.
February 13: Masoud Ayad, a Fatah activist, is killed in by an Israeli missile in Gaza. Six passers-by are wounded in the attack.
February 14: Notes, taken by European Union representative, Miguel Moratinos, are published in the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz.
February 14: A bus driven by a Palestinian plows into a group of Israeli soldiers and civilians in Tel Aviv, killing eight and injuring fourteen. Israel reimposes a total blockade on the occupied territories.
February 15: Ariel Sharon invites the Labor Party to join the national union government.
February 16: Outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Barak accepts an offer to join the government of his successor, Ariel Sharon, as defense minister.
February 20: Outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Barak executes one of his famous political u-turns and announces that he will not serve as defense minister in Ariel Sharon's cabinet. He also steps down as leader of the Labor Party and resigns as a member of the Knesset.
February 21: Ariel Sharon offers Shimon Peres the post of defense minister.
February 25: US Secretary of State Colin Powell holds talks with Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon.
February 25: An Israeli is critically wounded in a shooting attack west of Bir Zeit.
February 27: The Labor Party votes to join Ariel Sharon's government. Veteran Labour leader Shimon Peres will be foreign minister.
February 28: A US report criticizes Israel and the Palestinians.
March 1: A bomb blast inside a taxi van kills an Israeli man on and wounds nine people, including the suspected bomber, near an Israeli Arab town in northern Israel.
March 2: Benjamin Ben Eliezer, a former brigadier in the Israeli Army, wins election to become the Labor Party's candidate for defense minister in a unity government.
March 4: Three are killed by a suicide bomber in Netanya.
March 7: Ariel Sharon is sworn in as prime minister heading a fragile seven-party coalition and a government team comprising a third of the 120-member Knesset.
March 7: The Knesset abolishes direct election of the prime minister in favor of a system that requires Israelis to cast ballots for a party instead of an individual.
March 9: Prime Minister Ariel Sharon calls for personal contacts with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to kickstart the peace process. In a letter to Arafat, Sharon says he wants to "put an end to the cycle of bloodshed" through dialogue and direct negotiations.
March 10: Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat calls for new talks with Israel.
March 15: Foreign Minister Shimon Peres has appeals to the United Nations to reject a Palestinian proposal for a U.N. observer mission.
March 19: Prime Minister Ariel Sharon arrives in Washington for talks with US President George W. Bush.
March 20: Israel releases its second statement for the Mitchell Committee.
March 21: A fact-finding panel led by former US Senator George Mitchell, resumes its inquiry into Israeli-Palestinian violence with a tour of Gaza and interviews with key leaders from both sides.
March 26: The Israeli Army orders the evacuation of an Arab district in Hebron after a 10-month-old Jewish girl is shot dead in the arms of her father by a sniper.
March 27: At least three people are injured in a car bomb blast near a shopping center in Jerusalem. Islamic Jihad claims responsibility.
March 28: Responding to a series of deadly attacks against Israelis IDF helicopter gunships hit one target in Ramallah and four in Gaza, all belonging to Arafat's elite personal bodyguard unit, Force 17.
March 28: The United States veto a United Nations Security Council resolution that would have backed the creation of an international observer force to help protect civilians in the West Bank and Gaza.
March 29: Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat says that the Palestinian flag will fly above the walls of Jerusalem before Israeli military strikes can stop the six-month-old uprising against the Jewish state.
March 30: At least five Palestinians are killed in clashes with Israelis as Palestinians mark "Land Day", commemorating the deaths of six Arabs 25 years ago while protesting land confiscations in northern Israel.
April 1: Israel arrests members of Yasser Arafat's elite Force 17 at a checkpoint near Ramallah. Israelis and Palestinians bury children killed in recent clashes. An Israeli reservist is killed as he stands guard at an army post near the Jewish settlement of Itamar.
April 3: An Israeli helicopter attack kills a senior member of the radical Palestinian group Islamic Jihad.
April 4: Israelis and Palestinian negotiators meet in Athens.
April 6: Palestinians fire four mortar shells on Netzarim in the northern Gaza Strip. Israeli forces open fire with tanks.
April 7: Battles between Israelis and Palestinians continue.
April 14: Israeli combat planes strike a pair of Hezbollah targets inside southern Lebanon in response to heavy fire targeting the Israeli military near Shebaa Farms. One Israeli soldier is killed.
April 14 - 15: Pipe bombs explode in Kfar Saba and near a settlement in the West Bank.
April 15: Israel destroys a Syrian radar installation in Lebanon.
April 16: Jordanian Foreign Minister Abdel Ilah al-Khatib presents the Egyptian-Jordanian peace initiative to Israel.
April 16: Israeli rightwingers respond angrily to news that Ariel Sharon has used his businessman son Omri, aged 36, as a secret emissary to Yasser Arafat.
April 17: Israel launches air, land and sea strikes on Gaza. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell calls the action an "excessive and disproportionate" reaction to Palestinian "provocation." Israeli planes also continue to fly over eastern Lebanon and carry out reconnaissance missions over southern Lebanon and the Western Bekaa Valley. For the first time since the intifada erupted, Israeli troops seize back land controlled by the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and divide the territory into three parts.
April 22: A suicide bomber blows himself up at a bus stop in Kfar Saba, killing two and wounding at least 39.
April 23: Eight people are lightly hurt in a car bombing in Or Yehuda.
April 26: US President George W. Bush calls Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to discuss ways to secure peace in the Middle East. Bush will host a working visit with President Moshe Katsav at the end of May.
April 27: Heavy exchanges of gunfire between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers are reported near Ramallah, at Tulkarem and at Kalkilya.
April 29: A car bomb explodes close to a school bus near Nablus. There are no injuries.
April 29: Foreign Minister Shimon Peres discusses a joint Egyptian-Jordanian proposal at ending seven months of bloodshed in Amman and Cairo.
April 30 : The preliminary Mitchell Committee Report is released to the public. (More on Israel's reaction.) Mitchell condemns the expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories.
May 2: A meeting between Secretary of State Colin Powell and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres to discuss the Egyptian-Jordanian peace initiative ends with little advancement.
May 9: A Jewish settler is killed near a West Bank settlement. Three Palestinians, including Iman Hijjo, a four-month-old baby girl, are killed. Five of her relatives are wounded when a shell bursts through the asbestos roof of their house in the refugee camp of Khan Younis.
May 9: The bodies of two teenagers - Kobi Mandell and Yossi Ishran - are found in a cave near the settlement of Tekoa. The boys were stoned to death.
May 10: Israeli missiles strike several targets in Gaza City.
May 11: UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan condemns the escalating Middle East violence.
May 12: A member of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement and a Palestinian policeman die in an Israeli rocket attack in Jenin.
May 14: Hezbollah guerrillas fire anti-tank missiles and machine guns at an Israeli army outpost near the disputed Shebaa Farms area.
May 14: Israeli troops kill five Palestinian policemen manning a checkpoint in the West Bank and launch a major bombardment of security targets in the Gaza Strip. Thousands of Palestinians gather outside a West Bank hospital chanting for revenge.
May 16: Israel unleashes a helicopter attack on the Palestinian police station at Jabalya in Gaza. Five policemen are killed. Israel later says that the killing of five Palestinian policemen is a case of mistaken identity and expresses regret for their deaths.
May 18: A suicide bomber detonates himself outside the Hasharon SHopping Mall in Netanya. Five people are killed and over 100 are wounded.
May 18: Prime Minister Ariel Sharon orders F-16 aircraft strikes against Palestinian targets in response to the suicide bombing. Eleven Palestinians are killed in the strikes.
May 19: An explosive device is planted in the Biancini Pub in Jerusalem. The attack is prevented when the device is discovered by the proprietor.
May 20: Israel launches missile attacks at a factory that it says produces mortar shells in northern Gaza.
May 21: In his long awaited report on the Middle East conflict, former US Senator George Mitchell calls for an immediate cease-fire, to be followed by confidence building measures and ultimately by renewed peace negotiations. Mitchell also calls for a freeze on expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories.
May 22: The European Union condemns Israel for a "disproportionate use of force" and criticizes Jewish settlement policy in the West Bank and Gaza at the Brussels meeting of the EU-Israeli Association Committee.
May 22: Ariel Sharon rejects the Mitchell report's call for a freeze on Jewish settlement expansion in the occupied territories. He describes the settlements as " a vital national enterprise".
May 22: Prime Minister Ariel Sharon calls for a general cease-fire. But: "The first thing that has to happen is an end to the terror."
May 23: US President George W. Bush calls on Prime Minister Sharon and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to end the violence.
May 24: A wedding hall in Jerusalem collapses during a wedding. 25 people are killed, 250 injured.
May 24: Fearing a terrorist attack, Israel shoots down a small plane and kills its pilot after it crossed into its airspace from Lebanon.
May 25: A truck filled with explosives blows up in Gaza near an Israeli military outpost.
May 25: 65 people are injured in a car bombing in the Hadera central bus station.
May 25: A car carrying members of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement explodes in a West Bank refugee camp, killing one person and injuring three others.
May 26: Dozens of people are injured, two of them seriously, as soccer fans rush onto the field in the Kiryat Eliezer Stadium in Haifa during a game between Maccabi Haifa and defending champion Maccabi Tel Aviv. Maccabi Haifa was leading, 3-2.
May 27: Two car bombs explode in Jerusalem: One blast happens in Jaffa Road, the other some hours earlier in an area of discotheques and nightclubs called the Russian Compound. Three people are taken to hospitals to be treated for shock.
May 27: Senior U.S. diplomat William Burns starts mediation meetings with Israeli and Palestinian officials.
May 30: Israeli and Palestinian officials hold their first face-to-face meeting after more than a month.
May 30: A car bomb explodes outside a school in Netanya. Eight people are injured.
May 31: Prime Minister Ariel Sharon comes under increasing pressure to end a unilateral cease-fire with the Palestinians, as violence continues in the Middle East.
May 31: Top Palestinian politician Faisal Husseini dies of a heart attack in Kuweit, aged 61.
June 1: 21 people are killed and 120 wounded when a suicide bomber blows himself up outside a disco near Tel Aviv's Dolphinarium.
June 2: Yasser Arafat condemns the terrorist attack at the Dolphinarium and orders his security forces to implement an immediate cease-fire.
June 5: A cease-fire called by the Palestinian groups Hamas and Fatah begins, but comes with the promise of renewed attacks if Israel does not observe one as well.
June 5: Intense diplomatic efforts continue throughout the Middle East, in an attempt to ensure that the relative cease-fire between Israelis and Palestinians doesn't crumble.
June 5: U.S. CIA Director George Tenet heads for the Middle East amid conflicting reports about the participation of the militant Islamic group Hamas in a cease-fire.
June 7: CIA Director George Tenet meets with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
June 10: The latest cease-fire is thrown into doubt after an Israeli tank shell kills three Bedouin Arab women in a tent in the Gaza Strip.
June 12: CIA Director George Tenet meets with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
June 12: A new and fragile cease-fire takes shape, after talks chaired by CIA director George Tenet. It calls on Yasser Arafat to clamp down on militants, and on Israel to withdraw from territory seized during the intifada.
June 13: Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezerinstructs the IDF to implement the Tenet truce plan over the coming week.
June 14: Israeli officials furiously attack the BBC for a Panorama program which concluded that the prime minister, Ariel Sharon, could be tried for war crimes in connection with the massacre of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon in 1982.
June 16: UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan holds talks with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in an attempt to bolster the truce.
June 18: Survivors of the Sabra and Shatila massacres in September 1982 file two civil lawsuits against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in a Belgian court. A Belgian law passed in 1993 allows prosecutions of any war criminals in the Belgian courts.
June 20: The fragile Middle East cease-fire is under fresh pressure after the deaths of two Israeli settlers and a string of shootings in the West Bank.
June 22: The Jerusalem-Hebron road is blocked to Palestinian travelers in protest at the killing of four Jewish settlers by Palestinians since the truce began nine days ago.
June 23: A suicide blast kills two Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip.
June 23: Talks on how to implement the U.S.-brokered truce agreement between Palestinians and Israelis continues against a backdrop of violence.
June 25: Prime Minister Ariel Sharon arrives in the United States for talks with President George W. Bush. Disagreements over key issues mark the second meeting in three months.
June 26: At least seven Israelis and two Palestinians are wounded during clashes in Hebron.
June 28: Israel and the Palestinians agree to a timetable for resuming peace talks that includes a six-week cooling-off period. (More.)
June 28: Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, achieves a stunning diplomatic coup when he wins the support of the United States for a monitoring force to oversee a Middle East cease-fire
June 29: Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer gives the United Nations assurances that overflights across Lebanon will be immediately suspended. The announcement comes as Hezbollah guerrillas fire anti-tank missiles in the disputed Shebaa Farms area.
June 29 - 30: Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres meet in Lisbon. Both sides agree in principle to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's call for seven straight days without violence - to be followed by a six-week cooling off period when the two sides will begin to implement confidence building measures. But it is not clear when that week will begin.
July 1: Israel attacks Syrian positions in southern Lebanon. The strike responds to the injury of the two Israeli soldiers near the Shebaa Farms.
July 2: Two separate car bombs explode in the Tel Aviv suburb of Or Yehuda, hours after three Palestinian militants are killed in by Israeli helicopter gunships. Israeli ministers say they will continue the policy of "targeted killings".
July 4: The Israeli security cabinet votes after four hours of heated debate to give the army almost complete freedom in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to liquidate anyone it regards as a potential terrorist.
July 5: The Israeli government coalition is in turmoil after a row over the previously unthinkable option of whether to launch a massive military strike to topple the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat. Two rightwing ministers, pushing for the harder line against Mr Arafat, say they will boycott the cabinet indefinitely because of its failure to agree a military strike.
July 5: UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan calls on Israel to stop "what have become known as 'targeted assassinations'" of Palestinian militants, saying the practice violates international law.
July 6: German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder calls on Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to show more flexibility on the question of the Jewish settlements. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon arrives home after his short trip to Europe where he makes efforts to gain European support for his policy. His meeting with his French counterpart Lionel Jospin ends in disagreement.
July 6: The United Nations admit that they are in possession of a video tape containing information about the kidnapping of three Israeli soldiers in October 2000.
July 9: A Palestinian suicide bomber is killed in a car-bombing attack. No other casualties are caused.
July 12: Israeli tank shells kill a Palestinian policeman in the West Bank city of Nablus after an attack on Jewish settlers.
July 13: Violence in the West Bank and Gaza continues.
July 15: Foreign Minister Shimon Peres meets Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in Cairo.
July 16: A suicide bomber sets off a blast at a railroad station in Binyamina, two Israeli soldiers, one of them a woman. In retaliation, Israeli tanks shell four Palestinian military posts.
July 16 - 23: Close to 3,000 athletes participate in the 16th Maccabiah.
July 17: Israel sends tanks and infantry units into the West Bank after a day that saw the military assassination of four alleged Palestinian militants, mortar attacks and widespread small arms clashes.
July 19: Israel rejects a call from the G8 summit in Genoa for international observers to monitor its somewhat theoretical cease-fire with the Palestinian National Authority.
July 19: Three Palestinians, including a three-month-old baby, are killed by Jewish extremists near Hebron. A shadowy group calling itself the Committee for Safety on the Roads is thought responsible.
July 21: One person is killed in an explosion that damages the Hebron office of Fatah, the party of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
July 25: Israeli troops assassinate a Hamas militant with anti-tank missiles near the West Bank city of Nablus
July 28: In retaliation for a mortar attack on a Jewish settlement, Israeli launches a helicopter strike on a Palestinian target in Gaza.
July 29: Israelis and Palestinians clash on the Temple Mount.
July 30: Israeli warplanes fly over the disputed Shebaa Farms region along the Israel-Lebanon border for the first time in more than four weeks. The IDF say the air force was carrying out military exercises.
July 30: Six Palestinian activists in Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement are killed in an explosion at a refugee camp near the West Bank city of Nablus. Palestinians blame the Israeli army, but Israeli officials say the deaths were a "work accident" - the euphemistic jargon for the premature explosion of a bomb.
July 31: Eight Palestinians are killed when an Israeli helicopter rockets an office of the militant Islamic group Hamas in the West Bank town of Nablus. The dead include Jamal Mansour, the leading Hamas figure on the West Bank, and two young children. Hamas vows bloody revenge.
July: The prestigious Berlin Staatskapelle performs Richard Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde" overture at the Israel Festival. While the orchestra's conductor, Daniel Barenboim, has promised to respect the ban on Wagner's music, he surprises his audience by asking them if they want to hear Wagner as an encore following the scheduled performance. Most of the audience is in favor of the encore, which receives a standing ovation from all but a few of the listeners. However, during a half-hour debate that precedes the performance of the overture, numerous Israelis protest and walk out of the theater, some shouting insults.
August 1: The Israeli Cabinet votes to continue its policy of an "active self-defense" despite heavy criticism of its bombing of a Hamas office in Nablus that resulted in eight deaths.
August 2: Six Israeli soldiers are remanded in custody, charged with severely beating nine Palestinian taxi passengers. It is the first time in the 10-month uprising that Israeli military has taken such action, in spite of scores of complaints of alleged excesses.
August 4: Israel's strategy of assassinating Palestinian political and military leaders moves to within one rung of Yasser Arafat, as two missiles narrowly miss a car carrying Marwan Barghouti the man who rules the streets of the West Bank.
August 5: A Palestinian gunman, firing an automatic rifle from a car, shoots 10 people, most of them soldiers, on a busy street outside Israel's defense ministry in central Tel Aviv. The gunman is hit by return fire and fatally wounded. A second gunman opens fire on Jewish settlers in the West Bank, killing a pregnant woman and wounding three others. Hours later, Israeli helicopters fire missiles in the West Bank town of Tulkarem and kill the Hamas activist Amer Mansour Habiri in his car.
August 6: Israeli officials name seven Palestinians on the top of what they call their 'pinpoint prevention' list - targets for assassination. Since the intifada began, some 40 political and paramilitary leaders have been executed without trial.
August 8: A suicide bomber is killed when he detonates his carbomb. An Israeli soldier is lightly wounded.
August 9: 15 people are killed, including 7 children, and about 130 injured in a suicide bombing at the Sbarro Pizzeria on the corner of King George Street and Jaffa Road in the center of Jerusalem. Hamas and Islamic Jihad claim responsibility for the attack.
August 10: An Israeli F-16 jet fires missiles into a Palestinian police station in Jenin, destroying the facility. Israeli police takes over an area of East Jerusalem that serves as the unofficial headquarters for the Palestinian Liberation Organization. They Seven buildings are closed and the Orient House is occupied. Several guards are arrested.
August 12: 21 people are injured in a suicide bombing in the Wall Street Cafe in the center of Kiryat Motzkin.
August 13: Israel orders the closure of the Orient House in East Jerusalem.
August 14: The US-based non-profit organization Seeds of Peace sponsors a Middle East delegation which includes Jewish and Arab teenagers from Israel and the Palestinian territories.
August 14: Israeli tanks move into the West Bank city of Jenin and open fire on the Palestinian police station, destroying it. It is the biggest incursion into Palestinian-controlled territory since Yasser Arafat's forces started to take over in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1994. The invasion is strongly criticized by Washington, which is coming under increasing pressure to step up its intermediary role in the region.
August 15: Carmi Gillon, former head of the Israel's General Security Services (GSS), is scheduled to arrive in Copenhagen, where he is expected to take up his new post as Ambassador of Israel with the agreement of Denmark. He is greeted with large-scale demonstrations. Danish parliamentarians and a group of torture victims from various countries are among those protesting. They have asked Danish police to arrest Gillon upon arrival in Denmark in accordance with the United Nations Convention Against Torture, which Denmark ratified in 1987. Gillon, the former head of Israel’s General Security Service (GSS), has admitted to repeatedly using and sanctioning torture during his tenure at the GSS from 1988 to 1996.
August 15: Israeli troops kill a Palestinian militia leader, Emad Abu Sneineh, in a roadside ambush as part of the policy of targeted killings of suspected terrorists.
August 21: A bomb placed under a car explodes near the Russian Compound in downtown Jerusalem. A second, very large unexploded bomb is discovered inside the car and dismantled.
August 21: German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer tours Israel and the Palestinian Authority spearheading a new initiative to try to end 11 months of conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.
August 22: Israeli commando forces kill at least four Palestinians in the West Bank town of Nablus. The army says its unit foiled a bomb attack by Palestinian militants, while Palestinian officials said that three of the dead were unarmed villagers.
August 23: Israeli tanks and helicopter gunships enter Palestinian-controlled areas of Hebron and shell buildings, injuring as many as five Palestinians.
August 25: Three people are killed and two infants are wounded in a drive-by shooting near the Beit Horon service station.
August 25: Guerillas infiltrate an Israeli post in the Gaza Strip, killing three soldiers. The attack is claimed by the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, one of the smaller secular groups. Three Israeli civilians are killed in two shootings in the occupied West Bank.
August 26: Israeli F-16 jets fire missiles at Palestinian police headquarters in Gaza City, wounding three Palestinian policemen and causing heavy damage.
August 27: Israel launches multiple incursions into the West Bank and Gaza and takes over "dominant positions" in Beit Jala to stop Palestinians from shooting at the disputed Jerusalem suburb of Gilo.
August 27: A high ranking Palestinian is killed in an Israeli shell attack on his office. Abu Ali Mustafa, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, is the highest-ranking Palestinian official so far targeted for assassination.
August 29: Israel and the Palestinians reach a tentative cease-fire agreement in the West Bank town of Beit Jala , and Israel says it might withdraw its forces if the truce holds for several hours. The day began with fierce gun battles in the town and the adjacent Palestinian refugee camp of Aida, which left 13 Palestinians wounded, two of them seriously.
September 1: An aide to the Gaza Strip intelligence chief is killed by a bomb under the seat of his car. Palestinian officials accuse Israel of ordering the assassination. Colonel Taiseer Khatab, who was in his early fifties, was driving to his office in north Gaza. Two other people are wounded.
September 4: 20 people are injured when a suicide bomber blows himself up near Bikur Holim hospital in central Jerusalem. The terrorist is disguised as an orthodox Jew and arouses suspicion due to his large backpack. As two border policemen approach him, he detonates his bomb. The policemen are wounded - one critically.
September 4: European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana visits the Middle East in an attempt to restart peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians. Solana, who meets with Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, visits the scene of the blast. He is due to meet with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who is in Egypt for talks with President Hosni Mubarak.
September 5: The Israel Defense Forces attack a post of the elite Force 17 security guard unit close to Beit Hanun in Gaza in reaction to the firing of mortar bombs overnight at Israeli targets from Gaza.
September 7: Israel signs a contract to buy 52 F-16I fighter-bombers - one of the most advanced fighter-bombers in the world - from the U.S. firm of Lockheed Martin.
September 8: Israeli helicopters blast a headquarters of the Palestinian Fatah movement in Ramallah.
September 9: Three people are killed and some 90 injured, in a suicide bombing near the Nahariya train station.
September 9: A carbomb explodes at the Beit Lid junction near Netanya, injuring 17 people.
September 11: Israel Defense Forces sit on the outskirts of the northern West Bank town of Jenin, taking up positions in Palestinian-controlled territory.
September 12: Israeli tanks enter Jericho in the second invasion of a Palestinian-ruled town in 48 hours. The Jericho operation comes hours after fierce gun battles in the northern town of Jenin, where at least seven Palestinians, including a young girl, are killed.
September 15: Israeli forces make a major incursion into the Gaza Strip. Helicopters fire missiles into a Palestinian security compound in Gaza City, and also hit a security position in the Nisart refugee camp just outside the city. The Israeli forces also fire ground-to-ground missiles into a police station in Rafah, a town at the southern end of Gaza on the border with Egypt. In other violence in Gaza, two Palestinians are killed in a clash between Israeli tanks and Palestinian gunmen at Khan Younis.
September 16: Prime minister, Ariel Sharon, rebuffs US calls for cease-fire talks, and orders the third invasion of a Palestinian-ruled city - Ramallah - in less than a week.
September 18: The Israeli Defense Ministry cancels all offensive operations against the Palestinians after Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat reaffirms his determination to honor a cease-fire.
September 19: Leaders of the militant Islamic groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad say they will not adhere to a new cease-fire. Palestinian gunmen kill an Israeli woman and seriously wounded her husband in a West Bank road ambush that could destroy the fragile, two-day-old truce.
September 20: A meeting between Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres is postponed after an Israeli woman is shot and killed near the settlement of Tekoa in the West Bank.
September 21: Prime Minister Ariel Sharon labels Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat a "terrorist" but says a meeting is possible if he enforces a cease-fire.
September 23: The cease-fire between Israel and the Palestinians suffers another setback as Israel cancels a meeting between its foreign minister, Shimon Peres, and the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
September 26: Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat meet at the International Airport in Gaza. Israeli and Palestinian negotiators agree on a series of confidence-building measures aimed at ending a year of fighting. The deal comes after the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, finally succumbs to international - particularly US - pressure and allows high level cease-fire talks to proceed. The fragility of the deal is immediately underscored by a bomb attack on an Israeli army outpost and the killing of two Palestinians.
September 26: UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw angers Prime Minister Ariel Sharon when he refers to Palestine - the prospective Palestinian state not yet recognized by the international community.
September 27: Five Palestinians are killed in a gun battle with Israeli troops in the Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip.
September 28: Four Palestinians are killed in new fightings on the first anniversary of the al-Aqsa Intifada. 693 Palestinians and 168 Israelis have been killed during the first year. Among the Palestinian killed are 127 minors under the age of 18. Among the Israeli killed are 28 minors.
October 1: A large carbomb explodes in the Talpiot neighborhood of Jerusalem. Several people are lightly injured.
October 2: Two Israeli youths are killed and 13 other Israelis wounded, including some soldiers, as Palestinian gunmen enter the Jewish settlement of Elei Sinai in northern Gaza and opened fire.
October 2: President George Bush announces a dramatic break with America's previous Middle East policy, saying that he is prepared to back the creation of a Palestinian state.
October 3: Two people are wounded in a drive-by shooting on Route 9 in Jerusalem.
October 3: Israeli troops kill six Palestinians and wounded several others as the military launches revenge attacks for the previous night's raid on a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip.
October 4: A Sibir Airlines Tu-154 aircraft en route from Tel Aviv to Novosibirsk, with 77 people aboard, is downed into the Black Sea by an SA-5 surface-to-air missile fired from a shore battery during the largest scale Ukrainian military exercises in some years.
October 4: A Palestinian militant disguised as an Israeli soldier opens fire on travelers at a bus station in a central Israeli town, killing three people and wounding eight before being shot dead by police.
October 5: Israeli forces raid Hebron. Six Palestinians are killed.
October 5: American relations with Israel plunge to their lowest point in a decade, as the White House denounces as "unacceptable" statements by the Israeli prime minister comparing the US coalition-building in the Arab world with British appeasement of the Nazis in the 1930s.
October 7: One person is killed when a suicide bomber affiliated with Islamic Jihad detonates a large bomb near the entrance of a kibbutz in the Beit Shean Valley.
October 11: The Bush administration unveils a dramatic new blueprint for Middle East peace, envisaging Jerusalem as a shared capital for an Israeli and a Palestinian state.
October 14: Abdel Rahman Hamad, the Hamas terrorist who dispatched the suicide bomber to Tel Aviv's Dolphinarium in June and staged a suicide bombing at the Neveh Yamin gas station which killed two children is killed by forces from an Israeli elite police unit.
October 15: The Cabinet decides on easing restrictions on the Palestinian Population. Israel withdraws tanks and troops from Palestinian neighborhoods in the West Bank city of Hebron, following a meeting of Israeli and Palestinian security officials. British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, gives his public backing to the creation of a Palestinian state following a meeting at 10 Downing Street with Yasser Arafat. A Palestinian activist is blown up by a car bomb on his way to work in the West Bank city of Nablus - the second Israeli assassination in two days.
October 15: Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze'evi and National Infrastructure Minister Avigdor Liberman of National Union-Yisrael Beiteinu announce their resignation from the government.
October 17: Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze'evi is assassinated by three members of the Palestinian Popular Front in the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Jerusalem.
October 18: The Palestinians reject an Israeli ultimatum to hand over those responsible for Ze'evi's killing.
October 18: More than 20 Israeli tanks enter Bethlehem.
October 19: Violence intensifies across the West Bank, as Israeli tanks and troops move into Palestinian territory in raids aimed at thwarting revenge attacks for the killing of a local militia leader. After seizing large areas of Bethlehem, Ramallah, Nablus and Jenin, the Israeli army is waiting for an order to move in and conquer all of the Palestinian Authority.
October 20: Israel forces enter two more West Bank towns in what is rapidly emerging as the most far reaching military operation in more than a year of fighting. In the face of growing international condemnation, eight Palestinians are killed by Israeli fire, including two women and a 15-year-old boy.
October 21: Violence in the Middle East escalates as gun battles flare around the biblical town of Bethlehem. Three Palestinians are killed by Israeli gunfire, two at a nearby refugee camp and one near a hospital.
October 22: The Bush administration criticizes the recent killings of Palestinian civilians by Israeli gunfire and demands Israel immediately withdraw its forces from all Palestinian-controlled territory.
October 22: After tightening its hold on six West Bank cities, Israel moves to stifle Palestinian voices, banning activists and leaders of radical groups from state radio and television. A top Hamas bomb maker on Israel's most-wanted list is blown up in his car in the West Bank city of Nablus, in the fourth Israeli assassination in nine days.
October 23: Prime Minister Ariel Sharon provokes the most bruising confrontation with Washington since George Bush came to power, flatly rejecting a demand to end an occupation of Palestinian lands that threatens the survival of Yasser Arafat.
October 24: Israel continues to defy US calls to pull troops out of Palestinian-controlled towns, with Israeli soldiers allegedly killing at least seven Palestinians and arresting four more in an overnight raid on a West Bank village.
October 25: Under pressure from the United States, Israel says it will withdraw from Palestinian areas of the West Bank if the Palestinians observe a cease-fire agreement.
October 27: Bowing to international pressure, Israel agrees to pull out its troops from Bethlehem, as a test case for other withdrawals from the six West Bank towns that it invaded in search of Palestinian militants. But later, Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, cancels the withdrawal from Bethlehem, blaming continuing Palestinian violence.
October 28: Palestinian militants open fire on a queue of people waiting at a bus stop in a northern Israeli town, killing four people. Israel begins to withdraw its forces from the Palestinian city of Bethlehem.
October 31: The Israeli army storms into the West Bank, killing two Palestinians and arresting up to eight others suspected of plotting suicide attacks.
November 1: British Prime Minister Tony Blair arrives for talks aimed at curbing Mideast violence. (More.)
November 2: The chief rabbi of the Israel Defense Forces officially pronounces the three soldiers abducted by Hezbollah guerrillas in October 2000 are dead.
November 3: A Palestinian gunman sprays bullets at an Israeli bus, killing two passengers and injuring more than 35 before he is shot dead by armed Israelis.
November 4: The Cohen-Kedmi National Commission of Inquiry into the disappearance of the Yemenite children unequivocally rejects claims of "an all-inclusive establishment plot" to take children away from Yemenite immigrants and hand them over to childless families for adoption. (More.)
November 4: Israeli helicopters attack three Palestinian targets in northern Gaza in response to the firing of mortar bombs in the area.
November 5: A boy and a girl are killed and several dozen people injured when at least one Palestinian gunman wielding an M-16 rifle opens fire on a bus in the French Hill neighborhood in Jerusalem.
November 6: Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, and his Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres, hold discussions on a new Middle East peace plan, raising hopes of a break in the deadlock.
November 7: Israeli tanks and troops complete their withdrawal from areas of the West Bank town of Ramallah.
November 8: A Palestinian suicide bomber blows himself up as an elite Israeli anti-terrorist unit closes in on his hideout in a West Bank village.
November 11: Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat appeals for greater international involvement in the Mideast peace process in an address before the 56th session of the U.N. General Assembly.
November 12: Israeli troops backed by tanks raid a Palestinian village in the West Bank and shoot dead an Islamic militant suspected of killing two Jewish settlers.
November 15: Israel orders the halt to the construction of a mosque at a site near the Christian Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth, a project that has angered the Vatican.
November 15: Israeli troops and tanks raid a Gaza Strip refugee camp and a West Bank village, killing one Palestinian and wounding at least 14. The incursions come as Foreign Minister Shimon Peres tells the United Nations that there is widespread consensus on the creation of a Palestinian state.
November 21: A judicial inquiry into the killings of 13 Arab citizens of Israel, unarmed protesters who were shot dead by police snipers, enters a decisive phase after gathering evidence from the highest reaches of the Israeli establishment.
November 22: Five Palestinian boys are killed near a U.N. elementary school in the Khan Younis refugee camp when one of them kicks an unexploded Israeli tank shell.
November 23: An Israeli helicopter attack on a taxi kills three people, including two members of the militant Islamic group Hamas.
November 23: The majority of Israelis supports the creation of a Palestinian state, according to a Gallup opinion in the Maariv newspaper. It suggests that 59% of Israelis support a Palestinian state, with just 36% opposed.
November 25: Israeli missiles hit Palestinian security posts and political offices in Gaza, inflaming passions ahead of the arrival of two US peace envoys, and dangerously compromising their mission.
November 26: A suicide bomber kills himself and lightly wounds two border policemen at the Erez crossing point in the Gaza Strip.
November 26: Prime Minister Ariel Sharon appoints former general Meir Dagan - instead of his foreign minister - to head a negotiating team for talks with U.S. envoys on a Middle East peace.
November 27: Palestinian gunmen open fire on a crowded market in Afula. One Israeli is killed at the scene, and another dies at a local hospital.
November 29: Three people are killed and nine are wounded in a suicide bombing on an Egged 823 bus en route from Nazareth to Tel Aviv near the city of Hadera.
November 29: US Mideast envoy Anthony Zinni meets with Israeli and Palestinian security officials on the third day of his mission to get both sides to agree to a cease-fire.
November: Labor strikes sweep the country in late November, bringing various sectors of the economy to a standstill. A four-week strike at the National Insurance Institute leaves the vast majority of Israel's pensioners without their monthly stipends. An airport customs workers strike creates chaos at Ben-Gurion International airport. The four-week strike of lecturers closes Israel's leading university; employees of the Labor and Social Affairs Ministry and firefighters are striking.
December 1: Eleven people are killed and about 180 injured when explosive devices are detonated by two suicide bombers on Ben Yehuda Street in Jerusalem. A carbomb explodes nearby 20 minutes later.
December 2: 15 people are killed and 40 injured in a suicide bombing on an Egged bus in Haifa.
December 3: After more than five hours of closed-door talks, the Israeli Cabinet calls the Palestinian Authority a "terrorist supporting entity" that must be dealt with as such. "The government determines the lethal and cruel terror attacks over the last weekend shows the lack of inhibition of our enemies and calls for a larger scale activity than has been taken to date against Palestinian terror," the Cabinet says in a statement. The ministers for national security will be able to make operative decisions regarding military, political, financial and media matters as long as the prime minister, defense minister and foreign minister are included in the decisions. (More.)
December 3: Israel helicopter gunships fire missiles at targets near Yasser Arafat's headquarters in Gaza City.
December 5: The Israeli government agrees to a 12-hour pause in the offensive against the Palestinian Authority as its leader, Yasser Arafat, apparently bows to pressure to arrest senior members of the militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
December 5: A suicide bomber blows himself up on King David Street in Jerusalem. A number of people are lightly injured.
December 6: Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres, postpones for a fortnight the decision whether to leave Ariel Sharon's coalition government in protest at his handling of the Palestinian crisis.
December 6: Egypt and America ride to the rescue of Yasser Arafat, embarking on a day of frantic diplomacy to suspend the unrelenting Israeli military and political pressure that many fear could topple the Palestinian leader.
December 6: Hundreds of supporters of the militant group Hamas clash with Palestinian riot police, throwing stones, firing in the air and burning a police jeep in a show of resistance to the intensifying crackdown on Islamic militants by the embattled Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat.
December 7: Israel resumes air strikes against Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority, with bombers hitting a Palestinian police compound in Gaza, injuring at least 20 people.
December 9: A suicide bomber blows himself up at the Checkpost Junction in Haifa. About 30 people are injured. A second explosive device is found and detonated nearby.
December 10: A Palestinian three-year-old and a schoolboy are killed in a bungled Israeli assassination attempt, struck down by guided missiles only hours after Yasser Arafat secured a tentative promise from Palestinian militants to halt attacks inside the Jewish state.
December 10: Israel rejects a temporary cease-fire offer by four militant Palestinian groups to halt their attacks through the end of Ramadan if Israel agrees to stop assassinating their members.
December 10: A dangerous fracture between Israel and its one million Arab citizens opens wider as one of the country's few Arab parliamentarians, Azmi Bishara, goes on trial charged with undermining the state.
December 12:Palestinian militants ambush a bus of Jewish settlers, raking the fleeing passengers with gunfire and hand grenades, killing 10 people, and provoking swift Israeli retaliation from F-16 warplanes.
December 12: The Israeli Cabinet cuts off contact with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, saying it holds him directly responsible for an ambush of the bus in the West Bank. "Chairman Arafat has made himself irrelevant as far as Israel is concerned, and therefore no contacts will be maintained with him," the Cabinet says in a statement.
December 13: The U.N. Security Council adjourns a closed-door session in New York without taking action on a Palestinian-backed resolution calling for international observers in the Middle East.
December 13: Israeli helicopters pound Palestinian buildings in the West Bank and Gaza, in a campaign of political and military retaliation for deadly Palestinian attacks.
December 13: Israeli tanks train their cannon on Yasser Arafat's besieged headquarters, but hold their fire, hesitating to take the fateful step of consigning the Palestinian leader to physical as well as political oblivion.
December 14: Israeli warplanes strike Gaza City for the third straight night, targeting Palestinian security facilities that Israel says are used for terrorist activities. The Israeli army drives deeper into Yasser Arafat's shrinking realm, storming four West Bank villages with tanks and helicopter gunships, killing eight Palestinians, and arresting more than 40 others.
December 15: The United States recall Mideast envoy Anthony Zinni back to Washington for consultations as violence continues in northern Gaza and Palestinian officials work to curtail terror attacks.
December 17: Yasser Arafat calls for an end to suicide bombing attacks against Israelis as he seeks to re-engage with Israel and the international community from his besieged Ramallah headquarters.
December 17: Israel responds to Yasser Arafat's call for an end to armed attacks on Israelis by assassinating a Hamas militant in the West Bank, and detaining Dr. Sari Nusseibeh, a leading Palestinian peace activist in Jerusalem.
December 19: High-level talks between Israeli and Palestinian security officials resume as both sides sit down to discuss prevention of terrorist attacks.
December 21: Hamas announces it will suspend suicide attacks "inside the land occupied in 1948" by Israel and promises a "halt to firing mortars until further notice."
December 23: Israel bars Yasser Arafat from traveling to Bethlehem for his traditional attendance at midnight mass on Christmas eve, unless he arrests the two men Israel believes responsible for assassinating their travel minister in October.
December 25: Israelis and Palestinians are joined by music.
December 27: Israeli forces enter Hebron. Israeli troops arrest at least 17 members of Yasser Arafat's police force and his Fatah movement in a pre-dawn raid on the West Bank village of Azun.
December 28: Trying to make sure violence in the Middle East does not flare anew, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell talks by phone with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
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