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Dec. 2001Edition 28

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STRUGGLE FOR MIDEAST PEACE

A brief history and informative maps

For centuries the troubled holy lands of the Middle East have served as the stage for bloody battlegrounds between Jews, Muslims and Christians. Slowly, religious differences are being set aside as Israel and its Arab neighbors toil to find peace

August 29, 1897
The first Zionist conference is held in Basel, Switzerland. Attended by nearly 200 delegates, the congress formulates the Basel Program, which remains the basic platform of the Zionist movement. The program defines Zionism's goal as the creation "for the Jewish people of a home in Palestine secured by public law."

Nov. 2, 1917
Britain passes the Balfour Declaration, expressing support for the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. In the previous 40 years, Eastern Europeans immigrated to the region in large numbers. By 1914, Jews living in Palestine grew to 85,000, about 12 percent of the population.

May 6-11, 1942
During World War II the U.S becomes the center of Zionist activity. A conference in New York results in the Biltmore Program, which rejects British restrictions on immigration into Palestine and calls for the fulfillment of the Balfour Declaration urging the establishment of Palestine as a Jewish commonwealth

Nov. 29, 1947
The United Nations proposes to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states with Jerusalem under international control. The U.S. and Russia approve of the plan, but Britain abstains. The Zionist movement - pushing for an independent state - reluctantly accepts the proposal that is denounced by Arab states. Arabs feel that the U.N. has no right to make such a deal.

May 14, 1948
As the British mandate over Palestine expires, Jewish authorities declare a new State of Israel. Many nations recognize the new country under first prime minister David Ben-Gurion. The Arab League declares war and Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq engage in fighting with Israel until early 1949, when all parties sign truce agreements that established the borders of the new Jewish state.

1951
Egypt denies Israel access to the Suez Canal and blocks the use of the Strait of Tiran, Israel's only direct access to the Red Sea. Palestinians launch raids on Israeli soil from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank

 

Oct. 29, 1956
Israel invades Egypt's Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula. The U.N. brokers a cease-fire agreement and sends in peace-keeping troops.

Jan. 1, 1965
Yasser Arafat's Fatah Movement (founded in 1956)begins armed guerrilla attacks against Israel, which responds with raids against Syria and Jordan. Israeli security zone and border incidents escalate in intensity throughout the year.

 

June 5, 1967
Egypt had signed an alliance with Syria, Jordan and Iraq, and moved troops into the Sinai in May. In response, Israel launches an immense military strike at Egypt, Jordan and Syria in the Six-Day War, capturing the Gaza Strip, the Sinai, East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Golan Heights.

Feb. 26, 1969
Israeli secretary general Golda Meir is elected prime minister.

 

 

April 10, 1969
Egypt launches the War of Attrition against Israel along the Suez Canal. The U.S. brokers a cease-fire the next year.

September 1970
Jordan repels an attempt by the Palestine Liberation Organization to grab control of the country.

 

 

Sept. 28, 1970
Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who always strongly opposed the state of Israel, dies and Anwar al-Sadat is later elected the new president.

 

 

Oct. 6, 1973
Sadat fails to negotiate the return of the Sinai to Egypt, and therefore, along with Syria, launches a surprise attack against Israeli positions in the area. Called the Yom Kippur War by Israel and the Ramadan War by Arabs, the fighting ends in late October.

April 11, 1974
Meir resigns following the release of a government report criticizing Israel's lack of preparedness for the Arab strikes the year before. Yitzhak Rabin (pictured) assumes the prime minister position. He is replaced three years later by Menachem Begin.

 

Nov. 22, 1974
The U.N. recognizes the right for Palestinians to have "statehood and sovereignty."

Sept. 18, 1978
U.S. President Jimmy Carter hosts Sadat and Begin at Camp David, where the leaders approve the agreements for a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt and for a comprehensive Middle East peace. They sign the accord at the White House March 26, 1979.

Oct. 6, 1981
Muslim extremists, upset with the Egypt-Israel treaty, assassinate Sadat in Cairo.

June 6, 1982
Israeli troops launch Operation Peace for Galilee into southern Lebanon, with the sole purpose of ensuring security for northern Israel and destroying the infrastructure in Lebanon of the PLO, which had staged raids into Israel.

Sept. 14, 1982
Bashir Gemayel, president of Lebanon, is assassinated less than a month after the PLO withdraws its forces form Lebanon.

March 1984
Under pressure from Syria, which held considerable political and military influence in Lebanon, Lebanese president Amin Gemayel nullifies a 1983 peace agreement with Israel. Most of the Israeli forces evacuate Lebanon in 1985, leaving a small force in the south to maintain security along the border.

 

December 1987
The 7-year-long Palestinian uprising, or intefadeh, begins as an expression of frustration at 20 years of Israeli rule and Jewish settlement in the Occupied Territories. The movement becomes more violent over time as cease-fire attempts continue to fail.

Nov. 15, 1988
Arafat declares Palestine an independent state, acknowledges Israel's right to exist as a nation by accepting U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 - originally adopted in 1967 - and renounces terrorism. The PLO and The U.S. begin formal dialogue and Israel proposes a comprehensive peace initiative in spring 1989.

August 2, 1990
Saddam Hussein's order for an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the ensuing Gulf War in 1991 suspend efforts to seek an Arab-Israeli peace.

 

Sept. 13, 1993
The Oslo negotiations paved the way for the signing of a peace accord between Israel and the PLO. It proposes a Palestinian self-rule to be phased in over several years in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Peres, Rabin and Arafat win the Nobel Peace Prize.

May 4, 1994
Israel and the PLO sign an agreement in Cairo on the final status of Jericho and the Gaza Strip. Israel completes withdrawal of troops from the two regions. The Palestinian Authority led by Arafat assumes civil matters and sets up a Palestinian police force to maintain internal security.

 

Oct. 26, 1994
Israeli Prime Minister Rabin and Jordanian King Hussein sign a peace treaty.

Nov. 4, 1995
Israeli ultranationalist student Yigal Amir, who opposes the peace process, assassinates Rabin at a peace rally in Tel Aviv. Shimon Peres, also a major player in the peace process, takes over as Israeli prime minister.

 

Nov. 13, 1995
Israeli troops pull out of towns and give the Palestinians autonomy in six cities on the West Bank as part of the Oslo Accords.

Jan. 20, 1996
In their first elections since the formation of Israel almost 50 years earlier, Palestinians elect Arafat as president of the Palestinian Authority. He wins more than 80 percent of the vote.

 

August 27, 1996
Under Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli government lifts the four-year freeze on Jewish settlement construction in Palestinian territories by giving the go head for the expansion of the Kiryat Sefer Settlement. The building angers Arabs and puts the peace process into a dire situation.

 

Jan. 16, 1997
After more than 30 years of occupation, Israeli troops withdraw from the West Bank town of Hebron the day after an agreement is signed with the Palestinian Authority.

 

Oct. 23, 1998
Arafat and Netanyahu sign the Wye River Accord - a land-for-peace deal involving the West Bank. President Clinton hosts the Middle East Summit at the Wye River Conference Center retreat in Maryland.

Nov. 16, 1999
Citing Palestinian violations, Netanyahu freezes Israel's implementation of the peace accord and places new conditions on further withdrawals.

May 16, 1999
Ehud Barak defeats sitting prime minister Netanyahu for the top government seat and vows to continue Israel's withdrawal of troops from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

 

May 1-2, 1999
Mr. Clinton, Barak and Arafat meet in Oslo, Norway and agree to continue with the peace process.

 

May 25, 2000
Israeli troops conclude their three-day withdrawal from the security occupied zone of southern Lebanon, 18 years after Israel invaded its northern neighbor. Hezbollah guerrillas quickly overrun the Israeli-allied militia.

June 10, 2000
Syrian President Hafez al-Assad dies after three decades of autocratic rule. A renewal of Syria-Israel peace talks hangs in uncertainty as Bashar Assad, the president's oldest surviving son and heir apparent, is handed the reins of leadership.

 

Sept. 28, 2000
Israel's hard-line opposition leader, Ariel Sharon, visits a Jerusalem shrine holy to both Jews and Muslims. Jews call it the Temple Mount; Muslims call it the Noble Sanctuary. Palestinians angered by Sharon's visit riot. That violence is the beginning of what later will be called the new Palestinian intefadeh, which means "uprising," against Israel. The intefadeh will claim hundreds of lives.

March 6, 2001
Ariel Sharon is sworn in as Israeli prime minister, saying Israel's "hand is extended in peace." The 73-year-old former general and war hero has said there can be no negotiations while the violence of the Palestinian uprising continued.

 

April 16-17, 2001
After Palestinian mortar bombs slam into the southern Israeli town of Sderot, Israeli forces launch a fierce naval, air and land assault on Palestinian targets, and retake land in Gaza ceded to the Palestinians under a 1994 peace agreement. The U.S. criticizes the raids as "excessive," and Israeli troops withdraw from Gaza within 24 hours. One person dies and 30 are wounded in the fighting.

June 1, 2001
A Palestinian suicide bomber targets a popular seafront nightclub in Tel Aviv late in the evening, killing himself and 19 Isrealis - mostly teens under 18 - and wounding almost 100 others. The bombing is the deadliest attack in at least four years and the worst since the September Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation.

 

When the state of Israel was established in 1948, Arab nations invaded and in the subsequent war hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes. In ensuing years, Israel and the Arabs fought several wars, resulting in Israel’s conquest of territories now under dispute. Negotiation led to peace with Egypt in 1979 and with Jordan in 1994. An agreement with the Palestinians in 1993 ended the 7-year "intefada" and started the path toward Palestinian statehood in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

 

 

 

One of the main sticking points in completing a Palestinian-Israeli peace agreement is the sovereignty of the holy city of Jerusalem, where the world's three major religions claim sacred and symbolic shrines and relics. In an attempt to resolve a major issue that divides Israelis and Palestinians, academics, clerics and others have come up with the idea of dividing Jerusalem into 16 boroughs – 12 Israeli and four Palestinian. But the Palestinian Authority is pushing for sovereign rights over east Jerusalem and the highly contested Old City. '

Following the capture of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights in the Six-Day War of 1967, Israel started sending its citizens into the occupied areas to erect settlements. There exist more than 140 Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, where more than 140,000 Israelis live. About 200,000 Israelis live in former Palestinian sections of Jerusalem. About 17,000 Israelis in three dozen communities live in the Golan Heights, which was captured from Syria.

 

Following the capture of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights in the Six-Day War of 1967, Israel started sending its citizens into the occupied areas to erect settlements. There exist more than 140 Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, where more than 140,000 Israelis live. About 200,000 Israelis live in former Palestinian sections of Jerusalem. About 17,000 Israelis in three dozen communities live in the Golan Heights, which was captured from Syria.

         

 

One of the most difficult problems with finalizing an acceptable peace plan between the Palestinians and Israel and creating an independent Palestinian state is the future of Palestinian refugees. Currently, there are an estimated 1.5 million refugees living in 13 U.N.-run camps scattered across Jordan, part of an estimated 3.7 million Palestinians displaced in the 1948 and 1967 Middle East wars. Palestinians want insurance of their right to return and compensation. Israel maintains there is no blanket "right of return."

 

 

 

Mideast Key Players

JORDANIAN LEADER
King Abdullah II

King Abdullah II is catching on fast as a politician, eager to ensure Jordan keeps the key role in Middle East peacemaking carved out by his father, King Hussein.

After his ascension to the thrown, following his fathers death to cancer in early 1999, Abdullah has shuttled between Israel and Syria and reportedly held secret talks with Bashar al-Assad - before he became the new Syrian president - trying to bring the Middle East's longtime arch enemies back to the negotiating table. Publicly, Abdullah has said his main concern was to ensure that no one ignores the Palestinians' plight, which he calls "the core of the Arab-Israeli conflict."

Altruism aside, the king has his own reasons for wanting a key role in Middle East peacekeeping. Abdullah does not want Jordan to remain, along with Egypt, the only Arab states at peace with Israel. His kingdom is wedged in a precarious corner between Iraq, Syria and Israel. One side effect of peace between Syria and Israel would likely be firm action by Damascus to stifle dissident Palestinian factions based in its territory.

Abdullah's peacemaking may also be meant to ensure that Syria won't dump an estimated 300,000 Palestinian refugees on Jordan and exacerbate demographic pressure in a country where at least 60 percent of the 3.8 million population already is Palestinian.

PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY LEADER
Yasser Arafat

As president of the Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and chairman for the Executive Committee of Palestine Liberation Organization, Arafat is considered a heroic leader by the people searching for a homeland to call their own.

The PLO is an umbrella organization that claims to represent the world's non-Jewish Palestine population. In 1967 the PLO decided its primary goal was the destruction of the state Israel and Arafat has always been implicated as the brawn and brains behind a three-decade reign of terrorism on Israel and its allies - notably the United States. In 1974 the PLO made a decision to focus on the political issues and not just terrorist activities and Arafat has managed to shift the organization image from barbaric to a movement with legitimate claims.

Although the "intifada" has led to massive terrorist campaigns with very high causalities, Israel and many other international leaders have accepted Arafat as the leader of the Palestinian people.

In 1988 he recognized the right of the state of Israel to exist and denounced the PLO's former terrorist activities. On September 13, 1993 he signed the Declaration of Principals with Israel Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the following year he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize with Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. In 1996 he was elected the first President of the Palestine Authority.

SYRIAN PRESIDENT
Bashar Al-Assad

The 34-year-old Syrian President assumed leadership of Israel's eastern neighbor in mid July, 2000, following the death of his father Hafez Al-Assad, who has left his son delicate unfinished business: negotiations with Israel over the Golan Heights, captured by Israel in 1967.

Hafez Al-Assad pledged he would not accept anything less than the recovery of all of the Golan, a position his son has adopted but one that leaves him with little room to maneuver in the negotiations. Bashar Al-Assad, a former eye doctor, will have to test his unpolished skills as a politician against domestic and foreign challenges. Negotiations between Israel and Syria about returning the Golan Heights have produced only deadlock.

The last round of talks broke down over the elder Assad's demands that Israel give back every inch of the Golan Heights. And Israelis fear that a new leader in Damascus may be just as unbending as the old.

Within Syria the most outspoken opponents to his regime have been the Muslim Brotherhood a conservative faction that advocated a "pristine Islam" and a free market economy. They have made several assignation attempts and lead one bloody uprising in 1982.

FORMER ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER
Ehud Barak

Elected as prime minister of Israel in 1999, the former security head had a distinguished career with the Israeli Defense Force and was a protege of Yitzhak Rabin, the former Israeli prime minister who started the road toward peace with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and sealed a peace agreement with Jordan's King Hussein.

Barak joined the Defense Force in 1959 and served in both the 1967 Six Day War and the 1973 Yom Kippur War. He rose to the rank of general and is known as the most decorated soldier in Israeli history. In 1995 he became Interior minister and served as minister of Foreign Affairs and chairman of Israel's Labor Party.

He defeated then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in May 1999, on the platform that he would move quickly toward an expanded peace agreement with the Palestinian Authority. Although under constant political pressure by opposition parties who feared he would give in to too many Palestinian demands, Barak insisted he was serving as an extension of the Israeli people, who in polls early in his leadership showed they trusted Barak's leadership in the negotiations.

But a failed Camp David summit with Arafat and President Clinton and the ensuing surge of deadly clashes between Palestinians and Israelis at the end of 2000 suddenly reversed his popularity.

Many Israelis viewed Barak's efforts to put down four months of bloody clashes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as ineffectual - even as the outside world criticized Israel for wielding excessive force. The violence - still ongoing - has killed over 400 people, more than 80 percent of them Palestinians. After 19 months of turbulent leadership, the general-turned-peacemaker was defeated at the polls by conservative hardliner Ariel Sharon.

U.S. PRESIDENT
George W. Bush

George W. Bush took the oath of office as president of the United States on January 20, 2001. He has signaled that his administration does not intend to take on the "honest broker" mediator role tried by the Clinton administration and will instead stay active in the peace process as more of an interested observer.

In early moves, the Bush administration pressured Israel to ease travel restrictions placed on Palestinians, restrictions economically painful to Palestinians but seen by Israel as necessary security precautions.

Born July 6, 1946, Mr. Bush is the son of George Herbert Walker Bush, the 41st president of the United States. Like his father, George W. Bush graduated from Yale, and went on to get his MBA at Harvard before embarking on a career in the oil and gas business, and then politics, in 1986. He was elected governor of Texas in 1994 and re-elected in 1998.

Mr. Bush's ties to the oil and gas industry have not gone unnoticed in the Mideast, as has the fact that his father led the U.S. during the Gulf War, a point that Mr. Bush himself has mentioned on occasion.

FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT
Bill Clinton

Jimmy Carter had his 1978 Camp David summit, which established peace between Israel and Egypt. As 42nd president of the United States, Mr. Clinton would have liked to have been remembered as the man who brokered a final peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

The two-term president and former governor of Arkansas dealt with conflicts in the Balkans, Ireland and the Persian Gulf. But he has called the Israeli-Palestinian dispute "perhaps the most difficult of all the peace problems in the world, certainly dealing with the most difficult issues of the whole Middle East peace process."

Mr. Clinton was instrumental in forging a 1994 peace agreement between King Hussein of Jordan and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, with the final signing ceremony taking place on the White House lawn. Two years later, Mr. Clinton hosted Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the signing of the Wye River Accord - a land-for-peace deal involving the West Bank.

During his second term as president, Mr. Clinton saw the prospects for peace in the Mideast rise to the euphoric highs of Wye River, only to slide back to confrontational lows with deadly clashes between Israelis and Palestinians, beginning in late September 2000.

But time ran out for then-President Clinton. Despite several high-level meetings in the United States and the Mideast to hammer out a deal following the failed Camp David meeting of summer 2000, Mr. Clinton was unable to broker a final peace plan between Israel and the Palestinian Authority before his second term ended on Jan. 20, 2001. But for a president often criticized for ignoring foreign policy, Mr. Clinton is credited nonetheless with investing a lot of time in the Middle East, visiting the region more than any other U.S. president.

EGYPTIAN PRESIDENT
Hosni Mubarak

Elected president of Egypt following the May 1981 assassination of Anwar Sadat, Mubarak's career began in the Egyptian Air force.

He was instrumental in leading the Egyptian army in the 1973 Yom Kipper War against Israel. Although the battle to recover the Sinai Peninsula was a military defeat for the African Muslim country, Sadat named Mubarak his vice president in 1975 for his outstanding military service.

After Sadat's assassination by Muslim fundamentalists during a military parade in Cairo, Mubarak assumed the role of president. And like Sadat, Mubarak continued to depend heavily on the U.S for military and economic aid. He honored Sadat's 1979 Camp David Accord - a peace treaty with Israel brokered by U.S. President Jimmy Carter - and was very influential in getting Arafat to recognize that the state of Israel had a right to exist.

He is seen as a very influential moderate who has helped keep the Middle East peace process moving forward. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat often turns to the Egyptian president for advice when dealing with Israeli government. In 1999 Mubarak won his sixth term as president in an unopposed election.

ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER
Ariel Sharon

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has always portrayed himself as a problem-solver, a man who's ready to march in and take charge - sometimes with little heed for the consequences.

Bulky and white-haired, with a trademark trumpeting voice and an attention-getting style, he sometimes seems larger than life. He likes to remind Israelis he has fought in every one of the country's five wars since its founding more than half a century ago.

The child of Russian immigrants, Sharon first fought in the Jewish militia whose founding preceded statehood in 1948. After that, Sharon rose swiftly through the ranks of the Israeli army, making his name on the battlefield as he went.

From early on, he had a reputation for sometimes exceeding his orders and in September 1982, his brash leadership cost him his job as defense minister. Under his command, Israeli troops in west Beirut let an allied Christian militia group into two Palestinian refugee camps, where they systematically slaughtered hundreds of people. An Israeli commission found Sharon indirectly responsible and his political career seemed doomed. But he gradually rehabilitated himself, serving in parliament and holding a variety of cabinet posts.

Sharon has always taken a hard line with the Palestinians, and as a member of parliament, never voted in favor of any of Israel's peace agreements with neighboring Arab states. He has refused to shake the hand of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, who he has called a murderer and a liar.

After winning the post of prime minister in February 2000, Sharon admitted he can't reverse the results of seven years of peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority and neighboring Arab states, and acknowledged that a Palestinian state is coming into being whether Israelis like it or not.

However, he has said he won't recognize such a state until the Palestinians end all hostilities, and doesn't intend to give them more land than they now control - about 42 percent of the West Bank and most of the Gaza Strip - or divide Jerusalem, as former Prime Minister Ehud Barak expressed a willingness to do.

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