1.4.01 An Israeli soldier is killed
in a gun battle between Palestinians and Israelis near
Nablus.
1.4.01 In an article in the Hebrew
daily Yediot Aharonot, Eitan Haber, formerly an official with the
late Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin, says PM Ariel Sharon has no
political or security plan to confront the Palestinian Intifada. If
Sharon offers less than former PM Barak, he will not find a
Palestinian partner.
2.4.01 Israeli helicopters shell the
truck of Muhammad Abdul el-AI, 28, from Rafah in the Gaza Strip, an
Islamic Jihad activist, killing him and critically injuring his
fellow passenger.
2.4.01 Heavy fighting takes place in
the village of Khader, near Bethlehem. Israeli tanks shell the
refugee camps of Azza and Aida inside Bethlehem. Thirteen
Palestinians are injured, including one girl who lost an eye; an
Israeli soldier is killed.
3.4.01 Israel refuses to allow a
Knesset delegation to enter Ramallah to meet with Palestinian
President Yasser Arafat. The delegation was headed by Yossi Katz
and included Mohammmad Barakeh, Mosi Raz and Colette Avital. Katz
nevertheless defied the orders and met with Arafat.
4.4.01 Palestinian and Israeli
negotiators meet near Tel Aviv, with CIA representatives, in an
effort to reactivate security coordination between the two
sides.
4.4.01 Rabbis for Human Rights in
Israel and a group of American Jews are raising money to replace
olive trees uprooted by the Israeli army. Rabbi Arik Ascherman told
the Christian Science Monitor that in the Salfit area alone, 3,000
trees have been destroyed, some of them hundreds of years old. The
group has collected $20,000 in its campaign.
4.4.01 Islamic Jihad activist Iyad
Hardan, 28, from the village of Arraba near Jenin is killed
instantly when a pay phone he often uses exploded. Hardan, a
detainee in a PNA jail, had left his cell temporarily to make a
phone call.
6.4.01 The United Nations Commission
on Human Rights passes a:resolution supporting the e'stablishment
of an independent Palestinian state. The resolution was passed by a
majority of 48 to 2, with the United States and Guatemala
opposing.
8.4.01 The Women's Coalition for a
Just Peace, issues a statement in solidarity with the Palestinian
people, calling for an independent Palestinian state based on the
1967 borders, for an end to Israeli occupation, and for the
dismantling of Jewish settlements. Israel should admit its
responsibility for, and seek a just solution to, the problem of
Palestinian refugees.
9.4.01 Israeli forces using tanks
and heavy artillery aided by helicopter gunships invade the western
region of Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip. In a fierce battle, two
Palestinians are killed and 40 injured. Thirty-one houses are
demolished.
11.4.01 Shas spiritual leader Rabbi
Ovadia Yosef calls for the "annihilation of the Arabs" during a
speech given on the Jewish Passover.
11.4.01 High-level Palestinian and
Israeli security officials and CIA representatives again meet in
Tel Aviv at the home of the U.S. ambassador in Israel, Martin
Indik, in a further attempt to renew security cooperation between
the two sides.
13.4.01 In a joint statement,
European foreign ministers urge Israel to cease all settlement
activity in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
23.4.01 Rabbi Menachem Forman from
the Tekoa settlement near Bethlehem says that, during a meeting
with President Arafat, he proposed forming a committee of Muslim
and Jewish leaders tq work towards peace. He said that Arafat
showed interest in his proposal, but has not yet made any
commitments.
23.4.01 Belgian foreign minister
Louis Michel is forced to cancel his visit to al¬Aqsa Mosque
after Palestinian officials refused to allow Israeli security
guards to accompany him.
23.4.01 Israeli tanks fire missiles
during an exchange of fire at Gaza International Airport, heavily
damaging the radar room.
24.4.01 Israeli shelling and gunfire
from the nearby Jewish settlement of Psagot light the Ramallah
skies, with bullets landing near President Arafat's headquarters in
the city.
25.4.01 United Nations Relief and
Works Agency (UNRWA) General Commissioner Peter Hansen warns in
Amman that conditions in the Palestinian territories may develop
into a humanitarian disaster, due to the suffering of the
Palestinian people over the past seven months and collective
Israeli punishment measures.
25.4.01 Israeli forces assassinate
four Fateh cadres working for the Palestinian Security Apparatus in
Rafah, in an explosion on the border between Gaza and Egypt. Six
Palestinian citizens are also wounded in the explosion.
30.4.01 Three people, a Fateh
activist and two children, are killed in an explosion in a
residential building in the Ein Misbah area of Ramallah.
4.5.01 Israel allows the entrance of
an additional 11,000 Palestinian laborers into Israel for
work.
6.5.01 Israeli Foreign Minister Shim
on Peres discusses with the Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative
Council, Ahmed Qurei, means to stop the cycle of violence between
Palestinians and Israelis.
6.5.01 The Mitchell report is
submitted to the Palestinian and Israeli sides. The report was
prepared by an international committee set up in the wake of the
Sharm el-Sheikh talks last year to examine the causes of the
Palestinian-Israeli confron ta tions.
7.5.01 Four-month-old Iman Hajjo is
killed while her mother, 23, sat breast¬feeding her in their
Khan Younis home. An Israeli tank shell slammed through the wall
killing Iman and critically wounding her mother.
7.5.01 Israel seizes a boat loaded
with a large consignment of arms, including mortars and anti-tank
missiles off the Gaza coast. According to Israeli sources, this was
not an isolated incident; the boat, a fishing trawler, had set out
from northern Lebanon.
11.5.01 Danish Foreign Minister
Mogens Lykketoft declares that he will ask the European Union to
ban the import of all fruit grown in Jewish settlements in the
occupied Palestinian territories.
14.5.01 Israeli communications
minister Reuven Rivlin presents Israeli PM Ariel Sharon with a
detailed $150-million plan to establish Arabic-language television
and radio stations in order to respond to the "propaganda and
instigation" in the Arab and Palestinian media.
14.5.01 While resting, five
Palestinian policemen manning a checkpoint in Beitunia are shot
dead by the IOF.
17.5.01 Head of the International
Red Cross delegation in Israel and the Palestinian territories Rem~
Kosernic calls Jewish settlements in the occupied territories a war
crime according to humanitarian law. He believes the Geneva
Convention must be applied to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The
law for occupied territories also applies to East Jerusalem.
18.5.01 Nine Palestinians are killed
and about 60 are injured in Israeli air raids on the Gaza Strip and
the West Bank. Eight of the dead were members of the elite unit
Force 17. For the first time since the eruption of the al-Aqsa
Intifada, F-16 war planes were used for the missile attacks.
18.5.01 The Government of Qatar says
that it is ready to host a Palestinian¬Israeli summit in an
attempt to help put an end to the violence.
20.5.01 Israeli tanks fire missiles
at the residence in al-Bireh of the head of the Palestinian
Preventive Security Apparatus in the West Bank, Jibril Rajoub. Five
guards were injured.
22.5.01 Israeli officials announce
that Mauritania's foreign minister Oah Wild Abdi will arrive in
Israel, in spite of the Arab League call to halt all political
contacts with Israel.
22.5.01 Though announcing a
unilateral cease-fire, the Israeli army fires upon PNA areas in the
West Bank and the Gaza Strip injuring some 45 people. Following
Palestinian fire on the Jewish settlement of Gilo, fighting breaks
out in the Bethlehem area.
22.5.01 Israeli PM Sharon declares
that Israel considers settlements legal and a national and social
project, adding that settlements will be developed in order to face
current challenges. Since he assumed power last February, 15 new
Jewish settlement sites have been erected in the West Bank,
according to the Israeli movement Peace Now.
23.5.01 According to Ha' aretz, 55
New York legislators sign letters to Governor George Pataki and
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani asking to remove a wax figure of President
Arafat from Madame Tussaud's wax museum, recently opened in New
York. The manager of the museum said that it chronicles history
without political bias.
25.5.01 U.5. Secretary of State
Colin Powell officially declares his support for the Mitchell
recommendations as a basis for an end to violence between
Palestinians and Israelis. A new Middle East peace envoy, William
Bums, would function as mediator between the Government of Israel
and the PNA.
26.5.01 Meeting in Ooha, Qatar,
foreign ministers of states represented in the Islamic Conference
decide to freeze all political contacts with the Israeli
government.
31.5.01 Faisal Husseini, 61, holder
of the Jerusalem file in the PNA and a member of the PLO Executive
Committee, dies of a heart attack in Kuwait. He leaves a wife and
two children. Husseini was widely respected as an outstanding
leader of the Palestinian people and a consistent fighter for
national dignity, freedom and peace.
1.6.01 President Yasser Arafat pays
homage to Faisal Husseini at PNA headquarters in Ramallah before
the funeral cortege proceeded to Jerusalem. It passe from Orient
House to the Haram al-Sharif, accompanied by a huge crowd of
mourners. Condolences were offered at Orient House by Palestinian,
Israeli and foreign callers throughout the week.
1.6.01 Said al Hutari, 22, a
Palestinian-Jordanian affiliated with Hamas, blows himself up in a
crowd of Israeli young people waiting to enter a Tel Aviv
nightclub. Most were new immigrants from the former USSR. Twenty
Israelis are killed and over 70 injured in the bombing.
1.6.01 Organs from Mazen Joulani, a
33-year-old Palestinian pharmacist shot by Jewish settlers, are
donated to Israeli patients. According to the Israeli national
organ transplant coordinator, this is the first organ donation from
a Palestinian since the outbreak of the al-Aqsa Intifada.
10.6.01 According to Israel Radio,
Israeli PM Ariel Sharon likens Palestinian President Yasser Arafat
to Osama Bin Laden. Sharon's statement reportedly came during a
meeting with United States peace envoy William Bums. "You do not
hold negotiations with a person like Bin Laden; Arafat to us is
like Bin Laden."
12.6.01 Central Intelligence Agency
chief George Tenet meets with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat
in Ramallah.
13.6.01 According to Ha'aretz, the
European Union recently tried to set up a network of observers in
the Palestinian territories without Israel's approval. An
"operations room" set up in Bethlehem by the EU was later closed
under Israeli pressure. A request to deploy European observers in
the Rafah and Netzarim areas in Gaza was turned down.
18.6.01 The Red Crescent Society
issues statistics on Palestinian Shuhada' (martyrs) and injured
since the beginning of the al-Aqsa Intifada. The report notes 520
dead and 14,461 injured by Israeli soldiers.
18.6.01 The Arab Follow-Up Committee
meeting in Amman, Jordan, agrees to give the PNA the amount of $US
45 million monthly till the end of the year 2001.
22.6.01 Two Israeli soldiers are
killed when 27-year-old Ismail Mus'abi rammed his booby-trapped car
into their jeep in Gaza. Mus'abi was also killed.
22.6.01 Head of the Israeli internal
security intelligence network (Shabak) Avi Oichter says that there
has been a tangible decrease in Palestinian military attacks
against Israeli targets. In Rafah, the PNA is still having
difficulty controlling the area.
28.6.01 A woman settler is shot and
killed by Palestinian gunmen on a road near the settlement of Ganim
in the Jenin region.
30.6.01 Israeli PM Ariel Sharon is
indictable for crimes against humanity, ruled a Belgian court. The
complaint against Sharon is admissible in court and an
investigation will be launched into the events of the Sabra and
Shatilla massacre in Lebanon in 1982 while Sharon was Israel's
defense minister.
In this period, in the Palestinian territories, 54 Palestinians
were killed by Israel security forces of whom 21 were under the age
of 17. One Palestinian was killed by an Israeli civilian. Sixteen
Israeli civilians were killed by Palestinians. Six Israeli security
forces personnel were killed by Palestinians. Twenty-seven
Palestinian security forces personnel were killed by Israeli
security forces. Within the Green Line, 24 Israeli civilians were
killed by Palestinians. One member of the Israeli security forces
was killed by Palestinians.
