Year |
Date |
Event
|
1917 |
2 November |
Balfour Declaration calls for the establishment of the Jewish Homeland
|
1920 |
25 April |
The
League of Nations assigns Britain the creation of
Mandatory Palestine
|
1929 |
23-29 August |
Pogroms in mandatory Palestine made by Arabic nationalists.
|
1939–1945 |
|
World War II:
Germany invades Poland and
The Holocaust occurred in
German-occupied Europe killing 6 million Jews.
|
1947 |
25 November |
United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine that proposed a creation of one Arab state and one Jewish state passes with the Jewish leaders accepted and Arab states rejected the move. A
major civil war between the Arab populations and Jewish populations began shortly after.
|
1948 |
14 May |
On the last day of the British Mandate,
David Ben-Gurion, executive head of the
World Zionist Organization and chairman of the
Jewish Agency for Israel, issued the
Israeli Declaration of Independence which declared the establishment of a
Jewish state on Mandatory Palestine in the
land of Israel to be known as the State of Israel.
[1]
|
15 May |
1948 Arab–Israeli War: Hours after the expiration of the British Mandate of Palestine,
Iraq,
Egypt,
Jordan and
Syria invaded Israel.
[2]
|
1949 |
25 January |
1949 Israeli legislative election: Elections were held to a
constituent assembly.
Ben-Gurion's
center-left
Mapai won a plurality of seats.
|
24 February |
1948 Arab–Israeli War: The first of the
1949 Armistice Agreements ending the war was signed between Israel and
Egypt. An armistice line was agreed along the prewar border with the exception that Egypt remained in control of the
Gaza Strip.
|
8 March |
The
first government of Israel, in which
Mapai, the
Jewish
United Religious Front, the liberal
Progressive Party, the
Sephardim and Oriental Communities and the
Arab
Democratic List of Nazareth ruled in coalition with
Ben-Gurion as
prime minister, was established.
|
11 May |
The
General Assembly of the United Nations adopted
United Nations General Assembly Resolution 273, according to which Israel was admitted to membership.
[3]
|
13 December |
Ben-Gurion proclaimed
Jerusalem the capital of Israel.
[4]
|
1950 |
5 July |
The Israeli legislature the
Knesset passed the
Law of Return, which granted all
Jews the right to migrate to and settle in Israel and obtain
citizenship.
|
1956 |
26 July |
Suez Crisis: In a broadcast speech, Egyptian president
Gamal Abdel Nasser gave a codeword order for the occupation and nationalization of the
Suez Canal and the closure of the
Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping.
|
29 October |
Suez Crisis: The Israeli
air force began bombing Egyptian forces in the
Sinai Peninsula.
|
1960 |
11 May |
Eight agents of the Israeli internal security service
Shin Bet and its foreign intelligence service
Mossad abducted
Adolf Eichmann, the
Nazi officer primarily responsible for the actual implementation of
the Holocaust, near his home in
San Fernando, Buenos Aires.
|
1966 |
|
The
martial law imposed on Israeli
Arabs from the founding of the State of Israel was lifted completely.
|
1967 |
5 June |
Six-Day War: The Israeli
air force destroyed the Egyptian
air force on the ground over a period of three hours.
|
11 June |
Six-Day War: Israel signed a ceasefire with its enemies
Egypt,
Syria,
Jordan,
Lebanon and
Iraq. It remained in control of the formerly Egyptian
Gaza Strip and
Sinai Peninsula, the Syrian
Golan Heights and the Jordanian
West Bank and
East Jerusalem.
|
30 June |
Mayor
Teddy Kollek of
Jerusalem announced that the city had been fully reunified.
[5]
|
1973 |
21 February |
A Boeing 727-200 serving as Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114 from
Tripoli to
Cairo was shot down over the
Sinai Peninsula by Israeli fighter aircraft, killing over one hundred passengers and crew.
|
21 July |
Lillehammer affair: A team of fifteen
Mossad agents assassinated a Moroccan waiter in
Lillehammer in a case of mistaken identity.
|
6 October |
Yom Kippur War: Egyptian and Syrian forces simultaneously attacked Israeli positions in the
Sinai Peninsula and the
Golan Heights, respectively, on the
Jewish holiday of
Yom Kippur.
|
14 October |
Operation Nickel Grass: The United States began an airlift of tanks, artillery, ammunition and supplies to Israel.
|
25 October |
Yom Kippur War: Israel,
Egypt and
Syria agreed to a ceasefire. Israel remained in control of new territory north of the
Golan Heights and west of the
Suez Canal in the south.
|
1976 |
4 July |
Operation Entebbe:
Sayeret Matkal freed some hundred hostages held at
Entebbe International Airport by hijackers belonging to the
Palestinian nationalist
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – External Operations and the
far-left
Revolutionary Cells.
|
1977 |
10 May |
1977 Israeli Air Force Sikorsky CH-53 Sea Stallion crash: An
Israeli Air Force Sikorsky CH-53 Sea Stallion crashed in the
Jordan Valley, killing some fifty soldiers.
|
1978 |
17 September |
Israel and
Egypt signed the
Camp David Accords at the
White House. The framework agreement provided for the establishment of an autonomous authority in the
West Bank and
Gaza Strip and for withdrawal of Israeli forces from the
Sinai Peninsula in exchange for the establishment of full diplomatic relations with Egypt.
|
1979 |
26 March |
Egypt and Israel signed the
Egypt–Israel peace treaty under the framework of the
Camp David Accords at the
White House.
|
1980 |
24 February |
The
old Israeli shekel replaced the
Israeli pound as the currency of Israel.
|
30 July |
The
Knesset passed the
Jerusalem Law, asserting that
Jerusalem was and would remain the undivided capital of Israel.
|
1981 |
7 June |
Operation Opera: Israel carried out a surprise air strike on an
Iraqi nuclear reactor some ten miles southwest of
Baghdad.
[6]
|
1982 |
23 April |
The
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) forcibly evacuated
Yamit per the terms of the
Egypt–Israel peace treaty.
|
3 June |
Shlomo Argov, the Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom, was shot in the head in London in an attempted assassination organized by
Iraq's
Iraqi Intelligence Service and carried out by the
Palestinian nationalist
Abu Nidal Organization.
|
6 June |
1982 Lebanon War: The
IDF invaded
southern Lebanon in response to repeated attacks by the
Palestinian nationalist
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), whose militants were sheltered there, on Israeli civilians.
|
1984 |
12 April |
Bus 300 affair: Four
Palestinian nationalists hijacked a bus from
Tel Aviv to
Ashkelon and took its forty passengers hostage.
|
13 April |
Bus 300 affair:
Sayeret Matkal forces stormed the bus. Two hijackers and one hostage were killed. The two surviving hijackers were taken to a nearby field and shot.
|
21 November |
Operation Moses: The first of some eight thousand
Ethiopian Jews were covertly evacuated to Israel from refugee camps in
Sudan.
|
1985 |
5 January |
Operation Moses: Prime minister
Shimon Peres confirmed the existence of the airlift.
Sudan immediately halted flights.
|
1987 |
30 August |
The
Cabinet voted to cancel development of the IAI Lavi.
|
9 December |
First Intifada: Protests began in the
Jabalia Camp in response to the death of four
Palestinian civilians in a car crash with an
IDF truck.
|
1989 |
19 September |
Mount Carmel Forest Fire: A forest fire began on
Mount Carmel which would burn over two square miles over the next three days.
[7]
|
1991 |
22 January |
Gulf War: An
Iraqi Scud missile landed in
Ramat Gan, killing three and injuring nearly a hundred.
|
24 May |
Operation Solomon: An airlift began which would transport some fourteen thousand
Ethiopian Jews from
Ethiopia to Israel over a thirty-six-hour period.
|
30 October |
Madrid Conference of 1991: A conference opened in
Madrid with the goal of reviving the Israeli–
Palestinian peace process.
|
1992 |
17 December |
Israel deported some four hundred
Palestinians to
Lebanon.
|
1993 |
13 September |
Israel and the
PLO signed the
Oslo I Accord in Washington, D.C. The accords provided for the withdrawal of some
IDF forces from the
West Bank and
Gaza Strip and for the establishment of a self-governing authority for the
Palestinians, the
Palestinian National Authority.
|
1994 |
26 October |
Israel and
Jordan signed the
Israel–Jordan peace treaty in the
Arabah. The treaty clarified the borders of the two countries and their water rights; each pledged that neither would allow a third country to use its territory to stage an attack on the other.
|
1995 |
4 November |
Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin: The radical nationalist
Yigal Amir, an opponent of the
Oslo Accords, shot and killed prime minister
Yitzhak Rabin after a rally in
Tel Aviv.
|
1997 |
4 February |
1997 Israeli helicopter disaster: Two transport helicopters en route to
southern Lebanon collided in midair above
She'ar Yashuv, killing all on board.
|
14 July |
Maccabiah bridge collapse: A pedestrian bridge collapsed over the
Yarkon River in
Tel Aviv, killing four.
|
2000 |
24 May |
Israel withdrew the last of its forces from
southern Lebanon.
|
1 October |
October 2000 events: The first of a series of riots began in which thirteen
Arabs and one
Jew would be killed over nine days.
[8]
|
7 October |
2000 Hezbollah cross-border raid: The Lebanese
Shia Islamist militant group and political party
Hezbollah abducted three Israeli soldiers from the Israeli administered side of the
Blue Line, the internationally recognized border.
[9]
|