October 28:Arab leaders, meeting in Rabat, Morocco, recognize the Palestine Libe-
ration Organization as the “sole legitimate representative” of the Palestinian people.
Jordan’s King Hussein, who previously had been a voice for the Palestinians, agrees
to honor the PLO’s claim.
November 13:PLO chairman Yasir Arafat addresses the UN General Assembly and
calls for the creation of a Palestinian state.
November 22:The UN General Assembly grants the PLO observer status.
December 1:Israeli president Ephraim Katzir offers the first official acknowledgment
that Israel is capable of producing nuclear weapons. Subsequent reports will assert
that Israel had possessed this capability for several years.
1975
March 5:Iran and Iraq sign the Algiers Accord, an agreement mediated by Algeria,
resolving conflicting boundary claims to the Shatt al-Arab waterway and pledging
not to interfere in each other’s domestic affairs. A year-long Kurdish rebellion will
quickly collapse after Iran, under the agreement, suspends its support for Kurdish
separatists in Iraq.
March 25:King Faisal of Saudi Arabia is assassinated by a nephew and is succeeded
by Crown Prince Khalid. This is the first violent transfer of power in Saudi Arabia
since the kingdom’s founding four decades earlier.
April 13:An attack by unknown gunmen on Christian worshipers in a Beirut suburb
results in riots and retaliatory attacks. The ongoing conflict will develop into a civil
war lasting until 1990.
July 1:After the deaths of nearly 300 people, factions in Lebanon sign a truce, but it
fails to halt fighting.
September 4:Egyptian and Israeli officials sign Sinai II, an “interim agreement” negoti-
ated by Kissinger providing for additional Israeli withdrawals from the Sinai Peninsula.
November 10:The UN General Assembly adopts Resolution 3379, declaring that
Zionism is a form of racism.
1976
March 23:William Scranton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, calls Israeli
settlements in the occupied territories “an obstacle to the success of the negotiations
for a just and final peace.” This is the first of many similar official U.S. statements
on the settlements, which Israel continues to build.
October 25:The Arab League, except for Iraq and Libya, approves a plan calling for
an end to the Lebanese civil war and the deployment of a 30,000-man Arab peace-
keeping force. This plan will become the legal basis for Syria’s long-term military
occupation of Lebanon.
November 11:The UN Security Council issues a statement deploring Israel’s settle-
ments in the occupied territories and declaring Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem
to be “invalid.” The United States in March had vetoed a somewhat stronger Secu-
rity Council resolution on these matters.
1977
March 16:President Carter endorses a Palestinian “homeland,” becoming the first pres-
ident to do so.
666 CHRONOLOGY OF THE MIDDLE EAST, 1914–2007