November 1:The Likud Party scores a narrow victory in Israeli elections, enabling
Prime Minister Shamir to hold on to power.
November 15:Meeting in Algiers, the Palestine National Council issues a statement
declaring a Palestinian state, with its capital in Jerusalem and Arafat as president.
Earlier, the council also had voted limited acceptance of UN Resolutions 242 and
338.
December 14:Under pressure from the United States, PLO chairman Yasir Arafat again
renounces terrorism and directly accepts UN Resolutions 242 and 338. This enables
the United States to say that Arafat has met its conditions for direct contacts.
December 21:Pan Am Flight 203 from London to New York explodes and crashes in
Lockerbie, Scotland, after a bomb explodes onboard. All 259 passengers and crew
on the plane are killed, along with 11 people on the ground. British authorities will
later charge that Libyan government agents planted the bomb.
1989
February 14:Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issues a fatwa,or decree, calling on all Mus-
lims to kill author Salman Rushdie because his novel The Satanic Versesallegedly
blasphemes Islam. Rushdie goes into hiding.
February 15:The last Soviet soldiers leave Afghanistan, ending an occupation of more
than nine years. The Soviet departure will intensify battles for power among fac-
tions in Afghanistan, including the communist government supported by Moscow
and various groups of Islamist guerrillas, or mujahidin.
March 14:A new round of conflict between Christian and Muslim militias in Lebanon
erupts into a major artillery battle killing several dozen people and marking the start
of several months of fighting.
March 15:Israel evacuates Taba, which returns to Egyptian sovereignty.
April 2:Hamas kidnaps and murders two Israeli soldiers, its first such attack. Israel
will arrest dozens of Hamas members and leaders, including spiritual leader Shaykh
Ahmad Yasin, and later declare Hamas an illegal organization.
April 6:Israeli prime minister Shamir proposes a plan for Palestinians to elect repre-
sentatives who would negotiate with Israel toward a limited autonomy. Palestinian
officials will denounce the plan, which goes nowhere.
May 22:Secretary of State James A. Baker III tells the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee that Israel should give up “the unrealistic vision of a greater Israel” and
negotiate an agreement with the Palestinians. The speech is one of the toughest ever
given by a senior U.S. official criticizing Israeli policies.
May 22:Meeting in Casablanca, the Arab League formally readmits Egypt a decade
after its suspension following the signing of its peace treaty with Israel.
June 3:Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini dies.
June 4:The Iranian Assembly of Experts names President Ali Khamenei as the coun-
try’s new supreme leader.
July 28:Israeli commandos abduct Shaykh Abd al-Karim Obeid, leader of the Shiite
group Hizballah in Lebanon. Officials will later reveal that they had planned to
trade Obeid for Israeli hostages in Lebanon. A Lebanese group called the Organi-
zation of the Oppressed on Earth will announce that in retaliation for the kidnap-
ping it has killed U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Col. William Higgins, who had been held
hostage in Lebanon since February 1988.
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