July 1:Arafat arrives in the Gaza Strip after twenty-seven years in exile.
July 5:Arafat assumes office as the first president of the new Palestinian Authority.
July 11:Rolf Ekeus, head of UN weapons inspectors in Iraq, reports to the Security
Council that all illegal weapons acknowledged by Iraq have been destroyed. Ekeus
says Iraq could, however, still be hiding other weapons.
July 25:In Washington, Israeli prime minister Rabin and Jordan’s King Hussein sign
the Washington Declaration, calling for an end to the state of war between their
countries.
October 14:Arafat, Rabin, and Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres are named recipi-
ents of the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize for of their participation in the Oslo peace process.
October 26:At the Arava/Araba border crossing between Israel and Jordan, Israeli prime
minister Rabin and Jordan’s King Hussein sign a formal peace treaty.
November 5:The Taliban, an Islamist guerrilla group, captures Kandahar, the largest
city in southern Afghanistan, in an ongoing struggle among anticommunist factions
following the overthrow of the Soviet-backed government in 1992.
1995
January 22:Two car bombs explode in Bet Lid, a coastal town in northern Israel,
killing 19 Israelis and wounding more than 60 others. Islamic Jihad claims respon-
sibility for the attack. The Israeli government temporarily suspends negotiations
with the Palestinians.
March 20:Turkish military forces invade the Kurdish areas of northern of Iraq in pur-
suit of the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), which has been fighting for a separate
Kurdish area in Turkey.
April 14:The UN Security Council adopts Resolution 986, creating an oil-for-food
program through which Iraq can sell limited quantities of oil on world markets with
the proceeds used to buy food and other humanitarian supplies for the Iraqi people,
to pay reparations to Kuwait, and to reimburse UN agencies for their expenses. The
oil sales are limited to $2 billion every 180 days.
April 17:Iraq rejects Resolution 986, creating an oil-for-food program.
August 8:Two sons-in-law of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, along with their wives and
some family members, defect to Jordan, taking with them crates of documents
alleged to show that Iraq is continuing to hide weapons from UN inspectors. The
defectors will be killed after being convinced to return to Iraq in February 1996.
September 28:At the White House, Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO
chairman Yasir Arafat sign the Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza
Strip, also known as Oslo II, expanding on the previous Oslo Accords by broaden-
ing Palestinian rule in the West Bank. President Bill Clinton, Egyptian president
Hosni Mubarak, and Jordan’s King Hussein act as witnesses.
October 10–11:Israel hands control of several West Bank towns to the Palestinian
Authority as part of the Oslo II agreement. Israel also releases about 900 Palestini-
ans who had been held in Israeli jails.
November 4:A Jewish extremist assassinates Rabin during a peace rally in Tel Aviv.
November 22:Shimon Peres takes over as Israeli prime minister.
December:Israel withdraws from the main West Bank towns of Tulkarm (on De-
cember 9), Nablus (December 12), Bethlehem (December 21), and Ramallah
(December 27).
680 CHRONOLOGY OF THE MIDDLE EAST, 1914–2007