Palestinians and fifteen Israelis will die in subsequent rioting, the worst of which
takes place in Ramallah.
September 26:The Taliban occupy Kabul, thus securing effective control of most of
Afghanistan.
October 23:French president Jacques Chirac becomes the first foreign head of state to
address the Palestinian legislature. He says that France supports a Palestinian state.
The two rival Iraqi Kurdish parties agree to end their fighting, which has killed
an estimated 3,000 people and forced tens of thousands of Kurds to flee their homes.
December 10:Iraq pumps the first oil for legal export under the UN’s oil-for-food pro-
gram after announcing an agreement with the Security Council on November 25.
1997
January 17:Israeli and Palestinian officials sign a long-delayed agreement providing
for the Israeli military to withdraw from most of the West Bank town of Hebron,
a flashpoint for violence between Israeli settlers and Palestinian residents. Israeli
forces begin leaving Hebron immediately.
February 28:Turkey’s top generals issue a statement demanding that Prime Minister
Necmettin Erbakan sign a statement that includes a commitment to secularism.
May 23:Mohammad Khatami, a mid-level cleric generally considered a reformer,
scores a landslide victory in Iranian presidential elections, with about 69 percent of
the vote.
June 18:Turkey’s Islamist prime minister Erbakan resigns under pressure from the
military. He is succeeded by Mesut Yilmaz, president of the secular Motherland
Party.
June 26:Turkey withdraws most of the soldiers sent into northern Iraq in April as
part of Operation Hammer to destroy the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which
had taken refuge there.
July 31:Palestinian legislature demands that members of the Palestinian Authority cab-
inet resign because of corruption allegations. Arafat appoints a commission to inves-
tigate the charges, but its findings are suppressed.
September:The Turkish army returns to Iraq for an operation that will continue into
May 1998.
September 5:Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu says Israel is suspending its
obligations under the various Oslo agreements to protest two suicide bombings in
a Jerusalem market on July 30 that killed thirteen people.
September 25:In Amman, Israeli agents carrying Canadian passports inject a lethal poi-
son into the left ear of Khaled Meshel, the political leader of Hamas. Israel provides
an antidote for the poison after King Hussein demands it. Meshel recovers.
October 1:At King Hussein’s insistence, Israel releases from prison Hamas spiritual
leader Shaykh Ahmad Yasin, who is flown to Jordan. He eventually will return to
the Gaza Strip.
October 29:Iraq’s government demands the departure from Iraq of all Americans work-
ing for the UN weapons agency. The inspectors will leave in November but return
later in the month after the Russian government pressures Baghdad on the issue.
November 17:Gunmen from the Islamic Group attack a group of tourists near an
ancient temple in Egypt’s Luxor Valley and kill about seventy people, most of them
foreign tourists. It is the second major attack on foreign tourists in two months.
682 CHRONOLOGY OF THE MIDDLE EAST, 1914–2007