June 17:A suicide bomber attacks a police academy in Kabul, killing thirty-five people,
most of them police instructors, in one of the deadliest days in Afghanistan since
the Taliban’s ouster in 2001.
June 25:Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, Israeli prime minister Olmert, King
Abdallah II of Jordan, and Palestinian president Abbas meet in Sharm el-Sheikh,
Egypt, to develop a unified response to the Hamas takeover of Gaza. They pledge
support for Abbas and Fatah; Israel says it will release to Abbas several hundred mil-
lion dollars in Palestinian tax revenues that Israel had collected but had withheld
after Hamas won parliamentary elections in January 2006.
June 27:On British prime minister Tony Blair’s last day in office, the Middle East
Quartet—the European Union, Russia, the United Nations, and the United States—
announces that he will serve as its UN envoy for Middle East peace negotiations.
July 22:Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party achieves a major victory in
early parliamentary elections, capturing 47 percent of the popular vote (a landslide
by recent Turkish standards) and winnings 340 of the 550 seats in parliament. The
vote is a setback for the military, which sought to block the party from appointing
Foreign Minister Gul as president.
698 CHRONOLOGY OF THE MIDDLE EAST, 1914–2007