1948: The State of Israel is declared. British troops leave and fighting breaks out with Arab neighbours. Some 700,000 Palestinians, half the Arab population of British-ruled Palestine, flee or are driven from their homes. Arab troops intervene but lose some of the land the United Nations had assigned to Palestinians. Armistice pacts halt the fighting a year later, but there is no formal peace.
1956: Israel invades the Gaza Strip and Sinai in conjunction with the Suez Canal campaign launched by Britain and France against Egypt. Israel withdraws six months later.
1965: Palestinian guerrilla movement Fatah carries out its first military operation inside Israel.
1967: Israeli strikes against Egypt and Syria launch the Six-Day War. Israel has occupied the West Bank, Arab East Jerusalem, and Syria’s Golan Heights ever since – and the Gaza Strip for some of that time.
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1972: Palestinian guerrillas kill 11 Israelis at the Munich Olympics.
1973: Egypt and Syria attack Israeli positions along the Suez Canal and Golan Heights, beginning the Yom Kippur War. Israel pushes both armies back within three weeks.
1979: Iran’s pro-western leader, Mohammed Reza Shah, who regarded Israel as an ally, is swept from power in an Islamic Revolution that installs a new Shiite regime opposed to Israel. Egypt and Israel sign the first peace accord between Israel and an Arab state.
1981: Israeli planes destroy Iraq’s nuclear reactor site, thwarting Saddam Hussein’s bomb plans.
1982: Israel hands Sinai back to Egypt. As Israel invades Lebanon, Iran works with Shiite Muslims there to set up Hizbullah.
1983: Hizbullah uses suicide bombings to expel western and Israeli forces from Lebanon. Israel later withdraws from much of Lebanon.
1987: In December the first Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, breaks out in occupied territories. About 400 Israelis and 1,500 Palestinians are killed in the ensuing six years.
1993: Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and Fatah founder Yasser Arafat shake hands on the Oslo Accords on limited Palestinian autonomy.
1994: Israel signs a peace treaty with Jordan.
1995: Jewish ultranationalist Yigal Amir assassinates Rabin.
2000: Talks on returning the Golan Heights to Syria collapse. Camp David peace summit with Arafat and Israeli premier Ehud Barak fails. The second Intifada begins.
2002: A disclosure that Iran has a secret programme to enrich uranium stirs concern that it is trying to build a nuclear bomb.
2003: The US, EU, UN and Russia make public a “roadmap” to peace talks.
2004: Arafat dies. Fatah’s Mahmoud Abbas takes over as president of the Palestinian Authority.
2005: Israel’s prime minister Ariel Sharon and Abbas declare a ceasefire. Israel pulls its troops and settlers out of the Gaza Strip after 38 years of occupation.
2006: Islamist group Hamas, steadily rising in power, wins the Palestinian parliamentary election. Israel fights Hizbullah in a month-long war in Lebanon but is unable to crush the heavily armed group.
2007: Hamas forces rout Abbas loyalists in Gaza. Fatah loses all power in the strip.
2008: Hamas agrees on a ceasefire with Israel in June. By December, the truce is over.
2010: Stuxnet, a malicious computer virus widely believed to have been developed by the US and Israel, is used to attack a uranium enrichment facility at Iran’s Natanz nuclear site. It is the first publicly known cyberattack on industrial machinery.
2012: Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan is killed by a bomb placed on his car by a motorcyclist in Tehran.
2018: Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu hails US president Donald Trump’s withdrawal of the US from Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers after years of lobbying against the agreement. In May, Israel says it hit Iranian military infrastructure in Syria – where Tehran has been backing president Bashar al-Assad in the civil war – after Iranian forces there fired rockets at the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
2021: Iran blames Israel for the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, viewed by western intelligence services as the mastermind of a covert Iranian programme to develop nuclear weapons. Tehran has long denied any such ambition.
2022: US president Joe Biden and Israeli prime minister Yair Lapid sign a joint pledge to deny Iran nuclear arms.
2024: A suspected Israeli air strike on the Iranian embassy compound in Damascus kills seven Revolutionary Guards officers, including two senior commanders. In October Iran fires more than 180 missiles at Israel in what it calls revenge for the killing of Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah in an air strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs, and the killing of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Iran’s capital. Israel retaliates with strikes on military sites in Iran.
2025: In June, Israel carries out strikes in Iran, aiming to disrupt the Islamic Republic’s nuclear infrastructure, and targets scientists working on a nuclear bomb. On June 22nd, the US attacks three Iranian nuclear sites with missiles and “bunker buster” bombs. The success or failure of this mission is disputed.
- Reuters
