E-MAIL: |
|
|
DISCUSSION: |
|
CNN WEB SITES: |
|
|
TIME INC. SITES: |
|
|
CNN NETWORKS: |
|
|
SITE INFO: |
|
WEB SERVICES: |
|  |
Events in Syrian-Israeli relations
March 26, 2000
Web posted at: 1:14 a.m. EST (0614 GMT)
BEIRUT, Lebanon (Reuters) -- U.S. President Bill Clinton meets Syrian President Hafez al-Assad in Geneva on Sunday to try to kickstart peace talks with Israel. Here is a chronology of main events in the tense relations between Syria and Israel.
November 1947 -- Syria opposes U.N. General Assembly partition plan envisaging Jewish and Arab states side by side.
May 1948 -- When British mandate ends, Jews proclaim state of Israel. Syria and other Arab armies invade.
July 1949 -- Israel and Syria sign armistice agreement but on-and-off hostilities continue.
March 1963 -- Hafez al-Assad and other Syrian army officers seize power in a bloodless coup. A 20-man National Council for the Revolutionary Command set up, with Assad put in command of the air force.
June 1967 -- Israel launches surprise attack on Syria, capturing strategic Golan Heights in the Six Day War.
November 1967 -- U.N. Security Council passes Resolution 242 calling for Israel to pull out of occupied Arab lands and for recognition of all states under the formula "land for peace."
November 1970 -- After years of infighting within the ruling Baath party, Assad overthrows Salah Jadid and becomes president of Syria, launching the "Correctionist Movement" to purge his rivals and restore national unity.
October 1973 -- Led by Assad, Syria joins Egypt in attacking Israel. Syrians penetrate deep into the Golan before being pushed back by Israeli troops.
May 1974 -- Israel-Syria disengagement agreement reached through mediation of U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. U.N. observer force positioned in buffer zone from then on.
December 1981 -- Israeli parliament imposes Israeli law on the Golan Heights.
June 1982 -- Israel invades Lebanon with avowed aim of halting Palestinian guerrilla attacks, withdraws bulk of its forces in 1985, but with allies, maintains control of a border security zone.
April 1987 -- In Moscow, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev tells Assad reliance on military force in settling Arab-Israeli conflict is no longer credible. Gorbachev says Moscow will no longer support Syrian doctrine of strategic parity with Israel.
November 1990 -- Syrian tanks rumble into Saudi Arabia, dispelling doubts about commitment by Damascus to the U.S.-led multinational coalition arrayed against Iraq over its invasion of Kuwait.
October 1991 -- Syria joins Jordan, Lebanon and Palestinians at groundbreaking U.S.-brokered peace conference with Israel in Madrid.
July 1992 -- Having defeated Yitzhak Shamir's hardline Likud party in elections, Labor Party leader Yitzhak Rabin becomes Israeli prime minister vowing to accelerate peace moves with Arabs.
January 1994 -- Clinton meets Assad in Geneva, discusses Syria's stalled peace talks with Israel.
Arab-Israeli peace talks resume in secret locations in the United States. Syria attends the negotiations, which are the first with Israel since September 1993, but talks are suspended in March after several rounds of negotiations yield no progress.
July 1994 -- U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher meets Assad in Damascus for the second time since April to try to find a way to revive Syrian-Israeli peace talks.
Three months later, Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq al-Shara holds similar talks in Washington.
October 1994 -- Clinton becomes the first U.S. president to visit Damascus since 1973, holds talks with Assad aimed at advancing peace moves towards Israel. The U.S. president then flies into Israel proclaiming Syria definitely wants to make peace "but is having difficulty getting there."
June 1995 -- Damascus refuses to resume talks on security arrangements unless Israel drops demand for early-warning stations on Golan in any handover to Syria.
November 1995 -- A right-wing Jew opposed to land-for-peace deals with Arabs assassinates Rabin at a rally in Tel Aviv. Shimon Peres succeeds Rabin and promises to uphold his peace legacy.
December 1995 -- On a Middle East mission, Christopher meets Assad in Syria and Peres in Israel. All agree to send negotiators to talks.
Israel and Syria resume peace talks at secluded conference center in Maryland, east of Washington.
March 1996 -- After four suicide bombings by Palestinian Islamic militants in which a total of 59 people die, Israel withdraws its team from negotiations with Syria.
April 1996 -- The United States announces that Israel, Syria and Lebanon agreed to resume peace talks "as soon as possible" in a written but unsigned cease-fire document ending 16 days of fighting between Israeli forces and Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrillas on both sides of the Israeli-Lebanese border.
May 1996 -- Right-wing Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu narrowly defeats Peres in Israeli elections on a hardline platform averse to land-for-peace deals.
July 1996 -- U.S. President Bill Clinton's Middle East envoy Dennis Ross makes a peace trip to Damascus in a failed bid to revive Israeli-Syrian talks.
May 1999 -- Labour leader Ehud Barak, a former army chief of staff and ex-negotiator with Syria, beats Netanyahu by a landslide in the Israeli elections.
June 1999 -- Syrian President Assad heaps unexpected praise on Barak in newspaper interview with Assad's British biographer. Assad calls Barak "a strong and honest man" who wants peace with Syria.
July 1999 -- Barak takes office and pledges to work to advance peace with Syria and to withdraw Israeli troops from south Lebanon within one year.
December 1999 -- U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright says after meeting Assad in Damascus she is optimistic about restarting the talks stalled since March 1996.
December 1999 -- Clinton announces in Washington that Israel and Syria have agreed to resume peace talks.
December 1999 -- Barak and Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq al-Shara meet at the White House for peace talks at the highest level ever.
January 2000 -- Israeli-Syrian peace talks resume in the United States in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. The talks break off later in the month over a Syrian demand that Israel agree in advance to withdraw to the lines it held on the eve of the 1967
March 2000 -- Israel formally sets a July deadline for a troop withdrawal from south Lebanon, putting pressure on Damascus which has used Israel's desire to leave Lebanon as a bargaining chip in talks. Barak says the Syria talks will need to resume by May if the Lebanon pullback is to be part of a broader peace treaty rather than a unilateral act.
March 2000 -- Clinton announces he will meet Assad in Geneva in an effort to revive the stalled peace talks with Israel. The two leaders last met in 1994.
|
![[CNN Money]](http://i.cnn.net/cnn/images/main/fn.logo.newsnet.gif){kind=logo}
![[SI.com]](http://i.cnn.net/cnn/images/main/si.logo.gif){kind=logo}
(
