5 January 2000
Israeli and Syrian negotiators open long-awaited peace talks at a conference centre in West Virginia. They are the first such discussions for four years. The talks bog down in disagreement after four days.8 February 2000
Israeli jets strike targets in Lebanon, after a spate of guerrilla attacks by the Islamist Hizbollah movement in which five Israeli soldiers died. 10 February 2000 An Israeli government report, released five years after it was compiled, admits that the internal security service, Shin Bet, uses systematic torture on Palestinian suspects.
22 February 2000
The Israeli army chief of operations hints that occupation forces will pull out of south Lebanon by the end of the year, even if there is no peace with Syria.
5 March 2000
The Israeli cabinet votes to pull troops out of south Lebanon by July, ending the 18-year occupation.
19 March 2000
Israel approves the handover of another sliver of West Bank land to Palestinian control, raising the proportion of the territory ruled by Yasser Arafat to just under 40%. The moves precedes yet more peace talks, aimed at bringing about a final settlement by September.
22 March 2000
Pope John-Paul II, on his first visit to the Holy Land, makes an impassioned plea for a homeland for the Palestinian refugees.
15 May 2000
On the 52nd anniversary of the nakba - the day that Israel was founded and in Arabic literally the day of catastrophe - the West Bank explodes in fury. Two die and 30 are wounded, as Palestinian and Israeli security forces exchange fire. The violence eclipses the news that Israel is to hand over to the Palestinians two strategically important villages on the eastern flank of Jerusalem. Although the handover offer is later withdrawn due to continuing violence, rightwing Israeli parties say the move marks the beginning of the end for Ehud Barak's coalition government.
22 May 2000
After eight days of continuous violence in the Palestinian territories, Ehud Barak calls an end to peace talks in Stockholm.
22 May 2000
Israel abruptly ends its 18-year occupation of south Lebanon. Its client militia, the South Lebanon Army, disintegrates in panic, and militant Islamists of the Hizbollah guerrilla group take up positions along the Israeli border.
10 June 2000
President Hafez Assad, the autocratic ruler of Syria for 30 years, dies after a long illness. One of Israel's most implacable enemies, he derided all Arab leaders who came to terms with the Jewish state, and resisted peace overtures from the Israelis and the Americans.
11 June 2000
Hafez Assad's 34-year-old son Bashar is nominated to succeed him as president, as the ruling Ba'ath party frantically moves to shore up the old regime. Bashar, who is western educated, is inexperienced but is seen as a moderniser.
22 June 2000
After frenzied wheeler-dealing, Ehud Barak secures the survival of his faction-ridden coalition government, but observers believe it is now too weak to secure a peace deal with the Palestinians.
5 July 2000
President Clinton announces that Israeli and Palestinian leaders will meet next week in a peace summit at Camp David, the presidential summer retreat.
9 July 2000
Ehud Barak's fragile coalition disintegrates, as he prepares to leave for Camp David. Barak, who has also been abandoned by his foreign minister, David Levy, insists that he will try to negotiate a final settlement with Yasser Arafat.
10 July 2000
Ehud Barak narrowly survives a no-confidence motion in the Knesset. He promises to place any peace deal before the Israeli voters in a referendum.
11 July 2000
The peace summit opens at Camp David, where the Middle East peace process began 22 years ago. The new talks will address the most intractable of the outstanding issues between the Israelis and the Palestinian: final borders of the Palestinian state, a right of return for Palestinian refugees, and the future status of Jerusalem.
19 July 2000
After nine days of eyeball-to-eyeball negotiation, Ehud Barak announces that he's had enough and is going home. Ninety minutes later a haggard President Clinton announces that the two visiting delegations will in fact stay in Camp David and talk on.
25 July 2000
The marathon negotiation at Camp David finally breaks down without agreement. Ehud Barak heaps all the blame on Yasser Arafat for refusing to yield ground on Jerusalem. Israeli security officials predict violent unrest in the occupied territories.
31 July 2000
Moshe Katsav, a relatively unknown member of the opposition Likud bloc, is elected to the largely ceremonial presidency of Israel. The election is another blow to Ehud Barak, who had backed veteran statesman, former prime minister and Nobel peace laureate, Shimon Peres. Barak also narrowly survives a motion of no confidence in the Knesset - the second of the month.
2 August 2000
David Levy, the estranged foreign minister, resigns from Ehud Barak's increasingly embattled cabinet.
16 August 2000
Israel's new foreign minister, Shlomo Ben Ami, holds his first talks with Palestinian officials amid signals that both sides are reaching towards a peace deal.
7 September 2000
President Bill Clinton admits he made no progress in talks with Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat at the UN Millennium summit in New York. Arafat now has less than a week to decide whether he will declare an independent Palestinian state on September 13, as he has long threatened.
10 September 2000
Yasser Arafat and the central committee of the Palestine Liberation Organisation postpone, yet again, the planned declaration of statehood.
19 September 2000
Israel suspends talks with the Palestinians, indefinately, on the grounds that Yasser Arafat is hardening his line on outstanding issues, particularly Jerusalem.
29 September 2000
Violent rioting breaks out in Jerusalem after Ariel Sharon, the hawkish leader of the opposition, visits the most holy Muslim shrine in the city. Surrounded by hundreds of riot police and accompanied by a handful of Likud party colleagues, he spends 45 minutes on the Haram al-Sharif compound, home of the al-Aqsa mosque. By the time he leaves East Jerusalem is in uproar, and hundreds are injured. It is the start of the al-Aqsa intifada (uprising).
31 September 2000
Mohammed al-Durrah, aged 12, dies in his father's arms after being caught in crossfire in the Gaza Strip. His death is captured in sickening detail by a Palestinian cameraman working for French TV. The pictures, aired around the world on Saturday night, become a searing symbol of these days of bloody rioting. The death toll in the intifada, which has now spread throughout the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, has now risen to 15.
2 October 2000
Swathes of the West Bank and Gaza are in a state of war, as Israel deploys helicopter gunships and tanks against Palestinian gunmen and stone throwers. The death toll has climbed to 47 in four days.
3 October 2000
A truce between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants last just half a day before renewed fighting erupts. The intifada death toll now stands at 55, including nine 'Israeli Arabs' - Palestinians who are Israeli citizens.
7 October 2000
Hizbullah, the Iranian-backed militant Islamist group active in south Lebanon, captures three Israeli soldiers, and demands the release of 19 prisoners in Israel in return for the trio's return.
12 October 2000
The director of the CIA, George Tenet, flies into the Middle East to try to set up high-level security talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
12 October 2000
At least four US servicemen are killed and 12 more are missing, feared dead, after the destroyer USS Cole is rammed by suicide bombers on a rubber dinghy in the Yemeni port of Aden.
12 October 2000
Two Israeli soldiers lose their way near the Palestinian town of Ramallah, and are taken to the local police station. A baying mob surrounds and then invades the building. The helpless soldiers are stabbed to death. Israeli public opinion is enraged by televised pictures of the gloating murderers, holding up their bloodstained hands. There are massive retaliatory strikes with artillery and helicopter gunships.
12 October 2000
Fears of war in the Middle East send world stock markets tumbling, and oil prices rocketing to 10-year highs.
13 October 2000
A small bomb explodes in the compound of the British embassy in the Yemen capital, Sana'a. Windows are shattered but there are no casualties.
16 October 2000 President Clinton flies to Egypt for a crisis summit meeting in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. It is a deeply acrimonious meeting, but Clinton persuades Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian president Yasser Arafat to issue calls for an end to the violence.
20 October 2000
Peace hopes sink still further as fierce fighting on the West Bank claims the lives of ten more Palestinians.
22 October 2000
Ehud Barak announces that he is suspending the peace process. He is also negotiating to form an emergency grand coalition, including Israel's most hawkish politician, Ariel Sharon of the Likud faction.
30 October 2000
Ehud Barak battles for political survival, as coalition hopes fade. The Israeli prime minister's support in the Knesset is now down to just 30 of the parliament's 120 members.
1 November 2000
Amnesty International accuses Israel of using excessive force in the occupied territories, and says that its violations of human rights could constitute war crimes.
19 November 2000
Israeli diplomat Yoram Haviviam is shot and wounded in the Jordanian capital, Amman.
20 November 2000
Two adults are killed and nine passengers in an Israeli school bus are wounded in a mortar attack in the occupied Gaza Strip. Most of the wounded are children. Israel launches a fierce bombardment of Gaza in retaliation, wounding at least 50 people. Egypt recalls its ambassador from Tel Aviv in response to the bombardment.
22 November 2000
A powerful car bomb explodes next to a bus in the northern Israeli town of Hadera, killing two people and wounding at least 35.
23 November 2000
UN agencies warn that half the population of the occupied territories - some 1.5m people, could go hungry if Israel's economic blockade continues.
28 November 2000
Israel's embattled prime minister, Ehud Barak, calls early elections. He does not name the date. Harangued by the Israeli right for being too soft on the Palestinians during the past two months of undeclared war, pilloried from abroad for using excessive force, and deserted by even his coalition partners, Barak is a politician under siege.
9 December 2000
Ehud Barak announces his resignation as prime minister, and says there will be a new election for the post. He will stay on as caretaker in the meantime.
18 December 2000
Israeli and Palestinian negotiators leave for Washington, in a last bid to secure a peace agreement before President Clinton leaves office. The death toll in the intifada now stands at 330. The overwhelming majority of the dead are Palestinians.
Israeli and Syrian negotiators open long-awaited peace talks at a conference centre in West Virginia. They are the first such discussions for four years. The talks bog down in disagreement after four days.8 February 2000
Israeli jets strike targets in Lebanon, after a spate of guerrilla attacks by the Islamist Hizbollah movement in which five Israeli soldiers died. 10 February 2000 An Israeli government report, released five years after it was compiled, admits that the internal security service, Shin Bet, uses systematic torture on Palestinian suspects.
22 February 2000
The Israeli army chief of operations hints that occupation forces will pull out of south Lebanon by the end of the year, even if there is no peace with Syria.
5 March 2000
The Israeli cabinet votes to pull troops out of south Lebanon by July, ending the 18-year occupation.
19 March 2000
Israel approves the handover of another sliver of West Bank land to Palestinian control, raising the proportion of the territory ruled by Yasser Arafat to just under 40%. The moves precedes yet more peace talks, aimed at bringing about a final settlement by September.
22 March 2000
Pope John-Paul II, on his first visit to the Holy Land, makes an impassioned plea for a homeland for the Palestinian refugees.
15 May 2000
On the 52nd anniversary of the nakba - the day that Israel was founded and in Arabic literally the day of catastrophe - the West Bank explodes in fury. Two die and 30 are wounded, as Palestinian and Israeli security forces exchange fire. The violence eclipses the news that Israel is to hand over to the Palestinians two strategically important villages on the eastern flank of Jerusalem. Although the handover offer is later withdrawn due to continuing violence, rightwing Israeli parties say the move marks the beginning of the end for Ehud Barak's coalition government.
22 May 2000
After eight days of continuous violence in the Palestinian territories, Ehud Barak calls an end to peace talks in Stockholm.
22 May 2000
Israel abruptly ends its 18-year occupation of south Lebanon. Its client militia, the South Lebanon Army, disintegrates in panic, and militant Islamists of the Hizbollah guerrilla group take up positions along the Israeli border.
10 June 2000
President Hafez Assad, the autocratic ruler of Syria for 30 years, dies after a long illness. One of Israel's most implacable enemies, he derided all Arab leaders who came to terms with the Jewish state, and resisted peace overtures from the Israelis and the Americans.
11 June 2000
Hafez Assad's 34-year-old son Bashar is nominated to succeed him as president, as the ruling Ba'ath party frantically moves to shore up the old regime. Bashar, who is western educated, is inexperienced but is seen as a moderniser.
22 June 2000
After frenzied wheeler-dealing, Ehud Barak secures the survival of his faction-ridden coalition government, but observers believe it is now too weak to secure a peace deal with the Palestinians.
5 July 2000
President Clinton announces that Israeli and Palestinian leaders will meet next week in a peace summit at Camp David, the presidential summer retreat.
9 July 2000
Ehud Barak's fragile coalition disintegrates, as he prepares to leave for Camp David. Barak, who has also been abandoned by his foreign minister, David Levy, insists that he will try to negotiate a final settlement with Yasser Arafat.
10 July 2000
Ehud Barak narrowly survives a no-confidence motion in the Knesset. He promises to place any peace deal before the Israeli voters in a referendum.
11 July 2000
The peace summit opens at Camp David, where the Middle East peace process began 22 years ago. The new talks will address the most intractable of the outstanding issues between the Israelis and the Palestinian: final borders of the Palestinian state, a right of return for Palestinian refugees, and the future status of Jerusalem.
19 July 2000
After nine days of eyeball-to-eyeball negotiation, Ehud Barak announces that he's had enough and is going home. Ninety minutes later a haggard President Clinton announces that the two visiting delegations will in fact stay in Camp David and talk on.
25 July 2000
The marathon negotiation at Camp David finally breaks down without agreement. Ehud Barak heaps all the blame on Yasser Arafat for refusing to yield ground on Jerusalem. Israeli security officials predict violent unrest in the occupied territories.
31 July 2000
Moshe Katsav, a relatively unknown member of the opposition Likud bloc, is elected to the largely ceremonial presidency of Israel. The election is another blow to Ehud Barak, who had backed veteran statesman, former prime minister and Nobel peace laureate, Shimon Peres. Barak also narrowly survives a motion of no confidence in the Knesset - the second of the month.
2 August 2000
David Levy, the estranged foreign minister, resigns from Ehud Barak's increasingly embattled cabinet.
16 August 2000
Israel's new foreign minister, Shlomo Ben Ami, holds his first talks with Palestinian officials amid signals that both sides are reaching towards a peace deal.
7 September 2000
President Bill Clinton admits he made no progress in talks with Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat at the UN Millennium summit in New York. Arafat now has less than a week to decide whether he will declare an independent Palestinian state on September 13, as he has long threatened.
10 September 2000
Yasser Arafat and the central committee of the Palestine Liberation Organisation postpone, yet again, the planned declaration of statehood.
19 September 2000
Israel suspends talks with the Palestinians, indefinately, on the grounds that Yasser Arafat is hardening his line on outstanding issues, particularly Jerusalem.
29 September 2000
Violent rioting breaks out in Jerusalem after Ariel Sharon, the hawkish leader of the opposition, visits the most holy Muslim shrine in the city. Surrounded by hundreds of riot police and accompanied by a handful of Likud party colleagues, he spends 45 minutes on the Haram al-Sharif compound, home of the al-Aqsa mosque. By the time he leaves East Jerusalem is in uproar, and hundreds are injured. It is the start of the al-Aqsa intifada (uprising).
31 September 2000
Mohammed al-Durrah, aged 12, dies in his father's arms after being caught in crossfire in the Gaza Strip. His death is captured in sickening detail by a Palestinian cameraman working for French TV. The pictures, aired around the world on Saturday night, become a searing symbol of these days of bloody rioting. The death toll in the intifada, which has now spread throughout the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, has now risen to 15.
2 October 2000
Swathes of the West Bank and Gaza are in a state of war, as Israel deploys helicopter gunships and tanks against Palestinian gunmen and stone throwers. The death toll has climbed to 47 in four days.
3 October 2000
A truce between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants last just half a day before renewed fighting erupts. The intifada death toll now stands at 55, including nine 'Israeli Arabs' - Palestinians who are Israeli citizens.
7 October 2000
Hizbullah, the Iranian-backed militant Islamist group active in south Lebanon, captures three Israeli soldiers, and demands the release of 19 prisoners in Israel in return for the trio's return.
12 October 2000
The director of the CIA, George Tenet, flies into the Middle East to try to set up high-level security talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
12 October 2000
At least four US servicemen are killed and 12 more are missing, feared dead, after the destroyer USS Cole is rammed by suicide bombers on a rubber dinghy in the Yemeni port of Aden.
12 October 2000
Two Israeli soldiers lose their way near the Palestinian town of Ramallah, and are taken to the local police station. A baying mob surrounds and then invades the building. The helpless soldiers are stabbed to death. Israeli public opinion is enraged by televised pictures of the gloating murderers, holding up their bloodstained hands. There are massive retaliatory strikes with artillery and helicopter gunships.
12 October 2000
Fears of war in the Middle East send world stock markets tumbling, and oil prices rocketing to 10-year highs.
13 October 2000
A small bomb explodes in the compound of the British embassy in the Yemen capital, Sana'a. Windows are shattered but there are no casualties.
16 October 2000 President Clinton flies to Egypt for a crisis summit meeting in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. It is a deeply acrimonious meeting, but Clinton persuades Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian president Yasser Arafat to issue calls for an end to the violence.
20 October 2000
Peace hopes sink still further as fierce fighting on the West Bank claims the lives of ten more Palestinians.
22 October 2000
Ehud Barak announces that he is suspending the peace process. He is also negotiating to form an emergency grand coalition, including Israel's most hawkish politician, Ariel Sharon of the Likud faction.
30 October 2000
Ehud Barak battles for political survival, as coalition hopes fade. The Israeli prime minister's support in the Knesset is now down to just 30 of the parliament's 120 members.
1 November 2000
Amnesty International accuses Israel of using excessive force in the occupied territories, and says that its violations of human rights could constitute war crimes.
19 November 2000
Israeli diplomat Yoram Haviviam is shot and wounded in the Jordanian capital, Amman.
20 November 2000
Two adults are killed and nine passengers in an Israeli school bus are wounded in a mortar attack in the occupied Gaza Strip. Most of the wounded are children. Israel launches a fierce bombardment of Gaza in retaliation, wounding at least 50 people. Egypt recalls its ambassador from Tel Aviv in response to the bombardment.
22 November 2000
A powerful car bomb explodes next to a bus in the northern Israeli town of Hadera, killing two people and wounding at least 35.
23 November 2000
UN agencies warn that half the population of the occupied territories - some 1.5m people, could go hungry if Israel's economic blockade continues.
28 November 2000
Israel's embattled prime minister, Ehud Barak, calls early elections. He does not name the date. Harangued by the Israeli right for being too soft on the Palestinians during the past two months of undeclared war, pilloried from abroad for using excessive force, and deserted by even his coalition partners, Barak is a politician under siege.
9 December 2000
Ehud Barak announces his resignation as prime minister, and says there will be a new election for the post. He will stay on as caretaker in the meantime.
18 December 2000
Israeli and Palestinian negotiators leave for Washington, in a last bid to secure a peace agreement before President Clinton leaves office. The death toll in the intifada now stands at 330. The overwhelming majority of the dead are Palestinians.