Chronological Review of Events/May 1994 – DPR review

CHRONOLOGICAL REVIEW OF EVENTS

RELATING TO THE QUESTION OF PALESTINE

May 1994

Monitored from the press by the

Division for Palestinian Rights

1 May An Israeli delegation headed by Mr. David A'bri, the Defence Ministry Director-General, arrived in Doha, Qatar, to participate in the meeting of the multilateral working group on arms control in the Middle East.  (Ha'aretz)

Two young Palestinians were shot and injured by Israeli troops in Gaza city.  Two molotov bombs were thrown at a military patrol in Hebron.  (Jerusalem Press)

2 May A "Memorandum of Understanding" on the establishment of a Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH) was signed by Israel and the PLO in Copenhagen, Denmark. Representatives of Norway, Denmark and Italy, the contributing countries, participated in the ceremony.  The memorandum outlines TIPH's  responsibilities  and specifies structural and operational guidelines.  (Ha'aretz)

After being ambushed by Palestinian gunmen, four Israeli soldiers were injured in Gush  Katif  in  the  Gaza Strip.  The  Hamas  movement  took  responsibility  for the incident. (Ha'aretz)

Israeli troops shot and injured four Palestinians during clashes  in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.  (Jerusalem Press)

3 May The Foreign Minister of Qatar opened the meeting of the multilateral working group on arms control which is part of the Middle East multilateral peace talks.  Thirteen Middle Eastern countries, including Israel, and 25 other nations, are participating in the meeting. (Israel Line)

4 May Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, representing the Government of the State of Israel, and the PLO Chairman, Mr. Yasser Arafat, representing the Palestinian people, signed in Cairo an "Agreement on the Gaza Strip and Jericho Area".  The ceremony was hosted by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and attended by the United States Secretary of State and the Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation, the co-sponsors of the Middle East peace negotiations.  Forty other foreign ministers and 2,000 guests attended the ceremony. (Reuters)

The Israeli military authorities released 386 Palestinian detainees from the Gaza Strip.  It was the first group of Palestinians to be released from Israeli detention camps following the signing of the Israeli-Palestinian accord in Cairo.  (Ha'aretz)

The Israeli military stopped 400 Israelis from entering Jericho to demonstrate against the Israeli-Palestinian accord.  Sixteen Knesset members, using their parliamentary immunity, entered the city and signed a "covenant", in which they pledged to prevent the concession of territory to Arab hands.  (Ha'aretz)

5 May The Israeli military authorities released 1,000 Palestinian detainees from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.  (Al-Ittihad)

Israeli troops shot and injured three Palestinians during clashes in Hebron.  Two suspected "collaborators" with Israel were shot and injured in Jabalia refugee camp.  (Jerusalem Press)

10 May The sixth round of the multilateral working group on refugees, which is part of the multilateral peace talks on the Middle East, opened in Cairo.  Forty delegations, including Israel and the PLO, took part in this round of talks.  Syria and Lebanon did not attend the meeting.  (Israel Line)

11 May The Israeli Knesset (Parliament) ratified the "Agreement on the Gaza Strip and the Jericho Area" which was signed in Cairo by Prime Minister Rabin and PLO Chairman Arafat on 4 May.  All members of the opposition exited the Knesset hall during the vote in protest against the agreement. (Jerusalem Press)

12 May A three-day round of multilateral talks on Palestinian refugees ended in Cairo with a new pledge of $14.8 million to be spent in various projects aimed at improving the living conditions of the refugee camps in the occupied territories, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. (DPA)

13 May PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and European Commission Vice-President Manuel Marin signed in Tunis two documents of European Union aid to the Palestinian Authority.  The first document provide for 10 Mecu aid for financing the police force  expenditure,  while the second document provides for 1.8 Mecu aid for the electoral process in the self-ruled areas.  (European Commission press release IP/94/400)

The Israeli flag was lowered from the former military governor's building in Jericho and the authority of governing the city was handed over to representatives of the Palestinian Authority.  (Reuters)

14 May PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat signed the statutes of the Palestinian Economic Council for Development and Reconstruction (PECDR).  The statutes contain rules for transparency of foreign aid and define the terms of reference of its accounting bodies.  The signing of the statutes formally opened the way for foreign aid to be channelled to the Palestinian Authority.  (Reuters)

15 May A Palestinian man was accidentally shot and killed by Israeli soldiers when they clashed with Palestinian gunmen in Gaza city.  (Reuters)

16 May Jewish settlers and Israeli troops shot and injured 18 Palestinians in Hebron.  It was reported that some 35 armed settlers marched singing nationalist songs through Al-Sheikh, a Palestinian neighbourhood in the heart of Hebron, which triggered some stone-throwing at them by young Palestinians.  The settlers then opened fire and injured 10 of the stone-throwers.  This escalated into a full clash between the settlers and the Palestinians and when the army came to the scene, they opened fire and injured another 8 Palestinians. The  area  where  the clash occurred was declared closed by the military and members of the Temporary International  Presence  in  Hebron  were  prevented  from  reaching  the area. (Reuters, Al-Ittihad)

17 May The United States Secretary of State Warren Christopher arrived in Jericho, the first visit by an American official to the city after the withdrawal of the Israeli military authority and the take-over by the Palestinian Authority.  A Palestinian delegation headed by Feisal Husseini received the Secretary of State on  behalf  of  the Palestinian Authority whose seat city is becoming Jericho.  (The Washington Post)

Israel signed over control of daily administration in the Gaza Strip and Jericho to the Palestinian Authority after 27 years of Israeli occupation.  (Reuters)

Two  Jewish settlers were shot dead by gunmen from Hamas just south of Hebron.  (The New York Times)

18 May Palestinian self-rule came into full force in Gaza in an eruption of celebratory gunfire as the last Israeli troops pulled out under cover of darkness, ending 27 years of occupation. Fourteen days after the signing of the Israeli-PLO accord in Cairo, the Palestinian takeover of most of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank region of Jericho was completed as Israeli troops handed over to Palestinian police a half-dozen army and police facilities.  The Israeli troops were redeployed to guard some 4,000 Jewish settlers mainly in the southern part of the Gaza Strip.  (AP)

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres met in Oslo with PLO Chairman Arafat and expressed the severity with which Israel views Arafat's statement in South Africa in support of a jihad (holy war) for liberating Jerusalem.  (Ha'aretz)

Mr. Arafat said in Oslo that his comments in South Africa had been misinterpreted and that he had used the word jihad in a purely religious sense.  (AFP)

The Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH) complained that the Israeli army is keeping them from carrying out their duty to monitor the safety of Palestinians in the city.  (Reuters)

19 May The Israeli Supreme Court rejected an appeal by Palestinians in Hebron to remove 450 Jewish settlers living there.  The Court ruled that the dispute was of a political nature and that it did not have jurisdiction over the matter.  (AP)

20 May Several gunmen from the Hamas Islamic movement shot dead two Israeli soldiers on reserve duty by a petrol station which borders the settlements zone controlled by Israeli forces on the northern edge of the Gaza Strip.  Two Israeli civilians driving a garbage truck were wounded when Palestinians fired shots from a passing car near the settlement of Morag, south of the Gaza Strip.  (AFP)

The Fatah Revolutionary Council, Chairman Arafat's movement, endorsed the Israeli-PLO accords signed in Cairo on 4 May and set up some 15 ad hoc committees to assist the Palestinian Authority in the self-governed areas of Jericho and the Gaza Strip.  The 100-member council replaced the traditional reference to "struggle in all its forms" by an appeal for "effort and perseverance in the building of the homeland".  (AFP)

21 May The PLO denounced the killing of two Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip on 20 May as a threat to Palestinian security in the self-ruled areas.  (The New York Times)

22 May Israeli troops using anti-tank missiles battled with members of the Islamic Jihad group in a Hebron hideout, killing at least one Palestinian and demolishing a house.  The army said that the 12-hour stand-off began when militants fired bullets and threw a grenade at Israeli soldiers.  (AP)

24 May PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat published a notice declaring that he was reinstating in the Gaza Strip and Jericho all laws in effect prior to the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.  Israeli authorities sealed off Jericho "to give Palestinian police more time to organize themselves" after two armed settlers were detained by the police who temporarily confiscated their weapons.  (The Washington Post)

25 May US Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Israeli Foreign Shimon Peres called on PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat to reaffirm his commitment to the Declaration of Principles and the letter of mutual recognition with Israel.  The call by the ministers, following a meeting in Washington, was a response to Arafat's comments on jihad to liberate Jerusalem, which he made on 10 May in South Africa.  (UPI)

US Secretary of State Warren Christopher supported Foreign Minister Shimon Peres' contention that Mr. Arafat had no power to decree that Israeli law would no longer apply in Jericho and the Gaza Strip.  (The New York Times)

26 May The World Bank approved a credit as part of a $128 million project to improve the water supply and sanitation conditions in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.  The Bank said that road networks and schools would also be upgraded under the project, which is being financed by a group that includes Saudi Fund, the Arab Fund and the Kuwait Fund, as well as Denmark and Switzerland.  (Reuters)

28 May The PLO Executive Committee approved a programme for the self-rule administration in the Gaza Strip and Jericho and reaffirmed its commitment to the accord with Israel.  (The Washington Post)

30 May An Israeli soldier guarding the border with the Gaza Strip was shot  dead, possibly by a colleague, when their unit came under fire.  A search failed to locate the attackers.  (The Guardian)

31 May An Israeli security "special unit" shot and killed two Palestinians as they got off a bus on the main street of the Al-Ram village near Jerusalem.  The Israeli army confirmed the shooting and said that the two were members of Hamas.  Witnesses said that the Palestinians were shot without warning and a reporter saw 11 bullet holes on the wall where the two men were shot.  (The New York Times)

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