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September 1995

JERUSALEM — The Israeli capital kicks off a 15-month festival celebrating the 3,000th anniversary of its founding.

WASHINGTON — Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader Yasser Arafat sign the Interim Agreement, which extends Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and sets the stage for an Israeli withdrawal from six West Bank towns.

October 1995

NEW YORK — Blind Egyptian cleric Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and nine other Muslim fundamentalists are convicted of planning to blow up the U.N. building and other prominent New York sites.

JERUSALEM — Israel frees 900 Palestinian prisoners as part of the latest accord between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

WASHINGTON — Congress votes to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

JERUSALEM — Dr. Fathi Shakaki, leader of the fundamentalist Islamic Jihad movement, is assassinated in Malta.

November 1995

JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated by Yigal Amir, a 25-year-old religious Jewish law student, after a Tel Aviv peace rally.

JERUSALEM — The Israeli Supreme Court, in a landmark decision, opens the door to the possibility of Conservative and Reform conversions in Israel.

JERUSALEM — The Supreme Court rules that women can become air force pilots.

JERUSALEM — Israeli troops complete their withdrawal from Jenin, the first West Bank town to come under Palestinian self-rule under the Interim Agreement. Jericho had already been transferred.

December 1995

JERUSALEM — Israel bans seven U.S. Jews, including Rabbi Abraham Hecht, from entering the country. Hecht had said before Rabin's assassination that Jewish law allows for the murder of Israeli leaders who endanger Jewish lives.

JERUSALEM — Israel pulls out of Bethlehem, opening the way for the Palestinian Authority to organize the town's annual Christmas celebration for the first time. A week later, Israel pulls out of Ramallah.

January 1996

JERUSALEM — Yehiya Ayash, a Hamas terrorist also known as "the Engineer," is killed in an explosion after he picks up a booby-trapped cellular phone in Gaza. Ayash topped Israel's most-wanted list for masterminding a series of suicide bombings that killed scores of Israelis.

JERUSALEM — The head of the Shin Bet, Israel's domestic security service, resigns in the wake of Yitzhak Rabin's assassination.

JERUSALEM — Israel releases more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, most of them convicted of security offenses against the Jewish state, under the terms of the Interim Agreement signed in September.

JERUSALEM — Palestinians in the territories for the first time vote for a legislative body. Yasser Arafat is elected leader of the Palestinian Council with 90 percent of the vote.

JERUSALEM — Ethiopian immigrants converge on the Prime Minister's Office after the Israeli daily Ma'ariv reports that the Israel's blood bank, Magen David Adom, routinely discards blood donated by Ethiopians for fear it is contaminated with the virus that causes AIDS.

February 1996

WASHINGTON — The Palestinian man who hijacked the Achille Lauro cruiseship and killed wheelchair-using passenger Leon Klinghoffer escapes during a leave from an Italian prison. He is recaptured a month later in Spain.

JERUSALEM — Twin Hamas suicide attacks rock Israel: A bus bombing in Jerusalem kills 26 innocent people. In Ashkelon, a soldiers' hitchhiking post is blown up, killing one innocent person. Israel closes off the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

March 1996

JERUSALEM — After a second and nearly identical Hamas bus bombing in Jerusalem kills 18, the Israeli Cabinet votes for a plan to separate the Israeli and Palestinian populations.

JERUSALEM — A suicide bomber kills 12 innocent people at Dizengoff Center on Purim eve in the heart of Tel Aviv.

NEW YORK — Controversial plans for a minimall across the street from Poland's Auschwitz death camp are halted.

JERUSALEM — Yigal Amir is sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. A government panel concludes that the Shin Bet ignored information indicating that a Jewish militant might try to kill the prime minister.

April 1996

JERUSALEM — Israel launches "Operation Grapes of Wrath," a series of air assaults and raids on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, in retaliation for the fundamentalist group's repeated Katyusha rocket attacks on northern Israel.

LOS ANGELES — Marlon Brando criticizes Jews in Hollywood on CNN's "Larry King Live."

JERUSALEM — Israel shells a United Nations base in southern Lebanon, killing at least 91 refugees.

JERUSALEM — The Palestine National Council decides to amend those portions of the charter that call for the destruction of Israel, but leaves the exact wording to a future date.

WASHINGTON — President Clinton signs the anti-terrorism bill into law.

JERUSALEM — After 16 days of fighting, a cease-fire deal between Israel and Lebanon ends "Operation Grapes of Wrath."

May 1996

WASHINGTON — Declassified CIA documents show that Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews during World War II, was a U.S. spy.

JERUSALEM — Some two weeks after the cease-fire, the Islamic fundamentalist Hezbollah movement resumes attacks on Israeli soldiers and their allies in southern Lebanon.

ROME — The trial of former SS Capt. Erich Priebke, 82, who aided in the March 24, 1944, massacre of 335 men and boys in the Ardeatine Caves outside Rome, begins.

JERUSALEM — Israelis go to the polls to vote for prime minister and, in a separate vote, for Knesset. Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu wins the premiership with 50.4 percent of the vote.

June 1996

NEW YORK — After 23 years of leading the Reform movement, Rabbi Alexander Schindler steps down as president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations.

JERUSALEM — Egypt hosts an Arab summit to develop a united front against the new Netanyahu government's approach to the peace process.

July 1996

JERUSALEM — Ultrareligious and secular Jews clash in a demonstration on Bar Ilan Street in Jerusalem after the High Court overturns a decision to close the street during Shabbat and religious holidays.

JERUSALEM — Foreign Minister David Levy meets with Yasser Arafat in the Palestinian Authority leader's first meeting with a senior official in the Netanyahu government.

August 1996

ROME — An Italian court finds former SS Capt. Erich Priebke guilty of participating in a 1944 massacre near Rome, but rules that the statute of limitations precludes sentencing him. Priebke is rearrested after the verdict, pending action on a German request for extradition.

JERUSALEM — Israeli President Ezer Weizman offers to meet Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat, pressing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to soften his opposition to a meeting of his own.

September 1996

JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets for the first time with Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat.