The UN General Assembly passes Resolution 181 calling for the partition of the Palestinian territories into two states, one Jewish and one Arab.

The resolution also envisions an international, UN-run body to administer Jerusalem.

The Palestinian territories had been under the military and administrative control of the United Kingdom (known as a mandate) since the 1917 defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I. Civil strife and violence between the Jewish and Arab communities of the Palestinian territories intensifies.

Israel declares its independence as the British rule ends.

Sparked by Israel's declaration of independence, the first Arab-Israeli War begins.

Egypt (supported by Saudi Arabian, Sudanese, and Yemeni troops), Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria invade Israel.

The fighting continues until 1949, when Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria sign armistice agreements

Israel and several of its Arab neighbors fight the Six-Day War.

Israel wins a decisive victory: it suffers seven hundred casualties; its adversaries suffer nearly twenty thousand.

Israel also takes control of Syria's Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula, which is part of Egypt.

Israel will stay in the Sinai Peninsula until April 1982

The UN Security Council passes Resolution 242 calling for Israeli "withdrawal … from territories occupied in the recent conflict" and for the termination of "states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and political independence of every state in the area and the right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries."

The resolution establishes the concept of land for peace.

Another Arab-Israeli war, known variously as the Yom Kippur War, the Ramadan War, and the October War, is fought when Egypt and Syria attempt to retake the Israeli-occupied Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights.

Cold War tensions spike as the Soviet Union aids Egypt and Syria and the United States aids Israel.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries begins an oil embargo on countries that support Israel, and the price of oil skyrockets.

The fighting ends after a UN-sponsored cease-fire (negotiated by the United States and the Soviet Union) takes hold.

Israel and Egypt sign the Camp David Accords, which establish a basis for a peace treaty between the two countries.

The accords also commit the Israeli and Egyptian governments, along with other parties, to negotiate the disposition of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Egypt and Israel sign a peace treaty, the first between Israel and one of its Arab neighbors.

The treaty commits Israel to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula and evacuate its settlements there.

The termination of the state of war between Egypt and Israel leads to the normalization of diplomatic and commercial relations between the two countries.

An Israeli driver kills four Palestinians in a car accident that sparks the first intifada, or uprising, against Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza.

Over the next six years, roughly 200 Israelis and 1,300 Palestinians are killed.

A Palestinian cleric named Sheikh Ahmed Yassin establishes the militant group Hamas as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.

King Hussein of Jordan relinquishes his country's claims to the West Bank and East Jerusalem in favor of the claims of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

In December of the same year, PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat denounces violence, recognizes Israel's right to exist, and acknowledges UN Security Council Resolution 242 and the concept of land for peace.

The United States responds to Arafat's announcement by beginning direct talks with him, though it suspends the talks following a Palestinian terrorist attack against Israel.

The Madrid Peace Conference begins, sponsored jointly by the United States and the Soviet Union.

A multilateral track includes the wider Arab world and addresses regional issues.

The talks last for two years without any breakthroughs.

Before the accords are signed, Israel and the PLO recognize each other in an exchange of letters.

Israel and the PLO agree to the creation of the Palestinian Authority to temporarily administer the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

The Oslo Accords envision a peace agreement by 1999.

The Israelis and the Palestinians sign the Gaza-Jericho Agreement, which begins implementation of the Oslo Accords.

The agreement provides for an Israeli military withdrawal from Gaza and Jericho, a town in the West Bank, and for a transfer of authority from Israeli administration to the newly formed Palestinian Authority.

Arafat returns to the Gaza Strip after a long absence.

Israel and Jordan sign a peace treaty, settling their territorial dispute and agreeing to future cooperation in sectors such as trade and tourism.

This is Israel's second peace treaty with an Arab state.

It accords special administrative responsibilities for Jerusalem's Muslim holy places to Jordan.

Israeli and Palestinian negotiators sign the Interim Agreement, sometimes called Oslo II.

It gives the Palestinians control over additional areas of the West Bank and defines the security, electoral, public administration, and economic arrangements that will govern those areas until a final peace agreement is reached in 1999.

President Bill Clinton hosts Israeli and Palestinian leaders for talks at Camp David.

Reports indicate that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak is prepared to accept, among other things, Palestinian sovereignty over some 91 percent of the West Bank and certain parts of Jerusalem.

The deal would include a land swap in which some Israeli land would go to the Palestinians in compensation for the remaining 9 percent of the West Bank, which would go to Israel.

Israeli politicians, including Ariel Sharon, a controversial retired Israeli general, visit the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif.

The Palestinians view the visit as an effort to change the status quo at the holy site.

The ensuing demonstrations turn violent, marking the beginning of a second intifada.

It will last until 2005 and be markedly more violent than the first intifada. Four thousand Palestinians and one thousand Israelis die.

A terrorist attack kills thirty people at a Passover celebration at a hotel in the Israeli city of Netanya.

As a result, the Israeli military reoccupies portions of the West Bank, including the city of Ramallah, where the Palestinian Authority is located and where Arafat has his West Bank headquarters.

Israel begins building a security barrier in the West Bank to protect Israeli cities and towns from terrorist attacks.

The barrier, which is a wall in some stretches and a fence in others, is controversial because in places it cuts deep into West Bank territory to protect settlements.

The Palestinians are cut off from Jerusalem, some Palestinian villages are sliced in half, and some Palestinians are unable to get to work or school as a result of the security barrier's path.

The Quartet, an informal group created to pursue Middle East peace comprising the United States, Russia, the United Nations, and the European Union, puts forth a Road Map for Peace based on the outline President George W. Bush offered in his 2002 speech.

The road map lays out a plan for peace based on Palestinian reforms and a cessation of terrorism in return for an end to Israeli settlements and a new Palestinian state.

Israel begins a unilateral withdrawal of settlers and military forces from the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military remains in control of Gaza's borders (except the Gaza-Egypt border, which is controlled by Egypt), airspace, and coastline.

After Israel's withdrawal, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other smaller militant groups fire rockets from Gaza into southern Israel.

The United States and other countries suspend their aid to the Palestinian Authority because they consider Hamas to be a terrorist organization.

Fatah and Hamas make a deal to govern the West Bank and Gaza Strip together.

The deal quickly fails, and Hamas takes over the Gaza Strip in 2007.

Hamas operatives kidnap an Israeli soldier named Gilad Shalit on Israeli soil near the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military tries and fails to free him.

He is held captive in Gaza until Israel—with the help of Egypt and the United States—negotiates his release in 2012.

Israel attacks the Gaza Strip following nearly eight hundred rocket attacks from Gaza on Israeli towns in the months of November and December.

The war lasts less than a month but kills hundreds of civilians, in addition to hundreds of combatants, and sparks international criticism.

Secretary of State John Kerry seeks to restart final status negotiations. The process begins with the Israeli’s agreement to release 104 Palestinian prisoners and the Palestinians’ agreement not to use their new observer state status at the United Nations to advance the cause of statehood.

Negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority collapsed in April 2014 over such issues as Israeli settlement growth, the status of a final round of prisoners, and Palestinian attempts to join several international organizations.

The PLO and Hamas sign an agreement to form a unity government.

Tensions between the factions remain, however, and no unity government is formed.

Gaza and the West Bank remain disconnected and under the control of rival Palestinian leaderships.

After tit-for-tat attacks on Israeli and Palestinian civilians by extremists on both sides, Israel invades the Gaza Strip.

The operation, code-named Protective Edge, lasts for fifty days, killing about two thousand Gazans, sixty-six Israeli soldiers, and five Israeli civilians.

The war ends after the United States, in consultation with Egypt, Israel, and other regional powers, brokers a cease-fire.

Changing long-standing U.S. policy, U.S. President Donald Trump formally recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

He also pledges to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to that city, though the move is not set to occur immediately.

It also sparks protests and violence throughout East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank, as well as in Egypt, Iran, Iraq, and Jordan.

The Trump administration recognizes Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which Israel had formally annexed from Syria in 1981.

The United States is the first country other than Israel to recognize Israel's sovereignty over the territory.

The plan calls for a two-state solution with significant economic aid to the Palestinians.

Many analysts criticize the plan as being one sided, stipulating impossible requirements for Palestinian statehood and paving the way for Israeli annexation of the West Bank.

Palestinian authorities reject the plan immediately.

Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates agree to normalize diplomatic relations with Israel, becoming the first Arab countries to do so in over twenty-five years.

In return, Israel announces the suspension of its plans to annex territory in the West Bank.

Morocco and Sudan subsequently also sign on to the agreement and normalize relations with Israel.

Evictions of Palestinians in East Jerusalem and clashes at al-Aqsa Mosque spark conflict between Israel and Hamas.

Over two hundred people in Gaza and at least ten in Israel die.

The Joe Biden administration helps mediate a truce and restores some U.S. aid and diplomatic contact with the Palestinians.

Israel launches a counterterrorism operation in the West Bank in response to attacks by Palestinians against Jewish Israelis.

The operation and resulting resurgence contribute to the deadliest year for both sides since 2005, an uptick in violence that only turned out to rise in 2023.

The first nine months of 2023 witnessed a steady trend of clashes in the West Bank.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched an unprecedented surprise attack on Israel, leading to an explosion of violence.

According to Israeli media, the conflict's initial strikes led to at least 250 people killed and 1,500 injured in Israel, making it the deadliest attack in the country in decades.

Some 1.4 million Palestinians within the first month of conflict have been displaced as humanitarian concerns have grown.

The October 2023 war between Israel and Hamas marks the most significant escalation of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict in several decades.