Chronology: January 16, 2017 – April 15, 2017

ABBREVIATIONS

• AFP, Agence France-Presse

• AJE, Al Jazeera English

• Al Ahram

• Al Arabiya

• AP, The Associated Press

• BBC

• Bloomberg

• CNN

• Dawn (Pakistan)

• DS, The Daily Star (Lebanon)

• The Guardian

• Gulf News

• Haaretz

• Hurriyet

• JP, The Jerusalem Post

• JT, The Jordan Times

• LA Times

• NYT, The New York Times

• RFE/RL, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

• Reuters

• VOA, Voice of America

• WP, The Washington Post

Arab-Israeli Conflict

See also Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Palestinian Territories, Syria

Jan. 23: Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu lifted restrictions on settlements in East Jerusalem following the Jerusalem’s city council’s approval of additional housing projects. Netanyahu also took steps to begin additional building projects in the West Bank. Settlement construction had been the subject of dispute with the United States, particularly during the administration of US president Barack Obama, many saw this lifting of restrictions as Netanyahu’s testing of whether President Donald Trump would make good on campaign promises to be more supportive of Israeli policies. [Reuters, 1/23]

Jan. 26: Israel agreed to accept 100 orphaned Syrian children as temporary residents, the first refugees from the Syrian conflict to be accepted for any reason other than medical treatment. After four years of temporary residence, refugee children would be able to enter the Israeli education system. While historically at odds with Syria, Israel had declared neutrality in the Syrian Civil War, which began in 2011. [BBC, 1/26]

Jan. 29: Israeli soldiers shot and killed one Palestinian and wounded five others during a covert operation in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank. A spokeswoman for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claimed that the soldiers had fired in self-defense after being attacked with explosives. [AJE, 1/30]

Feb. 1: Israeli forces began the process of evacuating the unauthorized West Bank settlement of ‘Amona one day after approving the construction of 3,000 homes elsewhere in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. ‘Amona, which had been evacuated several times since 2006, had been scheduled to be evacuated and destroyed on December 25, 2016. [Guardian, 2/1]

Feb. 8: Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, passed a law that authorized previously unauthorized housing in 16 settlements throughout the West Bank. Following the bill’s passage, the president of the Palestinian Authority (PA), Mahmud ‘Abbas, called on the nations of the world to recognize Palestinian sovereignty as the only way to save the two-state solution. While the bill had been considered diplomatically untenable during the Obama Administration, its passage had been spurred by expectations that the Trump Administration would be more sympathetic to Israel. [NYT, 2/6; Haaretz, 2/8]

Feb. 9: The Egyptian affiliate of the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) known Sinai Province claimed responsibility for the February 8 rocket attacks on Eilat, Israel’s Red Sea port. Two days prior to the rocket attacks, rocket fire from the Gaza Strip had prompted Israeli retaliation targeting the northern part of the strip and the city of Khan Yunus. No Israelis were injured in either of the rocket attacks, though three Palestinians were injured. [AJE, 2/7; JP, 2/9]

Six Israelis were wounded when a Palestinian man stabbed and shot civilians in a crowded market in the Israeli city of Petah Tikva, near Tel Aviv. Bystanders subdued the attacker and held him down until Israeli police arrested him uninjured. Israeli officials believed the man to be a 19-year-old from the northern West Bank. [AFP, 2/9]

Feb. 22: Israeli jets reportedly struck an arms transport and several other targets in Syria’s Qatifa Mountains, along the Syro-Lebanese border. It was unclear whether the strike had targeted the Lebanese Shi‘i organization Hizbullah or other forces loyal to the government of Syrian president Bashar al-Asad, though statements made days prior by Hizbullah leader Hasan Nasrallah and Israeli defense minister Avigdor Liberman had ratcheted up tensions. [DS, 2/22; Haaretz, 2/22]

Feb. 27: Four Palestinian civilians were wounded in Gaza after Israel launched retaliatory airstrikes against the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas). While Hamas did not claim responsibility for the rocket attack that had precipitated the airstrikes...