There have been many theories about Russell and his organization. Some of these include that Russell was a Mason or that he was part of a world conspiracy that involved the Zionists.

Personally, I am always wary about conspiracy theories. Most of them have proven to be unfounded in recent years.

Russell's interest in Zionism was probably due to his own teaching that the Jews were to return to Palestine before the battle of Armageddon.  Since the Zionist movement seemed the most likely to fulfill his expectation, he supported their effort even to the extent of meeting with some of the Zionist leaders.  Today, Russell is recognized and honored by  Jewish organizations as one of the few "religious leaders" that supported their movement from its very start. Russell was always quick to "jump on a bandwagon" that seemed to prove his doctrines.  (The Great Pyramid of Egypt, for example)

In contrast, Rutherford was quick to revise and reverse Russell's Zionist leanings.  In fact, it is obvious that he had rather a strong streak of anti-Semitism.  No where is this better demonstrated than his effort to pacify Hitler and the Nazi regime by his publishing of the "Declaration" where he villified the Jews along with America and the British Isles.  However the Watchtower may try to explain away these historical records, the fact is that the Watchtower organization did a complete turnabout on the issue of the Jews and Zionism. 

 

Russell seemed to believe in the literal interpretation of those prophecies which foretold the return of Israel to the promised land.  The early Bible students followed his lead.  But Russell's mistake was trying to force interpretations according to the events of his day. Similar mistakes were made by many religious leaders down through history including the great Reformers.

In contrast to Russell,  Rutherford allegorized those same scriptures and "spiritualized" the explanation by applying them to the "remnant" of the annointed believers. (Spiritual Israel)  The Watchtower continues to hold to this practice. 

There is a certain parallel in the history of the church.  Early Christians held to the literalness of the scriptures such as the second coming of Christ. However, when the expected events did not occur within several generations of believers, certain leaders  began to make an allegory out of most of the events in the Bible and applied it to the Church itself.  A good example of this is St. Augustine and his City of God. 

Most good Bible scholars feel that one should consider the literal meaning of scriptures first.  Then, if other scriptures warrant, one may consider a spiritual meaning.  However, one must be very careful not to impose one's own interpretation.  And that seems very difficult for many religious leaders and organizations.  

Hello Prisca,

 

thanks for the interesting and I must add ...fascinating subject.

I doi believe that IslandWoman would appreciate some informations

on this matter.

Let's begin:

 

 

 

 

from : http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Thebes/5606/FM/E17.htm#ZIONISM

 

 

ZIONISM TO PROSPER

17:22. Thus saith the Lord God: I will also take of the highest branch of the high cedar, and will set it; I will crop off from the top of his young twigs a tender one, and will plant it upon a high mountain and eminent.— Thus says the Lord God: One of the highest branches of ecclesiasticism is Judaism. I will establish Judaism. I will take, in Judaism, one of its young and tender aspirations— Zionism— and will plant it, establish it at the very pinnacle of the coming Kingdom of God— the Jews ruling, through the resurrected Ancient Worthies— Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, etc.— over the earthly phase of that Kingdom.— Psa. 45:16; Heb. 11:40.

17:23. In the mountains of the height of Israel will I plant it; and it shall bring forth boughs, and bear fruit, and be a goodly cedar; and under it shall dwell all fowl of every wing; in the shadow of the branches thereof shall they dwell.— It shall branch above all nations (boughs) and bear character fruit unto life eternal. (John 4:36.) It shall be the desire of all nations (Hag. 2:7) (a goodly cedar). Under it shall dwell in peace all the truly wise ones of earth.

17:24. And all the trees of the field shall know that I the Lord have brought down the high tree, have exalted the low tree, have dried up the green tree, and have made the dry tree to flourish: I the Lord have spoken and have done it.— All the people (trees) of the world (field) shall know that the Lord has brought down nominal ecclesiasticism and exalted the Ancient Worthies, has dried up "Christianity" and given vitality to Zionism and Judaism.

 

 

 

*** Baron Benjamin (Edmond James) de Rothschild, the Jews and Palestine J

 

 

from: http://westy.jtwn.k12.pa.us/users/mjr/me3.html

 

Middle Ages to the Holocaust

During the Middle Ages, the signs of anti-Semitism were many and obvious. Jews were forced to live in restricted areas and excluded from commerce and some professions. Their rights were limited and often they were overtaxed. Tormented by ridicule and accused of such monstrous crimes as slaughtering children for ritual purposes, they were driven from place after place and butchered by mobs. Jews were expelled from England in 1290 and from France in 1395. In the German States, the Black Plague was attributed to the poisoning of wells by Jews. In March of 1492, Jews were ordered, on pain of death, to leave Spain within four months. From 1500 to the nineteenth century, a gradual improvement in the status of Jews was observed although the feeling of anti-Semitism was never far from the surface. The reestablishment of Jews in England began in 1723 when a considerable number of Jews who had returned were recognized as British subjects. Jews were given full religious equality in Switzerland in 1874. When Italy was united in 1870, the Italian Jews won full civil rights.

Although Jews had made pilgrimages to Palestine since the tenth century, the mass number of Jews had remained in Europe since the Diaspora. A revival of anti-Semitism toward the end of the nineteenth century gave rise to the Zionist movement whose aim was to restore Palestine to the Jews where they would be free from persecution. However, the "Dreyfus Affair" gave rise to the feeling that the time for "a Jewish State" had arrived.

In 1894, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, one of the few Jewish army officers in the French army, was unjustly accused of treason during a wave of anti- Jewish feeling in France. Dreyfus was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. Although he was eventually cleared, the Dreyfus case showed Jewish leaders that even in "enlightened" France, Jews could not be guaranteed justice. One of these leaders,

a writer and journalist (pictured) from Vienna, Theodor Herzl, founded the Zionist Movement in 1897. In his book, THE JEWISH STATE, Herzl detailed the notion that Jews must return to their traditional homeland in Zion - Israel. Therefore, The Zionists had one goal: work for a Jewish home in "Eretz Israel" - the land of Israel. This same land is known to people in the West as Palestine. Historically, it should be noted that some Jews had never left Israel. While only few in number, Israel was never officially without Israelis. However, large number of European Jews actually began to settle there in the late 1800s.

Donations for the Jewish National Fund were collected in "Blue Boxes" like this one. The fund, established in 1901, is active in purchasing land in Israel. Money for land in Israel came not only from small donations, from large contributions from wealthy philanthropists like Baron de Rothschild of Paris who initiated pioneer colonies in Palestine between 1883 and 1900. Some of these settlements are still active today. For example, Zikhron is one of Rothschild's settlements. The name "Zikhron-Yaakov" means "In memory of Yaakov (Jakob) who was the father of Baron de Rothschild. Initially, the land in Israel (Palestine) was purchased from absentee landowners who lived in the cities and were happy to make a good profit by selling the land. Unfortunately, Arabs who worked the land as tenant farmers were suddenly forced to leave. Many migrated to the cities, but faced severe hardship because they had neither education nor money. Between 1881 and 1914, 60,000 Jews had emigrated to Palestine. And, by 1914, almost 100,000 acres of Palestinian land had been purchased by the Jews. Despite the increasing tension between these new immigrants and the Palestinian Arabs who continued to live in Palestine, Britain supported the Jewish settlers by issuing a 1917 "White Paper" known as the Balfour Declaration. It declared that "His Majesty's Government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish People...it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine..."

The Balfour Declaration would not have had a significant impact except that the British were given a mandate over Palestine following the breakup of the Ottoman Empire after World War I

 

The British were now in the position to make policy and determine what land would belong to whom. It was understandable that some Jews should want to go to Palestine, since their ancestors had lived there some 2,000 years ago. On the other hand, the Arabs replied that 2,000 years is a long time, and during that time they occupied Palestine and made it their home. To that extent, historians often refer to this as a "right-right proposition."

The rise of Adolph Hitler hastened the emigration of Jews to Palestine. By 1937, the Jews constituted almost one-third of the total population of Palestine. Between 1928 and 1937, their number had risen from 150,000 to 400,000. The influx of Zionist settlers aroused angry resentment among Arabs and the resultant clashes were bitter. Britain decided, in 1939, to sharply curtail further Jewish immigration leading to a militant reactio n on the part of the Jews. It was no longer a question of land purchased by individual settlers, but the threat of an alien state in a land that had been inhabited by Arabs for over 1,000 years. However, the times were desperate for the Jews; the Holocaust had begun. By 1945, 6,000,000 Jews had been killed by a killing machine that is unparalled in modern history.

 

 

 

5 Questions about the Holocaust

1. What was the Holocaust?

The Holocaust was the state-sponsored, systematic persecution and annihilation of European Jewry by the Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945. In 1933 approximately nine million Jews lived in the 21 countries of Europe that would be occupied by Germany during World War II. By 1945 two out of every three European Jews had been killed. Jews were the primary victims -- six million were murdered; Roma (Gypsies), the handicapped and Poles were also targeted for destruction or decimation for racial, ethnic or national reasons. Millions more, including Soviet prisoners of war, political dissidents, homosexuals and Jehovah's Witnesses suffered grievous oppression and death under Nazi tyranny.

2. Who were the Nazis?

"Nazi" is a short term for the National Socialist German Workers Party, a right-wing political party formed in 1919 primarily by unemployed German veterans of World War I. Adolf Hitler became head of the party in 1921, and under his leadership the party eventually became a powerful political force in German elections by the early 1930's. The Nazi party ideology was strongly anti-Communist, antisemitic, racist, nationalistic, imperialistic and militaristic. In 1933, the Nazi Party assumed power in Germany and Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor. He ended German democracy and severely restricted basic rights, such as freedom of speech, press and assembly. He established a brutal dictatorship through a reign of terror. This created an atmosphere of fear, distrust and suspicion in which people betrayed their neighbors and which helped the Nazis to obtain the acquiescence of social institutions such as the civil service, the educational system, churches, the judiciary, industry, business and other professions.

3. Why did the Nazis want to kill large numbers of innocent people?

The Nazis believed that Germans were "racially superior" and that there was a struggle for survival between them and "inferior races." Jews, Roma (Gypsies) and the handicapped were seen as a serious biological threat to the purity of the "German (Aryan) Race" and therefore had to be "exterminated." The Nazis blamed the Jews for Germany's defeat in World War I, for its economic problems and for the spread of Communist parties throughout Europe. Slavic peoples (Poles, Russians and others) were also considered "inferior" and destined to serve as slave labor for their German masters. Communists, Socialists, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals and Free Masons were persecuted, imprisoned and often killed on political and behavioral (rather than racial) grounds . Sometimes the distinction was not very clear. Millions of Soviet Prisoners of War perished from starvation, disease and forced labor or were killed for racial political reasons.

4. How did the Nazis carry out their policy of genocide?

In the late 1930's the Nazis killed thousands of handicapped Germans by lethal injection and poisonous gas. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, mobile killing units following in the wake of the German Army began shooting massive numbers of Jews and Roma (Gypsies) in open fields and ravines on the outskirts of conquered cities and towns. Eventually the Nazis created a more secluded and organized method of killing enormous numbers of civilians -- six extermination centers were established in occupied Poland where large-scale murder by gas and body disposal through cremation were conducted systematically. Victims were deported to these centers from Western Europe and from the ghettos in Eastern Europe which the Nazis had established. In addition, millions died in the ghettos and concentration camps as a result of forced labor, starvation, exposure, brutality, disease and execution.

5. How did the world respond to the Holocaust?

The United States and Great Britain as well as other nations outside Nazi Europe received numerous press reports in the 1930s about the persecution of Jews. By 1942 the governments of the United States and Great Britain had confirmed reports about "the Final Solution" -- Germany's intent to kill all the Jews of the Europe. However, influenced by antisemitism and fear of a massive influx of refugees, neither country modified their refugee policies. Their stated intention to defeat Germany militarily took precedence over rescue efforts, and therefore no specific attempts to stop or slow the genocide were made until mounting pressure eventually forced the United States to undertake limited rescue efforts in 1944. In Europe, rampant antisemitism incited citizens of many German occupied countries to collaborate with the Nazis in their genocidal policies. There were, however, individuals and groups in every occupied nation who, at great personal risk, helped hide those targeted by the Nazis. One nation, Denmark, saved most of its Jews in a night time rescue operation in 1943 in which Jews were ferried in fishing boats to safety in neutral Sweden.

SOURCE: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum http://www.ushmm.org/misc-bin/add_goback/education/5quest.html

 

 

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from:

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Zionism

 

Timeline of Zionism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Timeline of Zionism in the modern era:

·        1861 - The Zion Society is formed in Frankfurt, Germany.

·        1870 - 1890 - Russian group Chovevei Tzion (Lovers of Zion) sets up 30 Jewish farming colonies in Palestine, financially aided by Baron Edmond de Rothschild. They were populated by European Jews with no common language; Eliezer ben Yehuda labored to revive Hebrew as a common spoken language. ([1])

·        1881 - 1884 - Russian pogroms kill tens of thousands of Jews. Hundreds of thousands of Jews flee.

·        1880 - 1920 - Two million Russian Jews migrate to the US.

·        1882 - 1903 - The first major wave of Jewish immigration (aliyah) to Palestine.

·        1894 - The Dreyfus affair radicalizes Theodore Herzl

·        1896 - Herzl writes Der Judenstaat (The State of Jews) advocating the creation of a Jewish state.

·        1896 - 1904 Herzl unsuccessfully approaches world leaders for assistance in the creation of a Jewish National Home.

·        1897 - The First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, urges "a publicly and legally assured home in Palestine" for Jews and establishes the World Zionist Organization (WZO).

·        1901 - Fifth Zionist Congress establishes the Jewish National Fund.

·        1902 - Herzl publishes the novel Altneuland (Old-New Land), which takes place in Palestine.

·        1903 -1906 - More pogroms in Russia

·        1903 - Controversial Uganda Proposal for settlement in East Africa splits the 6th Zionist Congress. A committee is created to look into it.

·        1904 - 1914 - Second aliyah.

·        1917 - The British gain control of Palestine from the Ottoman Empire during World War I.

·        1917 - The British issue the Balfour Declaration, lending support for "the establishment in Palestine for a national home for the Jewish people".

·        1918 - 1920 - More pogroms in Russia

·        1919 - 1923 - Third aliyah.

·        1920 - The San Remo conference in Italy establishes the British Mandate of Palestine.

·        1920 - Histadrut founded.

·        1920 - Haganah founded.

·        1921 - Chaim Weizmann becomes new President of the WZO at the 12th Zionist Congress (the first since World War I).

·        1921 - Autonomy is given to Transjordan under Crown Prince Abdullah. Jewish settlement is outlawed there.

·        1922 - The text from the San Remo Conference is confirmed by the League of Nations.

·        1923 - Britain gives the Golan Heights to the French mandate of Syria.

·        1924 - 1928 - Fourth aliyah.

·        1932 - 1939 - Fifth aliyah.

·        1933 - 1945 Jews flee Germany because of persecution under the Nazi government. Jews are turned away because of the British limit on immigrants.

·        1936 - The British propose a partition between Jewish and Arab areas. It is accepted by the Zionists, but rejected by the Arab parties (See [2]).

·        1936 - 1939 - Great Uprising by Arabs against British rule and Jewish immigration.

·        1939 - The British government issues the 'White Paper' setting a limit of 75,000 on future Jewish immigration to Palestine (See [3]).

·        1947 - On November 29, the United Nations approves partition of Palestine into a Jewish and Arab state. It is accepted by the Jews, but rejected by the Arabs (See [4] [5].

·        1947 - November 30, guerrilla war starts between Jewish forces, centered around the Haganah and Palestinian Arab forces.

·        1948 - May 14. The State of Israel declares itself as an independent nation.

·        1948 - May 15. Neighboring Arab countries invade, and the 1948 Arab-Israeli war ensues.

 

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from: http://www.angelfire.com/pa/waraqa/palhis.html

 

B.C.

  600,000 - 10,000

Paleolithic and Mesolithic period. Earliest human remains in

 the area(found south of the Lake of Tabariyya), date back to

 ca. 600,000 BC.

  10,000 - 5,000

 Neolithic period. Establishment of settled agricultural

 communities.

  5,000 - 3,000

 Chalcolithic period. Copper and stone tools and artifacts from

 this period found near Jericho, Bi'r As-Sabi' and the Dead

Sea.

  3,000 - 2,000

Early Bronze Age.Arrival and settlement of the Arab Canaanites

 (3,000 - 2,500 BC)

  ca. 1,250?

        Israelite conquest of Canaan.

  965? - 928?

King Solomon (Sulayman), construction of the temple in Jerusalem.

  928?

        Division of the Israelite state into the kingdom of

Israel and Judah.

  721

        Assyrian conquest of the kingdom of Israel.

  586

        Judah defeated by Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar,

 deportation of its population to Babylon and destruction of the

temple.

  539

Persians conquer Babylonia, allowance of deportees to return

 and construction of a new temple.

  333

Alexander the Great conquers Persia and Palestine comes

under the Greek rule.

  323

Alexander the Great dies, alternate rule by Ptolemies of

 Egypt and Seleucids of Syria.

  165

        Maccabees revolt against the Seleucid ruler (Antiochus

 Epiphanes) and establish an independent state.

  63

 Incorporation of Palestine into the Roman Empire.

 

 

A.D.

  70

        Destruction of the second temple by the Roman

 Emperor Titus.

132-135

Suppression of the Bar Kokhba revolt. Jews barred from

Jerusalem and Emperor Hadrian builds a pagan city on its ruins.

330-638

Palestine under Byzantine occupation, Christianity spreads.

638

Muslim Khalifa Omar ibn al-Khattaab liberates Jerusalem and

 ends the Byzantine occupation.

661-750

Palestine administered by the Umayyad muslim chaliphs from

Damascus and construct the Dome of the Rock ('Abd al-Malik,

 685-705) and Al-Aqsa in its current shape (al-Walid, 705-715).

750-1258

Palestine administered from Baghdad by the'Abbasid muslim caliphs.

969

Palestine administered by the Fatimids.

1071

Muslim Saljuqs (originally from Isfahan) rule Jerusalem and parts of

 Palestine (officially still under the 'Abbasids).

1099-1187

The Crusaders occupation and establishment of the "Latin Kingdom of

 Jerusalem".

1187

Great muslim leader Salah al-Diin al-Ayyoubi (from Kurdistan)

 conquers the  crusaders in the battle of Hittin, kicks

 them back to Europe and frees Jerusalem. Plaestine

administered from Cairo.

1260

The Mamluks succeed the Ayyubis, continue to administer Palestine

from Cairo and kick the Mongols in the battle of 'Ayn Jaluut near

 An-Nasira.

1291

The Mamluks (Khalil bin Qalawuun) conquer the last crusader

 stronghold in Akka and Qisariya.

1516-1917

Palestine incorporated into the Ottoman state and administered from

Istanbul.

1832-1840

Moh'd Ali Pasha (Egypt) rules Palestine, Ottomans take over

 afterwards.

1876-1877

First Palestinian deputies from Jerusalem attend the first Ottoman

parliament.

1878

First Zionist settlement (Petach Tiqva) established under the

 guise of agricultural community.

1882-1903

First wave of Zionists (25000 strong) enters Palestine as illegal

immigrants

from Eastern Europe.

1882

French Baron E. de Rothschild starts backing Zionists activities

 in  Palestine financially.

1887-1888

Ottomans divide Palestine into three districts: Jerusalem (follows

Istanbul), Akka and Nablus (follow the 'wilaya' of Beirut).

1895 - 1917

 

 

 

1895

 

 

 

The total population of Palestine was 500,000 of whom

47,000 were Jews who owned 0.5% of the land.

 

 

 

1896

 

 

 

Following the appearance of anti-Semitism in Europe,

 Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism tried to find a political

 solution for the problem in his book, 'The Jewish State'. He

advocated the creation of a Jewish state in Argentina or Palestine.

 

 

 

1897

 

 

The first Zionist Congress was held in Switzerland,

 which issued the Basle programme

on the colonization of Palestine and the establishment

of the World Zionist Organization (WZO).

 

 

 

1904

 

 

 

Fourth Zionist Congress decided to

 establish a national home for Jews in Argentina.

 

 

 

1906

 

 

 

The Zionist congress decided the Jewish

 homeland should be Palestine.

 

 

 

1914

 

 

 

With the outbreak of World War I, Britain

promised the independence of Arab lands under Ottoman rule,

 including Palestine, in return for Arab support against

Turkey which had entered the war on the side of Germany.

 

 

 

1916

 

 

 

Britain and France signed the Sykes-Picot

Agreement, which divided the Arab region into zones of influence.

 Lebanon and Syria were assigned to France, Jordan and Iraq to

Britain and Palestine was to be internationalized.

 

 

 

1917

 

 

 

Lord Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary sent a

letter to the Zionist leader Lord Rothschild which later became

 known as "TheBalfour declaration

". He stated that Britain would use its best endeavors

to facilitate the establishment in Palestine of a national

home for the Jewish people. At that time the population of

Palestine was 700,000 of which 574,000 were Muslims,

74,000 were Christian, and 56,000 were Jews.

 

 

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

 

1919 - 1967

 

 

 

1919

 

 

 

The Palestinians convened their first National

Conference and expressed their opposition to the Balfour

 Declaration.

 

 

 

1920

 

 

 

The San Remo Conference granted Britain a

mandate over Palestine and two years later Palestine was

 effectively under British administration,and Sir Herbert

Samuel, a declared Zionist, was sent as Britain's first

 High Commissioner  to Palestine.

 

 

 

1922

 

 

 

The Council of the League of Nations issued

a Mandate for Palestine. The Mandate was in favor of the

 establishment  for the Jewish people a homeland in Palestine.

 

 

 

1929

 

 

 

The outbreak of Al-Boraq uprising .

 

 

 

1935/11/20

 

 

The muslim syrian leader Izz-aldeen Alqasam

killed in Palestine by british occupation(a biginning to 1936 strike)

 

 

 

1936-1939

 

 

The Great revolution;

Palestinians held a six-month General Strike(longest strike

in history )to protest against killing of Izz-aldeen Alqasam   & the

confiscation of land and Jewish immigration.

But the strike was stopped by arab leaders thinking that Britain

will give palestinians thier rights.But revolution continues:

-146 palestinians excuted;

-50,000 palestinians arrested for miscellanuous periods;

-2,000 palestinians centanced for long periods;

-5,000 houses detroyed;

-leaders of revolution expeld.

 

 

 

 

1939

 

 

 

Timing with the outbreak of WW2 British

government published  a new White Paper restricting Jewish

immigration and offering independence for  Palestine within

 ten years.This was rejected by the Zionists, who then

organized terrorist groups and launched a bloody campaign against the

British and the Palestinians.The aim was to drive them both out of

Palestine and to pave the way for the establishment of the Zionist

 state.(The white paper was banded by Britain after war)

 

 

 

1947

 

 

 

The United Nations approved the partition under which

the Palestinian Arabs, who accounted for 70% of the population and

owned 92% of the land, were allocated 47% of the country.& for zionist

 who stole 5% allocated 50%of palestine & the rest is international

zone(UN resolution 181)

 

 

 

1948

 

 

 

British forces withdrew from Palestine in

 May (leaving weapons for zionists)and the Zionists proclaimed

 the state of Israel without defining its borders.Unprepared

Arab armies moved to defend the Palestinians.Corruption in

arab armies leads to  a  defeat for arab armies.Angry arab

 military officcers staged coup d'etat in thier contries

 against thier leaders (e.g Qasim in  Iraq ,Zaiem in Syria&

 Naser & Muslim brotherhode in Egypt)

 

 

 

1949

 

 

 

A cease fire was finally agreed. The

Zionists controlled 77% of Palestinian land and over

 1 million Palestinians were forced to leave their

country. The West Bank was put under Jordanian control and

the Gaza Strip under Egyptian control.

 

 

 

1964

 

 

 

The Palestine Liberation Organization

was established.

 

 

 

 

1967

 

 

 

Israel launched a new war against the

 Arabs and seized the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the

Syrian Golan Heights and the Egyptian

Sinai peninsula.UN issues resolution

number 242

 

 

 

1973 - 1988

 

 

 

 

1973

 

 

 

The October War between Israel and the Arab states

broke out.UN issues resolution number 338

 

 

 

1974

 

 

 

The Arab Summit in Rabat recognized the PLO as the

 sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. At the

United Nations General Assembly, the UN reaffirmed its commitment to

an independent sovereign state in Palestine and gave the PLO observer

status at the United Nations.

Yasser Arafat, chairman of the PLO, addressed the General Assembly

of the United Nations.

 

 

1978

 

 

 

Egypt and Israel signed the Camp David

 Agreement under the auspices of the United States.

 

 

 

1982

 

 

 

Israel invaded Lebanon with the aim of

destroying the PLO. Tens of thousands were killed and made

 homeless in the wake of the invasion which culminated in

the massacres of Sabra and Shatilla.

 

 

 

1983

 

 

 

The United Nations called for the

 convening of a Peace Conference with the participation

of the PLO on an equal footing with the other delegates

 as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.

 

 

 

 

1987

 

 

 

 In December the

Intifada-the Palestine Uprising - in the Occupied

Territories began.

 

 

 

1988

 

 

 

Abu Jihad, Palestinian leader,

was gunned down in his home in Tunis on 14April by

 the Israeli Mossad.

 

 

 

July 31

 

 

Jordanian disengagement - King Hussein

of Jordan said he no longer considered the West Bank as

part of his kingdom.

 

 

 

November 15

 

 

The PNC meeting in Algiers declared

the State of Palestine

as outlined in the UN Partition Plan 181.

 

 

 

 

Following the US government refusing

  Arafat a visa to enter the US, the UN General Assembly

 held a special session on the question of Palestine in

Geneva.

 

 

 

US/PLO dialogue began

 

 

 

1989 - 1996

 

 

 

1989

 

 

 

June 28: EEC Madrid Conference issued a

new declaration calling for the PLO to be involved in any

peace negotiations.

 

 

 

August 3: Fateh, the mainstream PLO

organization, at their 5th Conference endorsed the PLO

strategy adopted at the PNC in Algiers in November 1988.

 

 

 

1990

 

 

 

May 20: Seven Palestinian workers from Gaza

 were massacred by an Israeli gunman near Tel Aviv.

 

 

 

Yasser Arafat addressed the UN

 Security Council In Geneva after the massacre in

 which he called for the deployment  of a UN emergency

 force to provide international protection for the

 Palestinian people to safeguard their lives, properties and holy

 places.

 

 

The US vetoed a motion which called for the

 Security Council to send a fact finding mission to the area.

At the end of their hunger strike, Palestinian leaders in the

 Occupied Territories decided to boycott the US.

 

 

 

The Arab Summit in Baghdad  strongly denounced

the settlement of Soviet Jews with in the Occupied Territories.

 

 

 

June 20: The US suspended its dialogue with

the PLO after the PLO refused to denounce a military operation

in the sea by the PLF.

 

 

 

June 26: The EEC in Dublin issued a new

declaration on the Middle East which condemned Israeli human

 rights violations and the settlement of Soviet Jews in the

 Occupied Territories. It also doubled its economic aid programme

 to the Occupied Territories.

 

 

 

August 2: The Gulf Crisis erupted.

 

 

 

December 20: UN Security Council adopted

Resolution 681.

 

 

 

 

 

1991

 

 

 

January 16: War in the Gulf started.

 

 

 

February 17: Cease fire agreed in War in the

Gulf. - 23 September: The PNC met in Algiers and paved the way

for the Palestinian delegation to participate in the Middle East

 Peace Conference.

 

 

October 30: The Middle East Peace Conference

 convened in Madrid.

 

 

 

December 3: The bi-lateral talks between Israel

and the Palestinians, Syrians, Jordanians and Lebanese started in

 Washington.

 

 

 

 

1992

 

 

 

June 23: Israeli Labor Party won the election

 in Israel and formed a Labor coalition government.

 

 

 

August 24: The sixth round of the bi-lateral talks ,W.

 

 

 

1993

 

 

 

September 9-10: PLO Israeli recognition

 

 

 

September 13: Palestinian-Israeli Declaration of Principle