The United States has for several decades played a mediating role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, while remaining Israel’s main supporter.
On May 14, 1948, David Ben Gurion founds the Jewish state of Israel, after the British mandate ends in Palestine. The administration of US president Harry S. Truman recognises the state minutes after it is proclaimed.
However, the administrations of both Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower realise that too close a rapprochement with Israel risks harming US relations with the Arab world.
Washington thus voices strong opposition to the Israeli campaign against Egypt in 1956, launched in coordination with France and Britain and known as the Suez Crisis.
During the Cold War, relations between Israel and the United States take a new turn, becoming rock solid in the 1960s.
During the June 1967 Arab-Israeli war, Israel occupies the Sinai, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.
The Six Day War is a turning point for the US which becomes Israel’s main backer.
In October 1967, president Lyndon B. Johnson decides to order large-scale deliveries of arms to Israel.
On December 14, 1988, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat accepts three conditions laid down by president Ronald Reagan for a dialogue.
Arafat recognises Israel’s right to exist, accepts UN Security Council resolution 242 which calls for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from territories occupied in 1967, and he renounces terrorism.
On December 16 the first official contacts take place: a Palestinian delegation meets in Tunis with the American ambassador, who has been designated as interlocutor with the PLO.
George Bush, who takes over as president in early 1989, establishes channels of direct communication between Israel and the Arab countries, a process which will culminate with the first international conference on the Middle East, in 1991, in Madrid.
On September 13, 1993, after six months of secret negotiations in Oslo, president Bill Clinton orchestrates the historic handshake in Washington between Israel’s prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and Arafat, after they sign a five-year transitional agreement on Palestinian self-government in Gaza and the West Bank.
In 2000, Clinton blames Arafat for the failure of peace negotiations at Camp David from July 11-25.
Clinton, with eight Israeli-Palestinian summits under his belt, proposes in late 2000 a peace plan which will serve as the basis of discussions in Taba, Egypt. These negotiations, without the direct participation of the new administration of George W. Bush, fail to reach agreement.
In 2002, Bush floats a two-state solution, living peacefully side by side, but without Arafat.
After they respectively take office in 2009, relations between US president Barack Obama and right-wing Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu come under deep strain.
In May, 2011 Obama speaks out in favour of a Palestinian state based on the pre-1967 frontiers. But Netanyahu rules out any return to the borders that existed before the Six Day War.
In 2013-2014 efforts led by US Secretary of State John Kerry to relaunch the peace process fail.
In September 2016, however, the two leaders sign a deal on $38 billion in military assistance over a 10-year period beginning in 2018, the most generous military aid in US history.
In December, Washington, for the first time since 1979, does not veto a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel’s settlement building.
On February 15, 2017, new US President Donald Trump warmly welcomes Netanyahu to the White House and hails the “unbreakable” bond between their countries.
He backs away from Washington’s quest for a two-state solution to the conflict, saying he would back a single state if it led to peace.
On May 1, Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas accepts the idea of a Palestinian state in territories occupied by Israel in the Six-Day War of 1967.
Hamas’s announcement comes two days ahead of the first face-to-face meeting between Trump and Palestininian leader Mahmud Abbas, with whom Hamas is at odds.
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