Israel's History:
1997

1997:
by Liat Tzoubari, 2002-2003 ECRUSY Israel Affairs VP

• Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet reaffirms its decision to build a new Jewish neighborhood in the Palestinian owned territory called Har Homa in Hebrew, and Jabal Abu Gnayn in Arabic, despite warnings of Palestinian violence. With this settlemet East Jerusalem will be surrounded by all-Jewish housing estates. Suicide bombings increase, with deadly incidents in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Palestinian Authority legalizes the death sentence for Arabs who sell land to Jews.
• March 31: Arab countries reimposes boycott of Israel, as a retaliation of what they consider Israeli violations of the Oslo 2 Agreement. (Agreement between representatives for the Palestinian people, and the state of Israel, signed September 24, 1995, in Washington, USA, by the chairman of PLO, Yassir Arafat, the Israeli prime minister, Yithzak Rabin, and the president of USA, Bill Clinton. This agreement was a follow up of the Oslo Agreement, from two years earlier, the first peace agreement between Israel and Palestine, and served as a continuation of the fragile peace process of the Middle East. While the Oslo Agreement had been defined without any acting, or even much knowledge, from the American side, the Oslo 2 Agreement was mainly the result of American and Egyptian. There was little Norwegian mediation in this process. The actual content of the Oslo 2, concerned the West Bank, and covered security issues, Palestinian elections, transfer of land, transfer of civil power from Israel to Palestine, trade conditions between the two countries and release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons).
• Protocol concerning the Redeployment in Hebron signed between Israel and the PA.
• The crash of two helicopters in northern Israel kills 73 soldiers.
• Seven schoolgirls are murdered by a Jordanian soldier at Naharayim, on the border between Israel and Jordan.
• Suicide bombers in Jerusalem kill 21 in two separate attacks.
• Israeli wins silver medal at European Swimming Championship.
• Industry continues to make international-level strides in medical electronics, agrotechnology, telecommunications, fine chemicals, computer hardware and software and diamond cutting and polishing, making Israel a leader in industry towards the 21st century.