The Palestine Chronology

Meeting in Beirut, for. ministers of Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, PLO approve Arab participation in upcoming round of peace talks in Washington. (MM 4/2)

U.S. Congress passes foreign aid bill for rest of fiscal year which does not include $10 billion in loan guarantees to Israel. (MM 4/3)

State Dept. inspector general issues report stating that the department has failed to heed intelligence reports suggesting that an important U.S. ally-widely understood to be Israel-was making unauthorized transfers of U.S. military technology since about 1983. (NYT 4/2, WP 4/3)

EC "troika" arrives in Beirut for talks with Lebanese leaders on regional issues, upcoming multilateral economic talks [Lebanon has already announced it will not participate in multilateral talks]. (Radio Monte Carlo 4/1 in FBIS 4/2)

Security forces kill at least 4 Palestinians and wound 50 in Rafah, Gaza-most serious clash in o.t. in months. Rafah is curfewed shortly thereafter. In separate incident, 13 year-old boy is killed during confrontation with IDF in Tarqumiya, near Hebron. (NYT, MM 4/2; IDF Radio 4/5 in FBIS 4/6)

Lebanese parliament approves 5/22 Syrian-Lebanese treaty by vote of 46 in favor, one against, 20 abstentions. (NYT 5/28)

Israeli Def. Min. Moshe Arens calls for international conference involving Middle Eastern nations and countries supplying them with arms to restrict sales of conventional weapons to region. Proposal would benefit Israel, which manufactures many of its own conventional weapons, while limiting ability to Arab nations to augment their already large conventional forces. Middle Eastern nations have imported some $200 billion in military equipment during last 20 years. Proposal also seen as attempt to deflect anticipated proposal by Pres. Bush to limit nonconventional "weapons of mass destruction" [see 5/29], a field in which Israel holds an advantage over its Arab enemies. (WP 5/28)

Israeli officials consider second airlift to bring an additional 2,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel, in addition to larger number of Jews who converted to Christianity to escape persecution in the country and who were barred from earlier flights because Israeli immigration law specifies Jews who convert are not eligible to immigrate without reconversion to Judaism. (LAT 5/28)