TIMELINE: Milestones in six decades of Middle East conflict

Dec 27 - The following timeline presents some of the main events in 60 years of conflict between Israel, the Palestinians and Arab countries since the founding of the Jewish state.

* State of Israel declared in May 1948. British troops leave and fighting breaks out with Arab neighbors. Some 700,000 Palestinians, half the Arab population of British-ruled Palestine, fled or were driven from their homes. Arab troops intervened but lost some of the land the United Nations had assigned to Palestinians. Armistice pacts halted the fighting a year later but there was no formal peace.

* In 1956 Israel invaded the Gaza Strip and Sinai in conjunction with the Suez Canal campaign launched by Britain and France against Egypt. Israel withdrew six months later.

* In 1965 the Palestinian guerrilla movement Fatah carried out its first military operation inside Israel.

* In 1967 Israeli strikes against Egypt and Syria launched the Six Day War. Israel has occupied the West Bank, Arab East Jerusalem, and Syria's Golan Heights ever since.

* Palestinian guerrillas killed 11 Israelis at the 1972 Olympics in Munich.

* In 1973, Egypt and Syria attacked Israeli positions along the Suez Canal and Golan Heights, beginning the Yom Kippur War. Israel pushed both armies back within three weeks.

* Religious Zionists in 1974 founded Gush Emunim to promote Jewish settlement expansion in the occupied territories.

* In 1976, Israeli commandos at Entebbe, Uganda, rescued over 100 mostly Jewish hostages held by Palestinian hijackers.

* Egypt's President Anwar Sadat, after a landmark visit to Israel ending 30 years of hostility, joined Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and U.S. President Jimmy Carter at the White House in 1979 to sign Israel's first peace accord with an Arab state.

* Two years later, Israeli planes destroyed Iraq's nuclear reactor site, thwarting Saddam Hussein's atom bomb plans.

* Israel handed back Sinai to Egypt in 1982.

* That same year, Israel invaded Lebanon to drive out Palestinian guerrillas. Hundreds of Palestinian civilians were massacred at Beirut's Sabra and Shatila refugee camps by Lebanese Christian militiamen allowed in by Israeli troops.

* In December 1987 the first Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, broke out in occupied territories. About 400 Israelis and 1,500 Palestinians were killed over the ensuing 6 years.

* In 1988, the Palestine Liberation Organization under Yasser Arafat offered a Palestinian state living in peace with Israel but Israel dismissed the PLO's proposals.

* Massive immigration of Jews from the Soviet Union began in 1991. Some 700,000 arrived in Israel as Communism collapsed.