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Chairman of the Jewish Agency: Simcha Dinitz.

Head of Youth Aliya of the Jewish Agency: Yehiel Leket.

May 31: A proclamation, under the signatures of Deputy Minister Avraham Verdiger, Mayor Teddy Kollek and Jewish Agency Chairman Simcha Dinitz, is sent to Jewish communities around the world, inviting them to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Jerusalem's reunification.

July 26: The 32nd Zionist Congress opens in Jerusalem.

October 22: A group of 40 Jews rescued from embattled Sarajevo arrive in Israel.

New immigrants in 1992: 77,057.

The year starts with unusually turbulent weather, with flooding and snowstorms in many parts of the country.

January 5: An Israeli delegation leaves for peace talks in Washington, a continuation of the Madrid Conference. The extrime rightist parties Tehiya and Moledet threaten to drop out of the government.

January 6: A report by the National Insurance Institute on poverty in the country creates a stir. It discloses that over 500,000 persons live beyond the poverty line.

January 15: The extreme rightist Tehiya and Moledet parties drop out of the government on account of the peace talks.

January 24: Foreign Minister David Levy visits China. Full diplomatic relations are established.

January 28 - 29: Preparation conference in Moscow before the start of the multilateral negotiations. The representatives of 30 states and organizations establish a steering comittee and 5 working teams: armament control, regional security, refugees, economic development, water, and environment.

January 29: Labor and Likud agree to hold elections on 23 June.

February 2 - 15: Another wave of unusual snowstorms and flooding hits the country.

February 3: MK announces his retirement from political life.

February 3: The trial of Shas M.K. Yair Levy for fraud and theft begins.

February 14: Israeli Arabs attack an IDF camp near Kibbutz Gal'ed and axe three soldiers to death, wounding a fourth.

February 16: An Israeli force attacks and kills the secretary-general of the Hizbollah in Lebanon, Sheikh Abbas Musawi.

February 18 - 22: Katyusha barrages target the Galilee, after a long hiatus.

February 19: Yitzhak Rabin is nominated as Labor's candidate for prime minister.

March 9: Former prime minister Menachem Begin dies aged 79.

March 17: A Palestinian kills two Jews and wounds 18 in Jaffa.

March 18: The Knesset passes a law changing the electoral system to direct personal election of the prime minister instead of election by party, by a vote of 55 to 32.

March 30: Peace activist Abie Nathan is released from prison following a reduction of his sentence by the president to six months.

April 6: A convoy of IDF vehicles in southern Lebanon. Two soldiers are killed and 5 are wounded.

April 21: Latvia opens a consulate in Tel Aviv.

April 22: Israel and Armenia initiate diplomatic relations.

May: Unemployment reaches a record high of 144.000.

May 24: A Palestinian from Gaza stabs and kills 15-year-old Helena Rapp in Bat Yam. Residents of the city rampage and attack Palestinians over a period of several days.

May 30: Two Palestinians murder a resident of Eilat.

June: Shortly before the Knesset election, a wave of strikes engulfs the country.

June 14: Mikhail Gorbachev, former president of the Soviet Union , visits Israel.

June 20: Terje Rod Larson, founder of the Norwegian FAFO Institute who works on a project to alleviate Gaza's chronic social problems, Yossi Beilin and Palestinian politician Faisal Husseini discuss the idea of secret negotiations with the PLO in the American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem.

June 23: Knesset elections. Labor beats the Likud in an electoral upset. Labor emerges with 44 seats to the Likud's 32. Toegther with Meretz, Labor's natural alley, which obtained 12 seats, Labor marshalls 56 seats, and backed by Hadash and the Arab Democratic Party could control 61 seats. The factionalization of the Right and the proliferation of a series of new lists prevent Tehiya from passing the electoral threshold. A surprise in the Rightist camp is Rafael Eitan's Tzomet party, which enters the Knesset with 8 MKs. Yitzhak Rabin begins talks towards forming a new government.

June 25: Palestinian terrorists murder two Israelis in the Gaza Strip.

July 12: The terrorist who murdered the 15-year-old girl from Bat Yam is sentenced to life imprisonment.

July 12: A new government is formed by Labor (13) together with Meretz (3) and Shas (1) under the leadership of Yitzhak Rabin (Prime Minister and Minister of Defense). Shevah Weiss is elected Speaker of the Knesset. Minister of Foreign Affairs: Shimon Peres. Minister of Finance: Avraham Shochat. Minister of Health: Chaim Ramon. Minister of the Environment: Yossi Sarid. Minister of Internal Affairs: Aryeh Deri. Minister of Education and Culture: Shulamit Aloni. Yossi Beilin is appointed Deputy Foreign Minister.

July 13: Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin invites the leading Arab politicians to Jerusalem.

July 21: Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin visits Egypt.

July 30: Israel's women's judo champion Yael Arad makes Israeli history by taking a silver medal at the Olympic Games in Barcelona. Oren Smadja wins a bronze in men's judo.

August: Unemployment drops for the first time since the end of 1990.

August 31: Israel releases 182 Palestinian prisoners.

September 8: A disturbed young man shoots and kills 4 employees at a mental health center in Jerusalem and wounds 2 others. He flees to the roof of the building, where he is shot and killed by the police.

September 9 : The Norwegian Minister of State Jan Egeland visits Israel in connection with the FAFO project. He suggests to Deputy Foreign Minister Yossi Beilin that Norway could help set up a discreet back-channel between Israel and the PLO. Beilin puts Terje Rod Larsen in contact with two academics, not formally connected with the Government, Dr. Yair Hirschfeld, a Haifa University political scientist who had worked with FAFO in the past, and Dr. Ron Pundak. (More.)

September 10: Prime Minister Rabin declares that he promotes a partly withdrawal from the Golan Heights.

September 16: China's foreign minister arrives for a visit.

September 22: Yitzhak Rabin suggests a confederation between Israel, the Palestinians, and Jordan.

September 23: A forth trial launch of the Israeli-made Arrow missile succeeds.

September 23: Syria in principle approves a peace treaty. Pre-condition is Israel's withdrawal from the occupied territories.

September 24: Another round of peace talks is concluded in Washington.

October 4: An El Al Boing 747 cargo plane explodes in the air over a residential area in Holland, causing heavy casualties. The plane's three crew members and an Israeli passenger are killed.

October 14: Search activity for the Dakar submarine that sank mysteriously in the Mediterranean in 1969 is resumed in the light of new findings.

October 25: A road mine explodes in southern Lebanon killing six Israeli soldiers and wounding 4.

October 27: Katyusha missiles land in Kiryat Shmonah, killing a 14-year-old and wounding his father and sister.

November 3: In a grave incident at the Tze'elim army base, 5 soldiers are killed and 6 are wounded by a mistargeted missile fired during an exercise.

November 3: Bill Clinton is elected President of the United States.

November 8 - 11: Katyusha barrages from Lebanon target northern settlements in Israel. The IDF retaliates with an artillery attack in southern Lebanon.

November 10: The new Supreme Court building in Jerusalem is inaugurated.

December 3 - 4: Dr. Yair Hirschfeld is approached by Ahmed Suleiman Qorei (alias Abu Ala'a), administrator of the PLO's finances, in London. They agree to attend a seminar to be held by FAFO in a secluded villa at Sarpsborg, near Oslo, in January 1993. Palestinian delegation members Faisal Husseini and Hanan Ashrawi, together with the PLO representative in London, Afif Safieh, encourage the encounter.

December 7: Terror attacks against Israel increase. Palestinian terrorists kill three soldiers in the Gaza Strip.

December 13: A border policeman is kidnapped by Hamas in the Jerusalem area. His body is discovered two days later.

December 14: The remains of a group of immigrants from Morocco clandestinely bound for Israel aboard the Egoz in 1961, which sank off the coast of Morocco, are brought to Israel by permission of Morocco's King Hassan and are interred at Mount Herzl in a state ceremony.

December 17: The increase of terrorist acts by Palestinians prompts the government to deport over 450 Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists. The decision evokes a public debate and judicial proceedings in Israel and negative reactions abroad.

December: Uri Avnery, together with Jewish and Arab Israelis, puts up a protest tent opposite the Prime Minister's office, in which they live for 45 days and nights, during some of which Jerusalem is covered by snow. This experience leads to the creation of Gush Shalom, the Peace Bloc.

The cost of living index drops below 10% (9.4%) for the first time in years.

January: Paul Simon is the first major artist to tour South Africa after the end of the cultural boycott.

January: The exhibition "Jüdische Lebenswelten" opens in the Walter Gropius Building in Berlin.

January: The first central German Holocaust memorial opens in the House of the Wannsee Conference in Berlin.

March: The Alte Museum Berlin exhibits "Entartete Kunst - Das Schicksal der Avantgarde im Nazideutschland" - "Degenerate Art - The Fate of the Avantgarde in Nazi Germany".

March 17: 29 people are killed and 242 injured when a car bomb explodes in the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

March: Despite the criticism of the World Jewish Congress, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl meets with Austrian President Kurt Waldheim who is isolated because of his past as an officer of the German Wehrmacht.

March 31: This day marks the 500th anniversary of the signing of the Edict of Expulsion, banishing the Spanish Jews from Spain and its territories. The Edict was signed on March 31, 1492 at the magnificent Moorish palace of the Alhambra in Granada by Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand.

500 years commemoration ceremonies of the exile of the Jews from Spain in 1492 take place. Interest in the study of Spain's Jewish legacy once again comes to the fore. An impressive array of Spanish and international scholars joined in a collaborative effort addressing the many facets of Judeo-Spanish culture and history.

King Juan Carlos of Spain is presented with a copy of the Alba Bible facsimile. On the same occasion he revokes the order of the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain, and formally welcomes their descendants - and all Jews - back to Spain.

April 6: Isaac Asimov, Russian-born American writer and biochemist dies. Asimov is best known for his works of science fiction.

April 10: With the help of friends in America the Jewish community in Sarajevo pays for a plane, and organizes an evacuation on the 10th of April. Several planes leave Sarajevo carrying about 300 people. Some of them are members of the Jewish community; the rest are Sarajevans representing all other ethnic groups.

June: The first German-Jewish Dialogue, organized by the Bertelsmann Foundation takes place.

July: Heinz Galinski, chairman of the Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland, the umbrella organization of the Jews in Germany, dies aged 79.

September 9: Radio Jai, the Jewish broadcasting station in Argentina, is established.

September 12: The cornerstone is laid for the Berlin Museum extension, the "Libeskind Building".

September: Ignatz Bubis is elected chairman of the Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland.

September: One of the buildings of the KZ Memorial Sachsenhausen is destroyed by fire.

December 17: Philosopher and essayist Günther Anders dies in Vienna.

The Belarussian Orthodox Church publishes an article that advises readers to beware of the "cruel cults, where human sacrifices are being practiced," and identifies the Orthodox Jewish sect, Hasidism, as one such "cult."

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, in its declaration adopted at a summit in Lisbon, pointes out that antisemitism and aggressive nationalism "continue to endanger stability in OSCE" and committes itself to addressing the problem of antisemitism.

The Jewish Museum New York exhibits "Bridges and Boundaries: African Americans and American Jews."

In cooperation with the Film Society of Lincoln Center the Jewish Museum New York establishes the New York Jewish Film Festival.

The Jewish Community of Sarajevo vouches for an independent Bosnia and Herzegovina. During the war, the commnuity's organization "La Benevolencija" distributes humanitarian help.

The Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) sends medicine and food to Sarajevo and provides other humanitarian assistance to stricken residents of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Rabbi Susan Grossman is elected as the first woman to serve
on the Committee on Law and Standards of Conservative Judaism's Rabbinical Assembly.

Mexican film director Guitar Shyfter directs her movie "Novia que te vea" about two Jewish women growing up in Mexico in the 1950s and 60s.

Rudolph A. Marcus is awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry.

Gary S. Becker is awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics.

Georges Charpak is awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.