2004 in Israel - Events

Events

Israeli scientists Aaron Ciechanover and Avram Hershko are awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

• January 29 – 400 Palestinian Arab prisoners, 30 Lebanese and other Arab prisoners, and the remains of 59 Lebanese militants and civilians are transferred to Hezbollah, together with maps showing Israeli mines in South Lebanon, in exchange for the bodies of the three dead IDF soldiers, Benny Avraham, Adi Avitan and Omar Suaad, as well as the abducted Israeli citizen Elchanan Tenenbaum, who had been captured by Hezbollah after being lured to Dubai for a drug deal.
• April 21 – Mordechai Vanunu, who revealed an alleged Israeli nuclear weapons program in the 1980s, is released from prison in Israel after serving 18 years for treason.
• May 12 – The last F-4 Phantom fighters are withdrawn from service with the Israeli Air Force.
• May 24 – The popular singer Madonna cancels three concerts in Israel after receiving letters in which her two young children's lives are threatened. The letters contained intimate details regarding the children's routines and security staff.
• July 15 – New Zealand imposes diplomatic sanctions on Israel after an incident involving two alleged Mossad agents committing passport fraud.
• July 19 – Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon calls on French Jews to move to Israel immediately in light of the dramatic rise in French anti-semitism (510 anti-semitic acts or threats in the first six months of 2004, compared to 593 for all of 2003). The French government describes his comments as unacceptable. An Israeli spokesperson later claims that Sharon had been misunderstood.
• July 30 – Three people are killed and eight wounded in three suicide bomber attacks outside the Israeli and U.S. embassies and the Uzbek chief prosecutor's office in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. The Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir is blamed by Uzbek President Islam Karimov. Other unnamed sources point to al-Qaeda.

• August – Israeli windsurfer Gal Fridman won a gold medal in the Athens 2004 Summer Olympics, becoming the first (and only, thus far) Olympic gold medalist in Israeli history.
• September 6 – The launch of the Israeli reconnaissance satellite Ofek-6 fails.
• October 7 – Three car bombs are detonated in Egyptian towns in the Sinai Peninsula frequented by Israeli tourists. The largest explosion, which killed at least 34 and wounding 105, was at the Hilton Taba in Taba, near the border with Israel. The other two explosions occurred at the towns of Ras al-Sultan and Nuweiba, killing two Israelis and four Egyptians. A group calling itself Jamayia al-Islamia al-Alamiya ("World Islamist Group") later claims responsibility and threatens further attacks.
• November 6 – The Lebanese militant group, Hezbollah, flies a reconnaissance drone over Israeli territory for the first time.
• November 18 – Three Egyptian paramilitary security officers stationed at the Sinai–Gaza border are killed by Israeli tank fire, after IDF troops allegedly mistook them for Palestinian Arab terrorists or militants. The Egyptian government accepts an apology from Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and demands an investigation on the incident.
• December 1 – Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ends the Likud-led coalition after he fires ministers from the secular Shinui party, which voted to defeat the annual budget over subsidies to religious parties.
• December 1 – Israel and Egypt hold talks in Jerusalem to discuss the planned Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
• December 5 – In a prisoner exchange between Israel and Egypt, Egypt releases Azzam Azzam, an Israeli Druze businessman sentenced to 15 years imprisonment by Egypt in 1997 after being accused of espionage for Israel, while Israel releases six Egyptian students who had crossed the border illegally with the aim of carrying out attacks in Israel.
• December 10 – Two Israeli scientists Aaron Ciechanover and Avram Hershko, together with an American scientist Irwin Rose, receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for "the discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation", and become the first Israeli Nobel laureates in chemistry.
• December 17 – The Labour Party and Ariel Sharon's Likud Party reach an agreement, forming a unity government in order to implement Israel's unilateral disengagement plan of 2004. In return, the Labor will receive eight cabinet portfolios, including "peace/disengagement minister" specially suited for Shimon Peres and Internal Affairs.
• December 29 – The Knesset passes a law against terrorism and against support of terrorism. The law prohibits funding terrorists. It also prohibits aiding the families of perceived terrorists and institutes inciting for terrorism. The law will give Israel the right to confiscate property and funds of any perceived terrorist organization, even though if they do not target Israel or Israelis. The law is part of the state's legal war against terrorism and was approved 62–6.