Background: Six months of rising Middle East tensions

Israel struck Beirut airport and blockaded Lebanese ports on Thursday, intensifying reprisals that have killed 47 civilians since Lebanese Hizbollah fighters seized two Israeli soldiers and killed eight a day earlier.

Here is a short chronology of the Middle East conflict since the beginning of the year:


Jan. 25 - Islamic militant group Hamas defeats Fatah movement of moderate President Mahmoud Abbas in first Palestinian parliamentary election in a decade.

Jan. 30 - Hamas rejects a call from the Middle East Quartet to renounce violence and recognise Israel.

Feb. 19 - Israel halts its monthly transfer of millions of dollars to the PA ahead of the formation of a Hamas-led cabinet.

March 29 - Abbas swears in Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and his government.

April 10 - The EU severs political contacts and temporarily suspends direct aid to the Palestinian government to pressure it to recognise Israel and accept peace accords.

-- Hamas says it considers Israel's severing of contacts with the new Palestinian government "a declaration of war".

June 9 - Hamas armed wing calls off 16-month-old truce after seven family members are killed on a Gaza beach during a day of Israeli shelling. Israel denies responsibility for the deaths.

June 13 - Israel kills 11 Palestinians, nine of them civilians, in a missile strike on a van carrying militants and rockets in Gaza.

June 25 - Gaza militants launch deadly raid into Israel, killing two soldiers and capturing Corporal Gilad Shalit. Three days later Israel pushes into Gaza.

June 29 - Israeli troops in the West Bank detain one third of the Palestinian cabinet and nearly two dozen Hamas lawmakers.

July 3 - Israeli forces move into northern Gaza. Three days later the offensive is expanded after a rocket fired by Hamas hits the Israeli city of Ashkelon for the first time.

July 8 - Haniyeh calls for a ceasefire with Israel. Jewish state says militants must first free the captured soldier and halt rocket attacks.

July 12 - Hizbollah guerrillas capture two Israeli soldiers and kill up to eight around the Lebanese border. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert calls it an "act of war" by Lebanon.

-- Israel broadens Gaza offensive and cuts the strip in two. Attacks kill at least 24 Palestinians in Gaza.

July 13 - Israeli aircraft bomb runways at Beirut's Rafik al-Hariri International Airport, forcing flights to divert to Cyprus. Israel's navy blockades Lebanese ports.

-- Dawn air strikes in south Lebanon kill at least 44 civilians and wound 100 people.

-- Hizbollah retaliates for Israeli "massacres" by firing 60 Katyusha rockets at Nahariya in northern Israel killing one.

-- In Gaza, an air strike destroys the office of Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar.

- REUTERS

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