March 19 – Former Israeli president Moshe Katsav is formally indicted in a Tel Aviv court for rape and other sexual offences against three women who had worked with him.[1]
March 31 – Benjamin Netanyahu presents his cabinet for a Knesset "Vote of Confidence". The 32nd Government is approved that day by a majority of 69 to 45 and the members are sworn in.
June 24 – Former Finance Minister Avraham Hirschson is sentenced to five years and five months of jail and a fine of 450,000 shekels.
June 25 – During the 2009 NBA draft, the Israeli basketball player Omri Casspi is selected 23rd overall by the Sacramento Kings.[5] making him the first Israeli to be selected in the first round of the NBA draft. With his debut with the Kings on October 28, 2009, Casspi becomes the first Israeli to play in the NBA league.[6]
13–23 July – The 18th Maccabiah Games are held with 7,510 athletes from Israel and Jewish communities throughout the world competing in 33 sports.[7]
August 20 – Leading Israeli TV personality Dudu Topaz commits suicide in the Nitzan Detention Center in Ramla, by hanging himself in his prison cell, while awaited trial on charges of assaulting top media Israeli media executives.
September 1 – Former Finance Minister Avraham Hirschson arrives at the Hermon prison facility to begin serving his five-year sentence.
September 13 – An Israeli Air Force F-16A crashes while on a training flight over the southern Hebron hills, killing pilot Captain Assaf Ramon. Assaf was the son of Ilan Ramon, a former F-16 pilot and Israel's first astronaut, who was killed in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster.[9]
September 24 – In an address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Netanyahu said Iran poses a threat to the peace of the world and that it is incumbent on the world body to prevent it from obtaining nuclear weapons.[10][11]
September 25 – The trial of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on corruption charges begins in Jerusalem. He is the first ever Israeli Prime Minister to be brought to trial.[12]
November 14 – More than 1,000 ultra-Orthodox Jews demonstrate outside the offices of U.S. firm Intel in Israel in protest at work taking place at the site on Jewish Sabbath.[13][14][15]
December 10 – Ada Yonath received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas A. Steitz for her studies on the structure and function of the ribosome, becoming the first Israeli woman to win the Nobel Prize out of nine Israeli Nobel laureates,[16] the first woman from the Middle East to win a Nobel prize in the sciences,[citation needed] and the first woman in 45 years to win the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.
June 14 – Ten days after President Obama's Cairo speech, Netanyahu gives a speech at Bar-Ilan University in which he endorsed, for the first time, a "Demilitarized Palestinian State", after two months of refusing to commit to anything other than a self-ruling autonomy when coming into office. The speech is widely seen as a response to Obama's speech.[18]
October 2 – Israel releases twenty female Palestinian Arab prisoners to the Gaza Strip and in exchange the Hamas releasing a videotape that proves that the Israeli captured soldier Gilad Shalit is still alive.[19][20]
October 2 – The first video of the Israeli captured soldier Gilad Shalit is released to the public.
November 25 – Prime Minister Netanyahu announces a ten-month settlement moratorium in permits for new settlement homes in the West Bank (excluding east Jerusalem), seen as a result of pressure from the Obama administration, which urged the sides to seize the opportunity to resume talks. In his announcement, Netanyahu calls the move "a painful step that will encourage the peace process" and urges the Palestinian Arabs to respond.[21]
Notable Israeli military operations against Palestinian militancy targets
2008–2009 Israel–Gaza conflict. From top to bottom right: A Qassam rocket fired from a civilian area in Gaza towards Israel, Grad rocket fired from Gaza hits a kindergarten classroom in the southern Israeli city of Beer Sheva, An Israeli attack in the Gaza strip, Aftermath of an Israeli bombing.
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (October 2010)
January and February – Sudan Air Strikes: a series of two air strikes in Sudan and one in the Red Sea took place, allegedly conducted by the Israeli Air Force against Iranian arms being smuggled to the Gaza Strip through Sudan.[22][23] The Israeli government hinted that Israeli forces were involved in the incident.[24][25]
January 1 – Israeli airstrike on the Gaza Strip city of Jabalia kills senior Hamas military commander Nizar Rayan and six members of his family.[26]
January 3 – Israel launches a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip as the Gaza War enters its second week.[27]
January 17 – Israel announces a unilateral ceasefire in the Gaza War. It comes into effect the following day,[28] on which Hamas declares a ceasefire of its own.[29][30][31]
January 21— Israel completes its withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.[32] Intermittent air strikes by both sides of the preceding war continue in the weeks to follow.[33][34][35]
Notable Palestinian militant operations against Israeli targets
January 27 – Palestinian Arab militants detonate a bomb at the Kissufim crossing, killing one Israeli soldier and wounding three others.[36]
March 5 – A Palestinian Arab resident of east Jerusalem attacks an Israeli police car and a bus on the Menachem Begin Expressway in Jerusalem using a bulldozer, injuring two police officers before being shot to death.[37]
April 2 – Bat Ayin axe attack: A Palestinian Arab man armed with a pickax rampages in the Jewish settlement of Bat Ayin, killing 13-year-old Israeli boy, Shlomo Nativ, and wounding a seven-year-old boy before fleeing the area. On 14 April, Israeli security forces captured the perpetrator; Moussa Tayet, a 26-year-old resident of Khirbet Safa in Beit Ummar.[38]Islamic Jihad and Imad Mughniyeh claim responsibility for the attack.[39]
June 16 – Ten Palestinian Arab terrorists belonging to an al-Qaida-cell launch an attack at the Karni crossing using horses "laden" with explosives. Four terrorists and the horses are killed in the ensuring firefight with the IDF. No IDF soldiers are wounded.[40]
January 26 – Avraham Ravitz (born 1934), Israeli politician, member of the Knesset (1988–2009) – heart failure.[42]
February 1 – Arieh Levavi (born 1912), Russian (Lithuania)-born Israeli public servant, Ambassador to Argentina at the time of the capture of Adolf Eichmann.[43]
November 12 – Emanuel Zisman (born 1935), Bulgarian-born Israeli politician, Member of Knesset (1988–1999).[64]
November 14 – Moshe Gidron (born 1925), Israeli soldier, major general in the IDF.[65]
December 23 – Ike Aronowicz (born 1923), Danzig-born Israeli naval captain who during the Mandate period was the captain of the illegal immigrants ships "SS Exodus" and "Pan York" (Kibbutz Galuyot).[66]
The court ruled: Avraham Hirschson stole (in Hebrew). Ynet, published June 8, 2009: "The judge in the district court for Tel-Aviv, Bracha Ophir Tom, convicted Hirschson of stealing approximately 2million shekels from the National Workers Labor Federation...."