upied since the 1967 war are not included in the Israel country
profile, unless otherwise noted. On 25 April 1982, Israel withdrew
from the Sinai pursuant to the 1979 Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty.
Israel and Palestinian officials signed on 13 September 1993 a
Declaration of Principles (also known as the "Oslo Accords") guiding
an interim period of Palestinian self-rule. Outstanding territorial
and other disputes with Jordan were resolved in the 26 October 1994
Israel-Jordan Treaty of Peace. In addition, on 25 May 2000, Israel
withdrew unilaterally from southern Lebanon, which it had occupied
since 1982. In keeping with the framework established at the Madrid
Conference in October 1991, bilateral negotiations were conducted
between Israel and Palestinian representatives and Syria to achieve
a permanent settlement. In April 2003, US President BUSH, working in
conjunction with the EU, UN, and Russia - the "Quartet" - took the
lead in laying out a roadmap to a final settlement of the conflict
by 2005, based on reciprocal steps by the two parties leading to two
states, Israel and a democratic Palestine. However, progress toward
a permanent status agreement was undermined by Israeli-Palestinian
violence between September 2003 and February 2005. An
Israeli-Palestinian agreement reached at Sharm al-Sheikh in February
2005, along with an internally-brokered Palestinian ceasefire,
significantly reduced the violence. In the summer of 2005, Israel
unilaterally disengaged from the Gaza Strip, evacuating settlers and
its military. The election of HAMAS in January 2006 to head the
Palestinian Legislative Council froze relations between Israel and
the Palestinian Authority. Ehud OLMERT became prime minister in
March 2006; following an Israeli military operation in Gaza in
June-July 2006, he shelved plans to unilaterally evacuate from most
of the West Bank. The kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers by Lebanese
Hizballah led to a 34-day conflict in Lebanon in June-August 2006.

Italy
Italy became a nation-state in 1861 when the regional states
of the peninsula, along with Sardinia and Sicily, were united under
King Victor EMMANUEL II. An era of parliamentary government came to
a close in the early 1920s when Benito MUSSOLINI established a
Fascist dictatorship. His disastrous alliance with Nazi Germany led
to Italy's defeat in World War II. A democratic republic replaced
t