TIMELINE - U.S. support for Middle East peace moves

(Reuters) - George W. Bush began his first visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories as U.S. president on Wednesday, saying he saw a new opportunity for peace he aims to nurture in the face of deep scepticism.

Accused for years of neglecting the Middle East's most intractable conflict, Bush will try to nudge Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas forward in a fragile peace process relaunched at Annapolis, Maryland.

Here is a short timeline of U.S. involvement in Middle East peace efforts over the past 30 years:

1978 - Camp David talks between Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin seen as breakthrough for U.S. peace efforts. A peace treaty is signed in March 1979.

1988 - U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz proposes an international Middle East peace conference to include the Soviet Union. Arab states reject the plan as it excludes the Palestine Liberation Organisation

-- In December the U.S. starts dialogue with the PLO after its leader Yasser Arafat renounces terrorism and the Palestine National Council, the Palestinian parliament-in-exile, implicitly recognises Israel.

September 13, 1993 - At White House, Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin make historic handshake, sealing outline for limited Palestinian self-rule under interim peace accord secretly negotiated in Oslo, Norway.

October 26, 1994 - Israel and Jordan sign a peace treaty in a ceremony at their border, attended by President Bill Clinton.

October 1-2, 1996 - Clinton convenes emergency White House summit with new Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Arafat after unprecedented gun battles and protests over the opening of a tunnel near al-Aqsa mosque, one of Islam's holiest sites in Jerusalem.