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

(Reuters) - Wrapping up his first presidential visit to Israel and the occupied West Bank, U.S. President George W. Bush was leaving Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas with a forceful message of his own: "now is the time to make difficult choices."

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

1978 - Closed-door negotiations with U.S. President Jimmy Carter at Camp David between Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin are 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.

January 15, 1997 - A deal signed by the Palestinians with Netanyahu's government clears the way for the long delayed handover of 80 percent of the West Bank city of Hebron to Palestinian rule.