page_title: 2008 in Israel
section_title: Events
hierarchical_section_title: 2008 in Israel / Events
caption_attribution_description: English: Shrine of the Báb and its associated terraces at the Bahá'í World Centre, Haifa עברית: מקדש הבאב בחיפה וטראסות גני המרכז הבהאי העולמי
context_page_description: Events in the year 2008 in Israel.
context_section_description: January 21 – The Israeli reconnaissance satellite Ofek-8 is launched.
  January 21 – The senior lecturers' strike at the Israeli universities ends.
  January 30 – The final Winograd Commission report is announced in Binyanei HaUma in Jerusalem.
  April 24 – The United States claims North Korea helped Syria build a nuclear reactor at a site destroyed by Israeli forces in September 2007.
  April 28 – Israeli satellite Amos-3 is launched into space from the Baikonur Cosmodrome space launch facility in Kazakhstan.
  May 12 – Israeli police raid the Jerusalem city hall to seize documents related to alleged bribes received by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert from businessman Moshe Talansky.
  May 4 – Former Finance Minister Avraham Hirschson is indicted with a string of crimes including breach of trust, aggravated fraud, theft, forgery of corporate documents and money laundering.
  July 8 – Baha'i Holy Places in Haifa and Western Galilee are designated by UNESCO as World Heritage Sites.
  July 16 – Hezbollah swaps the bodies of the Israeli soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev in exchange for the Lebanese Druze terrorist, Samir Kuntar, four Hezbollah prisoners captured during the 2006 Lebanon war and the bodies of 199 Palestinian Arab and Lebanese fighters.
  July 30 – Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announces that he would not seek re-election as party leader and that he would resign from his position as Prime Minister immediately after a new Kadima leader was named. One reason for resignation is the corruption scandal in which Olmert is embattled.
  September 17 – Foreign Minister of Israel Tzipi Livni is selected as the new leader of the Kadima party, putting her in position to possibly become the first female Prime Minister of Israel since Golda Meir.
  September 21 – Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert officially submits his resignation to President Shimon Peres. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni begins talks on forming a new government.
  December 16 – 24 Russian tourists are killed when their bus plummets into a ravine near Eilat in southern Israel, making this road accident the deadliest in the state's history.
  December 27 – Population Census: 7,465,500 inhabitants in Israel. 75.5% of them are registered as Jewish (about 5,634,300 people), 20.3% of them are registered as Arabs (about 1,513,200 people), while the remaining 4.2% (about 318,000 people) are registered as "others".
caption: The Baha'i Holy Places in Haifa and the Western Galilee are designated by UNESCO as World Heritage Sites
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