West Bank

This article is about the geographic region. For other uses, see West Bank (disambiguation).

West Bank
الضفة الغربية
הגדה המערבית
Flag of West Bank
Location of the West Bank within the claimed territory of the State of Palestine
Location of the West Bank within the claimed territory of the State of Palestine
Status
Common languagesArabic, Hebrew
Religion
Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Samaritanism
Area
• Total
5,655 km2 (2,183 sq mi)
Population
• 2021 estimate
2,949,246[b]
• Density
522/km2 (1,352.0/sq mi)
CurrencyIsraeli shekel (ILS)
Jordanian dinar (JOD)
Time zoneUTC+2 (Palestine Standard Time)
• Summer (DST)
UTC+3 (Palestine Summer Time)
Calling code+970
ISO 3166 codePS

The West Bank (Arabic: الضفة الغربية, romanized: aḍ-Ḍiffah al-Ġarbiyyah; Hebrew: הַגָּדָה הַמַּעֲרָבִית, romanized: HaGadáh HaMaʽarávit), so called due to its location relative to the Jordan River, is the larger of the two Palestinian territories (the other being the Gaza Strip) that comprise the State of Palestine. A landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the Levant region of West Asia,[6] it is bordered by Jordan and the Dead Sea to the east and by Israel (via the Green Line) to the south, west, and north.[7] Since 1967, the territory has been under Israeli occupation, which had become illegal under international law.[8]

The territory first emerged in the wake of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War as a region occupied and subsequently annexed by Jordan. Jordan ruled the territory until the 1967 Six-Day War, when it was occupied by Israel. Since then, Israel has administered the West Bank as the Judea and Samaria Area, expanding its claim into East Jerusalem in 1980. Jordan continued to claim the territory as its own until 1988. The mid-1990s Oslo Accords split the West Bank into three regional levels of Palestinian sovereignty, via the Palestinian National Authority (PNA): Area A (PNA), Area B (PNA and Israel), and Area C (Israel, comprising 60% of the West Bank). The PNA exercises total or partial civil administration over 165 Palestinian enclaves across the three areas.

The West Bank remains central to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The Palestinians consider it the heart of their envisioned state, along with the Gaza Strip. Right-wing and religious Israelis see it as their ancestral homeland, with numerous biblical sites. There is a push among some Israelis for partial or complete annexation of this land. Additionally, it is home to a rising number of Israeli settlers.[9] Area C contains 230 Israeli settlements into which Israeli law is applied and under the Oslo Accords was supposed to be mostly transferred to the PNA by 1997, but this did not occur.[10] The international community considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank to be illegal under international law.[11][12][13][14] Citing the 1980 law in which Israel claimed Jerusalem as its capital, the 1994 Israel–Jordan peace treaty, and the Oslo Accords, a 2004 advisory ruling by the International Court of Justice concluded that the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, remain Israeli-occupied territory.[15]

The West Bank has a land area of about 5,640 square kilometres (2,180 square miles). It has an estimated population of 2,747,943 Palestinians, and over 670,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank, of which approximately 220,000 live in East Jerusalem.


Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).

  1. ^ "Ban sends Palestinian application for UN membership to Security Council". United Nations News Centre. 23 September 2011. Archived from the original on 10 October 2015. Retrieved 11 September 2015.
  2. ^ "Mideast accord: the overview; Rabin and Arafat sign accord ending Israel's 27-year hold on Jericho and the Gaza Strip" Archived 9 December 2020 at the Wayback Machine. Chris Hedges, The New York Times, 5 May 1994.
  3. ^ "ICJ says Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories is illegal". BBC News. 19 July 2024. Retrieved 19 July 2024.
  4. ^ Roberts, Adam (1990). "Prolonged Military Occupation: The Israeli-Occupied Territories Since 1967" (PDF). The American Journal of International Law. 84 (1): 85–86. doi:10.2307/2203016. ISSN 0002-9300. JSTOR 2203016. S2CID 145514740. Archived from the original (PDF) on 15 February 2020. The international community has taken a critical view of both deportations and settlements as being contrary to international law. General Assembly resolutions have condemned the deportations since 1969, and have done so by overwhelming majorities in recent years. Likewise, they have consistently deplored the establishment of settlements, and have done so by overwhelming majorities throughout the period (since the end of 1976) of the rapid expansion in their numbers. The Security Council has also been critical of deportations and settlements; and other bodies have viewed them as an obstacle to peace, and illegal under international law... Although East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights have been brought directly under Israeli law, by acts that amount to annexation, both of these areas continue to be viewed by the international community as occupied, and their status as regards the applicability of international rules is in most respects identical to that of the West Bank and Gaza.
  5. ^ "West Bank". Central Intelligence Agency. 17 October 2023. Archived from the original on 22 July 2021. Retrieved 25 December 2021.
  6. ^ "West Bank", The World Factbook, Central Intelligence Agency, 27 September 2022, archived from the original on 22 July 2021, retrieved 30 September 2022
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference CIA was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  8. ^ "ICJ says Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories is illegal". BBC News. 19 July 2024. Retrieved 19 July 2024.
  9. ^ "The A to Z of the Arab-Israeli conflict". The Economist. ISSN 0013-0613. Archived from the original on 21 November 2023. Retrieved 21 November 2023.
  10. ^ World Bank 2013, p. vii.
  11. ^ Roberts, Adam (1990). "Prolonged Military Occupation: The Israeli-Occupied Territories Since 1967" (PDF). The American Journal of International Law. 84 (1): 85–86. doi:10.2307/2203016. ISSN 0002-9300. JSTOR 2203016. S2CID 145514740. Archived from the original (PDF) on 15 February 2020. The international community has taken a critical view of both deportations and settlements as being contrary to international law. General Assembly resolutions have condemned the deportations since 1969, and have done so by overwhelming majorities in recent years. Likewise, they have consistently deplored the establishment of settlements, and have done so by overwhelming majorities throughout the period (since the end of 1976) of the rapid expansion in their numbers. The Security Council has also been critical of deportations and settlements; and other bodies have viewed them as an obstacle to peace, and illegal under international law... Although East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights have been brought directly under Israeli law, by acts that amount to annexation, both of these areas continue to be viewed by the international community as occupied, and their status as regards the applicability of international rules is in most respects identical to that of the West Bank and Gaza.
  12. ^ Pertile, Marco (2005). "'Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory': A Missed Opportunity for International Humanitarian Law?". In Conforti, Benedetto; Bravo, Luigi (eds.). The Italian Yearbook of International Law. Vol. 14. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. p. 141. ISBN 978-90-04-15027-0. the establishment of the Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory has been considered illegal by the international community and by the majority of legal scholars.
  13. ^ Barak-Erez, Daphne (2006). "Israel: The security barrier—between international law, constitutional law, and domestic judicial review". International Journal of Constitutional Law. 4 (3): 548. doi:10.1093/icon/mol021. The real controversy hovering over all the litigation on the security barrier concerns the fate of the Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. Since 1967, Israel has allowed and even encouraged its citizens to live in the new settlements established in the territories, motivated by religious and national sentiments attached to the history of the Jewish nation in the land of Israel. This policy has also been justified in terms of security interests, taking into consideration the dangerous geographic circumstances of Israel before 1967 (where Israeli areas on the Mediterranean coast were potentially threatened by Jordanian control of the West Bank ridge). The international community, for its part, has viewed this policy as patently illegal, based on the provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention that prohibit moving populations to or from territories under occupation.
  14. ^ Drew, Catriona (1997). "Self-determination and population transfer". In Bowen, Stephen (ed.). Human rights, self-determination and political change in the occupied Palestinian territories. International studies in human rights. Vol. 52. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. pp. 151–152. ISBN 978-90-411-0502-8. It can thus clearly be concluded that the transfer of Israeli settlers into the occupied territories violates not only the laws of belligerent occupation but the Palestinian right of self-determination under international law. The question remains, however, whether this is of any practical value. In other words, given the view of the international community that the Israeli settlements are illegal under the law if belligerent occupation, what purpose does it serve to establish that an additional breach of international law has occurred?
  15. ^ Domb, Fania (2007). International Law and Armed Conflict: Exploring the Faultlines. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. p. 511. ISBN 978-90-04-15428-5. Archived from the original on 3 March 2023. Retrieved 29 October 2020.