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West Bank. City of Bethlehem, West Bank. The name West Bank is a translation of the Arabic term aḍ-Ḍiffah al-Ġarbiyyah, which designates the territory situated on the western side of the Jordan River that was occupied in 1948 and annexed in 1950 by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
- Israeli Occupation of The West Bank
Route of the Barrier. The West Bank, including East...
- Area C (West Bank)
Area C in blue and light blue. East Jerusalem in red. Area C...
- Green Line
Further reading. Gad Barzilai and Ilan Peleg, "Israel and...
- Jerusalem Law
Jerusalem Law (Hebrew: חוֹק יְסוֹד: יְרוּשָׁלַיִם בִּירַת...
- Israeli Enclave Law
An Israeli settlement in the West Bank.. Israeli law is...
- Palestinian territories
Used in West Bank since 1950. +972 also used. The...
- Israeli Occupation of The West Bank
- Overview
- Geography
- History
West Bank, area of the former British-mandated (1920–47) territory of Palestine west of the Jordan River, claimed from 1949 to 1988 as part of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan but occupied from 1967 by Israel. The territory, excluding East Jerusalem, is also known within Israel by its biblical names, Judaea and Samaria.
Within its present boundaries, the West Bank represents the portion of the former mandate retained in 1948 by the Arab forces that entered Palestine after the departure of the British. The borders and status of the area were established by the Jordanian-Israeli armistice of April 3, 1949. In the decades that followed the armistice, Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) each laid claim to the approximately 2,180-square-mile (5,650-square-km) area. Pop. (2017) 2,881,957.
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Geographically, the West Bank is mostly composed of north-south–oriented limestone hills (conventionally called the Samarian Hills north of Jerusalem and the Judaean Hills south of Jerusalem) having an average height of 2,300 to 3,000 feet (700 to 900 metres). The hills descend eastwardly to the low-lying Great Rift Valley of the Jordan River and the Dead Sea. The West Bank does not lie entirely within the drainage system of the Jordan River, as elevated areas in the west give rise to the headwaters of streams flowing westward to the Mediterranean Sea.
Annual rainfall of more than 27 inches (685 mm) occurs in the most highly elevated areas in the northwest and declines in the southwest and southeast, along the Dead Sea, to less than 4 inches (100 mm). Widely variable land-use patterns are dictated by the availability of water. Relatively well-watered nonirrigated terrain in the hills (especially those of Samaria) is used for the grazing of sheep and the cultivation of cereals, olives, and fruits such as melons. Irrigated land in the hills and the Jordan River valley is intensively cultivated for assorted fruits and vegetables.
The industrial development of the West Bank was never strong during the Jordanian period, and by the mid-1960s there were less than a dozen industrial establishments with more than 30 employees in the area. Israeli occupation resulted in constraints on West Bank industrial development; investment capital remained scarce both in the West Bank and Gaza, and only the transportation infrastructure saw much improvement after 1967. This improvement occurred mostly for military reasons, although it also benefited agriculture by facilitating the supply and servicing of markets.
The principal Palestinian municipalities of the West Bank are Jenin, Nablus, and Ramallah north of Jerusalem and Bethlehem and Hebron (Al-Khalīl) south of Jerusalem. Jericho (Arīḥā) is the chief municipality of the Jordan River valley. Several small universities on the West Bank (founded or attaining university status in the 1970s) enroll mostly Palestinian students.
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Upon the departure of the British occupying forces in May 1948 and the proclamation of the State of Israel, the armies of five Arab countries entered Palestine. In the ensuing conflict—the first of the Arab-Israeli wars—Israel expanded beyond the territory contemplated by the partition plan. The West Bank, as demarcated by the Jordanian-Israeli armistice of 1949, was broadly similar to (but smaller than) one of the zones designated as an Arab state by the United Nations (UN) partition plan for Palestine in 1947 (see United Nations Resolution 181). According to that plan, Jerusalem was to have been an international zone. However, the city was instead divided into Israeli (west) and Jordanian (east) sectors. The Arab state whose creation was envisioned by the 1947 UN partition plan never came into being, and the West Bank was formally annexed by Jordan on April 24, 1950, although this annexation was recognized only by Great Britain and Pakistan.
From 1950 until it was occupied by Israel in the Six-Day War of 1967, the West Bank was governed as part of Jordan, though it was divided from the Jordanian population of the East Bank by the Jordan River. The relationship between the East and West banks was uneasy, both because of Palestinian suspicions of the Hashemite dynasty and because of the aspirations of Palestinians in the West Bank for a separate state. The web of relationships connecting the two halves of Jordan grew during this period, however, and by 1967 the West Bank represented about 47 percent of Jordan’s population and about 30 percent of its gross domestic product.
During the 1967 war, Israel occupied the West Bank and established a military administration throughout the area, except in East Jerusalem, which Israel incorporated into itself, extending Israeli citizenship, law, and civil administration to the area. During the first decade of Israeli occupation, there was comparatively little civil resistance to Israeli authorities and very little support among Palestinian residents of resistance activity.
This period of relative calm began to wane during the late 1970s and early ’80s as Israel began a more aggressive course of establishing settlements. By the early ’80s the settlements numbered in the scores. Land, businesses, and buildings were expropriated from the Palestinian inhabitants, many of whom were long absent, having fled the wars of 1948 and 1967. During the administration of Menachem Begin (1979–83), the number of Israeli settlements more than tripled, and the number of Israeli settlers increased more than fivefold. Israeli claims of a right to administer land in the West Bank not cultivated or privately owned (a category that might amount to between 30 and 70 percent of the West Bank, depending on the definitions adopted) gave rise to suspicions that Israel intended ultimately to annex the area piecemeal.
Throughout the 1970s and ’80s the issue of Israeli rule over the West Bank Palestinians remained unresolved. Israel regarded possession of the West Bank as vital to its security, and the growing number of Israeli settlements further stiffened Israeli unwillingness to relinquish control of the area. At the same time, the chief political representative of the West Bank Palestinians, the PLO, refused to negotiate with Israel and, until 1988, was unwilling to recognize Israel’s right to exist; Israel refused to negotiate with or recognize the PLO for years after that date.
In 1988 Jordan’s King Hussein renounced all administrative responsibility for the West Bank, thereby severing his country’s remaining connections with the area. Meanwhile, anti-Israeli protests broke out among the Palestinians of the West Bank in December 1987 and became virtually a permanent feature of West Bank life for the next few years, despite the Israeli army’s continued attempts to suppress the disorders.
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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. The West Bank, so called due to its relation to the Jordan River, is the larger of the two ...
Mar 19, 2024 · Introduction. A complex mix of authorities governs the 5.5 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip and West Bank territories. Palestinians, like Jews, trace their ancestry to the geographic ...
The West Bank is a piece of land in the Middle East. It touches the Dead Sea and the River Jordan. The landscape is mostly hills or desert. The weather in the summer is hot and dry. It is cooler and rainy in the winter. Some Israelis and other nations disagree on whose it really is. Since 1990 there are talks between the Israeli government and ...
