Misplaced Pages

West Bank

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Marknau (talk | contribs) at 02:20, 23 July 2002 (link fix). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 02:20, 23 July 2002 by Marknau (talk | contribs) (link fix)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
File:We-map.jpg

The West Bank is a region of Palestine controlled by Jordan from 1949 to 1967 and by Israel from 1967 to the present. Its boundaries are the result solely of the armistice lines reached during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Many Israelis prefer to call the area Judea and Samaria, in reference to the two biblical kingdoms that once occupied the West Bank (Judah and the Northern Kingdom of Israel, whose capital was, for a time, in the city of Samaria).

The only real geographical border of the West Bank is the Jordan River, from which the area now derives its name -- the East Bank of the Jordan River is the Kingdom of Jordan (once Transjordan). The most densely populated part of the region is a mountainous spine, running north-south, where the cities of Nablus, Ramallah, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Hebron are located. Jenin, in the extreme north of the West Bank is on the southern edge of the Jezreel Valley, Qalqilya and Tulkarm are in the low foothills adjacent to the Israeli coastal plain, and Jericho is situated near the Jordan River, just north of the Dead Sea.

The status of the West Bank, together with the Gaza Strip on the Mediterreanean shore, is currently disputed, though almost everyone agrees that the area will eventually form the basis of a future Palestinian homeland.

Generally, the Arab World considers the West Bank the rightful property of its Arab residents and regards the Israeli presence as an occupation force. Supporters of this view commonly refer to the West Bank and Gaza as the "occupied territories." Some official Arab maps show the West Bank, Gaza, and the rest of the territory bounded by Egypt, the Jordan River, Syria, Lebanon and the Mediterrenean Sea as "Palestine", reflecting a non-recognition of Israel as a state.

This is much too oversimplified. Israeli opinion is split into those who advocate, variously:

  • abandoning the West Bank entirely in hopes of ending Arab attacks on Israel (sometimes called the "land for peace" position)
  • maintaining a military presence in the West Bank to deter surprise attack, while relinquishing some degree of political control
  • annexing the West Bank (sometimes called an "extremist" position)

The West Bank was controlled by Trans-Jordan (now Jordan) prior to the Six-Day war in 1967 when it was captured by Israel. The boundaries of the West Bank with Israel, often known as the "Green Line", are the armistice lines agreed upon with Jordan in the 1949 cease-fire accords.

History

Note: this history should start much further back.

A part of the pre-1948 Mandatory Palestine, the territories now known as West Bank were mostly part of the territory reserved by the 1947 Partition Plan (UN General Assembly Resolution 181) for an Arab state. According to the plan, the city of Jerusalem and the surrounding towns (including Bethlehem and Ramallah) would be an internationally adminsitered territory, whose future would be determined at a later date. While a Palestinian Arab state failed to materialize, the territory was captured by the neighboring kingdom of Jordan. This occupation was not recognized by the UN or by the international community. In the Six-Day War of 1967, Israel captured this territory, but the U.N. did not recognize it either and asked for Israel's withdrawal in Resolution 242. In 1988, Jordan withdrew all claims to it.

The 1993 Oslo accords declared the final status of the West Bank to be a subject to a forthcoming settlement between Israel and the Palestinian leadership. Following the accords, Israel withdrew its military rule from some parts of West Bank, which was then split into:

  • Palestine-controlled, Palestinian-administered land(Area A)
  • Israeli-controlled, but Palestinian-administred land (Area B)
  • Israeli-controlled, Israeli-adminstered land (Area C)

Areas B and C constitute the majority of the territory, made up out of the rural areas, while urban areas per se are mostly Area A.

Israel has been criticized for construction of numerous settlements in the West Bank by supporters of the Palestinian cause. See Israeli settlements for a discussion of this question.

See also Palestine.