🏳 West Bank

The Turabay clan collected taxes and oversaw security on major trade routes on behalf of the Ottoman sultans, governing Jenin and the hills north of Nablus. Lajjun became a regional administrative hub before declining in the late seventeenth century, illustrating Ottoman reliance on local Arab elites in frontier districts.

From 1517 until 1917 the territory now called the West Bank was governed from Istanbul as part of Ottoman Syria, until its conquest by British forces in the First World War. Ottoman land tenure law, notably the Land Code of 1858, shaped property relations that later administrations inherited.

In the late Ottoman period the rural population of the West Bank hill country grew substantially, with new hamlets founded and cultivation pushed into forests, marshes and stony slopes. The expansion accompanied agrarian commercialisation, as peasants raised grain output and integrated into regional and international markets.

The San Remo Resolution of 25 April 1920 assigned the territory to the British Mandate of Palestine and incorporated the 1917 Balfour Declaration. Together with Article 22 of the League of Nations Covenant it formed the legal foundation of the Mandate that governed until 1948.

On 11 April 1921 Britain installed Abdullah I as emir of the Emirate of Transjordan. The Hashemite dynasty thus established would later occupy and annex the West Bank.

As successor state to the Ottoman Empire, Turkey gave up claims to the territory in 1923. The area then became an integral part of the British Mandate for Palestine.

On 25 May 1946 Abdullah proclaimed the independence of the Hashemite kingdom east of the Jordan. The new state would shortly extend its rule across the river into the West Bank.

The UN General Assembly's Partition Plan for Palestine (Resolution 181), passed in November 1947, recommended splitting the Mandate into Jewish and Arab states with an internationally administered Jerusalem enclave, allocating the hill country of Samaria and Judea — the future West Bank — to the proposed Arab state. The Arab states opposed the proposal, and the plan was never implemented.

The displacement accompanied the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that followed Israel's declaration of independence in May. The exact number displaced and the circumstances of individual departures are disputed among historians, and the events remain central to Palestinian national identity.

Transjordanian forces took the hill country west of the Jordan River during the war, while Israel occupied other parts of Mandate Palestine. The territory's emergence as a distinct entity dates from this military outcome.

On 15 November 1948 Abdullah received the crown of Jerusalem, symbolising Hashemite claims to the captured territory. The gesture prefigured the formal annexation two years later.

The armistice defined the interim boundary between Israel and Jordan, essentially reflecting the battlefield positions at the end of the war. This line became the enduring reference point for the West Bank's extent and for later peace proposals.

Transjordan, which had captured the area west of the Jordan River in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, formally annexed it in 1950, naming it the West Bank and renaming itself Jordan. Palestinian Arabs there received Jordanian citizenship and half the seats in parliament, though the annexation was recognised internationally only by the United Kingdom and Iraq.

Under Jordanian rule the dinar became the territory's currency and has remained in circulation ever since. Eight Arab banks operated 26 branches, and the West Bank contributed some 40% of Jordanian GNP on the eve of occupation.

The PLO was established in Jerusalem to represent the Palestinian national movement and later came under the leadership of Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction from 1969. It became the internationally recognised representative of the Palestinian people at the United Nations in 1974.

In 1966, 43% of a 55,000-strong labour force worked in agriculture with 2,300 square kilometres under cultivation, while in 1965 some 15,000 industrial workers produced 7% of GNP. The territory held 80% of Jordan's fruit-growing land and 40% of its vegetable land, and growth ran at 6–8% a year before occupation.

Immediately after the 1967 war the legal counsellor of Israel's Foreign Ministry advised ministers that building settlements in occupied territory contravened international law. The advice was not followed, and settlement construction proceeded.

Following the Six-Day War the Council called for Israeli withdrawal to the 1949 armistice lines in exchange for peace and mutual recognition. The resolution became the basic framework invoked in subsequent negotiations.

With the occupation of East Jerusalem Israel took over the museum and its holdings. The seizure formed part of a wider transformation of Palestinian cultural and institutional life after the conquest.

Soon after the 1967 war Allon proposed annexing a strip along the Jordan River valley while excluding densely Palestinian areas near the pre-1967 border. The final 1970 draft would have annexed about half of the West Bank.

Immediately after occupation the economy grew rapidly, with wages earned in Israel the major factor in Palestinian growth during the 1969–73 boom. Export earnings, however, collapsed as the territory was cut off from Jordanian markets.

The April 1967 poll was the final Jordanian election in which West Bank residents participated. Their parliamentary representatives remained in office until 1988, when the West Bank seats were abolished.

Israeli forces took the territory from Jordan in June 1967, ending nineteen years of Jordanian rule. Apart from East Jerusalem and the former no man's land, the West Bank was not annexed and remained under direct military government until 1982; the occupation continues and has been ruled unlawful by the ICJ.

The first two military orders had referred to the "Occupied West Bank", but from military order no. 187 in December 1967 Israeli authorities adopted the term Judea and Samaria. It remains Israel's official administrative designation for the West Bank excluding East Jerusalem.

By June 1967 only a third of West Bank land had been registered under Jordan's land law, and in 1968 Israel closed the registration route. The measure left most land title undocumented, easing later state appropriation for settlement.

The order of 14 June 1970 empowered the local commander to prohibit any building he judged a danger to Israeli security. It became a central instrument of planning control over Palestinian development.

The Roman Catholic Lasallian institution, partly funded by the Vatican, admitted its first students in 1973. It began a wave of higher-education foundations that reduced Palestinian dependence on foreign universities.

The 1974 Rabat summit resolution transferred political representation of Palestinians from Jordan to the Palestine Liberation Organization. It undercut Amman's claim to speak for the West Bank and prefigured Jordan's 1988 disengagement.

After adding third- and fourth-year programmes the college north of Ramallah attained university status. An-Najah in Nablus followed in 1977 and Hebron University in 1980, building a domestic higher-education system.

Resolution 446 stated that Israeli settlement practices in territories occupied since 1967 had no legal validity and called on Israel to abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention. From 1979 major international bodies have consistently described the West Bank as occupied Palestinian territory.

Israel claimed Jerusalem as its capital in 1980, separating East Jerusalem from the rest of the occupied West Bank administratively. The UN Security Council responded with Resolution 478 declaring the law null and void.

Following the Egypt–Israel peace treaty, civil matters were transferred from the IDF to civil servants under the Ministry of Defense in 1982. Israeli settlements were administered separately as the Judea and Samaria Area directly by Israel.

The uprising, beginning in December, involved widespread protests, strikes and clashes that continued for several years. It brought international attention to Palestinian demands and contributed to the diplomatic process that led to the Oslo Accords.

The declaration, made in Algiers in November by PLO chairman Yasser Arafat, was recognised by dozens of states in the following months. It did not establish effective control over territory, which the PLO did not gain until the Oslo Accords five years later.

In 1988 Jordan relinquished its claim to the territory, abolished the West Bank parliamentary seats and eventually stripped West Bank Palestinians of Jordanian citizenship. The move left the PLO as the sole claimant to the territory's political future.

The Oslo Accords, signed in Washington in September 1993, established mutual recognition between Israel and the PLO and created the Palestinian National Authority to govern parts of the West Bank and Gaza. The Accords gave the PA full control over roughly 11% of the West Bank (Area A), joint control over 28% (Area B) and left about 61% under full Israeli control (Area C). Area C, containing the land, water and quarry resources needed for a viable state, was to pass to the Palestinians by 1997–99 but never did; the Accords were intended as an interim step toward a permanent settlement that was never concluded.

Under a series of agreements signed between 1994 and 1999, stemming from the Oslo process, Israel handed the PA responsibility for many Palestinian-populated areas of the West Bank as well as the Gaza Strip.

The 1994 treaty settled relations between the two states and was later cited in legal argument over the West Bank's status. The ICJ referred to it in concluding in 2004 that the territory remained occupied.

Between 1994 and 1997 the IDF constructed bypass roads through the territories, taking land close to Palestinian villages. The network connected settlements while fragmenting Palestinian movement.

Ratification on 14 December 1994 bound Israel to consider the dangers posed to occupied populations by any transfer of waste. Critics note landfills such as Al-Jiftlik serving Israeli settlements and cities inside Israel.

The PWA was established in 1995 to manage water and sanitation in the territories. Access to sewer networks rose from 39% of households in 1999 to 55% in 2011.

The 1995 foundation brought several existing colleges and faculties into a single university. It consolidated Palestinian higher education in the Jerusalem area.

Protectionist policies so distorted trade that by 1996 nine-tenths of West Bank imports came from Israel. Palestinian consumers paid more than they would have with commercial autonomy.

Founded outside Zababdeh in 2000, it offered courses on the American system of education. It broadened the range of higher-education provision in the territory.

The coordinated 9 June measures targeted individuals and organisations accused of funding and enabling attacks on Palestinian communities. The move followed a series of similar, narrower sanctions by individual governments over the preceding year.

The 26 June demonstrations were among the first open displays of anti-Hamas sentiment in Gaza in more than a year. Hamas deployed armed operatives onto the streets to suppress the protests.

Lists loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas won most contested seats in the 26 April vote, including some in Gaza's Deir al-Balah. A Hamas-aligned list took only two of 15 seats contested there.

The February 2026 plan aimed to strengthen administrative control over settlements and their surrounding regions. Analysts read it as part of an effort to annex the West Bank in practice.

The 2 February reopening, under joint Israeli and Egyptian supervision, restored a limited flow of people and goods between Gaza and Egypt. The crossing had been closed to regular traffic since May 2024.

The 5 January approval allowed Palestinian operators to import equipment that had been held up for years. Palestinian telecoms had long operated on older networks than Israeli and settler providers in the same territory.

In the first three months of 2026 an unprecedented number of Palestinians were displaced by settler attacks and access restrictions, often followed by new settler outposts. Reports described coercive environments including sexual violence and threats used to force families from their homes, with settler numbers reaching some 750,000.

The 19 December declaration followed the world's first formal famine finding in the Middle East, made in August 2025 for Gaza Governorate. Humanitarian agencies said conditions remained fragile and access continued to vary across the territory.

The 17 November resolution welcomed the creation of a Board of Peace to oversee Gaza's postwar governance and reconstruction, and endorsed an international force to help maintain security. Implementation timelines were not immediately specified.

The exchange on 13 October followed the Israeli cabinet's ratification of a ceasefire three days earlier, ending two years of war. Israel released 1,968 Palestinian prisoners, including 250 serving life sentences for security offences.

The 16 September report said Israel's conduct met four of five legal criteria for genocide under international law. Israel rejected the findings as biased and unfounded, saying its military actions targeted Hamas fighters.

The recognitions, announced between 21 and 23 September, came alongside a UN General Assembly session and roughly doubled the number of Western states recognising Palestinian statehood. Israel and the United States rejected the move as premature and rewarding Hamas.

OCHA documented more than 1,800 settler attacks in 2025, the highest annual total recorded and the ninth consecutive yearly increase. Hundreds of incidents targeted wells, springs, reservoirs and water infrastructure, and security forces were reported present without intervening.

Human Rights Watch documented the forcible removal of 36,000 people from camps in Tulkarem, Nur Shams and Jenin in January and February 2025. The investigation called them the largest expulsions since 1967 and characterised them as ethnic cleansing, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In a 2024 advisory opinion the ICJ found Israel's occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem unlawful, and held that its conduct violated the international prohibition on racial segregation and apartheid. By June 2024, 146 of 193 UN member states recognised the State of Palestine.

The 7 October attack killed about 1,200 people in Israel and saw roughly 250 taken hostage. The following war caused widespread destruction in Gaza and a large number of Palestinian deaths; estimates vary widely between sources and remain disputed.

The 2020 American plan departed sharply from earlier frameworks for the West Bank's future. It formed part of the shifting diplomatic context around annexation debates.

The UN identified firms operating in or with West Bank settlements, describing the violations as pervasive and devastating for Palestinians. The list gave commercial substance to the legal findings on settlement illegality.

The December 2016 resolution declared Israeli settlement activity to have no legal validity. It restated the international legal consensus at a moment of accelerating settlement growth.

On 31 August 2014 Israel announced the appropriation of 400 hectares to house 1,000 Israeli families, reported as a response to the kidnapping and murder of Israeli teenagers. It was among the largest single land seizures of the period.

The Israeli government and President Mahmud Abbas resumed direct talks in July 2013 after a lengthy hiatus.

The 2013 report found that respecting the Interim Agreement and lifting restrictions in Area C would raise output in a few key industries by 23% of 2011 Palestinian GDP, cut the PA deficit by half and lift employment by 35%. Related estimates put losses from quarrying bans at US$241 million and from Dead Sea minerals at up to US$918 million annually.

The resolution, passed in November with 138 votes in favour, allowed Palestine to join UN bodies and international treaties despite continued opposition from Israel and the United States. It fell short of full UN membership, which requires Security Council approval.

The EU adopted a report documenting how Israeli control of Area C constrained Palestinian development. It cited a fall in Jordan Valley Palestinian population from 200,000–320,000 before 1967 to 56,000.

The June 2011 report found Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza subjected in 2010 to abuses by the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and Israeli authorities. PA and Hamas security forces were held responsible for torture, arrests and arbitrary detention.

The US President officially stated support for a future Palestinian state based on the borders before the 1967 war, allowing mutually agreed land swaps. It marked an explicit American statement of the territorial baseline for negotiations.

The rival factions reached a reconciliation agreement in early 2011 but have struggled to implement details on governance and security. The status quo remains, with HAMAS in control of the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian Authority governing the West Bank.

Negotiations relaunched in September 2010 broke down within weeks, in late 2010, over the issue of continued Israeli settlement construction.

Jawwal had monopolised the Palestinian mobile market until 2007, and Wataniya began service in 2009. Internet users rose from 35,000 in 2000 to 356,000 in 2010.

An order of 30 December 2007 made both the Prime Minister and Defence Minister approve all West Bank settlement activity, including planning. It centralised political responsibility for settlement expansion.

The census, including East Jerusalem, put the Palestinian Arab population at 2.345 million, though the World Bank and an American-Israeli research group disputed enrolment-based projections. The Israeli Civil Administration counted 2,657,029 Palestinians by May 2012.

Days of fighting in June followed months of tension after Hamas's 2006 election victory and an attempted power-sharing arrangement. The takeover left the Palestinian territories politically split between Hamas-run Gaza and the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

The January vote was the first Palestinian legislative election in a decade and defeated the long-dominant Fatah party. Israel, the United States and the European Union responded by cutting direct aid to the Hamas-led government.

After Arafat died in late 2004, Abbas, head of the Fatah party, was chosen as PLO Executive Committee Chairman and elected PA president in January 2005. Israel and the PA subsequently agreed to move the peace process forward.

In late 2005 Israel dismantled its military facilities in Gaza and redeployed its military from several West Bank settlements, though it continues to control maritime, airspace and other access.

The advisory opinion of 9 July 2004 held that the territories between the Green Line and the former eastern boundary of Mandate Palestine were occupied by Israel in 1967, and that the Fourth Geneva Convention applied de jure. The Israeli Supreme Court in the same year's Beit Sourik case likewise applied the Hague Regulations and the Convention.

The resolution of 17 May 2004 declared that the Palestinian people hold the right of sovereignty over the West Bank including East Jerusalem. It reinforced the legal basis for statehood claims.

In early 2003 the Quartet of the US, EU, UN and Russia proposed a roadmap to a settlement by 2005, calling for two states — Israel and a democratic Palestine.

Building started on 23 June 2002, two years into the Second Intifada, on a route approved at 708 km and largely inside the West Bank, diverging from the Green Line to enclose major settlements. Supporters credit it with cutting terror attacks by around 90% between 2002 and 2005; by 2020 some 454 km had been built.

In 2002 the EU as a whole declared Israeli settlement activities in the occupied territories unlawful. The position underpinned later EU reporting on Area C and settlement products.

The conference of 5 December 2001 called on Israel as occupying power to respect the Convention fully in the Occupied Palestinian Territory including East Jerusalem. It reaffirmed that the settlements and their extension were illegal.

The only airport in the West Bank, near Ramallah, has been shut since 2001. Its closure left air access wholly dependent on Israeli-controlled facilities.

The Second Intifada, or Al-Aqsa Intifada, began in September 2000 after a visit by Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon to the Temple Mount / Haram al-Sharif compound in Jerusalem. Years of violence followed, with thousands of Palestinian and Israeli deaths before it subsided by around 2005, along with a sharp increase in attacks on Israeli civilians and severe movement restrictions in the West Bank; Ramallah was cut off from all its feeder villages that year and unemployment stayed above 20% thereafter.