West Bank history

The West Bank's total area is 2,270 square miles (5,880 sq. km), smaller than the area that was originally allocated to a future Arab state by the United Nations partition resolution of November 1947.

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.

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.

In 1978, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza showed strong opposition to the Camp David Accords, which led to Israeli military and administrative repression.

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.

In 1982 the majority of Palestinian mayors were discharged and replaced by Israeli administrators.

Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1985.

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 1992 the Israeli settlement of Maʿale Adumim, with a population of 15,000, became the first Israeli city in the West Bank.

By 2000 the Palestinian Authority (PA) controlled less than one-fifth of the West Bank, while Israeli occupation (in some areas, combined with PA local administration) continued in the remainder. As a result of secret negotiations begun in April 1993, Israel and the PLO reached agreement in September on a plan to gradually extend self-government to the Palestinians of the West Bank (and Gaza Strip) over a five-year period prior to a final settlement of the issue of Palestinian statehood.

Palestinian inhabitants of the West Bank continued until 1995 to be ruled under this system of military government.

In late September 2000 a new uprising, the al-Aqsa Intifada, broke out in the Palestinian territories.

In 2002 Israel reinvaded and reoccupied many West Bank cities.

The total population of the region in 2003 consisted of some 2 million Palestinians in the West Bank, with a further 180,000 Palestinians in East Jerusalem.

After Arafat's death in November 2004, West Bank and Gazan Palestinians elected Mahmoud Abbas (b.

As of 2005 Palestine was not yet an independent sovereign state, although the Palestinian people hoped to achieve independence from Israel.

These developments opened the way for the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to be brought under a unified Palestinian administration for the first time since the 2007 split between Fatah and Hamas.

Fayyad, however, failed to garner wide support among Palestinians and resigned in 2013 as the PA was facing a financial crisis.

On June 2, 2014, two months after the conclusion of a reconciliation agreement between the rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas, a new PA cabinet was sworn in with Hamdallah again as prime minister.

In July 2015, amid growing tensions, Abbas reshuffled the cabinet without consulting Hamas.

Nonetheless, in 2017 Hamas allowed Hamdallah’s government to begin taking on administrative control of the Gaza Strip.

In March 2018 a roadside bomb detonated near Hamdallah’s convoy during a visit to the Gaza Strip.