WEST BANK

Arabic Ad-daffah Al-gharbiyah, Hebrew Ha-gadah Ha-ma'aravit, area of the former British-mandated (192047) 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. The approximately 2,270-square-mile (5,900-square-kilometre) area is the centre of contending Arab and Israeli aspirations in Palestine. Within its present boundaries, it represents the portion of the former mandate occupied in 1948 by Arab forces trying to prevent the creation of the Jewish state. The borders and status of the area as a zone of Arab occupation were established by the Jordanian-Israeli armistice of April 3, 1949, though this agreement did not establish Jordanian sovereignty in the West Bank. The West Bank defined by the armistice was broadly similar to one of the zones designated for Arab occupation by the United Nations' partition plan for Palestine in 1947, except for the Israeli salient that connected the Mediterranean coast of Israel with Jerusalem (the city was to have been an international zone, according to that plan). Upon the departure of the British occupying forces in May 1948 and the proclamation of the State of Israel, the Arab powers, rejecting the 1947 partition plan, attacked Israel. In the ensuing war, Israel expanded beyond the territory contemplated by the partition plan. The cease-fire lines formalized by the 1949 armistice defined the borders of Israel in the West Bank, and Jerusalem was divided into Israeli (west) and Jordanian (east) sectors. The Arab state whose creation was envisioned by the 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 the relationship between 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 nation. 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 Arab residents of terrorist activity. This has been attributed to such factors as the relatively light hand of the Israeli administration and its introduction of increased electrification and improved housing and health care to the areaas well as to the difficulty of opposing the Israeli army and the lack of affinity between the West Bank's Palestinian (i.e., Arab) population and neighbouring Arabs, particularly those of Jordan's East Bank. This period of truce began to wane during the late 1970s and early '80s as Israel began a more aggressive course of establishing settlements both as part of Israel's defense perimeter and as extensions of its agricultural economy. By the early '80s the settlements numbered in the scores, although their combined area did not constitute a significant proportion of the whole. Land, businesses, and buildings were expropriated from the Arab inhabitants, many of whom were long absent, having fled the wars of 1948 and 1967. There were, as well, increasing numbers of Israeli acts circumscribing the civil life of the Arab Palestinians. Israeli settlements tended for the most part to be founded on uncultivated land or land to which no clear legal claim existed (though judgments as to the sufficiency of Arab claims rested with Israeli authorities). During the administration of Menachem Begin (197983), 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 unsolved. Israel regarded possession of the West Bank as vital to its security while it remained menaced by neighbouring Jordan and Syria, 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 Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), refused to recognize Israel's right to exist or to negotiate with Israel over the West Bank. Israel in turn refused to recognize or negotiate with the PLO. 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 rioting broke out among the Arabs of the West Bank in December 1987 and became virtually a permanent feature of West Bank life in subsequent years, despite the Israeli army's continued attempts to suppress the disorders. 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. Under the plan, Israel's civilian and military administration would be dissolved and the Israeli army withdrawn from populous Arab areas. In the West Bank, the plan's actual implementation began in May 1994 with the Israelis' withdrawal from the town of Jericho and its environs. Geographically, the West Bank is mostly composed of north-southoriented 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 m). 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. Israel did not actually hamper industrial development, but investment capital remained scarce both in the West Bank and Israel, 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 Janin, Nabulus, and Ram Allah north of Jerusalem and Bethlehem (Bayt Lahm) and Hebron (al-Khalil) south of Jerusalem. Jericho (Ariha) 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. Many Palestinians were displaced after the 1948 and 1967 wars. About 300,000 Palestinians (most of whom were originally from territory captured by Israel in 1948) left the impoverished West Bank for Transjordan (later Jordan) during the year after the 1948 war; and about 380,000 Palestinians fled the West Bank after it was captured by the Israelis in 1967. Between 1967 and 1977 an estimated 6,300 Palestinians were evicted from East Jerusalem and replaced by Jewish immigrants. Pop. (1993 est.) 1,054,000.