Does Israel have rights to settlements in the West Bank?
Settlements on “state land” often expand into surrounding, privately owned, Palestinian land. As an occupying power, Israel does not own the West Bank and is not permitted under international law to seize land in this manner. Based on the law in the West Bank, a state is only allowed to expropriate private land for public Palestinian needs.
How much land do West Bank settlements take up?
The overall area in dispute is very small. According to one organization critical of settlements, the built-up areas constitute only 1.7% of the West Bank. That is less than 40 square miles. Even if you add the unbuilt areas falling within the municipal boundaries of the settlements, the total area is only 152 square miles. Outposts
Are the Israeli settlements on the West Bank legal?
Israeli settlements in the West Bank are legal both under international law and the agreements between Israel and the Palestinians. Claims to the contrary are mere attempts to distort the law for political purposes. Yet whatever the status of the settlements, their existence should never be used to justify terrorism.
Is West Bank and Palestine the same?
The term "Palestinian territories" has been used to describe the territories delimited by the 1949 Armistice borders within the former British Mandate for Palestine, that were occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War of 1967, namely the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip.The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has referred to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as ...
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How many settlers live in the West Bank 2021?
450,000 IsraeliWest BankCountries/territoriesState of Palestine, IsraelPopulation2,949,246 (July 2021 est.) Note: over 450,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank (2021); approximately 227,100 Israeli settlers live in East Jerusalem (2019) [2]Area5,655 km2 (2,183 sq mi)LanguagesPalestinian Arabic, Israeli Hebrew6 more rows
What percent of the West Bank is Israeli settlements?
Roughly 75 percent of settlers live on or near the West Bank border with Israel.
How much of West Bank is occupied?
Daily life under occupation: trapped and oppressed Israel claims the winding 700-km fence/wall is there to prevent armed attacks on Israel by Palestinians. But that does not explain why 85% of it is built on Palestinian land, including land deep inside the West Bank.
Has Israel stolen land?
Israel has declared at least 26 percent of the West Bank as “state land”. Using a different interpretation of Ottoman, British and Jordanian laws, Israel stole public and private Palestinian land for settlements under the pretext of “state land”.
Who owned the West Bank before Israel?
West Bank, Arabic Al-Ḍaffah al-Gharbiyyah, Hebrew Ha-Gadah Ha-Maʿaravit, 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.
How much land has Palestine lost to Israel?
During and immediately following the state's creation in 1948, Israel expropriated approximately 4,244,776 acres of Palestinian land. In the process, more than 400 Palestinian cities and towns were systematically destroyed by Israeli forces or repopulated with Jews.
Is Israel occupying Palestine land?
BACKGROUND: Palestinian territory – encompassing the Gaza Strip and West Bank, including East Jerusalem – has been illegally occupied by Israel since 1967.
Who Owns the West Bank?
IsraelPresently, most of the West Bank is administered by Israel though 42% of it is under varying degrees of autonomous rule by the Fatah-run Palestinian Authority. The Gaza Strip is currently under the control of Hamas.
Does Israel have a right to the West Bank?
Israel claims historical and religious rights to the West Bank as the ancestral land of the Jewish people. It also says its presence there - especially in the Jordan Valley - is strategically vital for its self-defence.
How big is the West Bank?
2,263 mi²West Bank / Area
What was the occupation of the West Bank in 1967?
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.
When did the West Bank become a permanent feature?
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.
Which two countries split in the Gaza Strip?
The increasingly violent power struggle between Hamas and Fatah resulted in a split between the West Bank, run by Fatah through the emergency PA government, and the Gaza Strip, controlled by Hamas.
How many Palestinians were displaced after the 1948 war?
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, and many others lost their residency rights under the 1992–96 government of Benjamin Netanyahu.
What countries occupied Palestine in 1948?
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.
What are the Palestinian towns in the West Bank?
The principal Palestinian municipalities of the West Bank are Janīn, Nāblus, and Ramallah north of Jerusalem and Bethlehem (Bayt Laḥm) 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.
What is the West Bank?
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.
Who collects the population statistics for Israeli settlements in the West Bank?
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The population statistics for Israeli settlements in the West Bank are collected by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics. As such, the data contains only population of settlements recognized by the Israeli authorities.
How many settlers were there in 2012?
The total number of settlers east of the barrier lines in 2012 was at least 67,702, plus 11,528 in the Jordan Valley. By comparison, the number of Gaza Strip settlers in 2005 who refused to move voluntarily and be compensated, and that were forcibly evicted during the Israeli disengagement from Gaza was around 9,000.
Is the population of the Nahal settlement tracked?
Israeli outposts are not tracked, and their population is hard to establish. In addition to these, Nahal settlements are formally considered military outposts, and their population is counted, but not reported. Once a Nahal settlement becomes a civilian locality, it starts to be reported.
Where is the West Bank?
The West Bank ( Arabic: الضفة الغربية aḍ-Ḍiffah al-Ġarbiyyah; Hebrew: הגדה המערבית HaGadah HaMa'aravit or יהודה ושומרון Yehuda VeShomron) is a landlocked territory near the Mediterranean coast of Western Asia, bordered by Jordan and the Dead Sea to the east and by Israel to the south, west and north.
Which country occupied the West Bank in 1948?
In 1948, Jordan occupied the West Bank and annexed it in 1950. In 1967, Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan in the Six-Day War.
How many countries are there in Palestine?
As of February 2020, 134 (69.4%) of the 193 member states of the United Nations have recognised the State of Palestine within the Palestinian territories, which are recognized by Israel to constitute a single territorial unit, and of which the West Bank is the core of the would-be state. City of Jericho, West Bank.
Why does the Palestinian public oppose Israeli military and settler presence on the West Bank?
Palestinian public opinion opposes Israeli military and settler presence on the West Bank as a violation of their right to statehood and sovereignty. Israeli opinion is split into a number of views:
What was the Oslo agreement?
The Oslo Accords, signed between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel, created administrative districts with varying levels of Palestinian autonomy within each area. Area C, in which Israel maintained complete civil and security control, accounts for over 60% of the territory of the West Bank.
What is the name of the city in the West Bank?
City of Bethlehem, West Bank. The name West Bank is a translation of the Arabic term ad-Diffah I-Garbiyyah, given to the territory west of the Jordan River that fell, in 1948, under occupation and administration by Jordan, which subsequently annexed it in 1950.
How many people worked in agriculture in 1966?
The West Bank, despite its smaller area, contained half of Jordan's agricultural land. In 1966, 43% of the labor force of 55,000 worked in agriculture, and 2,300 km 2 were under cultivation. In 1965, 15,000 workers were employed in industry, producing 7% of the GNP.
Where are the settlements in the West Bank?
Facts About Jewish Settlements in the West Bank. The term “ Settlements ” usually refers to the towns and villages that Jews established in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and the Gaza Strip (prior to the disengagement) since Israel captured the area in the Six-Day War of 1967. In some cases, the settlements are in the same area ...
How much of the West Bank is built up?
The overall area in dispute is very small. According to one organization critical of settlements, the built-up areas constitute only 1.7% of the West Bank. That is less than 40 square miles. Even if you add the unbuilt areas falling within the municipal boundaries of the settlements, the total area is only 152 square miles.
How many Jews will live in Israel in 2020?
In 2004, for example, Arnon Soffer, Israel’s most prominent demographer, forecast that in 2020 approximately 6,300,000 Jews would live in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza combined while the Palestinian population would be 8,740,000 leaving the Jews as the minority (42% – down from the current 74%) in their own country.
What percentage of the West Bank was annexed by Israel?
Instead of calling for the establishment of a Palestinian state in more than 90% of the West Bank, the plan envisioned a state in 70% and, rather than expecting Israel to dismantle and evacuate a majority of settlements, it approved of Israel’s annexation of all the settlements.
How many settlements are there in Israel in 2021?
The estimate for the Jewish population in 128 West Bank settlements at the beginning of 2021 was 475,481, roughly 5 percent of Israel’s total population.
What political parties supported Israel during the Six Day War?
Following Israel’s resounding victory over the Arab armies in the Six-Day War, strategic concerns led both of Israel’s major political parties - the Labor and Likud - to support and establish settlements at various times. The first settlements were built by Labor governments from 1968 to 1977, with the explicit objective to secure a Jewish majority in key strategic regions of the West Bank - such as the Tel Aviv - Jerusalem corridor - that were the scene of heavy fighting in several of the Arab-Israeli wars. In 1968, only five sparsely populated settlements existed beyond the Green Line.
Why did Jews move to the West Bank?
A third group of Jews who are today considered “settlers,” moved to the West Bank primarily for economic reasons ; that is, the government provided financial incentives to live there, and the towns were close to their jobs.
How many settlement outposts were there in the West Bank?
In addition, there were approximately 110 “settlement outposts” located throughout the West Bank. The outposts do not have official government recognition, although many of them were established with governmental assistance. Outposts are generally smaller than recognized settlements.
How many settlers are there in the West Bank?
There are an estimated 622,670 settlers in the West Bank.
How much did the settlement population increase in 2017?
According to the CBS, the annual growth rate of the settler population (excluding East Jerusalem) in 2017 was 1.75 times greater than that of the population in Israel: an annual increase of 3.5% in the settlements versus 2% in Israel.
What are outposts in Israel?
Outposts are generally smaller than recognized settlements. Eleven large Israeli neighborhoods were built in areas that Israel annexed to the Jerusalem Municipality after 1967. These neighborhoods are also considered settlements under international law.
Where do the West Bank settlers live?
Still, these fervent settlers are a vocal and highly visible minority. They generally live in smaller settlements, located deep inside the West Bank.
How many Israelis live in the West Bank?
The population of Israelis living in the West Bank has mushroomed over the years. An estimated 430,000 Israeli Jews now live in 132 officially recognized “settlements” and in 121 unofficial “outposts” that require, but haven’t yet received, government approval.
Why are there checkpoints in the West Bank?
The Israeli army security checkpoints that dot the West Bank, which are meant to protect Israelis from terror attacks, also restrict and complicate the ability of Palestinian people to move around.
Why is the West Bank considered occupied territory?
According to the International Court of Justice, the UN’s main judicial body, the West Bank is considered occupied territory because it was not part of Israel before the Israeli army conquered it in 1967. Territorial conquest is also forbidden by international law. The Israeli government says that the Geneva Convention is not applicable to ...
Why do Jews live in the West Bank?
Most Jewish settlers in the West Bank, however, live there for economic reasons. Israeli government investment and incentives aimed at encouraging Jews to settle there make the cost of living lower than inside Israel.
What are the Palestinians' claims to the West Bank?
Palestinians contend that Israeli settlements in the West Bank are built on stolen land and that the settlers’ use of water – a scarce resource – is likewise illegal.
Why is the Geneva Convention not applicable to the West Bank?
The Israeli government says that the Geneva Convention is not applicable to the West Bank because it only refers to a state occupying another state’s land. Israel considers the West Bank “disputed territory,” not occupied territory.
Which country occupied the West Bank?
Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan in the 1967 war and has occupied the territory ever since. The Fourth Geneva Convention, ratified by 192 nations in the aftermath of World War II, says that an occupying power “shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”.
How many settlements have been built in Israel?
Israel has built about 130 formal settlements in the West Bank since 1967. A similar number of smaller, informal settlement outposts have gone up since the 1990s, without government authorization but usually with some government support.
What is the birthright of the West Bank?
Some of the settlements are home to religious Zionists who believe that the West Bank, which Israel refers to by its biblical names of Judea and Samaria, is their biblical birthright . Many secular and ultra-Orthodox Jews also moved there largely for cheaper housing.
Where is Givat Zeev?
Givat Zeev, an Israeli settlement near the Palestinian city of Ramallah in the West Bank. Credit... The Trump administration’s declaration Monday that Israeli settlements on the West Bank are “not inconsistent with international law” reversed American policy on the settlements and contradicted the view of most countries. ...
When did Israel capture Jerusalem?
Israel also captured East Jerusalem in 1967, and annexed it. The Palestinians demand East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state, and much of the world still considers it occupied territory. Most of the world views the expansion of Israeli settlements as an impediment to a peace agreement.
Is it illegal to build a settlement in Israel?
The Israeli Supreme Court and the government do consider settlement construction on privately owned Palestinian land to be illegal. Under the Oslo Accords, signed by Israel and the Palestinians in the 1990s, both sides agreed that the status of Israeli settlements would be resolved by negotiation.
When did the International Court of Justice reject the settlements?
The International Court of Justice rejected that argument in an advisory opinion in 2004, ruling that the settlements violated international law.
Dangerous harvest: Soldiers arrest five children, 9 to 13, and detain them for hours
On Wednesday morning, March 10, 2021, at around 8:00 A.M., a group of children from the village of Um Lasafa, which lies east of the town of Yatta, went out to pick wild greens in the fields east of the village. The children – brothers Zeid (11) and…
State Business
Settler violence against Palestinians is a daily matter in the West Bank. Instead of taking preventive action, the Israeli authorities aid and abet the settlers in harming Palestinians and using their land. The report shows how settler violence is…
Overview
History
From 1517 through 1917, the area now known as the West Bank was under Turkish rule as part of Ottoman Syria.
At the 1920 San Remo conference, the victorious Allies of World War I allocated the area to the British Mandate of Palestine (1920–1948). The San Remo Resolution, adopted on 25 April 1920, incorporated the Balfour Declaration of 1…
Etymology
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 subsequently annexed in 1950 by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. This annexation was widely considered to be illegal, and was recognized only by Iraq, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom.
Public opinion
Palestinian public opinion opposes Israeli military and settler presence on the West Bank as a violation of their right to statehood and sovereignty. Israeli opinion is split into a number of views :
• Complete or partial withdrawal from the West Bank in hopes of peaceful coexistence in separate states (sometimes called the "land for peace" position); (In a 2003 poll, 76% of Israelis supported a peace agreement based on that principle).
Geography
The West Bank has an area of 5,628 square kilometres (2,173 sq mi), which comprises 21.2% of former Mandatory Palestine (excluding Jordan) and has generally rugged mountainous terrain. The total length of the land boundaries of the region are 404 kilometres (251 miles). The terrain is mostly rugged dissected upland, some vegetation in the west, but somewhat barren in the east. The ele…
Crossing points
Allenby Bridge, or ‘King Hussein Bridge’, is the main port for the Palestinian in the West Bank to the Jordanian borders. This crossing point is controlled by Israel since 1967. It was inaugurated on 11 December 2011 under the military order "175" entitled ‘An order concerning transition station’. Later, Order ‘446’ was issued which annexed the Damia Bridge crossing point to the Allenby Bridge as a commercial crossing point only. Goods were exported to Jordan, while the i…
Economy
As of the early-21st century, the economy of the Palestinian territories is chronically depressed, with unemployment rates constantly over 20% since 2000 (19% in the West Bank in first half of 2013).
Consequences of occupation
According to a 2013 World Bank report, Israeli restrictions hinder Palestinian economic development in Area C of the West Bank. A 2013 World Bank report calculates that, if the Interim Agreement was respected and restrictions lifted, a few key industries alone would produce US$2.2 billion per annum more (or 23% of 2011 Palestinian GDP) and reduce by some US$800 million (50%) the Palestinian Authority's deficit; the employment would increase by 35%.
History of The Settlement Movement
Outposts
- Outposts are settlements typically constructed by a handful of people without government authorization. In 2003, President George W. Bush asked Israel to remove illegal outposts as part of the road map for peace. Israel subsequently removed some outposts; however, in February 2017, the Knessetpassed the Regularization Law, which legalized outposts, including those buil…
Legalities
- Another charge is that settlements are “illegal.” On November 18, 2019, Secretary of State Michael Pompeo expressed the Trump administration’s position that “the establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bankis not per se inconsistent with international law.” The idea that settlements are illegal derives primarily from UN resolutions and the International Court of J…
Obstacles?
- Since 1967, Israelis have been divided over two competing ideas of what to do with the territories captured in the war. The Land for Peace advocates argue that Israel should evacuate most of the area in exchange for a peace agreement that provides Israelis with peace and security. By contrast, the proponents of Greater Israel insist that the land is part of the biblical homeland of th…
Rights Versus Wisdom
- The implication of many settlement critics is that it would be better for peace if the West Bank were Judenrein. It would certainly be called racist if Jews were barred from living in New York, Paris or London; barring them from living in the West Bank, the cradle of Jewish civilization, would be no less objectionable. On the other hand, though Jews may have the right to live in the territo…