The Israeli occupation of the West Bank, with its continuing settlement building and military checkpoints, and Palestinian attacks, have slowed progress towards a final agreement and led many on both sides to dispute the worth of the Accords.
Israel retains full control over bypass roads, settlements and the Jordan Valley, and makes incursions into urban areas against armed groups.
In 2005, Israel completed the withdrawal of all its troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip but it retains control of the airspace, seafront and access - including deliveries of food and other goods - apart from the crossing with Egypt.
The Islamist Hamas movement, which runs Gaza, explicitly rejects Oslo and its charter calls for Israel's "nullification".
Separate factions
The Fatah faction of the PLO ran the PNA until 2006, when Hamas won a majority in Legislative Council elections.
Uneasy co-existence between PNA President Mahmoud Abbas and a Hamas-led government led to violence between armed wings of Fatah and Hamas, culminating in Hamas seizing power in Gaza in June 2007 and President Abbas dismissing the government.
The two PNA areas have since been run by the separate factions - the West Bank by Fatah, and Gaza by Hamas. Egyptian-mediated efforts to bring the two factions together met with little success.
Local elections on the West Bank in October 2012 undermined Fatah's position, as it won only two-fifths of the seats contested on a turnout of 55%, with independents and Fatah dissidents making gains. Hamas boycotted the poll, and allowed no elections at all in Gaza.
In 2014 Fatah and Hamas announced a reconciliation deal and formed a unity government, in an attempt to end seven years of sometimes violent division.
The PNA made a symbolic bid for recognition at the UN as the "State of Palestine" in 2011, mainly in an effort to highlight the lack of movement in relations with Israel.
This failed to gain the required support, but UNESCO - the UN cultural and educational agency - did admit the "State of Palestine" as a member in October.
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| Locals enjoy a day out on the beach in the Gaza Strip, a narrow stretch of land on the Mediterranean Sea |
In November 2012, the UN General Assembly voted to upgrade the status of the Palestinians to that of a "non-member observer state" - a move that allows them to take part in General Assembly debates and improves their chances of joining UN agencies.
Palestinian territories
This article is about the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. For the historical region, see Palestine (region). For the recognized state, see State of Palestine. For other uses, see Palestinian territories (disambiguation).
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Palestinian territories
الأراضي الفلسطينية
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"Palestinian territories" and "occupied Palestinian territories" (OPT or oPt) are descriptions often used to describe the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip which are occupied or otherwise under the control of Israel.
Israeli governments have maintained that the area involved is within territorial dispute.
The extent of the territories, while subject to future negotiations, have frequently been defined by the Green Line. The term "Palestinian Territory, Occupied" had been utilized by the UN and other international organizations between 1998 to 2013 in order to refer to the Palestinian National Authority; it was replaced in UN Secretariat communications by the term State of Palestine starting in 2012,
and the ISO adopted the name change in 2013.
However, as of August 2015, the UN Security Council continues to treat Palestine as a non-sovereign entity,
which also prevents its admission to UN General Assembly membership.
Israel occupied the territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the Six-Day War of 1967, which had been earlier occupied by Jordan and Egypt respectively, and has maintained control of them since.
In 1980, Israel officially absorbed East Jerusalem and considers the whole of Jerusalem to be its capital. The inclusion, though never formally amounting to legal annexation, was condemned internationally and declared "null and void" by the United Nations Security Council.
The Palestinian National Authority, the United Nations,
the international legal and humanitarian bodies and the international community regard East Jerusalem as part of the West Bank, and consequently a part of the Palestinian territories. The Palestinian National Authority never exercised sovereignty over the area, although it housed its offices in Orient House and several other buildings as an assertion of its sovereign interests,
until Israel shut them down in response to the Sbarro restaurant suicide bombing.
Israeli sovereignty, however, has not been recognized by any country, since the unilateral annexation of territory occupied during war contravenes the Fourth Geneva Convention.
In 1988, with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) intention to declare a Palestinian State, Jordan renounced all territorial claims to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
Since the Palestinian Declaration of Independence in 1988, 135 UN Member Nations have recognized the State of Palestine, comprising the Palestinian territories. It has not been recognized by Israel and some Western nations, including the United States.
In 1993, following the Oslo Accords, parts of the territories politically came under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian National Authority (Areas A and B). Israel still exercises full military control and, civil control over 61% of the West Bank (Area C). The Oslo Accords established access to the sea for Gaza within 20 nautical miles from the shore. The Berlin Commitment of 2002 reduced this to 12 miles (19 km). In October 2006 Israel imposed a 6-mile limit, and at the conclusion of the Gaza War restricted access to a 3-nautical-mile limit, beyond which a no-go zone exists. As a result, over 3,000 fishermen are denied access to 85% of the maritime areas agreed to in 1995.
The majority of the Dead Sea area is off-limits to Palestinian use, and Palestinians are denied access to its coast line.
Israel disengaged from the Gaza strip in 2005. However, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are still considered to be occupied by Israel according to the international community.
The Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2007 divided the Palestinian territories politically, with Abbas’s Fatah left largely ruling the West Bank and recognized internationally as the official Palestinian Authority (see: Fatah-Hamas conflict).
In 2014, there was an agreement between the two political groups to hold elections and form a compromise unity government.
The 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict intervened; however, the unity government survived.
The Name
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| Flag of Palestine |
There are disagreements over what the Palestinian territories should be called. The United Nations, the European Union, International Committee of the Red Cross and the government of the United Kingdom all refer to the "Occupied Palestinian Territories".
The International Court of Justice refers to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as "the Occupied Palestinian Territory" and this term is used as the legal definition by the International Court of Justice in the ruling in July 2004.
Other terms used to describe these areas collectively include "the disputed territories", and "Israeli-occupied territories". Further terms include "Palestine", "State of Palestine", "Yesha" (Judea-Samaria-Gaza), "Yosh" (Judea and Samaria), the "Katif Bloc" (the south-west corner of the Gaza Strip), "Palestinian Autonomous Areas" (although this term is also used to specifically refer to Areas A and B), "Palestinian Administered Territories", "administered territories", "territories of undetermined permanent status", "1967 territories", and simply "the territories".
Many Arab and Islamic leaders,[who?] including some Palestinians,[who?] use the designation "Palestine" and "occupied Palestine" to imply a Palestinian political or religious claim to sovereignty over the whole former territory of the British Mandate west of the Jordan River, including all of Israel. Many[who?] of them view the land of Palestine as an Islamic Waqf (trust) for future Muslim generations. A parallel exists in the aspirations of David Ben-Gurion, Menachem Begin, and other Zionists and Jewish religious leaders[who?] to establish Jewish sovereignty over all of Greater Israel in trust for the Jewish people. However, this dispute is not related to religion for many Arabs, but simply an issue of rights, as the land was inhabited by Arabs (as well as a minority of Jews) before the Zionist movement began.
Many Israelis[who?] object to the term "Occupied Palestinian Territories" and similar descriptions because they maintain such designations disregard Israeli claims to the West Bank and Gaza, or prejudice negotiations involving possible border changes, arguing that the armistice line agreed to after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War was not intended as a permanent border. Dore Gold wrote, "It would be far more accurate to describe the West Bank and Gaza Strip as "disputed territories" to which both Israelis and Palestinians have claims."
Boundaries
The Palestinian Territories consist of two distinct areas: the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip. The boundaries are defined by the "1967 borders", which correspond with the Green Line. The Green Line represents the armistice lines under the 1949 Armistice Agreements, which brought an end to the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and expressly declared armistice lines, not international borders. Some Palestinian negotiators have claimed a return to those lines as the boundary for a future Palestinian state, while Hamas does not recognize the State of Israel at all.The Arab League has supported these boundaries as the borders of the future State of Palestine in the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative.
The eastern limit of the West Bank is the border with Jordan. The Israel–Jordan peace treaty defined that border as the international border, and Jordan renounced all claims to territory west of it. The border segment between Jordan and the West Bank was left undefined pending a definitive agreement on the status of the territory.
The southern limit of the Gaza Strip is the border with Egypt. Egypt renounced all claims to land north of the international border, including the Gaza Strip, in the Israel-Egypt peace treaty. The Palestinians were not parties to either agreement.
The Gaza Strip is bounded by the Mediterranean Sea. The natural geographic boundary of the West Bank, as the name implies, is the Jordan River. To the Territories belong the territorial waters of the Gaza Strip and the part of the Dead Sea between the West Bank and the Jordan border-line (see adjacent CIA-map),
which are also completely controlled by Israel.
Palestinian state
UN General Assembly Resolution
The Palestinian territories are part of the area intended by the United Nations to become the territory of the future State of Palestine.
Originally, a larger area was allotted to the planned Palestinian state in Resolution 181 of 29 November 1947, but the Arabs rejected it and in the 1948 Palestine war, the Israeli army conquered major parts of it. While in the Partition Plan about 45% of historic Palestine was destined for the Arabic state, the Palestinian territories constitute only some 23%.
The last figure is including all space occupied by Israeli settlements, walls and roads.
In the UN, nearly all countries voted in favour of Resolution 58/292 of 17 May 2004; namely, that the boundaries of a future Palestinian state should be based on the pre-1967 borders, which correspond with the Green Line. The Resolution affirmed, in connection with the Palestinian right to self-determination and to sovereignty, that the independent State of Palestine should be based on the pre-1967 borders.
In Resolution 43/177 of 15 December 1988, the declaration of independence of the State of Palestine was acknowledged by the UN General Assembly,
but it was not admitted as a member state. In the same resolution, their sovereignty over the Occupied Palestinian Territories was recognized.
On 29 November 2012, the UN General Assembly passed United Nations General Assembly resolution 67/19 changing Palestine's observer status at the UN from "entity" to "non-member state" by a vote of 138 to 9, with 41 abstentions.
Capital East Jerusalem
Immediately after the Six Day War of June 1967, Israel effectively annexed East Jerusalem, an area comprising the much smaller prior Jordanian municipality of east Jerusalem and a surrounding area of the West Bank, as far as Kalandia to the north and Har Homa to the south. Israeli law, jurisdiction and administration were applied to this area, which was also made part of the Israeli Jerusalem municipality in its entirety. East Jerusalem residents became Israeli residents with blue Israeli ID cards. In 1980, the Knesset elevated the issue of the unity of Jerusalem to constitutional status by enacting Basic Law: Jerusalem the Capital of Israel, an act which was condemned by much of the world community, the few, mainly Latin American, embassies maintained in west Jerusalem promptly moving to Tel Aviv. Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem lacks international recognition by any country. Seven UNSC resolutions, including United Nations Security Council Resolution 478 declared it "null and void" and required that it be rescinded, stating that it was a violation of international law (the Fourth Geneva Convention). The United Nations never explicitly recognized Jerusalem as part of either Israel or Palestine, as Resolution 181 (1947) was never revoked. In Resolution 181, Jerusalem was intended to become a corpus separatum under international regime. Nevertheless, most countries, including the United States, implicitly recognize West Jerusalem as part of Israel, but do not recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.
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Palestinians regard East Jerusalem as the capital of the future Palestinian state. East Jerusalem is generally recognized as part of the Palestinian Territories. In UN resolutions concerning Israel, East Jerusalem is routinely referred to as part of the West Bank or as part of the Palestinian Territories.
According to the Israeli Supreme Court, the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits unilateral annexation of occupied territory, does not[dubious – discuss] apply to East Jerusalem, as there was no[dubious – discuss] "legitimate sovereign"[citation needed] recognised by Israel and its allies previously exercising control over the territory. In Israel, there has always been large support for retaining all of Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty, although opinions differ regarding the large number of outlying Palestinian villages and neighbourhoods annexed to Jerusalem beyond "core" East Jerusalem (the Old City, Sheikh Jarrah and the large post-1967 Jewish neighborhoods such as Ramot, Ramat Eshkol, French Hill and Gilo). A few times, there were Israeli or U.S. proposals to divide East Jerusalem between Israel and the Palestinians. In the 1995 Beilin-Abu Mazen agreement, Israeli negotiators proposed Palestinian sovereignty over some Arab neighborhoods within an expanded Jerusalem that would include annexed Israeli neighborhoods and major settlement blocs. In 2000, U.S. president Bill Clinton offered a similar proposal in his Clinton Parameters. In more recent years, the Israeli position has strongly been favourable to keeping all of Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty.
Gaza Strip
In 2005, Israel pulled all its remaining forces out of the Gaza Strip and dismantled its settlements. Nevertheless, according to the international community, the Gaza Strip is still considered to be occupied by Israel.[9] Israel has denied that it occupies the Gaza Strip, but two of the three border sectors of the Gaza Strip, together with the coast and airspace, are controlled by Israel (the third border sector near Rafah is controlled by Egypt).
The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 stated in 2007:
Israel remains an occupying Power in respect of Gaza. Arguments that Israel ceased its occupation of Gaza in 2005 following the evacuation of its settlements and the withdrawal of its troops take no account of the fact that Israel retains effective control over Gaza by means of its control over Gaza’s external borders, airspace, territorial waters, population registry, tax revenues and governmental functions. The effectiveness of this control is emphasized by regular military incursions and rocket attacks.
Governance
The political status of the territories has been the subject of negotiations between Israel and the PLO and of numerous statements and resolutions by the United Nations. (See List of United Nations resolutions concerning Israel.) Since 1994, the autonomous Palestinian National Authority has exercised various degrees of control in large parts of the territories, as a result of the Declaration of Principles contained in the Oslo Accords. The United States government considers the West Bank and Gaza as a single entity for political, economic, legal and other purposes.
The State Department and other U.S. government agencies, such as USAID West Bank and Gaza,
have been tasked with projects in the areas of democracy, governance, resources, and infrastructure. Part of the USAID mission is to provide flexible and discrete support for implementation of the Quartet Road Map.The Road Map is an internationally backed plan that calls for the progressive development of a viable Palestinian State in the West Bank and Gaza. Participating states provide assistance through direct contributions or through the Palestinian State account established by the World Bank.
Gaza City in 2007.
Hamas won a majority of seats in elections for the Palestinian Parliament in 2006 and formed a government in Ramallah for the entire PA largely shunned by the United States and Israel. However the Fatah movement continued to dominate the PA security forces in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In 2007, Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip by force, executing PA officers and removing its officials, many of whom, such as Muhammad Dahlan, escaped the Gaza Strip with their families. Mahmoud Abbas promptly deposed the Hamas-dominated PA government, and two rival administrations were created, a Fatah-controlled one in the West Bank, with which Israel, the US and the EU resumed business, and a Hamas-controlled one in the Gaza Strip which was largely shunned by the world community. After Hamas intensified rocket and mortar fire on Israeli civilian centers from the Gaza Strip, the United States and Israel instituted a military and economic blockade of the Gaza Strip.
When that failed to topple the new government, a covert operation was launched to eliminate Hamas by force.
The covert initiative was exposed when confidential State Department documents were accidentally leaked by the U.S. envoy. The talking points delivered to the Fatah leadership said:
Hamas should be given a clear choice, with a clear deadline: they either accept a new government that meets the Quartet principles, or they reject it. The consequences of Hamas’ decision should also be clear: If Hamas does not agree within the prescribed time, you should make clear your intention to declare a state of emergency and form an emergency government explicitly committed to that platform.
Since the Battle of Gaza (2007), the administration of the territories has been contested by two rival factions of the Palestinian National Authority, with Hamas controlling the Gaza Strip and Fatah continuing to administer the West Bank. Both groups claim legitimacy over leadership of the Palestinian territories. Most countries with an interest in the issues, including most of the Arab countries, recognize the administration of Mahmoud Abbas as the legitimate government over both Palestinian Territories.[who?]
During Operation Cast Lead the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1860 (2009), which said that the Gaza Strip constitutes an integral part of the territory occupied in 1967 that will be a part of the Palestinian state.
On 15 December 2011, Iceland recognized Palestine as an independent and sovereign state within the pre-1967 Six-Day War borders; Össur Skarphéðinsson, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Iceland, and Dr. Riad Malki, the Foreign Minister of Palestine, formally confirmed the establishment of full diplomatic relations between Iceland and Palestine.
In 2014, there was an April 2014 agreement between the two political groups to hold elections and form a compromise unity government.
The 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict intervened, however the unity government survived. In August 2014, Palestinian leaders said they would apply to the United Nations Security Council for the establishment of a timetable for ending the Israeli occupation in the West Bank. The application would be made on 15 September 2014, following an Arab League meeting on 5 September 2014 at which support for the move would be requested. Unless a timetable was established, the Palestinian leadership said it would apply to the International Criminal Court where it would hold Israel responsible for its actions not only in the West Bank, but in the Gaza Strip.
