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West Bank, West Bank

To the west, north, and south, the West Bank shares borders with the state of Israel, which maintains the security of this area. To the east, across the Jordan River, lies the country of Jordan. The West Bank also contains a significant coastline along the western bank of the Dead Sea. Since 1967, most of the West Bank has been under Israeli military occupation.

At the 1920 San Remo conference, the victorious Allied powers allocated the area to the British Mandate of Palestine which included modern day Jordan and Israel. The 1948 Arab-Israeli War saw the establishment of Israel in parts of the former Mandate, while the territory known as the "West Bank" area was captured by Trans-Jordan. Since it then controlled the territory on both sides of the Jordan river, Trans-Jordan renamed itself Jordan in 1949. Prior to its capture by Jordan and the subsequent renaming, parts of the West Bank had been called Judea and Samaria for more than 2000 years, according to the Tanakh. The 1949 Armistice Agreements defined its interim boundary. From 1948 until 1967, the area was under Jordanian rule, and Jordan did not officially relinquish its claim to the area until 1988. Jordan's claim was never recognized by the international community, with the exception of the United Kingdom. The West Bank was taken control of by Israel, during the Six-Day War in June, 1967. With the exception of East Jerusalem, the West Bank was not annexed by Israel. Most of the residents are Arabs, although a large number of Israeli settlements have been built in the region since 1967.

The analogous Transjordan has historically been used to designate the region now comprising the state of Jordan which lies on the "other side" of the River Jordan. In English, the name Cisjordan is also occasionally used to designate the entire region between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, particularly in the historical context of the British Mandate and earlier times. The use of Cisjordan to refer to the smaller region discussed in this article, while common in scholarly fields including archaeology, is rare in general English usage; the name West Bank is standard usage for this geo-political entity. For the low-lying area immediately west of the Jordan, the name Jordan Valley is used instead.

When the United Nations General Assembly voted in 1947 to partition Palestine into a Jewish State, an Arab State, and an internationally-administered enclave of Jerusalem, a more broad region of the modern-day West Bank was assigned to the Arab State. The West Bank was controlled by Iraqi and Jordanian forces at the end of the 1948 War and the area was annexed by Jordan in 1950 but this annexation was recognized only by the United Kingdom (Pakistan is often, but apparently falsely, Beyond the Veil, Israel-Pakistan Relations P. R. Kumuraswami.

When an armored brigade commander entered the West Bank on his own initiative, and stated that he could see Jericho, Dayan ordered him back. However, when intelligence reports indicated that Hussein had withdrawn his forces across the Jordan river, Dayan ordered his troops to capture the West Bank.

Ramallah, although relatively small in population compared to other major cities, serves as an economic and political center for the Palestinians. Jenin in the extreme north of the West Bank is on the southern edge of the Jezreel Valley. Modi'in Illit, Qalqilyah and Tulkarm are in the low foothills adjacent to the Israeli Coastal Plain, and Jericho and Tubas are situated in the Jordan Valley, north of the Dead Sea.

As the number of internet users is increasing rapidly (year 2005 160.000 users Numerous Palestinian websites are growing to helping the Palestinians communicate and trade through the internet like: Dialling code +970 is used in the West Bank and all over Palestinian territories within Palestinian Authority.

There were a few lesser institutions of higher education; for example, An-Najah, which started as an elementary school in 1918 and became a community college in 1963. As the Jordanian government did not allow the establishment of such universities in the West Bank , Palestinians could obtain degrees only by travelling abroad to places such as Jordan, Lebanon, or Europe.

This means that sovereignty of the West Bank is currently suspended, and, according to some, Israel, as the only successor state to the Palestine Mandate, has a status that "goes beyond that of military occupier alone." Dowty, 2001, p. 217.

The United Nations calls the West Bank and Gaza Strip Israeli-occupied (see Israeli-occupied territories). The United States State Department also refers to the territories as occupied.

President Lyndon Johnson, who wrote in 1991 that Israel has a right to have settlements in the West Bank under 1967's UN Security Council Resolution 242.

Source: Wikipedia > West Bank