West Bank - History

History

The region now known as the West Bank was a part of the territory entrusted to the United Kingdom by the League of Nations under the British Mandate for Palestine after World War I. The terms of the Mandate called for the creation in Palestine of a Jewish national home without prejudicing the civil and religious rights of the non-Jewish population of Palestine. The current border of the West Bank was not a dividing line during the Mandate period, but is the armistice line between the forces of the kingdom of Jordan and those of Israel at the close of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

When the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution in 1947 recommending the adoption and implementation of a plan to partition the British Mandate (United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181(II)) 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. In the 1948 Arab-Israeli War most of the area assigned to the Arab State was occupied by Jordanian and Iraqi forces. Jordan annexed the West Bank after the war, and the annexation was recognized by the UK. The idea of an independent Palestinian state was not raised by the Arab populations there at the time, due to lack of political representation. King Abdullah of Jordan was crowned King of Jerusalem and granted Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank and East Jerusalem Jordanian citizenship.

The interim boundary between Israel and Jordan's West Bank was defined in the 1949 Armistice Agreements. Jordan ruled over the West Bank from 1948 until 1967, annexing it in 1950. Jordan's claim was never formally recognized by the international community, with the exception of the United Kingdom.

During the 1950s, there was a significant influx of Palestinian refugees and violence together with Israeli reprisal raids across the "Green Line".

In May 1967 Egypt ordered out U.N. peacekeeping troops and re-militarized the Sinai peninsula, and commenced an economic blockade of Israel through the straits of Tiran at the same time. Fearing an Egyptian attack, the government of Levi Eshkol attempted to restrict any confrontation to Egypt alone. In particular it did whatever it could to avoid fighting Jordan in a two-front war. However, "carried along by a powerful current of Arab nationalism", on 30 May 1967 King Hussein flew to Egypt and signed a mutual defense treaty in which the two countries agreed to consider "any armed attack on either state or its forces as an attack on both". On 5 June, the Israel Defense Forces launched a pre-emptive attack on Egypt which began what came to be known as the Six Day War.

Jordan soon began shelling targets in west Jerusalem, Netanya, and the outskirts of Tel Aviv. Despite this, Israel sent a message promising not to initiate any action against Jordan if it stayed out of the war. Hussein replied that it was too late, "the die was cast". On the evening of 5 June the Israeli cabinet convened to decide what to do; Yigal Allon and Menahem Begin argued that this was an opportunity to take the Old City of Jerusalem, but Eshkol decided to defer any decision until Moshe Dayan and Yitzhak Rabin could be consulted. Uzi Narkis made a number of proposals for military action, including the capture of Latrun, but the cabinet turned him down. The Israeli military only commenced action after Government House was captured, which was seen as a threat to the security of Jerusalem. On 6 June Dayan encircled the city, but, fearing damage to holy places and having to fight in built-up areas, he ordered his troops not to go in. However, upon hearing that the U.N. was about to declare a ceasefire, he changed his mind, and without cabinet clearance, decided to take the city. After fierce fighting with Jordanian troops in and around the Jerusalem area, Israel captured the Old City on 7 June.

No specific decision had been made to capture any other territories controlled by Jordan. After the Old City was captured, Dayan told his troops to dig in to hold it. 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. Over the next two days, the IDF swiftly captured the rest of the West Bank and blew up the Abdullah and Hussein Bridges over the Jordan, thereby severing the West Bank from the East. According to Narkis:

First, the Israeli government had no intention of capturing the West Bank. On the contrary, it was opposed to it. Second, there was not any provocation on the part of the IDF. Third, the rein was only loosened when a real threat to Jerusalem's security emerged. The end result was something that no one had planned.

The Arab League's Khartoum conference in September declared continuing belligerency, and stated the league's principles of "no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it". In November 1967, UN Security Council Resolution 242 was unanimously adopted, calling for "the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East" to be achieved by "the application of both the following principles:" "Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict" (see semantic dispute) and: "Termination of all claims or states of belligerency" and respect for the right of every state in the area to live in peace within secure and recognised boundaries. Egypt, Jordan, Israel and Lebanon entered into consultations with the UN Special representative over the implementation of 242. The text did not refer to the PLO or to any Palestinian representative because none was recognized at that time.

Until 1974, Jordan demanded the restoration of its control over the West Bank. In 1988, Jordan ceded its claims to the West Bank to the Palestine Liberation Organization, as "the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people."