West Bank, Palestine

The West Bank is a landlocked territory near the Mediterranean coast of Western Asia, the bulk of it now under Israeli control, or else under joint Israeli-Palestinian Authority control. The final status of the entire area is yet to be determined by the parties concerned. The West Bank shares boundaries (demarcated by the Jordanian-Israeli armistice of 1949) to the west, north, and south with Israel, and to the east, across the Jordan River, with Jordan. The West Bank also contains a significant section of the western Dead Sea shore.

The West Bank, including East Jerusalem, has a land area of 5,640 km2 plus a water area of 220 km2, consisting of the northwest quarter of the Dead Sea. As of July 2015 it has an estimated population of 2,785,366 Palestinians, and approximately 371,000 Israeli settlers, and approximately another 212,000 Jewish Israelis in East Jerusalem. The international community considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this. The International Court of Justice advisory ruling (2004) concluded that events that came after the 1967 occupation of the West Bank by Israel, including the Jerusalem Law, Israel's peace treaty with Jordan and the Oslo Accords, did not change the status of the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) as occupied territory with Israel as the occupying power.