West Bank
Palestinian territory on the western bank of the Jordan River, occupied by Israel
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The West Bank is a Palestinian territory located on the western side of the Jordan River that has been occupied by Israel. It matters because the status and control of this territory is central to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and efforts to establish a Palestinian state.
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The West Bank is the larger of the two Palestinian territories (the other being the Gaza Strip) that make up Palestine. A landlocked territory located on the western bank of the Jordan River near the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in West Asia's Levant region, it is bordered by Jordan and the Dead Sea to the east, and by Israel (via the Green Line) to the south, west, and north. Since 1967, the territory has been under Israeli occupation, which is illegal under international law.
The territory first emerged in the wake of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War as a region occupied and subsequently annexed by Jordan. Jordan ruled the territory until the 1967 Six-Day War, when it was occupied by Israel. Since then, Israel has administered the West Bank (except for East Jerusalem, which was effectively annexed in 1980) as the Judea and Samaria Area. Jordan continued to claim the territory as its own until 1988. The mid-1990s Oslo Accords split the West Bank into three regional levels of Palestinian sovereignty, via the Palestinian National Authority (PNA): Area A (PNA), Area B (PNA and Israel), and Area C (Israel, comprising 60% of the West Bank). The PNA exercises total or partial civil administration over 165 Palestinian enclaves across the three areas.