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The West Bank
Hill country west of the Jordan River at the center of the debate over a Palestinian state
The West Bank is the larger of the two Palestinian territories and the ground on which most plans for a Palestinian state have been drawn. About 3.3 million Palestinians live there, alongside more than 700,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, by Israeli and UN estimates. The United Nations, the Palestinian Authority and most governments call it occupied Palestinian territory. Israel's government calls it Judea and Samaria, the biblical heartland of the Jewish people, and describes it as disputed rather than occupied. In 2025 and 2026 the questions of settlement growth and annexation moved from argument to action, as Israel advanced the long-frozen E1 project east of Jerusalem and began registering land.
The territory covers about 5,655 square kilometers, including East Jerusalem, between the 1949 armistice line, known as the Green Line, and the Jordan River and Dead Sea. Hill country runs north to south through Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah, Bethlehem and Hebron, dropping east to the arid Jordan Valley. Under the 1995 Oslo II accord the land was divided into Area A, about 18 percent, under Palestinian Authority civil and security control, Area B, about 22 percent, under PA civil and Israeli security control, and Area C, about 60 percent, under full Israeli control. Israel annexed East Jerusalem after 1967, a step most states do not recognize. Checkpoints, settler roads and the separation barrier divide Palestinian towns, and the PA governs from Ramallah.
Jordan held the West Bank from 1948 until Israel captured it in the 1967 war, and settlement began soon after. The Oslo Accords of the 1990s were meant to lead to a final-status deal that never came. In July 2024 the International Court of Justice advised that Israel's continued presence is unlawful, a finding Israel rejected. In August 2025 Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced approval of E1, about 3,400 homes that the UK and other governments say would sever the northern West Bank from the south, and tenders opened in August 2026. In February 2026 the Israeli cabinet began the first land registration since 1967, which the PA called de facto annexation. President Trump has said he will not allow formal annexation. Israelis vote in a general election on 27 October 2026.