The West Bank in 2022

Our series on 21st Century Conflicts takes us to the Middle East, a region that has been marked by constant warfare for over a Century.

One of the most tragic situations occurs in what used to be British Mandate Palestine. While originally a mix of Arabic speaking Sunni Muslims with Eastern Christian and Jewish minorities, the region had seen the influx of Jewish migrants following secular and religious "alyot", or movements of return to the ancestral lands of the Jewish people. Initiated in the late nineteenth Century, these movements were boosted by the Balfour declaration of 1916 and subsequent takeover of the region by the British, which encouraged such migrations.

As early as the 1920s, however, the idea of a harmonious coexistence between Jewish and Arab populations was seriously challenged by violent confrontation between the communities. By the end of World War II, the predominant thought had become the concept of two countries for two peoples, as solemnly agreed at the United Nations in 1948. While the Jewish part accepted the partition and created the State of Israel, Arabs did not and called on their neighbouring Arab nations to retake Jewish-controlled lands. This war ended up consolidating Israel's control over the majority of the land, with an armistice line separating it from Jordanian and Egyptian-controlled territories. Further disastrous attempts by Arab countries to retake the territory led to a situation of total occupation of the Palestinian territories by Israel in 1967.

Subsequent attempts at finding a just and lasting solution for these territories have proved extremely difficult, and the Oslo Agreement of 1993 created a temporary situation of a mixed Israeli-Palestinian control over various parts of the region. As of 2022, the Gaza Strip is controlled by Hamas, a religious faction in conflict with the Palestinian Authority, while Israel has allowed settlement of parts of the West Bank by Israeli nationals, which makes the creation of a viable Palestinian state elusive. This map gives a glimpse of the intricacy and complexity of the current situation.