West Bank
History, Population, Map, Settlements, & Facts
West Bank, Arabic Al-Ḍaffah al-Gharbiyyah, Hebrew Ha-Gadah Ha-Maʿaravit, area of the former British-mandated (1920–47) territory of Palestine west of the Jordan River, claimed from 1949 to 1988 as part of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan but occupied from 1967 by Israel. The territory, excluding East Jerusalem, is also known within Israel by its biblical names, Judaea and Samaria.
Within its present boundaries, the West Bank represents the portion of the former mandate retained in 1948 by the Arab forces that entered Palestine after the departure of the British. The borders and status of the area were established by the Jordanian-Israeli armistice of April 3, 1949. In the decades that followed the armistice, Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) each laid claim to the approximately 2,180-square-mile (5,650-square-km) area. Pop. (2017) 2,881,957.
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