title: Francoist Spain

text: Spain's strong ties with the Axis resulted in its international ostracism in the early years following World War II as Spain was not a founding member of the United Nations and did not become a member until 1955. This changed with the Cold War that soon followed the end of hostilities in 1945, in the face of which Franco's strong anti-communism naturally tilted its regime to ally with the United States. Independent political parties and trade unions were banned throughout the duration of the dictatorship. Nevertheless, once decrees for economic stabilisation were put forth by the late 1950s, the way was opened for massive foreign investment—"a watershed in post-war economic, social and ideological normalisation leading to extraordinarily rapid economic growth"—that marked Spain's "participation in the Europe-wide post-war economic normality centred on mass consumption and consensus, in contrast to the concurrent reality of the Soviet bloc".


title: Francoist Spain

text: On 26 July 1947, Spain was declared a kingdom, but no monarch was designated until in 1969 Franco established Juan Carlos of Bourbon as his official heir-apparent. Franco was to be succeeded by Luis Carrero Blanco as Prime Minister with the intention of continuing the Francoist regime, but those hopes ended with his 1973 assassination by the Basque separatist group ETA. With the death of Franco on 20 November 1975, Juan Carlos became the King of Spain. He initiated the country's subsequent transition to democracy, ending with Spain becoming a constitutional monarchy with an elected parliament and autonomous devolved governments.


title: Francoist Spain

text: After Franco's victory in 1939, the Falange was declared the sole legally sanctioned political party in Spain and it asserted itself as the main component of the National Movement. In a state of emergency-like status, Franco ruled with, on paper, more power than any Spanish leader before or since. He was not even required to consult his cabinet for most legislation. According to historian Stanley G. Payne, Franco had more day-to-day power than Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin possessed at the respective heights of their power. Payne noted that Hitler and Stalin at least maintained rubber-stamp parliaments, while Franco dispensed with even that formality in the early years of his rule. According to Payne, the lack of even a rubber-stamp parliament made Franco's government "the most purely arbitrary in the world." The 100-member National Council of the Movement served as a makeshift legislature until the passing of the organic law of 1942 and the "Ley Constitutiva de las Cortes" (Constituent Law of the Cortes) the same year, which saw the grand opening of the Cortes Españolas on 18 July 1942.


title: Francoist Spain

text: The Organic Law made the executive government ultimately responsible for passing all laws, while defining the Cortes as a purely advisory body elected by neither direct nor universal suffrage. The Cortes had no power over government spending, and the government was not responsible for it; ministers were appointed and dismissed by Franco alone as the "Chief" of state and government. The "Ley del Referendum Nacional" (Law of the National Referendum), passed in 1945 approved for all "fundamental laws" to be approved by a popular referendum, in which only the heads of families could vote. Local municipal councils were appointed similarly by heads of families and local corporations through local municipal elections while mayors were appointed by the government. It was thus one of the most centralised countries in Europe and certainly the most centralised in Western Europe following the fall of the Portuguese "Estado Novo" in the Carnation Revolution.


title: Francoist Spain

text: The referendum law was used twice during Franco's rule—in 1947, when a referendum revived the Spanish monarchy with Franco as "de facto" regent for life with sole right to appoint his successor; and in 1966, another referendum was held to approve a new "organic law", or constitution, supposedly limiting and clearly defining Franco's powers as well as formally creating the modern office of Prime Minister of Spain. By delaying the issue of republic versus monarchy for his 36-year dictatorship and by refusing to take up the throne himself in 1947, Franco sought to antagonise neither the monarchical Carlists (who preferred the restoration of a Bourbon) nor the republican "old shirts" (original Falangists). Franco ignored the claim to the throne of Infante Juan, Count of Barcelona, son of the last king, Alfonso XIII, who designated himself as his heir; Franco found him too liberal. In 1961, Franco offered Otto von Habsburg the throne, but was refused and ultimately followed Otto's recommendation by selecting in 1969 the young Juan Carlos of Bourbon, son of Infante Juan, as his officially designated heir to the throne, shortly after his 30th birthday (the minimum age required under the Law of Succession).


title: Francoist Spain

text: In 1973, due to old age and to lessen his burdens in governing Spain he resigned as Prime Minister and named Navy Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco to the said post, but Franco remained as the Chief of State, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces and "Jefe del Movimiento" (Chief of the Movement). However, Carrero Blanco was assassinated in the same year and Carlos Arias Navarro became the country's new Prime Minister.


title: Francoist Spain

text: During the first year of peace, Franco dramatically reduced the size of the Spanish Army—from almost one million at the end of the Civil War to in early 1940, with most soldiers two-year conscripts. Concerns about the international situation, Spain's possible entry into World War II, and threats of invasion led him to undo some of these reductions. In November 1942, with the Allied landings in North Africa and the German occupation of France bringing hostilities closer than ever to Spain's border, Franco ordered a partial mobilization, bringing the army to over men. The Air Force and Navy also grew in numbers and in budgets to airmen and sailors by 1945, although for fiscal reasons Franco had to restrain attempts by both services to undertake dramatic expansions. The army maintained a strength of about men until the end of the Second World War.


title: Francoist Spain

text: Spain attempted to retain control of the last remnants of its colonial empire throughout Franco's rule. During the Algerian War (1954–1962), Madrid became the base of the "Organisation armée secrète" right-wing French Army group which sought to preserve French Algeria. Despite this, Franco was forced to make some concessions. When the French protectorate in Morocco became independent in 1956, Spain surrendered its Spanish protectorate in Morocco to Mohammed V, retaining only a few exclaves, the "Plazas de soberanía". The year after, Mohammed V invaded Spanish Sahara during the Ifni War (known as the "Forgotten War" in Spain). Only in 1975, with the Green March and the military occupation, did Morocco take control of all of the former Spanish territories in the Sahara.


title: Francoist Spain

text: In 1968, under United Nations pressure, Franco granted Spain's colony of Equatorial Guinea its independence and the next year ceded the exclave of Ifni to Morocco. Under Franco, Spain also pursued a campaign to gain sovereignty of the British overseas territory of Gibraltar and closed its border in 1969. The border would not be fully reopened until 1985.


title: Francoist Spain

text: Initially the regime embraced the definition of "Totalitarian State" or the ""nacional-sindicalista"" label. Following the defeat of Fascism in much of Europe in WW2, was the new moniker the regime adopted for itself, yet it only sounded credible to staunch believers. Other later soft definitions include "authoritarian regime" or "constituent or developmental dictatorship", the latter having inner backing from within the regime. During Cold War, Juan José Linz, either accused of whitewashing the regime or being praised as the elaborator of "the first scientific conceptualization" of the regime, famously early characterized it as an "authoritarian regime with limited pluralism". The Francoist regime has been described by other scholars as a ""Fascismo a la española"" ("Spanish-style Fascism") or as a specific variant of Fascism marked by the preponderance of the Catholic Church, the Armed Forces and Traditionalism.


title: Francoist Spain

text: While the regime evolved along with its protracted history, the primitive essence of it remained, underpinned by the legal concentration of all powers into a single person, Francisco Franco, ""Caudillo" of Spain by the Grace of God", embodying national sovereignty and "only responsible before God and History.


title: Francoist Spain

text: The consistent points in Francoism included above all authoritarianism, anti-Communism, Spanish nationalism, national Catholicism, monarchism, militarism, national conservatism, anti-Masonry, anti-Catalanism, pan-Hispanism, and anti-liberalism—some authors also include integralism. Stanley Payne, a scholar of Spain notes that "scarcely any of the serious historians and analysts of Franco consider the "generalissimo" to be a core fascist". According to historian Walter Laqueur "during the Civil War, Spanish fascists were forced to subordinate their activities to the nationalist cause. At the helm were military leaders such as General Francisco Franco, who were conservatives in all essential respects. When the civil war ended, Franco was so deeply entrenched that the Falange stood no chance; in this strongly authoritarian regime, there was no room for political opposition. The Falange became junior partners in the government and, as such, they had to accept responsibility for the regime's policy without being able to shape it substantially". The United Nations Security Council voted in 1946 to deny the Franco regime recognition until it developed a more representative government.


title: Francoist Spain

text: The Falange Española de las JONS, a fascist party formed during the Republic, soon transformed itself into the framework of reference in the National Movement. In April 1937, the "Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista" (Traditionalist Spanish Phalanx and of the Councils of National Syndicalist Offensive) was created from the absorption of the "Comunión Tradicionalista" (Traditionalist Communion) by the "Falange Española de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista", which itself was the result of an earlier absorption of the "Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista" by José Antonio Primo de Rivera's "Falange Española". This party, often referred to as Falange, became the sole legal party during Franco's regime, but the term "party" was generally avoided, especially after World War II, when it was commonly referred to as the "National Movement" or just as "the Movement".


title: Francoist Spain

text: The main point of those scholars that tend to consider the Spanish State to be authoritarian rather than fascist is that the FET-JONS were relatively heterogeneous rather than being an ideological monolith. After World War II, the Falange opposed free capital markets, but the ultimately prevailing technocrats, some of them linked with Opus Dei, eschewed syndicalist economics and favoured increased competition as a means of achieving rapid economic growth and integration with wider Europe.


title: Francoist Spain

text: The Spanish State was authoritarian: Non-government trade unions and all political opponents across the political spectrum were either suppressed or controlled by all means, including police repression. Most country towns and rural areas were patrolled by pairs of "Guardia Civil", a military police for civilians, which functioned as a chief means of social control. Larger cities, and capitals, were mostly under the heavily armed "Policía Armada", commonly called "grises" due to their grey uniforms. Franco was also the focus of a personality cult, which taught that he had been sent by Divine Providence to save the country from chaos and poverty.


title: Francoist Spain

text: Members of the oppressed ranged from Catholic trade unions to communist and anarchist organisations to liberal democrats and Catalan or Basque separatists. The "Confederación Nacional del Trabajo" (CNT) and the "Unión General de Trabajadores" (UGT) trade unions were outlawed and replaced in 1940 by the corporatist "Sindicato Vertical". The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) and the "Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya" (ERC) party were banned in 1939 while the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) went underground. University students seeking democracy revolted in the late 1960s and early 1970s, which was repressed by the "grises". The Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) went into exile and in 1959 the armed separatist group ETA was created to wage a low-intensity war against Franco. Like others at the time, Franco evinced a concern about a possible Masonic and Judaic conspiracy against his regime.


title: Francoist Spain

text: Franco continued to personally sign all death warrants until just months before he died despite international campaigns requesting him to desist.


title: Francoist Spain

text: Franco's Spanish nationalism promoted a Castilian-centric unitary national identity by repressing Spain's cultural diversity. Bullfighting and flamenco were promoted as national traditions, while those traditions not considered Spanish were suppressed. Franco's view of Spanish tradition was somewhat artificial and arbitrary: while some regional traditions were suppressed, Flamenco, an Andalusian tradition, was considered part of a larger, national identity. All cultural activities were subject to censorship and many were forbidden entirely, often in an erratic manner. This cultural policy relaxed over time, most notably in the late 1960s and early 1970s.


title: Francoist Spain

text: Franco was reluctant to enact any form of administrative and legislative decentralisation and kept a fully centralised form of government with a similar administrative structure to that established by the House of Bourbon and General Miguel Primo de Rivera. These structures were modelled after the centralised French state. As a result of this type of governance, government attention and initiatives were irregular and often depended more on the goodwill of government representatives than on regional needs. Thus inequalities in schooling, health care or transport facilities among regions were patent: historically affluent regions like Madrid, Catalonia or the Basque Country fared much better than others such as Extremadura, Galicia or Andalusia.


title: Francoist Spain

text: Franco eliminated the autonomy granted by the Second Spanish Republic to the regions and abolished the centuries-old fiscal privileges and autonomy (the fueros) in two of the three Basque provinces: Guipuzcoa and Biscay, which were officially classified as "traitor regions". The fueros were kept in the third Basque province, Alava, and also in Navarre, a former kingdom during the Middle Ages and the cradle of the Carlists, possibly due to the region's support during the Civil War.


title: Francoist Spain

text: Franco also used language politics in an attempt to establish national homogeneity. Despite Franco himself being Galician, the government revoked the official statute and recognition for the Basque, Galician and Catalan languages that the Republic had granted them for the first time in the history of Spain. The former policy of promoting Spanish as the only official language of the state and education was resumed, even though millions of the country's citizens spoke other languages. The legal usage of languages other than Spanish was forbidden: all government, notarial, legal and commercial documents were to be drawn up exclusively in Spanish and any written in other languages were deemed null and void. The use of any other language was forbidden in schools, advertising, religious ceremonies and on-road and shop signs. Publications in other languages were generally forbidden, though citizens continued to use them privately. During the late 1960s, these policies became more lenient yet non-Castilian languages continued to be discouraged and did not receive official status or legal recognition. Additionally, the popularisation of the compulsory national educational system and the development of modern mass media, both controlled by the state and exclusively in Spanish, reduced the competency of speakers of Basque, Catalan and Galician.


title: Francoist Spain

text: Franco's regime often used religion as a means to increase its popularity throughout the Catholic world, especially after the Second World War. Franco himself was increasingly portrayed as a fervent Catholic and a staunch defender of Roman Catholicism, the declared state religion. The regime favoured very conservative Roman Catholicism and it reversed the secularisation process that had taken place under the Republic. According to historian Julian Casanova, "the symbiosis of religion, fatherland and Caudillo" saw the Church assume great political responsibilities, "a hegemony and monopoly beyond its wildest dreams" and it played "a central role in policing the country's citizens".


title: Francoist Spain

text: The Law of Political Responsibility of February 1939 turned the Church into an extralegal body of investigation as parishes were granted policing powers equal to those of local government officials and leaders of the Falange. Some official jobs required a "good behaviour" statement by a priest. According to historian Julian Casanova, "the reports that have survived reveal a clergy that was bitter because of the violent anti-clericalism and the unacceptable level of secularisation that Spanish society had reached during the republican years" and the law of 1939 made the priests investigators of peoples' ideological and political pasts.


title: Francoist Spain

text: The authorities encouraged denunciations in the workplace. For example, Barcelona's city hall obliged all government functionaries to "tell the proper authorities who the leftists are in your department and everything you know about their activities". A law passed in 1939 institutionalised the purging of public offices. The poet Carlos Barral recorded that in his family "any allusion to republican relatives was scrupulously avoided; everyone took part in the enthusiasm for the new era and wrapped themselves in the folds of religiosity". Only through silence could people associated with the Republic be relatively safe from imprisonment or unemployment. After the death of Franco, the price of the peaceful transition to democracy would be silence and "the tacit agreement to forget the past", which was given legal status by the 1977 Pact of forgetting.


title: Francoist Spain

text: Civil marriages that had taken place in the Republic were declared null and void unless they had been validated by the Church, along with divorces. Divorce, contraception and abortions were forbidden. Children had to be given Christian names. Franco was made a member of the Supreme Order of Christ by Pope Pius XII whilst Spain itself was consecrated to the Sacred Heart.


title: Francoist Spain

text: The Catholic Church's ties with the Franco dictatorship gave it control over the country's schools and crucifixes were once again placed in schoolrooms. After the war, Franco chose José Ibáñez Martín, a member of the National Catholic Association of Propagandists, to lead the Ministry of Education. He held the post for 12 years, during which he finished the task of purging the ministry begun by the Commission of Culture and Teaching headed by José María Pemán. Pemán led the work of Catholicizing state-sponsored schools and allocating generous funding to the Church's schools. Romualdo de Toledo, head of the National Service of Primary Education, was a traditionalist who described the model school as "the monastery founded by Saint Benedict". The clergy in charge of the education system sanctioned and sacked thousands of teachers of the progressive left and divided Spain's schools up among the families of falangists, loyalist soldiers and Catholic families. In some provinces, like Lugo, practically all the teachers were dismissed. This process also affected tertiary education, as Ibáñez Martín, Catholic propagandists and the Opus Dei ensured professorships were offered only to the most faithful.


title: Francoist Spain

text: The orphaned children of "Reds" were taught in orphanages run by priests and nuns that "their parents had committed great sins that they could help expiate, for which many were incited to serve the Church".


title: Francoist Spain

text: Francoism professed a strong devotion to militarism, hypermasculinity and the traditional role of women in society. A woman was to be loving to her parents and brothers, faithful to her husband and to reside with her family. Official propaganda confined women's roles to family care and motherhood. Most progressive laws passed by the Second Republic were declared void. Women could not become judges, or testify in the trial. They could not become university professors. In the 1960s and 1970s, there was increasing liberalization, yet such measures would continue until Franco's death.


title: Francoist Spain

text: In 1947, Franco proclaimed Spain a monarchy through the "Ley de Sucesión en la Jefatura del Estado" act, but did not designate a monarch. He had no particular desire for a king because of his strained relations with the legitimist heir to the Crown, Juan of Bourbon. Therefore, he left the throne vacant with himself as regent and set the basis for his succession. This gesture was largely done to appease monarchist factions within the Movement. At the same time, Franco wore the uniform of a captain-general (a rank traditionally reserved for the King), resided in the Royal Palace of El Pardo, appropriated the kingly privilege of walking beneath a canopy and his portrait appeared on most Spanish coins. Indeed, although his formal titles were "Jefe del Estado" (Head of State) and "Generalísimo de los Ejércitos Españoles" (Generalissimo of the Spanish Armies), he was referred to as Caudillo of Spain, by the Grace of God. "Por la Gracia de Dios" is a technical, legal formulation which states sovereign dignity in absolute monarchies and had been used only by monarchs before.


title: Francoist Spain

text: The long-delayed selection of Juan Carlos of Bourbon as Franco's official successor in 1969 was an unpleasant surprise for many interested parties as Juan Carlos was the rightful heir for neither the Carlists nor the Legitimists.


title: Francoist Spain

text: Women had first been granted the right to vote in Spain during the Second Republic. Under the new constitution they had gained full legal status and equal access to the labor market, abortion had been legalized and the crime of adultery abolished.


title: Francoist Spain

text: The Franco regime's embrace of National Catholicism ("nacionalcatolicismo") as part of its ideological identity meant that the Catholic Church, which traditionally supported the social subordination of women, had preeminence in all aspects of public and private life in Spain. The Catholic Church had a central role in upholding the traditional role of the family and women's place in it. Civil marriage had also been introduced in the country during the Republic, so the Church immediately asked the new Franco regime to restore its control of family and marriage laws. All Spanish women were required by the state to serve for six months in the Women's Section ("Sección Femenina"), the female branch of the Falange state party, to undergo training for motherhood along with political indoctrination.


title: Francoist Spain

text: Francoism professed a devotion to the traditional role of a woman in society; that is, being a loving daughter and sister to her parents and brothers, being a faithful wife to her husband, and residing with her family. Official propaganda confined the role of women to family care and motherhood. Immediately after the civil war most progressive laws passed by the Republic aimed at equality between the sexes were nullified. Women could not become judges or testify in a trial. Their affairs and economic lives had to be managed by their fathers and husbands. Until the 1970s, a woman could not open a bank account without having it co-signed by her father or husband. In the 1960s and 1970s these restrictions were somewhat relaxed.


title: Francoist Spain

text: Francoism had an influence abroad in Chile, where it found clear expressions in the military dictatorship era (1973–1990), in particular in the period prior to 1980. Traditionalist historian Jaime Eyzaguirre was an admirer of Francoist Spain. The lawyer Jaime Guzmán, once a student of Eyzaguirre, helped establishing the Francoist-influenced Guildist Movement at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile in the 1960s. This has been interpreted as a reaction inspired in Francoist corporatism against elements of the Chilean university reform. The movement rapidly gained a long-lasting influence in the catholic universities of Chile. The Guildists, presenting themselves as apolitical, were highly critical of perceived detrimental ideological influences in the Church, corporations (e.g. trade unions) and the Christian Democratic Party.


title: Francoist Spain

text: Already in from the first days of after the 1973 Chilean coup d'état Guzmán became advisor and speechwriter of dictator Augusto Pinochet. While writing the Constitution of Chile of 1980 Jaime Guzmán studied the institutionalization of Francoism in Spain with the aim of preventing undesired reforms in future as it happened in Spain with the post-Franco constitution of 1977. Josemaría Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei, visited Chile 1974 after which Opus Dei begun to spread in the country. Opus Dei helped establish the University of the Andes in 1989. Both the University of the Andes and the political party Independent Democratic Union, founded in 1983 by Guzmán, have a Francoist heritage. In the 1970s Pinochet's dictatorship organized ritualized acts reminiscent of Francoist Spain, notably Acto de Chacarillas. After 1980 Francoist influence gave way to economic liberalism. Even Guzmán, once clearly influenced by Francoist corporatism, adopted economic liberalism from the Chicago Boys and writings such as "The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism".


title: Francoist Spain

text: In 1975 Pinochet and his wife Lucía Hiriart attended the funeral of Francisco Franco. When Pinochet died in 2006 supporters of late Francisco Franco paid homage in Spain. Antonio Tejero, who led the failed coup of 1981, attended a memorial service in Madrid.


title: Francoist Spain

text: For nearly twenty years after the war, Francoist Spain presented the conflict as a crusade against Bolshevism in defence of Christian civilization. In Francoist narrative, authoritarianism had defeated anarchy and overseen the elimination of "agitators", those "without God" and the "Judeo-Masonic conspiracy". Since Franco had relied on thousands of North African soldiers, anti-Islamic sentiment "was played down but the centuries-old myth of the Moorish threat lay at the base of the construction of the "communist menace" as a modern-day Eastern plague". The official position was therefore that the wartime Republic was simply a proto-Stalinist monolith, its leaders intent on creating a Spanish Soviet satellite. Many Spanish children grew up believing the war was fought against foreigners and the painter Julian Grau Santos has said "it was instilled in me and I always believed that Spain had won the war against foreign enemies of our historic greatness". About Catholic clergy were murdered by the Republicans. Collectively, they are known as the martyrs of the Spanish Civil War.


title: Francoist Spain

text: Under the 1938 Press Law, all newspapers were put under prior censorship and were forced to include any articles the government desired. Chief editors were nominated by the government and all journalists were required to be registered. All liberal, republican and left-wing media were prohibited.


title: Francoist Spain

text: The "Delegación Nacional de Prensa y Propaganda" was established as a network of government media, including daily newspapers "Diario Arriba" and "Pueblo". The "EFE" and Pyresa government news agencies were created in 1939 and 1945. The "Radio Nacional de España" state radio had the exclusive right to transmit news bulletins, which all broadcasters were required to air. The No-Do were 10-minute newsreels shown at all cinemas. The "Televisión Española", the government television network, debuted in 1956.


title: Francoist Spain

text: The Roman Catholic Church had its own media outlets, including the Ya newspaper and the "Cadena COPE" radio network. Other pro-government media included "Cadena SER", "ABC", "La Vanguardia Española", "El Correo" and "El Diario Vasco".


title: Francoist Spain

text: The 1966 Press Law dropped the prior censorship regime and allowed media outlets to select their own directors, although criticism was still a crime.


title: Francoist Spain

text: The Civil War had ravaged the Spanish economy. Infrastructure had been damaged, workers killed and daily business severely hampered. For more than a decade after Franco's victory, the economy improved little. Franco initially pursued a policy of autarky, cutting off almost all international trade. The policy had devastating effects and the economy stagnated. Only black marketeers could enjoy an evident affluence.


title: Francoist Spain

text: In 1940, the "Sindicato Vertical" was created. It was inspired by the ideas of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, who thought that class struggle would be ended by grouping together workers and owners according to corporative principles. It was the only legal trade union and was under government control. Other trade unions were forbidden and strongly repressed along with political parties outside the Falange.


title: Francoist Spain

text: The Francoist agrarian colonisation was one of the most ambitious programs related to the regime's agrarian policies, which were an answer to the Republic's Law of Agrarian Reform and the war-time collectivizations. Somewhat inspired by the brief points related to agrarian policy of FE de las JONS, the Francoist colonisation underpinned a materialisation of the agrarian policies vowed by Fascism (connected to the Italian "Bonifica integrale" or the agrarian policy elements of the Nazi "Generalplan Ost"). The policy was carried out by the Instituto Nacional de Colonización (INC), created in 1939 with the goal of agricultural modernisation by means of the creation of irrigated lands, improvements in agrarian technology and training and the installment of settlers. It consolidated the privileges of the landowning classes, protecting to a large extent the large landowners from potential expropriations ("tierras reservadas" where large landowners owners retained land property and were transformed into irrigated lands with help from the INC vs the comparatively smaller "tierras en exceso", purchased or expropriated and where settlers installed). While its inception dates to the period of hegemony of Fascist powers in Europe, the plan did not fully take off until the 1950s. From 1940 to 1970 around 300 colonisation settlements were created.


title: Francoist Spain

text: On the brink of bankruptcy, a combination of pressure from the United States (including about $1.5 billion in aid 1954–1964), the IMF and technocrats from Opus Dei managed to "convince" the regime to liberalize the economy in 1959 in what amounted to a mini coup d'état which removed the old guard in charge of the economy, despite the opposition of Franco. However, this economic liberalisation was not accompanied by political reforms and oppression continued unabated.


title: Francoist Spain

text: Economic growth picked up after 1959 after Franco took authority away from these ideologues and gave more power to the liberal technocrats. The country implemented several development policies and growth took off, creating the "Spanish Miracle". Concurrent with the absence of social reforms and the economic power shift, a tide of mass emigration commenced to European countries and to lesser extent to South America. Emigration helped the regime in two ways: the country got rid of surplus population and the emigrants supplied the country with much needed monetary remittances.


title: Francoist Spain

text: During the 1960s, Spain experienced further increases in wealth. International firms established their factories in Spain. Spain became the second-fastest-growing economy in the world, alongside Brazil and just behind Japan. The rapid development of this period became known as the "Spanish Miracle". At the time of Franco's death, Spain still lagged behind most of Western Europe, but the gap between its GDP per capita and that of the major Western European economies had greatly narrowed. In world terms, Spain was already enjoying a fairly high material standard of living with basic but comprehensive services. However, the period between the mid-1970s and mid-1980s was to prove difficult as in addition to the oil shocks to which Spain was highly exposed, the settling of the new political order took priority over the modernising of the economy.


title: Francoist Spain

text: In Spain and abroad, the legacy of Franco remains controversial. In Germany, a squadron named after Werner Mölders has been renamed because as a pilot he led the escorting units in the bombing of Guernica. As recently as 2006, the BBC reported that Maciej Giertych, an MEP of the right-wing League of Polish Families, had expressed admiration for Franco's stature who he believed had "guaranteed the maintenance of traditional values in Europe".


title: Francoist Spain

text: Spanish opinion has changed. Most statues of Franco and other public Francoist symbols have been removed, with the last statue in Madrid coming down in 2005. Additionally, the Permanent Commission of the European Parliament "firmly" condemned in a resolution unanimously adopted in March 2006 the "multiple and serious violations" of human rights committed in Spain under the Francoist regime from 1939 to 1975. The resolution was at the initiative of the MEP Leo Brincat and of the historian Luis María de Puig and is the first international official condemnation of the repression enacted by Franco's regime. The resolution also urged to provide public access to historians (professional and amateurs) to the various archives of the Francoist regime, including those of the "Fundación Francisco Franco", which as well as other Francoist archives remain as of 2006 inaccessible to the public. Furthermore, it urged the Spanish authorities to set up an underground exhibition in the Valley of the Fallen in order to explain the terrible conditions in which it was built. Finally, it proposed the construction of monuments to commemorate Franco's victims in Madrid and other important cities.


title: Francoist Spain

text: In Spain, a commission to restore the dignity of the victims of Franco's regime and pay tribute to their memory ("comisión para reparar la dignidad y restituir la memoria de las víctimas del franquismo") was approved in the summer of 2004 and was directed by the then-Vice President María Teresa Fernández de la Vega. Because of his repressive regional linguistic policies, Franco's memory is still particularly resented in Catalonia and the Basque Country. The Basque Provinces and Catalonia were among the regions that offered the strongest resistance to Franco in the Civil War, as well as during his regime.


title: Francoist Spain

text: In 2008, the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory initiated a systematic search for mass graves of people executed during Franco's regime, a move supported since the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party's victory during the 2004 elections by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's government. The Historical Memory Law ("Ley de Memoria Histórica") was passed in 2007 as an attempt to enforce official recognition of the crimes committed against civilians during Franco's rule and to organise under state supervision the search for mass graves.


title: Francoist Spain

text: Investigations have begun into wide-scale child abduction during the Franco years. The lost children of Francoism may reach 300,000.


title: Francoist Spain

text: At the conclusion of the Spanish Civil War and in spite of the army's reorganisation, several sections of the army continued with their bi-colour flags improvised in 1936, but since 1940 new ensigns began to be distributed, whose main innovation was the addition of the eagle of Saint John to the shield. The new arms were allegedly inspired in the coat of arms the Catholic Monarchs adopted after the taking of Emirate of Granada from the Moors, but replacing the arms of Sicily with those of Navarre and adding the Pillars of Hercules on either side of the coat of arms. In 1938, the columns were placed outside the wings. On 26 July 1945, the commander's ensigns were suppressed by decree and on 11 October a detailed regulation of flags was published that fixed the model of the bi-colour flag in use, but better defined its details, emphasising a greater style of the Saint John's eagle. The models established by this decree remained in force until 1977.


title: Francoist Spain

text: During this period, two more flags were usually displayed along with the national flag: the flag of Falange (red, black and red vertical stripes, with the yokes and arrows in the centre of the black stripe) and the traditionalist flag (white background with the Cross of Burgundy in the middle), representing the National Movement which had unified Falange and the Requetés under the name "Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las JONS".


title: Francoist Spain

text: From the death of Franco in 1975 until 1977, the national flag followed the 1945 regulations. On 21 January 1977, a new regulation was approved that stipulated an eagle with more open wings, with the restored Pillars of Hercules placed within the wings and the tape with the motto ""Una, Grande y Libre"" ("One, Great and Free") moved over the eagle's head from its previous position around the neck.


title: Francoist Spain

text: From 1940 to 1975, Franco used the Royal Bend of Castile as Head of State's standard and guidon: the Bend between the Pillars of Hercules, crowned with an imperial crown and open royal crown.


title: Francoist Spain

text: As Prince of Spain from 1969 to 1975, Juan Carlos used a royal standard which was virtually identical to the one later adopted when he became King in 1975. The earlier standard differed only that it featured the royal crown of a Crown Prince, the King's royal crown has 8 arches of which 5 are visible, while the Prince's one has only 4 arches of which 3 are visible. The Royal Standard of Spain consists of a dark blue square with the coat of arms in the centre. The King's guidon is identical to the standard.


title: Francoist Spain

text: In 1938, Franco adopted a variant of the coat of arms reinstating some elements originally used by the House of Trastámara such as Saint John's eagle and the yoke and arrows as follows: "Quarterly, 1 and 4. quarterly Castile and León, 2 and 3. per pale Aragon and Navarra, enté en point of Granada. The arms are crowned with an open royal crown, placed on eagle displayed sable, surrounded with the pillars of Hercules, the yoke and the bundle of arrows of the Catholic Monarchs".


title: West Bank

text: The West Bank (; , also referred to by some Israelis as ) is a landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediterranean in Western Asia that forms the main bulk of the Palestinian territories. It is bordered by Jordan and the Dead Sea to the east and by Israel (see Green Line) to the south, west, and north. Under an Israeli military occupation since 1967, its area is split into 165 Palestinian "islands" that are under total or partial civil administration by the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), and 230 Israeli settlements into which Israeli law is "pipelined". The West Bank includes East Jerusalem.


title: West Bank

text: It initially emerged as a Jordanian-occupied territory after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, before being annexed outright by Jordan in 1950, and was given its name during this time based on its location on the western bank of the Jordan River. The territory remained under Jordanian rule until 1967, when it was captured by Israel during the Six-Day War.


title: West Bank

text: The Oslo Accords, signed between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel, created administrative districts with varying levels of Palestinian autonomy in specific areas: Area A, which is administered exclusively by the PNA; Area B, which is administered by both the PNA and Israel; and Area C, which is administered exclusively by Israel. Area C accounts for over 60% of the West Bank's territory.


title: West Bank

text: The West Bank, including East Jerusalem, has a land area of 5,640 km plus a water area of 220 km, consisting of the northwestern quarter of the Dead Sea. It has an estimated population of 2,747,943 Palestinians, and over 670,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank, of which 220,000 live in East Jerusalem. The international community considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem to be illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this. A 2004 advisory ruling by the International Court of Justice concluded that events that came after the 1967 capture of the West Bank by Israel – including the Jerusalem Law, the Israel–Jordan peace treaty, and the Oslo Accords – did not change the status of the West Bank and East Jerusalem as Israeli-occupied territory. Alongside the self-governing Gaza Strip, the Israeli-occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem are claimed by the State of Palestine as its sovereign territory, and thus remain a flashpoint of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.


title: West Bank

text: The name "West Bank" is a translation of the Arabic term , which designates the territory situated on the western side of the Jordan River that was occupied in 1948 and subsequently annexed in 1950 by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. This annexation was widely considered to be illegal, and was recognized only by Iraq, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom.


title: West Bank

text: The neo-Latin name "Cisjordan" or "Cis-Jordan" () is the usual name for the territory in the Romance languages and in Hungarian. The name "West Bank", however, has become the standard usage for this geopolitical entity in English and some of the other Germanic languages since its inception following the 1948 Jordanian capture.


title: West Bank

text: The analogous "Transjordan" () has historically been used to designate the region now roughly comprising the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which lies to the east of the Jordan River.


title: West Bank

text: From 1517 through 1917, the area now known as the West Bank was under Turkish rule as part of Ottoman Syria.


title: West Bank

text: At the 1920 San Remo conference, the victorious Allies of World War I allocated the area to the British Mandate of Palestine (1920–1948). The San Remo Resolution, adopted on 25 April 1920, incorporated the Balfour Declaration of 1917. It and Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations were the basic documents upon which the British Mandate of Palestine was constructed. The United Kingdom proclaimed Abdullah I as emir of the Emirate of Transjordan on 11 April 1921; he declared it an independent Hashemite kingdom on 25 May 1946.


title: West Bank

text: Under the United Nations in 1947, it was subsequently designated as part of a proposed Arab state by the Partition Plan for Palestine. Resolution 181 recommended the splitting of the British Mandate into a Jewish state, an Arab state, and an internationally administered enclave of Jerusalem; a broader region of the modern-day West Bank was assigned to the Arab state. The resolution designated the territory described as "the hill country of Samaria and Judea" (the area now known as the "West Bank") as part of the proposed Arab state, but following the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, this area was captured by Transjordan.


title: West Bank

text: The 1949 Armistice Agreements defined the interim boundary between Israel and Jordan (essentially reflecting the battlefield after the war). Following the December 1948 Jericho Conference, Transjordan annexed the area west of the Jordan River in 1950, naming it "West Bank" or "Cisjordan", and designated the area east of the river as "East Bank" or "Transjordan". Jordan (as it was now known) ruled over the West Bank from 1948 until 1967. Jordan's annexation was never formally recognized by the international community, with the exception of the United Kingdom and Iraq.


title: West Bank

text: A two-state option, dividing Palestine, as opposed to a binary solution arose during the period of the British mandate in the area. The United Nations Partition Plan had envisaged two states, one Jewish and the other Arab/Palestinian, but in the wake of the war only one emerged at the time. During the 1948 war, Israel occupied parts of what was designated in the UN partition plan as “Palestine”. King Abdullah of Jordan had been crowned King of Jerusalem by the Coptic Bishop on 15 November 1948. Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank and East Jerusalem were granted Jordanian citizenship and half of the Jordanian Parliament seats.


title: West Bank

text: Many refugees continued to live in camps and relied on UNRWA assistance for sustenance. Palestinian refugees constituted more than a third of the kingdom's population of 1.5 million.


title: West Bank

text: The last Jordanian elections in which West Bank residents would vote were those of April 1967, but their parliamentary representatives would continue in office until 1988, when West Bank seats were finally abolished. Palestinians enjoyed equal opportunities in all sectors of the state without discrimination.


title: West Bank

text: Agriculture remained the primary activity of the territory. The West Bank, despite its smaller area, contained half of Jordan's agricultural land. In 1966, 43% of the labor force of 55,000 worked in agriculture, and 2,300 km were under cultivation. In 1965, 15,000 workers were employed in industry, producing 7% of the GNP. This number fell after the 1967 war, and would not be surpassed until 1983. The tourism industry also played an important role. 26 branches of 8 Arab banks were present. The Jordanian dinar became legal tender, and remains so there today. 80% of Jordan's fruit-growing land and 40% of its vegetables lay in the West Bank, and, with the onset of the occupation, the area could no longer produce export earnings.


title: West Bank

text: On the eve of occupation the West Bank accounted for 40% of Jordanian GNP, between 34% and 40% of its agricultural output and almost half of its manpower, though only a third of Jordanian investment was allocated to it and mainly to the private housing construction sector. Though its per-capita product was 10 times greater than that of the West Bank, the Israeli economy on the eve of occupation had experienced two years (1966-1967) of a sharp recession. Immediately after the occupation, from 1967 to 1974, the economy boomed. In 1967 the Palestinian economy had a gross domestic product of $1,349 per capita for a million people, with the West Bank population at 585,500, of whom 18% were refugees, and was growing annually by 2%. West Bank growth, compared to Gaza (3%), had lagged, due to the effect of mass emigration of West Bankers seeking employment in Jordan. As agriculture gave way to industrial development in Israel, in the West Bank the former still generated 37% of domestic product, and industry a mere 13%.


title: West Bank

text: The growth rate of the West Bank economy in the period of the Jordanian rule of the West Bank (before Israeli occupation), had ticked along at an annual rate of 6-8%. This rate of growth was indispensable if the post-war West Bank were to achieve economic self-reliance. 80% of Jordan's fruit-growing land and 40% of its vegetables lay in the West Bank, and, with the onset of the occupation, the area could no longer produce export earnings.


title: West Bank

text: In June 1967, the West Bank and East Jerusalem were captured by Israel as a result of the Six-Day War. With the exception of East Jerusalem and the former Israeli-Jordanian no man's land, the West Bank was not annexed by Israel; it remained under Israeli military control until 1982.


title: West Bank

text: Although the 1974 Arab League summit resolution at Rabat designated the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) as the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people", Jordan did not officially relinquish its claim to the area until 1988, when it severed all administrative and legal ties with the West Bank and eventually stripped West Bank Palestinians of Jordanian citizenship.


title: West Bank

text: In 1982, as a result of the IsraeliEgyptian peace treaty, the direct military rule was transformed into a semi-civil authority, operating directly under the Israeli Ministry of Defense, thus taking control of civil matters of Palestinians from the IDF to civil servants in the Ministry of Defense. The Israeli settlements were, on the other hand, administered subsequently as Judea and Samaria Area directly by Israel.


title: West Bank

text: Since the 1993 Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority officially controls a geographically non-contiguous territory comprising approximately 11% of the West Bank (known as Area A) which remains subject to Israeli incursions. Area B (approximately 28%) is subject to joint Israeli-Palestinian military and Palestinian civil control. Area C (approximately 61%) is under full Israeli control. Though 164 nations refer to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as "Occupied Palestinian Territory", the state of Israel quotes the UN that only territories captured in war from "an established and recognized sovereign" are considered occupied territories.


title: West Bank

text: After the 2007 split between Fatah and Hamas, the West Bank areas under Palestinian control are an exclusive part of the Palestinian Authority, while the Gaza Strip is ruled by Hamas.


title: West Bank

text: The Jordanians neglected to invest much in the area during their time governing the area, although there was some investment in the immediate vicinity of Jerusalem.


title: West Bank

text: Soon after the 1967 war, Yigal Allon produced the Allon Plan, which would have annexed a strip along the Jordan River valley and excluded areas closer to the pre-1967 border, which had a high density of Palestinians. Moshe Dayan proposed a plan which Gershom Gorenberg likens to a "photo negative of Allon's." The Allon plan evolved over a period of time to include more territory. The final draft dating from 1970 would have annexed about half of the West Bank. Israel had no overall approach for integrating the West Bank:


title: West Bank

text: The early occupation set severe limits on public investment and comprehensive development programmes in the territories. British and Arab commercial banks operating in the West Bank were closed down soon after Israel assumed power there. Bank Leumi then opened nine branches, without successfully replacing the earlier system. Farmers could get loans, but Palestinian businessmen avoided taking out loans from them since they charged 9% compared to 5% interest in Jordan. By June 1967, only a third of West Bank land had been registered under Jordan's "Settlement of Disputes over Land and Water Law" and in 1968 Israel moved to cancel the possibility of registering one's title with the Jordanian Land Register. Ian Lustick states that Israel "virtually prevented" Palestinian investment in local industry and agriculture. At the same time, Israel encouraged Arab labour to enter into Israel's economy, and regarded them as a new, expanded and protected market for Israeli exports. Limited export of Palestinian goods to Israel was allowed. Expropriation of prime agricultural land in an economy where two thirds of the workforce had farmed is believed to account for the flight of labourers to work in Israel. As much as 40% of the workforce commuted to Israel on a daily basis finding only poorly paid menial employment. Remittances from labourers earning a wage in Israel were the major factor in Palestinian economic growth during the 1969–73 boom years, but the migration of workers from the territories had a negative impact on local industry by creating an internal labour scarcity in the West Bank and consequent pressure for higher wages there; the contrast between the quality of their lives and Israelis' growing prosperity stoked resentment.


title: West Bank

text: Attempting to impose governmental authority, Israel established a licensing system according to which no industrial plant could be built without obtaining a prior Israeli permit. With Military Order No. 393 (14 June 1970), the local commander was given the power and authority to block any construction if, in his evaluation, the building might pose a danger to Israel's security. The overall effect was to obstruct manufacturing development and subordinate any local industrial activity to the exigencies of Israel's economy, or to block the creation of industries that might compete with Israel's. For example, entrepreneurs were denied a permit for a cement factory in Hebron. In order to protect Israeli farmers, melon production was forbidden, imports of grapes and dates were banned, and limits were set to how many cucumbers and tomatoes could be produced. Israeli milk producers exerted pressure on the Ministry for Industry and Trade to stop the establishment of a competitive dairy in Ramallah.


title: West Bank

text: The sum effect after two decades was that 15% of all Palestinian firms in the West Bank (and Gaza) employing over eight people, and 32% with seven or less, were prohibited from selling their products in Israel. Israeli protectionist policies thus distorted wider trade relations to the point that, by 1996, 90% of all West Bank imports came from Israel, with consumers paying more than they would for comparable products had they been able to exercise commercial autonomy.


title: West Bank

text: From 1517 to 1917 the West Bank was part of the Ottoman Empire. Turkey, successor state to the Ottoman Empire, renounced its territorial claims in 1923, signing the Treaty of Lausanne, and the area now called the West Bank became an integral part of the British Mandate for Palestine. During the Mandate period Britain had no right of sovereignty, which was held by the people under the mandate. Nevertheless, Britain, as custodians of the land, implemented the land tenure laws in Palestine, which it had inherited from the Ottoman Turks (as defined in the Ottoman Land Code of 1858), applying these laws to both Arab and Jewish legal tenants or otherwise. In 1947 the UN General Assembly recommended that the area that became the West Bank become part of a future Arab state, but this proposal was opposed by the Arab states at the time. In 1948, Jordan occupied the West Bank and annexed it in 1950.


title: West Bank

text: In 1967, Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan in the Six-Day War. UN Security Council Resolution 242 followed, calling for withdrawal (return to the 1949 armistice lines) from territories occupied in the conflict in exchange for peace and mutual recognition. Since 1979, the United Nations Security Council, the United Nations General Assembly, the United States, the EU, the International Court of Justice, and the International Committee of the Red Cross refer to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as occupied Palestinian territory or the occupied territories. General Assembly resolution 58/292 (17 May 2004) affirmed that the Palestinian people have the right to sovereignty over the area.


title: West Bank

text: The International Court of Justice and the Supreme Court of Israel have ruled that the status of the West Bank is that of military occupation. In its 2004 advisory opinion the International Court of Justice concluded that:


title: West Bank

text: The executive branch of the Israeli government, through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has defined the West Bank as “disputed” instead of “occupied” territory, whose status can only be determined through negotiations. The Ministry says that occupied territories are territories captured in war from an established and recognized sovereign, and that since the West Bank wasn't under the legitimate and recognized sovereignty of any state prior to the Six-Day War, it shouldn't be considered an occupied territory.


title: West Bank

text: The International Court of Justice ruling of 9 July 2004, however, found that the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is territory held by Israel under military occupation, regardless of its status prior to it coming under Israeli occupation, and that the Fourth Geneva convention applies "de jure". The international community regards the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) as territories occupied by Israel.


title: West Bank

text: International law (Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention) prohibits "transfers of the population of an occupying power to occupied territories", incurring a responsibility on the part of Israel's government to not settle Israeli citizens in the West Bank.


title: West Bank

text: As of February 2020, 134 (69.4%) of the 193 member states of the United Nations have recognised the State of Palestine within the Palestinian territories, which are recognized by Israel to constitute a single territorial unit, and of which the West Bank is the core of the would-be state.


title: West Bank

text: The future status of the West Bank, together with the Gaza Strip on the Mediterranean shore, has been the subject of negotiation between the Palestinians and Israelis, although the 2002 Road Map for Peace, proposed by the "Quartet" comprising the United States, Russia, the European Union, and the United Nations, envisions an independent Palestinian state in these territories living side by side with Israel (see also proposals for a Palestinian state). However, the "Road Map" states that in the first phase, Palestinians must end all attacks on Israel, whereas Israel must dismantle all outposts.


title: West Bank

text: The Palestinian Authority believes that the West Bank ought to be a part of their sovereign nation, and that the presence of Israeli military control is a violation of their right to Palestinian Authority rule. The United Nations calls the West Bank and Gaza Strip "Israeli-occupied territories". The United States State Department also refers to the territories as "occupied".


title: West Bank

text: In 2005 the United States ambassador to Israel, Daniel C. Kurtzer, expressed U.S. support "for the retention by Israel of major Israeli population centres [in the West Bank] as an outcome of negotiations", reflecting President Bush's statement a year earlier that a permanent peace treaty would have to reflect "demographic realities" on the West Bank. In May 2011 US President Barack Obama officially stated US support for a future Palestinian state based on borders prior to the 1967 War, allowing for land swaps where they are mutually agreeable between the two sides. Obama was the first US president to formally support the policy, but he stated that it had been one long held by the US in its Middle East negotiations.


title: West Bank

text: In December 2016, a resolution was adopted by United Nations Security Council that condemned Israel's settlement activity as a "flagrant violation" of international law with "no legal validity". It demands that Israel stop such activity and fulfill its obligations as an occupying power under the Fourth Geneva Convention. The United States abstained from the vote.


title: West Bank

text: In 2020, President Donald Trump unveiled a peace plan, radically different from previous peace plans. The plan failed to gain support.


title: West Bank

text: Palestinian public opinion opposes Israeli military and settler presence on the West Bank as a violation of their right to statehood and sovereignty. Israeli opinion is split into a number of views :


title: West Bank

text: The West Bank has an area of , which comprises 21.2% of former Mandatory Palestine (excluding Jordan) and has generally rugged mountainous terrain. The total length of the land boundaries of the region are . The terrain is mostly rugged dissected upland, some vegetation in the west, but somewhat barren in the east. The elevation span between the shoreline of the Dead Sea at −408 m to the highest point at Mount Nabi Yunis, at 1,030 m (3,379 ft) above sea level. The area of West Bank is landlocked; highlands are main recharge area for Israel's coastal aquifers.


title: West Bank

text: There are few natural resources in the area except the highly arable land, which comprises 27% of the land area of the region. It is mostly used as permanent pastures (32% of arable land) and seasonal agricultural uses (40%). Forests and woodland comprise just 1%, with no permanent crops.


title: West Bank

text: The climate in the West Bank is mostly Mediterranean, slightly cooler at elevated areas compared with the shoreline, west to the area. In the east, the West Bank includes the Judean Desert and the shoreline of the Dead Sea – both with dry and hot climate.


title: West Bank

text: The 1993 Oslo Accords declared the final status of the West Bank to be subject to a forthcoming settlement between Israel and the Palestinian leadership. Following these interim accords, Israel withdrew its military rule from some parts of the West Bank, which was divided into three administrative divisions of the Oslo Accords:


title: West Bank

text: Area A, 2.7%, full civil control of the Palestinian Authority, comprises Palestinian towns, and some rural areas away from Israeli settlements in the north (between Jenin, Nablus, Tubas, and Tulkarm), the south (around Hebron), and one in the center south of Salfit. Area B, 25.2%, adds other populated rural areas, many closer to the center of the West Bank. Area C contains all the Israeli settlements (excluding settlements in East Jerusalem), roads used to access the settlements, buffer zones (near settlements, roads, strategic areas, and Israel), and almost all of the Jordan Valley and the Judean Desert.


title: West Bank

text: Areas A and B are themselves divided among 227 separate areas (199 of which are smaller than ) that are separated from one another by Israeli-controlled Area C.


title: West Bank

text: According to B'tselem, while the vast majority of the Palestinian population lives in areas A and B, the vacant land available for construction in dozens of villages and towns across the West Bank is situated on the margins of the communities and defined as area C. Less than 1% of area C is designated for use by Palestinians, who are also unable to legally build in their own existing villages in area C due to Israeli authorities' restrictions,


title: West Bank

text: An assessment by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in 2007 found that approximately 40% of the West Bank was taken up by Israeli infrastructure. The infrastructure, consisting of settlements, the barrier, military bases and closed military areas, Israeli declared nature reserves and the roads that accompany them is off-limits or tightly controlled to Palestinians.


title: West Bank

text: In June 2011, the Independent Commission for Human Rights published a report that found that Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip were subjected in 2010 to an "almost systematic campaign" of human rights abuse by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, as well as by Israeli authorities, with the security forces of the PA and Hamas being responsible for torture, arrests and arbitrary detentions.


title: West Bank

text: Through the Jerusalem Law, Israel extended its administrative control over East Jerusalem. This has often been interpreted as tantamount to an official annexation, though Ian Lustick, in reviewing the legal status of Israeli measures, has argued that no such annexation ever took place. The Palestinian residents have legal permanent residency status. Rejecting the Jerusalem Law, the UN Security Council passed UN Security Council Resolution 478, declaring that the law was "null and void". Although permanent residents are permitted, if they wish, to receive Israeli citizenship if they meet certain conditions including swearing allegiance to the State and renouncing any other citizenship, most Palestinians did not apply for Israeli citizenship for political reasons. There are various possible reasons as to why the West Bank had not been annexed to Israel after its capture in 1967. The government of Israel has not formally confirmed an official reason; however, historians and analysts have established a variety of such, most of them demographic. Among those most commonly cited have been:


title: West Bank

text: The importance of demographic concerns to some significant figures in Israel's leadership was illustrated when Avraham Burg, a former Knesset Speaker and former chair of the Jewish Agency for Israel, wrote in "The Guardian" in September 2003,


title: West Bank

text: As of 2022, there are over 450,000 Israeli settlers living in 128 Israeli settlements in the West Bank excluding East Jerusalem, with an additional 220,000 Jewish settlers residing in 12 settlements in East Jerusalem. In addition, there are over 100 Israeli outposts in the West Bank that are not recognized and are therefore illegal even under Israeli law, but that are nevertheless been provided with infrastructure, water, sewage, and other services by the authorities. They are colloquially known as "illegal outposts."


title: West Bank

text: As a result of the application of Israeli law in the settlements ("Enclave law"), large portions of Israeli civil law are applied to Israeli settlements and to Israelis living in the Israeli-occupied territories.


title: West Bank

text: The international consensus is that all Israeli settlements on the West Bank are illegal under international law. In particular, the European Union as a whole considers all settlements to be illegal. Significant portions of the Israeli public similarly oppose the continuing presence of Jewish Israelis in the West Bank and have supported the 2005 settlement relocation. The majority of legal scholars also hold the settlements to violate international law, however individuals including Julius Stone, and Eugene Rostow have argued that they are legal under international law. Immediately after the 1967 war, Theodor Meron, legal counselor of Israel's Foreign Ministry, advised Israeli ministers in a "top secret" memo that any policy of building settlements across occupied territories violated international law and would "contravene the explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention". Fifty years later, citing decades of legal scholarship on the subject, Meron reiterated his legal opinion regarding the illegality of Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories.


title: West Bank

text: The UN Security Council has issued several non-binding resolutions addressing the issue of the settlements. Typical of these is UN Security Council resolution 446 which states that the "practices of Israel in establishing settlements in the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967 have no legal validity", and it calls on Israel "as the occupying Power, to abide scrupulously by the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention""."


title: West Bank

text: The Conference of High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention held in Geneva on 5 December 2001 called upon "the Occupying Power to fully and effectively respect the Fourth Geneva Convention in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and to refrain from perpetrating any violation of the Convention." The High Contracting Parties reaffirmed "the illegality of the settlements in the said territories and of the extension thereof."


title: West Bank

text: On 30 December 2007, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert issued an order requiring approval by both the Israeli Prime Minister and Israeli Defense Minister of all settlement activities (including planning) in the West Bank. The change had little effect with settlements continuing to expand, and new ones being established. On 31 August 2014, Israel announced it was appropriating 400 hectares of land in the West Bank to eventually house 1,000 Israel families. The appropriation was described as the largest in more than 30 years. According to reports on Israel Radio, the development is a response to the 2014 kidnapping and murder of Israeli teenagers.


title: West Bank

text: The Haaretz newspaper published an article in December 2005 about demolition of "Palestinian outposts" in Bil'in. The demolitions sparked a political debate as according to "PeaceNow" it was a double standard ("After what happened today in Bil'in, there is no reason that the state should defend its decision to continue the construction" credited to Michael Sfard).


title: West Bank

text: In January 2012, the European Union approved the "Area C and Palestinian state building" report. The report said Palestinian presence in Area C has been continuously undermined by Israel and that state building efforts in Area C of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the EU were of "utmost importance in order to support the creation of a contiguous and viable Palestinian state". The EU will support various projects to "support the Palestinian people and help maintain their presence".


title: West Bank

text: In May 2012, a petition was filed to the Israeli Supreme Court about the legality of more 15 Palestinian outposts and Palestinian building in "Area C". The cases were filed by Regavim.


title: West Bank

text: The petition was one of 30 different petitions with the common ground of illegal land takeover and illegal construction and use of natural resources. Some of the petitions (27) had been set for trials and the majority received a verdict.


title: West Bank

text: "Ynet News" stated on 11 January 2013 that a group of 200 Palestinians with unknown number of foreign activists created an outpost named Bab al-Shams ("Gate of the Sun"), contains 50 tents


title: West Bank

text: "Ynet News" stated on 18 January 2013 that Palestinian activists built an outpost on a disputed area in Beit Iksa, where Israel plans to construct part of the separation fence in the Jerusalem vicinity while the Palestinians claim that the area belongs to the residents of Beit Iksa. named Bab al-Krama


title: West Bank

text: The Israeli West Bank barrier is a physical barrier ordered for construction by the Israeli Government, consisting of a network of fences with vehicle-barrier trenches surrounded by an on average wide exclusion area (90%) and up to high concrete walls (10%) (although in most areas the wall is not nearly that high). It is located mainly within the West Bank, partly along the 1949 Armistice line, or "Green Line" between the West Bank and Israel. The length of the barrier as approved by the Israeli government is long. As of 2020, approximately have been constructed (64%). The space between the barrier and the green line is a closed military zone known as the Seam Zone, cutting off 9% of the West Bank and encompassing dozens of villages and tens of thousands of Palestinians.


title: West Bank

text: The barrier generally runs along or near the 1949 Jordanian-Israeli armistice/Green Line, but diverges in many places to include on the Israeli side several of the highly populated areas of Jewish settlements in the West Bank such as East Jerusalem, Ariel, Gush Etzion, Immanuel, Karnei Shomron, Givat Ze'ev, Oranit, and Maale Adumim.


title: West Bank

text: Supporters of the barrier claim it is necessary for protecting Israeli civilians from Palestinian attacks, which increased significantly during the Al-Aqsa Intifada; it has helped reduce incidents of terrorism by 90% from 2002 to 2005; over a 96% reduction in terror attacks in the six years ending in 2007, though Israel's State Comptroller has acknowledged that most of the suicide bombers crossed into Israel through existing checkpoints. Its supporters claim that the onus is now on the Palestinian Authority to fight terrorism.


title: West Bank

text: Opponents claim the barrier is an illegal attempt to annex Palestinian land under the guise of security, violates international law, has the intent or effect to pre-empt final status negotiations, and severely restricts Palestinian livelihoods, particularly limiting their freedom of movement within and from the West Bank thereby undermining their economy.


title: West Bank

text: After the signing of the Oslo Accords, the West Bank was divided into 11 governorates under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian National Authority. Since 2007 there are two governments claiming to be the legitimate government of the Palestinian National Authority, one based in the West Bank and one based in the Gaza Strip.


title: West Bank

text: The West Bank is further divided into 8 administrative regions: Menashe (Jenin area), HaBik'a (Jordan Valley), Shomron (Shechem area, known in Arabic as Nablus), Efrayim (Tulkarm area), Binyamin (Ramallah/al-Bireh area), Maccabim (Maccabim area), Etzion (Bethlehem area) and Yehuda (Hebron area).


title: West Bank

text: Allenby Bridge, or ‘King Hussein Bridge’, is the main port for the Palestinian in the West Bank to the Jordanian borders. This crossing point is controlled by Israel since 1967. It was inaugurated on 11 December 2011 under the military order "175" entitled ‘An order concerning transition station’. Later, Order ‘446’ was issued which annexed the Damia Bridge crossing point to the Allenby Bridge as a commercial crossing point only. Goods were exported to Jordan, while the import was banned for security purposes.


title: West Bank

text: In 1993, the Palestinian National Authority, according to Oslo Accord assigned by PLO and the Israeli government, became a partial supervisor over the Rafah Border Crossing to Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Authority was responsible for issuing passports to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. However, Israel remained the major responsible party for this crossing point. According to the agreement, Israel has the right to independently inspect luggage and to maintain security. In addition, it can prevent anyone from using the crossing.


title: West Bank

text: As of the early-21st century, the economy of the Palestinian territories is chronically depressed, with unemployment rates constantly over 20% since 2000 (19% in the West Bank in first half of 2013).


title: West Bank

text: According to a 2013 World Bank report, Israeli restrictions hinder Palestinian economic development in Area C of the West Bank. A 2013 World Bank report calculates that, if the Interim Agreement was respected and restrictions lifted, a few key industries alone would produce US$2.2 billion per annum more (or 23% of 2011 Palestinian GDP) and reduce by some US$800 million (50%) the Palestinian Authority's deficit; the employment would increase by 35%.


title: West Bank

text: Amnesty International has criticized the way that the Israeli state is dealing with the regional water resources:


title: West Bank

text: Israeli settlers in the West Bank have seized dozens of wells from Palestinians. The wells are privately owned by Palestinians and the settlers forcibly took them, gave them Hebrew names and, with the assistance of the Israeli military, prevent Arab people, including the wells' owners, from using the wells and the pools the wells feed.


title: West Bank

text: Israel ratified the international Basel Convention treaty on Israel on 14 December 1994, according to which, any transfer of waste must be performed with an awareness of the dangers posed to the disempowered occupied people. It forbids the creation among them of "environmental sacrifice zones." Israel, it is argued, uses the West Bank as a "sacrifice" zone for placing 15 waste treatment plants, which are there under less stringent rules that those required in Israel because a different legal system has been organized regarding hazardous materials that can be noxious to local people and the environment. The military authorities do not render public the details of these operations. These materials consist of such things as sewage sludge, infectious medical waste, used oils, solvents, metals, electronic waste and batteries.


title: West Bank

text: In 2007 it was estimated that 38% (35 mcm a year) of all wastewater flowing into the West Bank derived from settlements and Jerusalem. Of the 121 settlements surveyed, 81 had wastewater treatment plant, much of it inadequate or subject to breakdown, with much sewage flowing into lowland streams and terrain where Palestinian villages are located. Only 4 of 53 indictments for waste pollution were made over the years from 2000 to 2008, whereas in Israel the laws are strictly applied and, in 2006 alone, 230 enforcements for the same abuse were enforced. At the same time 90–95% of Palestinian wastewater was not treated, with only 1 of 4 Israeli plants built in the 1970s to that purpose functioning, and the neglect to improve the infrastructure is attributed to Israeli budgetary problems. After the Oslo Accords, the global community earmarked $250,000,000 for West Bank wastewater infrastructure. Israel at times insisted its approval was conditional on linking the grid to Israeli settlements, which neither the donors nor Palestinians accepted. Most of the infrastructure was subsequently destroyed by IDF military operations. The PA did raise funds from Germany for 15 plants, but only managed to build one, at al-Bireh, within Area B, though even there Israel insisted the plant process waste from the settlement of Psagot, though refusing to pay fees for the treatment. Palestinian towns like Salfit have been deeply affected by sewage overflow channeled past the town from the settlement of Ariel.


title: West Bank

text: Unlike the data available for sewage treatment within Israel, the Israeli Water Commission refuses to provide public reports on 15 million cubic metres of sewage flowing from Israeli settlements in the West Bank. It claims 75% is treated adequately but independent Israeli studies (2000) suggest that only 6% met Israeli treatment standards, while 48% was either not treated adequastely or discharged raw. Since then some improvements have been implemented.


title: West Bank

text: The landfill near Al-Jiftlik in the Jericho Governorate, built on absentee Palestinian property without planning or an environment impact analysis, is for the exclusive use of waste, 1,000 tons per day, produced by Israeli settlements and cities within Israel. Palestinians are restricted to 3 landfills, and permits for more have been denied unless the sites can be used to dump settlement garbage. Even if a permit is given without this agreement, settler waste under military escort is still dumped there.


title: West Bank

text: Israel has been accused of engaging in ‘warfare ecology’ in the West Bank. In response to local opposition in Israel to waste treatment plants and the high cost of meeting stringent environment laws in that country. It has been argued that Israel had used the area of the West Bank as a ‘sacrifice zone’ where its waste can be dumped."


title: West Bank

text: Many waste treatment facilities in the West Bank were built for processing waste generated inside Israeli sovereign territory, according to B'Tselem, Israel's leading human rights organization for monitoring the West Bank. At least 15 waste treatment plants operate in the West Bank and most of the waste they process is brought over from within the Green line inside Israel proper. Of these 15 facilities, six process hazardous waste, including infectious medical waste, used oils and solvents, metals, batteries and electronic industry byproducts, and one facility that processes sewage sludge. The Israel government requires no reporting by these West Bank facilities of the amount of waste they process or the risks they pose to the local population, and applies less rigorous regulatory standards to these facilities than it does to solid waste treatment facilities in Israel. B'Tselem, Israel's leading independent human rights organization for monitoring human rights in the West Bank, has observed that "any transfer of waste to the West Bank is a breach of international law which Israel is dutybound to uphold" because according to international law "an occupied territory or its resources may not be used for the benefit of the occupying power’s own needs." Experts have also warned that some of these facilities are garbage dumps that endanger the purity of the mountain aquifer, which is one of the largest sources of water in the region.


title: West Bank

text: In 1995, the Palestinian Water Authority (PWA) was established by a presidential decree. One year later, its functions, objectives and responsibilities were defined through a by-law, giving the PWA the mandate to manage water resources and execute the water policy.


title: West Bank

text: About 90% of the Palestinians in the Territories had access to improved sanitation in 2008. Cesspits were used by 39% of households, while access to the sewer network increased to 55% in 2011, up from 39% in 1999. In the West Bank, only 13,000 out of 85,000 m³ of wastewater were treated in five municipal wastewater treatment plants in Hebron, Jenin, Ramallah, Tulkarem and Al-Bireh. The Al Bireh plant was constructed in 2000 with funding by the German aid agency KfW. According to the World Bank report, the other four plants perform poorly concerning efficiency and quality.


title: West Bank

text: Based on the number of quarries per km in Areas A and B, it is calculated that, were Israel to lift restrictions, a further 275 quarries could be opened in Area C. The World Bank estimates that Israel's virtual ban on issuing Palestinians permits for quarries there costs the Palestinian economy at least US$241 million per year.


title: West Bank

text: In International law drawing on the Hague Conventions (Article 55), it is established that an occupying power may reap some value from the resources of the country occupied but not deplete its assets, and that the usufruct must benefit the people under occupation. The Oslo Accords agreed to hand over mining rights to the Palestinian Authority. Israel licenses eleven settlement quarries in the West Bank and they sell 94% of their material to Israel, which arguably constitutes "depletion" and pays royalties to its West Bank military government and settlement municipalities. Thus the German cement firm quarrying at Nahal Raba paid out €430,000 ($479,000) in taxes to the Samaria Regional Council in 2014 alone. The Israeli High Court rejected a petition that such quarrying was a violation by stating that after 4 decades Israeli law must adapt to "the realities on the ground". The state did undertake not to open more quarries. As an illustrative example, a Human Rights Watch report contrasts the difference between a Palestinian-owned quarry company in Beit Fajar and that of a European one working on what Israeli considers its state land. The European company obtained a concession and license to harvest stone, whereas Israel refuses permits for most of the roughly 40 Beit Fajar quarries, or nearly any other Palestinian-owned quarry in the West Bank under Israeli administration.


title: West Bank

text: Israel had denied Palestinians permits to process minerals in that area of the West Bank. The products of the Israeli cosmetics firm Ahava, established in 1988, were developed in laboratories at the West Bank Dead Sea settlements of Mitzpe Shalem and Kalya. 60% of their production is sold in the EU market. In 2018 The UN, stating that the violations were both "pervasive and devastating" to the local Palestinian population, identified some 206 companies which do business with Israeli settlements in the West Bank.


title: West Bank

text: Roughly 73 percent of global bromine production comes from Israeli and Jordanian exploitation of the Dead Sea. The potential incremental value that could accrue to the Palestinian economy from the production and sales of potash, bromine and magnesium has been conservatively estimated at US$918 million per annum, or 9 percent of GDP. The lost earnings from not being allowed to process Dead Sea minerals such as potash, and for making bromide-based flame retardants, based on calculations of comparable use by Israel and Jordan, suggest a figure of $642 million.


title: West Bank

text: Albert Glock argued that Israel is responsible for the disappearance of significant parts of the Palestinian cultural patrimony, by confiscating Arab cultural resources. In 1967 it appropriated the Palestine Archaeological Museum and its library in East Jerusalem. Often these losses are personal, as when homes are ransacked and looted of their valuables. The journalist Hamdi Faraj, jailed for endangering public order, had his 500-volume library confiscated, including copies of the Bible and Qur'an and, when he applied for their restitution, was told all the books had been accidentally burnt.


title: West Bank

text: The Israeli occupation has wrought a profound change in Palestinian identity, which clings to a sense of a "paradise lost" before the changes brought out by the 1967 conquest.


title: West Bank

text: The Palestinian territories contain several of the most significant sites for Muslims, Christians and Jews, and are endowed with a world-class heritage highly attractive to tourists and pilgrims. The West Bank Palestinians themselves have difficulties in accessing the territory for recreation.


title: West Bank

text: Based on 1967 figures, the Palestinian Dead Sea Coastline is roughly 40 km in length, of which 15% (6 kilometres) could lend itself to the same tourist infrastructure developed by Jordan and Israel in their respective areas. Were Israel to permit a parallel development of this Palestinian sector, the World Bank estimates that 2,900 jobs would be added, allowing the Palestinian economy a potential value-added input of something like $126 million annually. It is also the only maritime recreational outlet for West Bankers, but according to an Acri complaint to the Israeli Supreme Court in 2008 Palestinians are often barred or turned away from the beaches at their only access point, the Beit Ha'arava checkpoint on Route 90. Acri claimed the ban responds to fears by settlers who operate tourist concessions in this West Bank area that they will lose Jewish customers if there are too many West Bank Palestinians on the beaches.


title: West Bank

text: The key Palestinian towns in the West Bank for tourism are East Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Jericho. All access points are controlled by Israel and the road system, checkpoints and obstacles in place for visitors desiring to visit Palestinian towns leaves their hotels half-empty. From 92 to 94 cents in every dollar of the tourist trade goes to Israel. The general itineraries under Israeli management focus predominantly on Jewish history. Obstacles placed in the way of Palestinian-managed tourism down to 1995 included withholding licenses from tour guides, and hotels, for construction or renovation, and control of airports and highways, enabling Israel to develop a virtual monopoly on tourism.


title: West Bank

text: In December 2007, an official census conducted by the Palestinian Authority found that the Palestinian Arab population of the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) was 2,345,000. However, the World Bank and American-Israeli Demographic Research Group identified a 32% discrepancy between first-grade enrollment statistics documented by the Palestinian Ministry of Education and Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS)’ 2007 projections, with questions also raised about the PCBS’ growth assumptions for the period 1997–2003. The Israeli Civil Administration put the number of Palestinians in the West Bank at 2,657,029 as of May 2012.


title: West Bank

text: In 2014 there were 389,250 Israeli settlers living in the West Bank, excluding East Jerusalem, as well as around 375,000 living in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem. There are also small ethnic groups, such as the Samaritans living in and around Nablus, numbering in the hundreds.


title: West Bank

text: As of October 2007, around 23,000 Palestinians in the West Bank worked in Israel every day, while another 9,200 worked in Israeli settlements. In addition, around 10,000 Palestinian traders from the West Bank were allowed to travel every day into Israel. By 2014, 92,000 Palestinians worked in Israel legally or illegally, twice as many as in 2010.


title: West Bank

text: In 2008, approximately 30% of Palestinians or 754,263 persons living in the West Bank were refugees or descendants of refugees from villages and towns located in what became Israel during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, according to UNRWA statistics. A 2011 EU report titled "Area C and Palestinian State Building" reported that before the Israeli occupation in 1967, between 200,000 and 320,000 Palestinians used to live in the Jordan Valley, 90% which is in Area C, but demolition of Palestinian homes and prevention of new buildings has seen the number drop to 56,000, 70% of which live in Area A, in Jericho. In a similar period, the Jewish population in Area C has grown from 1,200 to 310,000.


title: West Bank

text: The most densely populated part of the region is a mountainous spine, running north–south, where the cities of Jerusalem, Nablus, Ramallah, al-Bireh, Jenin, Bethlehem, Hebron and Yattah are located as well as the Israeli settlements of Ariel, Ma'ale Adumim and Beitar Illit. Ramallah, although relatively mid in population compared to other major cities as Hebron, Nablus and Jenin, serves as an economic and political center for the Palestinians. Near Ramallah the new city of Rawabi is under construction. Jenin in the extreme north and is the capital of north of the West Bank and is on the southern edge of the Jezreel Valley. Modi'in Illit, Qalqilyah and Tulkarm are in the low foothills adjacent to the Israeli Coastal Plain, and Jericho and Tubas are situated in the Jordan Valley, north of the Dead Sea.


title: West Bank

text: The population of the West Bank is 80–85% Muslim (mostly Sunni) and 12–14% Jewish. The remainder are Christian (mostly Greek Orthodox) and others.


title: West Bank

text: It has been said that for "Jewish settlers, roads "connect"; for Palestinians, they "separate"." Between 1994 and 1997, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) built 180 miles of bypass roads in the territories, on appropriated land because they ran close to Palestinian villages. The given aim was said to be to afford protection to settlers from Palestinian sniping, bombing, and drive-by shootings. For TAU emeritus professor of geography Elisha Efrat, they ignored the historical topography, road systems and environmental characteristics of the West Bank, and simply formed an apartheid network of "octopus arms which hold a grip on Palestinian population centres".


title: West Bank

text: A large number of embankments, concrete slabs and barriers impeded movement on primary and secondary roads. The result was to cantonize and fragment Palestinian townships, and cause endless obstacles to Palestinians going to work, schools, markets and relatives. Ramallah was cut off from all of its feeder villages in 2000.


title: West Bank

text: Though prohibited by law, confiscation of Palestinian identity cards at checkpoints is a daily occurrence. At best drivers must wait for several hours for them to be returned, when, as can happen, the IDs themselves are lost as soldiers change shifts, in which case Palestinians are directed to some regional office the next day, and more checkpoints to get there. Even before the Al Aqsa Intifada, UNFPA estimated that 20% of pregnant West Bank women were unable to access prenatal care because of the difficulties and delays caused by crossing checkpoints, and dozens were forced to deliver their children on the roadside.


title: West Bank

text: Constant uncertainty and the inability to plan are the results for Palestinians of the Israeli military rules governing their movements. The World Bank noted that additional costs arising from longer travelling caused by restrictions on movement through three major routes in the West Bank alone ran to (2013) USD 185 million a year, adding that other, earlier calculations (2007) suggest restrictions on the Palestinian labour market cost the West Bank approximately US$229 million per annum. It concluded that such imposed restrictions had a major negative impact on the local economy, hindering stability and growth. In 2007, official Israeli statistics indicated that there were 180,000 Palestinians on Israel's secret travel ban list. 561 roadblocks and checkpoints were in place (October), the number of Palestinians licensed to drive private cars was 46,166 and the annual cost of permits was $454. These checkpoints, together with the separation wall and the restricted networks restructure the West Bank into "land cells", freezing the flow of normal everyday Palestinian lives. Israel sets up flying checkpoints without notice. Some 2,941 flying checkpoints were rigged up along West Bank roads, averaging some 327 a month, in 2017. A further 476 unstaffed physical obstacles, such as dirt mounds, concrete blocks, gates and fenced sections had been placed on roads for Palestinian use. Of the gates erected at village entrances, 59 were always closed. The checkpoint system did not ease up after the Oslo Accords, but was strengthened after them, which has been interpreted as suggesting their function is to assert control over Palestinians, and as a sign of an unwillingness to yield ground in the West Bank. According to PA Health Ministry statistics relating to the period from 2000 to 2006, of 68 Palestinian women who gave birth to their children while held up at checkpoints, 35 miscarried and 5 died while delivering their child there. Machsom Watch accumulated over a mere five years (2001–2006) some 10,000 eyewitness reports and testimonies regarding the innumerable difficulties faced by Palestinians trying to negotiate West Bank checkpoints.


title: West Bank

text: Transportation infrastructure is particularly problematic as Palestinian use of roads in Area C is highly restricted, and travel times can be inordinate; the Palestinian Authority has also been unable to develop roads, airports or railways in or through Area C, while many other roads were restricted only to public transportation and to Palestinians who have special permits from Israeli authorities.


title: West Bank

text: As such, movement restrictions were also placed on main roads traditionally used by Palestinians to travel between cities, and such restrictions are still blamed for poverty and economic depression in the West Bank. Underpasses and bridges (28 of which have been constructed and 16 of which are planned) link Palestinian areas separated from each other by Israeli settlements and bypass roads"


title: West Bank

text: There is a road, Route 4370, which has a concrete wall dividing the two sides, one designated for Israeli vehicles, the other for Palestinian. The wall is designed to allow Palestinians to pass north–south through Israeli-held land and facilitate the building of additional Jewish settlements in the Jerusalem neighborhood.


title: West Bank

text: , a plan for 475-kilometer rail network, establishing 11 new rail lines in West Bank, was confirmed by Israeli Transportation Ministry. The West Bank network would include one line running through Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah, Jerusalem, Ma'aleh Adumim, Bethlehem and Hebron. Another would provide service along the Jordanian border from Eilat to the Dead Sea, Jericho and Beit She'an and from there toward Haifa in the west and in also in a northeasterly direction. The proposed scheme also calls for shorter routes, such as between Nablus and Tul Karm in the West Bank, and from Ramallah to the Allenby Bridge crossing into Jordan.


title: West Bank

text: The only airport in the West Bank is the Atarot Airport near Ramallah, but it has been closed since 2001.


title: West Bank

text: The Palestinian Paltel telecommunication companies provide communication services such as landline, cellular network and Internet in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Dialling code +970 is used in the West Bank and all over the Palestinian territories. Until 2007, the Palestinian mobile market was monopolized by Jawwal. A new mobile operator for the territories launched in 2009 under the name of Wataniya Telecom. The number of Internet users increased from 35,000 in 2000 to 356,000 in 2010.


title: West Bank

text: The Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation broadcasts from an AM station in Ramallah on 675 kHz; numerous local privately owned stations are also in operation. Most Palestinian households have a radio and TV, and satellite dishes for receiving international coverage are widespread. Recently, PalTel announced and has begun implementing an initiative to provide ADSL broadband internet service to all households and businesses. Israel's cable television company HOT, satellite television provider (DBS) Yes, AM and FM radio broadcast stations and public television broadcast stations all operate. Broadband internet service by Bezeq's ADSL and by the cable company is available as well.


title: West Bank

text: The Al-Aqsa Voice broadcasts from Dabas Mall in Tulkarem at 106.7 FM. The Al-Aqsa TV station shares these offices.


title: West Bank

text: Most universities in the West Bank have politically active student bodies, and elections of student council officers are normally along party affiliations. Although the establishment of the universities was initially allowed by the Israeli authorities, some were sporadically ordered closed by the Israeli Civil Administration during the 1970s and 1980s to prevent political activities and violence against the IDF. Some universities remained closed by military order for extended periods during years immediately preceding and following the first Palestinian Intifada, but have largely remained open since the signing of the Oslo Accords despite the advent of the Al-Aqsa Intifada (Second Intifada) in 2000.