Judea and Samaria

A map Judea and Samaria

Catholics in the West Bank.

Judea and Samaria or its the most commonly used secular name, the West Bank, refers to the ancient Jewish homelands located in the west bank of the Jordan River near Jerusalem. The land is bitterly disputed between Jewish and Arab settlers in the region. The West Bank has been controlled by Israel since the Six-Day War (1967) and part of it by the State of Palestine since the Oslo Accords. The West Bank is not officially part of any country, and is often referenced in the media as a Palestinian authority as it is recognized by the international community.

The total population, which is predominantly Palestinian, totals 2.9 million residents in an area of 2,183 square miles. Historic religious sites such as Bethlehem are located in the West Bank, while Jerusalem is on its border.

History

The name "West Bank" was used by Jordan (at the time The Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan) for the area controlled under the 1949 Armistice Agreements at the end of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The Jordan annexation of the West Bank in this war lasted for 19 years and was never condemned by a single United Nations resolution.

During the Six-Day War in 1967 King Hussein of Jordan ordered his army to attack Israel. The Jordan artillery shelled Israeli population centers in West Jerusalem while the Israeli army responded to the attacks by conquering East Jerusalem and the West Bank. According to the Article 52 of the UN Charter Israel acted legal by defending itself against the Jordan aggression. Nevertheless, the "occupation" of the West Bank through Israel was condemned by the European Union.

Since the Oslo Accords, several parts of the territory is under Arab rule. There is presence of Arab Christians, which are mostly Catholic and Orthodox.

References

"The Mufti.. concocted a new kind of antisemitism that combined traditional Muslim antisemitism, like the anti-Jewish verses you find in the Koran, with the Nazi antisemitism that demonised Jews... His whole ideology was antisemitic and from the very beginning he targeted Jews, not Zionists."

The difference between lies and reality is sometimes just a color on a map

Lord Peel to W. Ormsby-Gore as he was preparing the royal commission report, "Though I knew there was ill-feeling between Jews and Arabs, I had not realized the depth and intensity of the hatred with which the Jews are held by the Arabs..."

"It is not Israel's settlement blocks but rather the Palestinian ideological blockade that constitutes the biggest barrier to peaceful arrangements . The Jew-hatred in this region must no longer be played down as a kind of local custom ..."

The only tweet (July 2014) on the Twitter account of the late American Elan Ganeles - murdered by Arab-Islamist "Palestinian" on Feb 27, 2023 hy"d: "I think you're always going to have tension in the Middle East, when there's [are] people who want to kill Jews, and the Jews don't want to be killed, and neither side is willing to compromise."