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Wild, Wild West Bank: Flashpoint to the Arab-Israeli Conflict

© lawhawk

What do you call several hundred square miles of desert in the Middle East so bitterly contested by two people who have such strong ties to the land that they are willing to do just about anything to get it? The West Bank. This wedge of land running along the west bank of the Jordan River and the Dead Sea (the reason for its name) is generally a very arid, harsh landscape with large temperature swings during the day with highs in the 100s during the summer and cool nights that can see 50s and 40s. There are very few natural resources and the most precious commodity is not oil but water. Several places in the desert have water close enough to the surface to allow for agriculture or potable drinking water; Jericho and Ein Gedi are two such locations.

So why does the West Bank cause so much trouble for negotiators? The West Bank was captured from the Jordan in 1967 and Israel never formally annexed it into their country as they did with Jerusalem (in order to unify the city under Israeli civilian rule). It became home to many dispossessed Palestinians who became refugees and people without a country to call their own. Israel created a military government to administer the day to day affairs but this could never take the place of Palestinians governing Palestinians. Some Israelis, especially ultra-religious Jews and ultra-nationalists saw the capture of the West Bank as a precondition to the coming of the Messiah and the beginning of a great period in history for Israel. Needless to say, this made many Palestinians extremely unhappy since they saw their former homes being inhabited by Israelis who they felt had no right to do so.

This frustration with their treatment has let to periodic riots, strikes and demonstrations against the Israelis but the Israeli government has, as a rule, not stopped construction of housing and other Israeli facilities in the West Bank. Complicating matters further, the Israelis moving into the West Bank are typically more right wing than the general Israeli public and claim they have extremely strong ties to the land and that no one, Palestinian or Israeli, will take them away from the land. These settlers also are typically armed with various machine guns and other personal weapons unlike the vast majority of Palestinians living on the West Bank and this has led to some ugly confrontations where the Israeli settlers have either provoked or been provoked into incidents with Palestinians such that the Israeli settlers end up either injuring or killing Palestinians.

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