News Highlight:
The violence in the West Bank is reshaping Israeli and Palestinian societies. Israeli security forces killing five Palestinian men in separate incidents on Tuesday in Hebron and Ramallah is the latest flare-up of a continuing story of violence and retribution in the occupied West Bank.
Key Takeaway:
- Organised armed resistance independent of the official Palestinian leadership has been growing in the West Bank since the clashes in Jerusalem in May 2021, which led to the 11-day war on the Gaza Strip, controlled by the Islamist Hamas.
- The new militant group that has sprung up in the West Bank is the Lion’s Den, reportedly based in the Old City of Nablus, attacking Israeli troops and illegal Jewish settlers in Palestinian territories.
West Bank and Associated issues:
- West Bank Geography:
- It is a landlocked territory near the Mediterranean coast of Western Asia, bordered by Jordan to the east and by the Green Line separating it and Israel on the south, west and north.
- Jordan captured it after the Arab-Israel War, but Israel snatched it back during the Six-Day War of 1967 and has occupied it ever since
- It is sandwiched between Israel and Jordan.
- Ramallah is the de facto administrative capital of Palestine.
- West Bank Politics:
- Presently, 130 formal Israeli settlements, 26 lakh Palestinians in the West Bank and a similar number of smaller, informal settlements have mushroomed over the last 20-25 years.
- When Israel took control of the land in 1967, it allowed Jewish people to move in, but Palestinians considered the West Bank illegally occupied Palestinian land.
- The Palestinians want the West Bank to form the central part of their future state.
- The Six-Day War 1967:
- The Six-Day war was the third in the long line of Arab-Israeli wars that started in 1947, around the time of the creation of the Israeli state. The War was a brief but bloody conflict fought in June 1967 between Israel and the Arab states of Egypt, Syria and Jordan.
- Israel seized the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip from Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria.
- Since 1967, the lands Israel seized in the Six-Day War have been at the centre of efforts to end the war.
- Even though Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in 1982 and withdrew from Gaza in 2005, the Golan Heights and the West Bank status continues to be a stumbling block in Arab-Israeli peace negotiations.
- The legality of the settlement
- The United Nations General Assembly, the UN Security Council, and the International Court of Justice have said West Bank settlements violate the Fourth Geneva Convention.
- Under the Rome Statute that set up the International Criminal Court in 1998, such transfers constitute war crimes, as does the “extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully.
India’s Stand:
- India was one of the first countries to recognise Palestine in 1988. In 1996, India opened its Representative Office to the Palestine Authority in Gaza, which later was shifted to Ramallah in 2003
- India traditionally believes in the 2-state solution and supports the establishment of a sovereign independent, and viable state of Palestine. However, India’s support for Palestine has not deterred its growing relationship with Israel.
Pic Courtesy: The Times Of India.
Content Source: The Hindu.