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The West Bank was declared part of Jordanian territory after Israel and Jordan signed armistice agreements in 1949. The area became occupied by Israel as a result of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. Israeli military and economic policies dominated the West Bank. Conflicts with Arab residents there grew in the late 1970s as Israeli Jewish settlers, encouraged by the Begin administration, began a series of large-scale housing developments. Although the Camp David Accords (1978) incorporated plans for Arab self-rule in the West Bank, this goal remained elusive.
Israel's incursion into Lebanon in 1982 to destroy Palestinian armed bases exacerbated rioting and political turmoil in the West Bank. Israel responded with military curfews and increased Israeli troop presence. The development of the Intifada (Palestinian uprising), which began in Gaza in 1987, embroiled the West Bank in outbreaks of stone-throwing, protests, and violent attacks. Israeli reprisals resulted in hundreds of Palestinian deaths, property damage, high unemployment, and reduced living standards. Due to the Persian Gulf War (1991), the West Bank was hit with further economic hardship as Palestinian workers returned en masse from the war zone. Loss of export markets in the Gulf and with Jordan further diminished West Bank revenues.
Rioting and clashes with Israeli troops continued into the 1990s. An accord between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), reached in 1993 after secret negotiations, led to limited Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in mid-1994. Agreements providing for a transfer of control to Palestinians in the West Bank town of Jericho and the Gaza Strip, and then in the other West Bank cities and towns (except East Jerusalem), were finalized in 1994 and 1995; most had been implemented by early 1996. In Mar., 1996, Israel sealed off many towns in the West Bank following a series of suicide bombings inside Israel. Yasir Arafat was elected president of the Palestinian-controlled territory in 1996. Most of Hebron was handed over to the Palestinians in 1997 and, in a 1998 accord, Israel agreed to withdraw from additional West Bank territory. Although progress was slow, this was accomplished by Mar., 2000.
Negotiations in 2000 proved unfruitful, and widespread violence erupted in the West Bank (and Gaza) in the fall after Ariel Sharon visited the Haram esh-Sherif (or Temple Mount) in Jerusalem. Efforts to resume to talks were subsequently mainly unsuccessful, stymied by mutual distrust and a cycle of fighting and violence, including suicide bombings by Palestinians and Israeli attacks on facilities of the Palestinian authority and Israeli reoccupation of Palestinian territory. The continuing growth of Israeli settlements in the region, which nearly doubled in population from 1992 to 2001, has also proved a major irritant to Arabs and stumbling block to peace.
In Mar., 2003, the Palestinian parliament established the post of prime minister, effectively reducing Arafat's powers as president; Mahmoud Abbas, regarded as more moderate than Arafat, was appointed to the post. The acceptance by Palestinians and Israelis of an internationally supported "road map for peace" raised hopes for a cessation of violence, though militant Palestinian groups only agreed (June) to a three-month cease-fire that did not hold even that long. Abbas resigned in September and was replaced by Ahmed Qurei, who, like Abbas, clashed with Arafat over control of the security forces.
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