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The Palestinian National Authority, commonly known as the Palestinian Authority and officially the State of Palestine, is the Fatah-controlled government body that exercises partial civil control over West Bank areas "A" and "B" as a consequence of the 1993–1995 Oslo Accords. The Palestinian Authority controlled the Gaza Strip prior to the Palestinian elections of 2006 and the subsequent Gaza conflict between the Fatah and Hamas parties, when it lost control to Hamas; the PA continues to claim the Gaza Strip, although Hamas exercises de facto control. Since January 2013, the Palestinian Authority has used the name "State of Palestine" on official documents, although the United Nations continues to recognize the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) as the "representative of the Palestinian people".
The West Bank, so called due to its relation to the Jordan River, is the larger of the two Palestinian territories. A landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the Levant region of West Asia, it is bordered by Jordan and the Dead Sea to the east and by Israel to the south, west, and north. The territory has been under Israeli occupation since 1967.
The history of the State of Palestine describes the creation and evolution of the State of Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Gaza, also called Gaza City, is a Palestinian city in the Gaza Strip. Before the 2023 Israel–Hamas war, it was the most populous city in the State of Palestine, with 590,481 in 2017.
The Palestinian territories are the two regions of the former British Mandate for Palestine that have been occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War of 1967, namely the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has referred to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as "the Occupied Palestinian Territory", and this term was used as the legal definition by the ICJ in its advisory opinion of July 2004. The term occupied Palestinian territory was used by the United Nations and other international organizations between October 1999 and December 2012 to refer to areas controlled by the Palestinian National Authority, but from 2012, when Palestine was admitted as one of its non-member observer states, the United Nations started using exclusively the name State of Palestine. The European Union (EU) also uses the term "occupied Palestinian territory". The government of Israel and its supporters use the label "disputed territories" instead.
Palestine, officially the State of Palestine, is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. Founded on 15 November 1988 and officially governed by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), it claims the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as its territory, all of which have been Israeli-occupied territories since the 1967 Six-Day War. The West Bank contains 165 Palestinian enclaves that are under partial Palestinian rule, but the remainder, including 200 Israeli settlements, is under full Israeli control. The Gaza Strip was governed by Egypt but conquered by Israel in 1967. Israel governed the region until it withdrew in 2005. The United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and various human-rights organizations still consider Gaza to be held under Israeli military occupation, due to what they regard as Israel's effective military control over the territory; Israel disputes this. Hamas seized power after winning the 2006 Palestinian legislative election. This has since been ensued by a blockade of the Gaza Strip by Israel and Egypt.
The 1949 Armistice Agreements, which ended the 1948 Arab–Israeli War by delineating the Green Line as the legal boundary between Israel and the Arab countries, left the Kingdom of Egypt in control of a small swath of territory that it had captured and occupied in the former British Mandate for Palestine: the Gaza Strip. This period saw the creation of the All-Palestine Government within the All-Palestine Protectorate, an Egyptian client state that would last until 1959, a year after the Republic of Egypt and the Second Syrian Republic merged to form a single sovereign state known as the United Arab Republic. The Egyptian occupation of the Gaza Strip was briefly subsumed by Israel during the 1956 Suez Crisis and ended entirely during the 1967 Arab–Israeli War, after which the Israeli Military Governorate was established in the territory and succeeded by the Israeli Civil Administration in 1981; the direct Israeli presence in the Gaza Strip ended with the 2005 disengagement plan.
The Palestinian government is the government of the Palestinian Authority or State of Palestine. The Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (EC) is the highest executive body of the Palestine Liberation Organization and acts as the government. Since June 2007, there have been two separate administrations in Palestine, one in the West Bank and the other in the Gaza Strip. The government on the West Bank was generally recognised as the Palestinian Authority Government. On the other hand, the government in the Gaza Strip claimed to be the legitimate government of the Palestinian Authority. Until June 2014, when the Palestinian Unity Government was formed, the government in the West Bank was the Fatah-dominated Palestinian government of 2013. In the Gaza Strip, the government was the Hamas government of 2012. Following two Fatah–Hamas Agreements in 2014, on 25 September 2014 Hamas agreed to let the PA Government resume control over the Gaza Strip and its border crossings with Egypt and Israel, but that agreement had broken down by June 2015, after President Abbas said the PA government was unable to operate in the Gaza Strip.
Israel has occupied the Palestinian territories and the Golan Heights since the Six-Day War of 1967. It previously occupied the Sinai Peninsula and southern Lebanon as well. Prior to Israel's victory in the Six-Day War, occupation of the Palestinian territories was split between Egypt and Jordan, with the former having occupied the Gaza Strip and the latter having annexed the West Bank; the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights were under the sovereignty of Egypt and Syria, respectively. The first conjoined usage of the terms "occupied" and "territories" with regard to Israel was in United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, which was drafted in the aftermath of the Six-Day War and called for: "the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East" to be achieved by "the application of both the following principles: ... Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict ... Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force."
The politics of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) take place within the framework of a semi-presidential multi-party republic, with a legislative council, an executive president, and a prime minister leading the cabinet.
The Palestinian National Authority began in 1994 to issue stamps and operate postal services as authorized by the Oslo Accords.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the State of Palestine:
The Oslo II Accord divided the Israeli-occupied West Bank into three administrative divisions: the Palestinian enclaves as "Areas A and B" and the remainder, including Israeli settlements, as "Area C".
The water resources of Palestine are de facto fully controlled by Israel, and the division of groundwater is subject to provisions in the Oslo II Accord.
The Civil Administration is the Israeli governing body that operates in the West Bank. It was established by the government of Israel in 1981, in order to carry out practical bureaucratic functions within the territories captured by Israel in 1967. While formally separate, it was subordinate to the Israeli military and the Shin Bet.
The Oslo Accords are a pair of interim agreements between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO): the Oslo I Accord, signed in Washington, D.C., in 1993; and the Oslo II Accord, signed in Taba, Egypt, in 1995. They marked the start of the Oslo process, a peace process aimed at achieving a peace treaty based on Resolution 242 and Resolution 338 of the United Nations Security Council. The Oslo process began after secret negotiations in Oslo, Norway, resulting in both the recognition of Israel by the PLO and the recognition by Israel of the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people and as a partner in bilateral negotiations.
Healthcare in the State of Palestine refers to the governmental and private healthcare providers to which residents in the claimed territory have access. Since 1967, there have been improvements in the access to healthcare and the overall general health conditions for residents. Advances in training, increased access to state-of-the-art medical technology, and various governmental provisions have allowed per-capita funding to increase, and therefore the overall health of residents in the region to increase. Additionally, the enhanced access to and funding from international organizations like the World Health Organization, the United Nations, the Palestinian Ministry of Health, and the World Bank Education and Health Rehabilitation Project have contributed to the current state of affairs within the healthcare segment of the Palestinian territories.
The governance of the Gaza Strip since the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip in June 2007 has been carried out by Hamas. The Hamas government in Gaza was led by Ismail Haniyeh from 2007 until February 2017, when Haniyeh was replaced as leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip by Yahya Sinwar. As of November 2023, Yahya Sinwar continues to be the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Due to the ongoing Israel–Hamas war, Hamas lost control of most of the northern part of the Gaza Strip.
The Ministry of Local Government (MoLG) is a governmental body in Palestine that is responsible for overseeing the local government system and ensuring that it functions effectively. The ministry is responsible for providing support and guidance to local government institutions, including municipalities, village councils, and other local authorities.
References
- ↑ "Palestinian Territories" (PDF). OECD . October 2016. p. 2. Retrieved 23 March 2024.
