Context:

As Israel was set to launch its new unity government, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to push on with controversial plans to annex large parts of the occupied West Bank.

About:

• The West Bank is a chunk of land east of Israel.
• It is home to nearly three million Palestinians and would make up the heart of any Palestinian state.
• 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.
• The West Bank also contains a significant section of the western Dead Sea shore.

The bone of contention

• The territory is still a point of contention due to a large number of Palestinians who live there and hope to see the land become a part of their future state.
• The West Bank is currently home to about 2.8 million Palestinian Arabs and 400,000 Jewish residents in 127 communities commonly referred to as settlements.
• When Israel took control of the land in 1967 it allowed Jewish people to move in, but Palestinians consider the West Bank illegally occupied Palestinian land.

Oslo Accords

• Oslo Accord was signed in between both countries to bring peace.
• The Oslo Accords are a pair of agreements between the Government of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
  • The Oslo I Accord, signed in Washington, D.C., in 1993 t
  • The Oslo II Accord, signed in Taba, Egypt, in 1995
  • The Oslo Accords marked the start of the Oslo process, a peace process aimed at achieving a peace treaty based on United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338.
• The Oslo Accords created a Palestinian Authority tasked with limited self-governance of parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and acknowledged the PLO as Israel’s partner in permanent status negotiations about remaining questions.

United Nations stance

The United Nations considers all settlement activity by Israel in the West Bank to be illegal, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his intention to annex the settlements in the region.