Netanyahu’s security risks mount as violence spirals in West Bank

Subject : IR

Section: Places in news

Concept :

Violence in the occupied West Bank risks spiraling out of control fueled by Israel’s use of advanced military weaponry more suited to a war zone, the UN human rights chief warned.
Israel saw armed battles between its forces and Palestinian militants, attacks on settlers by Palestinian gunmen and violence by radical settlers in Palestinian villages — all in one week.

West Bank

The West Bank is a landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediterranean in Western Asia that forms the main bulk of the Palestinian territories.
It is bordered by Jordan and the Dead Sea to the east and by Israel to the south, west, and north.
It was captured by Jordan after the Arab-Israeli War (1948) but Israel snatched it back during the Six-Day War of 1967 and has occupied it ever since.
Ramallah, the de facto administrative capital of Palestine is situated in West Bank.
At present, there are around 130 formal Israeli settlements along with 26 lakh Palestinians at West Bank.
Under the Oslo Accords of the 1990s, both Israel and the Palestinians agreed that the status of settlements would be decided by negotiations.

Legality of the settlements:

The United Nations General Assembly, the UN Security Council, and the International Court of Justice have said that the West Bank settlements are violative of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Under the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949), an occupying power “shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies”.