Opher Ganel
2 min readJun 24, 2024

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The Golan Heights has been governed by Israel since Israel conquered it from Syria in the Six-Day War (1967). In 1981, Israel formally annexed the GH (https://www.jta.org/2019/03/21/israel/the-golan-heights-explained).

In 2019, the Trump administration recognized that annexation (https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/27/trump-officially-recognized-israels-annexation-of-golan-heights.html), which was lauded by Israel and widely criticized internationally (not stating an opinion here, just recounting facts).

The West Bank isn't as simple as "they govern themselves." The Oslo accords divided the West Bank and Gaza into Area A, that included most Palestinians in the West Bank and all of the Gaza Strip, where the Palestinian Authority has civil and security authority (after which, in 2007, Hamas took the Gaza Strip over from the PA in a bloody coup).

However, Area A comprises only 18% of the West Bank (https://www.anera.org/what-are-area-a-area-b-and-area-c-in-the-west-bank/).

Area B is another 22% of the West Bank land area, where the PA exerts civil authority but Israel retains security authority.

Area C comprises 60% of the West Bank land, and there Israel retains full control. As the map shows, Areas A and B are like a multitude of "islands" in a sea of Area C land, making it difficult for the Palestinians to move around from one city to another without going through multiple Israeli security checkposts.

If and when there is a comprehensive peace agreement that establishes a state of Palestine, some of the major sticking points will be:

- Does Israel retain control, or at least the ability to observe, the Jordan Valley between the West Bank and Jordan, to ensure no heavy military hardware makes it into the West Bank?

- Does Israel retain the portions of the West Bank adjacent to the pre-1967 border, where 80% of Israeli settlers live, and if so, what land do the Palestinians receive as compensation?

- Does Israel remove the remaining settlements and outposts that are deep within the West Bank, and if not, what rights (if any) do Israeli citizens who choose to stay there have within Palestine?

- Does Palestine get any portion of Jerusalem (e.g., East Jerusalem, where the Palestinians are a clear majority), and if so, do they get to make that portion their capital?

- Do any portions of Jerusalem remain accessible to both Israelis and Palestinians, and if so, who's responsible for that area in terms of civil goverance and/or security?

As you can tell, this is a complex conflict with lots of hard questions and no easy solutions, especially when there are so many extremists on both sides rooting for there to never be peace (e.g., Hamas on the Palestinian side and Smothrich's Religious Zionist Party and Ben Gvir's Jewish National Front on the Israeli side).

BTW, Wikis are notoriously poor sources because so many entries are written by people with agendas (that could be pro- or anti-Israel), so they're often slanted, if not outright false.

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Opher Ganel
Opher Ganel

Written by Opher Ganel

Consultant | systems engineer | physicist | writer | avid reader | amateur photographer. I write about personal finance from an often contrarian point of view.

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