The Palestinian territories

The Palestinian territories is one of a number of designations for those portions of the British Mandate of Palestine captured and occupied by Jordan and by Egypt in the late 1940s, and captured by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War.

Today, the designation typically refers to the territories governed in varying degrees by the Palestinian Authority (42% of the West Bank plus all of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip), or includes all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It does not include the Golan Heights captured from Syria during the Six Day War, or the Sinai Peninsula, captured from Egypt at that time but later returned by Israel to Egypt after a peace accord was signed between the two countries in 1979. Israel does not consider East Jerusalem nor the former Israeli – Jordanian no man’s land (the former annexed in 1980 and the latter in 1967) to be parts of the West Bank. Israel claims that both fall under full Israeli law and jurisdiction as opposed to the 58% of the Israeli-defined West Bank which is ruled by the Israeli ‘Judea and Samaria Civil Administration’, although this has not been recognized by any other country.