* 2005 – Israel's unilateral disengagement plan to evict all Israelis from the Gaza Strip and from four settlements in the northern West Bank begins.

Plans were also made for a new retractable-roof ballpark, Bank One Ballpark, nicknamed the BOB, ( renamed in 2005 to Chase Field ) to be built in an industrial / warehouse district on the southeast edge of downtown Phoenix, one block from the Suns ' America West Arena ( now US Airways Center ).

The Central Bank of the West African States ( BCEAO ) reports that about 41 microfinance institutions ( MFIs ) operate in the country, serving a total of 800, 000 customers.

Bethlehem ( or, lit " House of Meat ";,,, lit " House of Bread ;", Vithleém ) is a city located in the central West Bank and approximately south of Jerusalem, with a population of about 30, 000 people.

Jordan retained control of the city until the Six-Day War in 1967, when Bethlehem was occupied by Israel, along with the rest of the West Bank.

On December 21, 1995, Israeli troops withdrew from Bethlehem, and three days later the city came under the complete administration and military control of the Palestinian National Authority in conformance with the Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in 1995.

In June 2009, the US National Public Radio ( NPR ), relying on information obtained from the CIA World Factbook, put the number of Israeli Jews living in settlements in the West Bank and Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem at 250, 000.

In 1991 the DFLP split, with a minority faction led by Yasser Abd Rabbo ( who had become increasingly close to Yasser Arafat ) favouring the Madrid negotiations that led initially to limited Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Essentially the Damascus-headquartered DFLP under Hawatmeh was able to retain its external branches, whereas the majority of the organization within Palestine, mainly on the West Bank, was taken over by FIDA.

The Dead Sea (,,, " Sea of Salt ", also,, " The Sea of Death "), also called the Salt Sea, is a salt lake bordering Jordan to the east and Israel and the West Bank to the west.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, hundreds of religious documents dated between 150 BCE and 70 CE were found in caves near the ancient settlement of Qumran, about a mile inland from the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea ( presently in the West Bank ).

The world's lowest road, Highway 90, runs along the Israeli and West Bank shores of the Dead Sea at below sea level.

File: Deadsea_sign_diagram_jordan. jpg | Located in Jordan, this sign diagrams the topography of Jordan, the West Bank, Israel, and the Mediterranean Sea.

* 1987 – Israeli-Palestinian conflict: The First Intifada begins in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

West of The Village, Downtown contains the two tallest buildings in the Quad Cities: the Wells Fargo Bank Building, which is 255 feet tall, and the Mid-American Energy Building, which is 220 feet tall.

* 2004 – A gang of thieves steal £ 26. 5 million worth of currency from the Donegall Square West headquarters of Northern Bank in Belfast, Northern Ireland, one of the largest bank robberies in UK history.

In 1960, Frank Drake conducted the first search for radio signals from extraterrestrial civilizations at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia.

On April 6, 1972 the Egyptian government severed relations in protest for a Jordanian plan for federation with the West Bank, which didn't take PLO interests unto considerations.

* 1994 – Mosque of Abraham massacre: In the Cave of the Patriarchs in the West Bank city of Hebron, Baruch Goldstein opens fire with an automatic rifle, killing 29 Palestinian worshippers and injuring 125 more before being subdued and beaten to death by survivors.

However, the Hamas legislative victory led to a split between the two main Palestinian political parties, with Fatah retaining control of the Palestinian National Authority in the West Bank.

Fatah's internal conflicts have also, due to the creation of the Palestinian Authority, merged with the turf wars between different PA security services, e. g., a longstanding rivalry between the West Bank ( Jibril Rajoub ) and Gaza ( Muhammad Dahlan ) branches of the powerful Preventive Security Service.

The younger generations of Fatah, especially within the militant al-Aqsa Martyrs ' Brigades, have been more prone to splits, and a number of lesser networks in Gaza and the West Bank have established themselves as either independent organizations or joined Hamas.

The Sixth General Assembly of the Fatah Movement, nearly 16 years after the Oslo Conference and 20 years since the last Fatah convention began on 4 August 2009, in Bethlehem, West Bank after being repeatedly postponed over conflicts ranging from who would be represented, to what venue would be acceptable.

Some 400 Fatah members from the Gaza Strip were unable to attend the conference in Bethlehem after Hamas barred them from traveling to the West Bank.

* West Bank

Under the plan, all Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip ( and four in the West Bank ) and the joint Israeli-Palestinian Erez Industrial Zone were dismantled with the removal of all 9, 000 Israeli settlers ( most of them in the Gush Katif settlement area in the Strip's southwest ) and military bases.

The political status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is one of the most violently disputed issues in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Various conferences and negotiations have been conducted to determine the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip ( see " Palestinian territories ").

The Israel-PLO Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements ( the DOP, better known as the Oslo accords ), signed in Washington on 13 September 1993, provided for a transitional period not exceeding five years of Palestinian interim self-government in sections of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

Under the DOP, Israel agreed to recognize the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as a " Single Territorial Unit " as well as to transfer certain powers and responsibilities to the Palestinian Authority, which includes the Palestinian Legislative Council elected in January 1996, as part of the interim self-governing arrangements in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The US granted a request from the Palestinian National Authority for recognition of the West Bank and Gaza as a Country in view of developments including the Israeli-PLO Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements.

In a letter dated 13 January 1997, the Department of State advised the other agencies of the Executive branch that it considered the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to be one area for political, economic, legal and other purposes.

The Treasury Department subsequently stated that the country of origin markings of goods from the West Bank and Gaza shall not contain the words " Israel ", " Made in Israel ", " Occupied Territories-Israel ", or words of similar meaning.

Direct negotiations to determine the permanent status of Gaza and the West Bank had begun in September 1999 after a three-year hiatus, but have been derailed by the al-Aqsa Intifada that began in September 2000.

In 2003, the Israeli government issued a plan for total withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and part of the northern West Bank by late 2005.

A narrow definition would take in roughly the same area as the modern states of Israel, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and Jordan, while a wider definition would include Syria.

Hamas has made great use of guerrilla tactics in the Gaza Strip and to a lesser degree the West Bank.

Hezbollah's television station Al-Manar airs programming designed to inspire suicide attacks in Gaza, the West Bank, and Iraq.

A poll of Gaza Strip and West Bank residents indicated that 79. 6 % had " a very good view " of Hezbollah, and most of the remainder had a " good view ".

For example, whilst the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics defines the area of Israel to include the annexed East Jerusalem and Golan Heights and to exclude the militarily controlled regions of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, it defines the population of Israel to also include Israeli settlers living in the West Bank.

The second point of transfer was near the Caprivi Strip and the Okavango River, where it was apparently the Yeyi language which borrowed the clicks from a West Kalihari Khoe language, and which in turn passed on a reduced click inventory to the neighboring Mbukushu, Kwangali, Gciriku, Kuhane, and Fwe languages in Angola, Namibia, Botswana, and Zambia.

Israel dismantled 18 settlements in the Sinai Peninsula in 1982, and all 21 in the Gaza Strip and 4 in the West Bank in 2005, but continues to both expand its settlements and settle new areas in the West Bank in spite of the Oslo Accords which barred both Israeli and Palestinians from undertaking unilateral actions that would alter the status quo.

Settler population by year in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and Golan Heights 1972-2007

In 2005, all 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip and four in the northern West Bank were forcibly evacuated as part of Israel's unilateral disengagement plan.