Oslo II and the Division of the West Bank

The Declaration of Principles of September 1993 had deferred almost everything. The Israeli–Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, signed in Washington on 28 September 1995 and known as Oslo II, was where the deferral acquired a map. It extended Palestinian self-government beyond Gaza and Jericho to the rest of the West Bank, established the Palestinian Legislative Council, provided for elections and for further Israeli redeployments — and divided the territory into three zones.

What the three zones are — Palestinian civil and security control in Area A, Palestinian civil administration under Israeli security control in Area B, full Israeli control in Area C — is set out in this archive’s entry on Area A, Area B and Area C. Worth adding here is that the familiar proportions are not the proportions of 1995. At signing, Area A was only the main Palestinian cities, a small fraction of the West Bank; it grew through the staged redeployments the agreement provided for. The last of them, agreed at Wye River on 23 October 1998, transferred thirteen percent of Area C (one percent to Area A, twelve to Area B) and turned a further 14.2 percent of Area B into Area A. Only after that did Area A reach roughly the eighteen percent usually quoted. The arrangement was explicitly transitional: permanent-status negotiations on Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, borders and security were to begin no later than May 1996 and conclude by May 1999.

They did not conclude. Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated five weeks after signing, on 4 November 1995; the negotiations that followed at Camp David in 2000 and Taba in 2001 ended without agreement; the second intifada, the reoccupation of the Area A cities in 2002 and the construction of the separation barrier followed. Meanwhile the settler population of the West Bank has multiplied several times over since the agreement was signed.

The three areas were meant to dissolve. Instead they hardened into the architecture of the occupation, and the arithmetic of Area C is the measure of it. UN monitors recorded that less than one percent of Area C is covered by an Israeli-approved planning scheme for Palestinian communities; that between 2009 and 2016 fewer than three percent of Palestinian building-permit applications there were approved; that Israel demolished more than four thousand Palestinian-owned structures in Area C over the same period, with over twelve thousand demolition orders outstanding; and that Palestinians are barred from nearly thirty percent of Area C as designated firing zones. Some 300,000 Palestinians live in 532 residential areas lying partly or wholly in Area C, alongside 400,000 settlers in roughly 230 settlements. What was drawn as a five-year expedient has lasted longer than the Mandate.

Sources

• Israeli–Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (“Oslo II”), 28 September 1995 — United Nations (UNISPAL)
• The Wye River Memorandum, 23 October 1998 (PDF) — UN Peacemaker
• West Bank — Area C: Key Humanitarian Concerns (PDF) — UN OCHA occupied Palestinian territory