Oslo Accords in the context of "Fatah"

The West Bank is on the western bank of the Jordan River and is the larger of the two Palestinian territories (the other being the Gaza Strip) that make up the State of Palestine. A landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in West Asia's Levant region, it is bordered by Jordan and the Dead Sea to the east and by Israel (via the Green Line) to the south, west, and north. Since 1967, the territory has been under Israeli occupation, which has been regarded as illegal under the law of the international community.

The territory first emerged in the wake of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War as a region occupied and subsequently annexed by Jordan. Jordan ruled the territory until the 1967 Six-Day War, when it was occupied by Israel. Since then, Israel has administered the West Bank (except for East Jerusalem, which was effectively annexed in 1980) as the Judea and Samaria Area. Jordan continued to claim the territory as its own until 1988. The mid-1990s Oslo Accords split the West Bank into three regional levels of Palestinian sovereignty, via the Palestinian National Authority (PNA): Area A (PNA), Area B (PNA and Israel), and Area C (Israel, comprising 60% of the West Bank). The PNA exercises total or partial civil administration over 165 Palestinian enclaves across the three areas.

The Gaza Strip, also known simply as Gaza, is the smaller of the two Palestinian territories (the other being the West Bank) that make up the State of Palestine in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. Gaza is bordered by Egypt on the southwest and Israel on the east and north. Its capital and largest city is Gaza City.

The territorial boundaries were established while Gaza was controlled by the Kingdom of Egypt at the conclusion of the 1948 Arab–Israeli war. During that period the All-Palestine Protectorate, also known as All-Palestine, was established with limited recognition and it became a refuge for Palestinians who fled or were expelled during the 1948 Palestine war. Later, during the Six-Day War, Israel captured and occupied the Gaza Strip, initiating its decades-long military occupation of the Palestinian territories. The mid-1990s Oslo Accords established the Palestinian Authority (PA) as a limited governing authority, initially led by the secular party Fatah until that party's electoral defeat in 2006 to the Sunni Islamic Hamas. Hamas would then take over the governance of Gaza in the Battle of Gaza the next year, subsequently warring with Israel.

The 1990s (often referred and shortened to as "the '90s" or "the Nineties") was the decade that began on 1 January 1990, and ended on 31 December 1999. Known as the "post-Cold War decade", the 1990s were culturally imagined as the period from the Revolutions of 1989 until the September 11 attacks in 2001. The dissolution of the Soviet Union marked the end of Russia's status as a superpower, the end of a multipolar world, and the rise of anti-Western sentiment. China was still recovering from a politically and economically turbulent period. This allowed the US to emerge as the world's sole superpower, creating relative peace and prosperity for many western countries. During this decade, the world population grew from 5.3 to 6.1 billion.

The decade saw greater attention to multiculturalism and advance of alternative media. Public education about safe sex curbed HIV in developed countries. Generation X bonded over musical tastes. Humor in television and film was marked by ironic self-references mixed with popular culture references. Alternative music movements like grunge, reggaeton, Eurodance, K-pop, and hip-hop, became popular, aided by the rise in satellite and cable television, and the internet. New music genres such as drum and bass, post-rock, happy hardcore, denpa, and trance emerged. Video game popularity exploded due to the development of CD-ROM supported 3D computer graphics on platforms such as Sony PlayStation, Nintendo 64, and PCs.

As of September 2025, the State of Palestine is recognized as a sovereign state by 157 of the 193 member states of the United Nations (UN), or just over 80% of all UN members. It has been a non-member observer state of the UN General Assembly since November 2012. This limited status is largely due to the fact that the United States, a permanent member of the UN Security Council with veto power, has consistently blocked Palestine's full UN membership; Palestine is recognized by the other four permanent members, which are China, France, Russia, and the United Kingdom.

The State of Palestine was officially declared by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) on 15 November 1988, claiming sovereignty over the internationally recognized Palestinian territories: the West Bank (which includes East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip. By the end of 1988, the Palestinian state was recognized by 78 countries. In an attempt to solve the decades-long Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the Oslo Accords were signed between Israel and the PLO in 1993 and 1995, creating the Palestinian Authority (PA) as a self-governing interim administration in Gaza and around 40% of the West Bank.

The Civil Administration (Hebrew: המנהל האזרחי, ha-Minhal ha-ʿEzraḥi; Arabic: الإدارة المدنية الإسرائيلية) is the Israeli governing body that operates in the West Bank. It was established by the government of Israel in 1981, in order to carry out practical bureaucratic functions within the territories captured by Israel in 1967. While formally separate, it was subordinate to the Israeli military.

The Civil Administration is subordinate to a larger entity known as the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, which is a unit in the Defense Ministry of Israel. Among its functions are coordination with the Palestinian Authority. After 2002, the distinction set forth in the Oslo Accords restricting Israeli military operations in area A was de facto terminated.

The Palestinian Authority (PA), officially known as the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), is the Fatah-controlled government body that exercises partial civil control over the Palestinian enclaves in the Israeli-occupied West Bank as a consequence of the 1993–1995 Oslo Accords. The Palestinian Authority controlled the Gaza Strip prior to the Palestinian elections of 2006 and the subsequent Gaza conflict between the Fatah and Hamas parties, when it lost control to Hamas; the PA continues to claim the Gaza Strip, although Hamas exercises de facto control. Since January 2013, following United Nations General Assembly resolution 67/19, the Palestinian Authority has used the name "State of Palestine" on official documents, without prejudice to the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) role as "representative of the Palestinian people".

The Palestinian Authority was formed on 4 May 1994, pursuant to the Gaza–Jericho Agreement between the PLO and the government of Israel, and was intended to be a five-year interim body. Further negotiations were then meant to take place between the two parties regarding its final status. According to the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority was designated to have exclusive control over both security-related and civilian issues in Palestinian urban areas (referred to as "Area A") and only civilian control over Palestinian rural areas ("Area B"). The remainder of the territories, including Israeli settlements, the Jordan Valley region and bypass roads between Palestinian communities, were to remain under Israeli control ("Area C"). East Jerusalem was excluded from the Accords. Negotiations with several Israeli governments had resulted in the Authority gaining further control of some areas, but control was then lost in some areas when the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) retook several strategic positions during the Second ("Al-Aqsa") Intifada. In 2005, after the Second Intifada, Israel withdrew unilaterally from its settlements in the Gaza Strip, thereby expanding Palestinian Authority control to the entire strip while Israel continued to control the crossing points, airspace, and the waters of the Gaza Strip's coast.

Intermittent discussions are held by various parties and proposals put forward in an attempt to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict through a peace process. Since the 1970s, there has been a parallel effort made to find terms upon which peace can be agreed to in both this conflict and the wider Arab–Israeli conflict. Notably, the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel included discussions on plans for Palestinian autonomy, but did not include any Palestinian representatives. The autonomy plan was not implemented, but its stipulations were represented to a large extent in the Oslo Accords.

Despite the failure of the peace process to produce a final agreement, the international consensus has for decades supported a two-state solution to the conflict, based on United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 and 338. This includes the establishment of an independent Palestinian state under the pre-1967 borders including East Jerusalem and a resolution to the refugee question based on the Palestinian right of return (in accordance with United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194, though Israel disputes this interpretation). This is in contrast to the current situation under the Oslo Accords in which the Palestinian territories are divided into areas of varying jurisdiction between Israeli military control and the Palestinian National Authority (PA), with the PA only having partial self-rule in Area A of the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip. A final settlement as stipulated by the Oslo Accords has yet to be reached.