West Bank (2005) | World (2002) | |
Administrative divisions | - | 268 nations, dependent areas, other, and miscellaneous entries |
Age structure | 0-14 years: 43.4% (male 530,197/female 504,794)
15-64 years: 53.2% (male 649,610/female 619,335) 65 years and over: 3.4% (male 34,803/female 46,876) (2005 est.) |
0-14 years: 29.2% (male 932,581,592; female 885,688,851)
15-64 years: 63.7% (male 2,009,997,089; female 1,964,938,201) 65 years and over: 7.1% (male 193,549,180; female 247,067,032) (2002 est.) |
Agriculture - products | olives, citrus, vegetables; beef, dairy products | - |
Airports | 3 (2004 est.) | - |
Airports - with paved runways | total: 3
2,438 to 3,047 m: 1 1,524 to 2,437 m: 1 under 914 m: 1 (2004 est.) |
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Area | total: 5,860 sq km
land: 5,640 sq km water: 220 sq km note: includes West Bank, Latrun Salient, and the northwest quarter of the Dead Sea, but excludes Mt. Scopus; East Jerusalem and Jerusalem No Man's Land are also included only as a means of depicting the entire area occupied by Israel in 1967 |
total: 510.072 million sq km
land: 148.94 million sq km water: 361.132 million sq km note: 70.8% of the world's surface is water, 29.2% is land |
Area - comparative | slightly smaller than Delaware | land area about 16 times the size of the US |
Background | The Israel-PLO Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements (the DOP), signed in Washington on 13 September 1993, provided for a transitional period not exceeding five years of Palestinian interim self-government in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Under the DOP, Israel agreed 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 Gaza Strip. A transfer of powers and responsibilities for the Gaza Strip and Jericho took place pursuant to the Israel-PLO 4 May 1994 Cairo Agreement on the Gaza Strip and the Jericho Area and in additional areas of the West Bank pursuant to the Israel-PLO 28 September 1995 Interim Agreement, the Israel-PLO 15 January 1997 Protocol Concerning Redeployment in Hebron, the Israel-PLO 23 October 1998 Wye River Memorandum, and the 4 September 1999 Sharm el-Sheikh Agreement. The DOP provides that Israel will retain responsibility during the transitional period for external and internal security and for public order of settlements and Israeli citizens. Direct negotiations to determine the permanent status of Gaza and West Bank that began in September 1999 after a three-year hiatus, were derailed by a second intifadah that broke out in September 2000. The resulting widespread violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Israel's military response, and instability within the Palestinian Authority continue to undermine progress toward a permanent agreement. Following the death of longtime Palestinian leader Yasir ARAFAT in November 2004, the election of his successor Mahmud ABBAS in January 2005 could bring a turning point in the conflict. | Globally, the 20th century was marked by: (a) two devastating world wars; (b) the Great Depression of the 1930s; (c) the end of vast colonial empires; (d) rapid advances in science and technology, from the first airplane flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina (US) to the landing on the moon; (e) the Cold War between the Western alliance and the Warsaw Pact nations; (f) a sharp rise in living standards in North America, Europe, and Japan; (g) increased concerns about the environment, including loss of forests, shortages of energy and water, the decline in biological diversity, and air pollution; (h) the onset of the AIDS epidemic; and (i) the ultimate emergence of the US as the only world superpower. The planet's population continues to explode: from 1 billion in 1820, to 2 billion in 1930, 3 billion in 1960, 4 billion in 1974, 5 billion in 1988, and 6 billion in 2000. For the 21st century, the continued exponential growth in science and technology raises both hopes (e.g., advances in medicine) and fears (e.g., development of even more lethal weapons of war). |
Birth rate | 32.37 births/1,000 population (2005 est.) | 21.16 births/1,000 population (2002 est.) |
Budget | revenues: $676.6 million
expenditures: $1.155 billion, including capital expenditures of NA; note - these budget data include Gaza Strip (2003) |
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Climate | temperate; temperature and precipitation vary with altitude, warm to hot summers, cool to mild winters | two large areas of polar climates separated by two rather narrow temperate zones form a wide equatorial band of tropical to subtropical climates |
Coastline | 0 km (landlocked) | 356,000 km |
Country name | conventional long form: none
conventional short form: West Bank |
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Death rate | 3.99 deaths/1,000 population (2005 est.) | 8.93 deaths/1,000 population (2002 est.) |
Debt - external | $108 million (includes Gaza Strip) (1997 est.) | $2 trillion for less developed countries (2001 est.) |
Disputes - international | West Bank and Gaza Strip are Israeli-occupied with current status subject to the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement - permanent status to be determined through further negotiation; Israel continues construction of a "seam line" separation barrier along parts of the Green Line and within the West Bank; Israel announced its intention to pull out settlers and withdraw from four settlements in the northern West Bank in 2005; since 1948, about 350 peacekeepers from the UN Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO), headquartered in Jerusalem, monitor ceasefires, supervise armistice agreements, prevent isolated incidents from escalating, and assist other UN personnel in the region | - |
Economic aid - recipient | $2 billion (includes Gaza Strip) (2004 est.) | official development assistance (ODA) $50 billion (2001 est.) |
Economy - overview | The West Bank - the larger of the two areas under the Palestine Authority - has experienced a general decline in economic growth and a degradation in economic conditions made worse since the second intifadah began in September 2000. The downturn has been largely the result of the Israeli closure policies - the imposition of border closures in response to security incidents in Israel - which disrupted labor and commodity market relationships. In 2001, and even more severely in 2002, Israeli military measures in Palestine Authority areas resulted in the destruction of much capital plant, the disruption of administrative structure, and widespread business closures. Including the Gaza Strip, the UN estimates that more than 100,000 Palestinians out of the 125,000 who used to work in Israeli settlements, or in joint industrial zones, have lost their jobs. International aid of $2 billion to the West Bank and Gaza strip in 2004 prevented the complete collapse of the economy and allowed some reforms in the government's financial operations. Meanwhile, unemployment has continued at more than half the labor force. ARAFAT's death in 2004 leaves open more political options that could affect the economy. | Growth in global output (gross world product, GWP) fell from 4.8% in 2000 to 2.2% in 2001. The causes: slowdowns in the US economy (21% of GWP) and in the 15 EU economies (20% of GWP); continued stagnation in the Japanese economy (7.3% of GWP); and spillover effects in the less developed regions of the world. China, the second largest economy in the world (12% of GWP), proved an exception, continuing its rapid annual growth, officially announced as 7.3% but estimated by many observers as perhaps two percentage points lower. Russia (2.6% of GWP), with 5.2% growth, continued to make uneven progress, its GDP per capita still only one-third that of the leading industrial nations. The other 14 successor nations of the USSR and the other old Warsaw Pact nations again experienced widely divergent growth rates; the three Baltic nations were strong performers, in the 5% range of growth. The developing nations also varied in their growth results, with many countries facing population increases that eat up gains in output. Externally, the nation-state, as a bedrock economic-political institution, is steadily losing control over international flows of people, goods, funds, and technology. Internally, the central government often finds its control over resources slipping as separatist regional movements - typically based on ethnicity - gain momentum, e.g., in many of the successor states of the former Soviet Union, in the former Yugoslavia, in India, in Indonesia, and in Canada. In Western Europe, governments face the difficult political problem of channeling resources away from welfare programs in order to increase investment and strengthen incentives to seek employment. The addition of 80 million people each year to an already overcrowded globe is exacerbating the problems of pollution, desertification, underemployment, epidemics, and famine. Because of their own internal problems and priorities, the industrialized countries devote insufficient resources to deal effectively with the poorer areas of the world, which, at least from the economic point of view, are becoming further marginalized. The introduction of the euro as the common currency of much of Western Europe in January 1999, while paving the way for an integrated economic powerhouse, poses economic risks because of varying levels of income and cultural and political differences among the participating nations. The terrorist attacks on the US on 11 September 2001 accentuate a further growing risk to global prosperity, illustrated, for example, by the reallocation of resources away from investment to anti-terrorist programs. (For specific economic developments in each country of the world in 2001, see the individual country entries.) |
Electricity - consumption | NA kWh | - |
Electricity - imports | NA kWh | - |
Electricity - production | NA kWh; note - most electricity imported from Israel; East Jerusalem Electric Company buys and distributes electricity to Palestinians in East Jerusalem and its concession in the West Bank; the Israel Electric Company directly supplies electricity to most Jewish residents and military facilities; some Palestinian municipalities, such as Nablus and Janin, generate their own electricity from small power plants | - |
Electricity - production by source | - | fossil fuel: NA%
hydro: NA% nuclear: NA% other: NA% |
Elevation extremes | lowest point: Dead Sea -408 m
highest point: Tall Asur 1,022 m |
lowest point: Bentley Subglacial Trench -2,540 m
note: in the oceanic realm, Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench is the lowest point, lying -10,924 m below the surface of the Pacific Ocean highest point: Mount Everest 8,850 m (1999 est.) |
Environment - current issues | adequacy of fresh water supply; sewage treatment | large areas subject to overpopulation, industrial disasters, pollution (air, water, acid rain, toxic substances), loss of vegetation (overgrazing, deforestation, desertification), loss of wildlife, soil degradation, soil depletion, erosion |
Ethnic groups | Palestinian Arab and other 83%, Jewish 17% | - |
Exchange rates | new Israeli shekels per US dollar - 4.482 (2004), 4.5541 (2003), 4.7378 (2002), 4.2057 (2001), 4.0773 (2000) | - |
Exports | $205 million f.o.b., includes Gaza Strip (2002) | $6.3 trillion f.o.b. (2001 est.) |
Exports - commodities | olives, fruit, vegetables, limestone | the whole range of industrial and agricultural goods and services |
Exports - partners | Israel, Jordan, Gaza Strip (2000) | in value, about 75% of exports from the developed countries |
Fiscal year | calendar year (since 1 January 1992) | - |
GDP | - | GWP (gross world product) - purchasing power parity - $47 trillion (2001 est.) |
GDP - composition by sector | agriculture: 9%
industry: 28% services: 63% note: includes Gaza Strip (2002 est.) |
agriculture: 4%
industry: 32% services: 64% (2001 est.) |
GDP - per capita | purchasing power parity - $800 (2003 est.) | purchasing power parity - $7,600 (2001 est.) |
GDP - real growth rate | 6% (2003 est.) | 2.2% (2001 est.) |
Geographic coordinates | 32 00 N, 35 15 E | - |
Geography - note | landlocked; highlands are main recharge area for Israel's coastal aquifers; there are 244 West Bank settlements and 29 East Jerusalem settlements in addition to at least 20 occupied outposts (August 2003 est.) | the world is now thought to be about 4.55 billion years old, just about one-third of the 13-billion-year age estimated for the universe |
Highways | total: 4,500 km
paved: 2,700 km unpaved: 1,800 km note: Israelis have developed many highways to service Jewish settlements (1997 est.) |
total: NA km
paved: NA km unpaved: NA km |
Household income or consumption by percentage share | lowest 10%: NA
highest 10%: NA |
lowest 10%: NA%
highest 10%: NA% |
Imports | $1.5 billion c.i.f., includes Gaza Strip (2002) | $6.3 trillion f.o.b. (2001 est.) |
Imports - commodities | food, consumer goods, construction materials | the whole range of industrial and agricultural goods and services |
Imports - partners | Israel, Jordan, Gaza Strip (2000) | in value, about 75% of imports into the developed countries |
Industrial production growth rate | NA | 6% (2000 est.) |
Industries | generally small family businesses that produce cement, textiles, soap, olive-wood carvings, and mother-of-pearl souvenirs; the Israelis have established some small-scale, modern industries in the settlements and industrial centers | dominated by the onrush of technology, especially in computers, robotics, telecommunications, and medicines and medical equipment; most of these advances take place in OECD nations; only a small portion of non-OECD countries have succeeded in rapidly adjusting to these technological forces; the accelerated development of new industrial (and agricultural) technology is complicating already grim environmental problems |
Infant mortality rate | total: 19.62 deaths/1,000 live births
male: 21.66 deaths/1,000 live births female: 17.45 deaths/1,000 live births (2005 est.) |
51.55 deaths/1,000 live births (2002 est.) |
Inflation rate (consumer prices) | 2.2% (includes Gaza Strip) (2001 est.) | developed countries 1% to 4% typically; developing countries 5% to 60% typically (2001 est.); national inflation rates vary widely in individual cases, from declining prices in Japan to hyperinflation in several Third World countries |
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) | - | 10,350 (2000 est.) |
Irrigated land | NA sq km | 2,714,320 sq km (1998 est.) |
Labor force | 364,000 (2004) | NA |
Labor force - by occupation | agriculture 15%, industry 25%, services 60% (2004 est.) | agriculture NA%, industry NA%, services NA% |
Land boundaries | total: 404 km
border countries: Israel 307 km, Jordan 97 km |
the land boundaries in the world total 250,472 km (not counting shared boundaries twice) |
Land use | arable land: 16.9%
permanent crops: 18.97% other: 64.13% (2001) |
arable land: 10.58%
permanent crops: 1% other: 88.42% (1998 est.) |
Languages | Arabic, Hebrew (spoken by Israeli settlers and many Palestinians), English (widely understood) | Chinese, Mandarin 14.37%, Hindi 6.02%, English 5.61%, Spanish 5.59%, Bengali 3.4%, Portuguese 2.63%, Russian 2.75%, Japanese 2.06%, German, Standard 1.64%, Korean 1.28%, French 1.27% (2000 est.)
note: percents are for "first language" speakers only |
Legal system | - | all members of the UN plus Switzerland are parties to the statute that established the International Court of Justice (ICJ) or World Court |
Life expectancy at birth | total population: 73.08 years
male: 71.33 years female: 74.95 years (2005 est.) |
total population: 63.94 years
male: 62.28 years female: 65.67 years (2002 est.) |
Literacy | definition: age 15 and over can read and write
total population: 91.9% male: 96.3% female: 87.4% (2003 est.) |
definition: age 15 and over can read and write
total population: 77% male: 83% female: 71% (1995 est.) |
Location | Middle East, west of Jordan | - |
Map references | Middle East | Physical Map of the World, Political Map of the World, Standard Time Zones of the World |
Maritime claims | none (landlocked) | a variety of situations exist, but in general, most countries make the following claims: contiguous zone - 24 NM; continental shelf - 200-m depth or to the depth of exploitation, or 200 NM or to the edge of the continental margin; exclusive fishing zone - 200 NM; exclusive economic zone - 200 NM; territorial sea - 12 NM; boundary situations with neighboring states prevent many countries from extending their fishing or economic zones to a full 200 NM; 43 nations and other areas that are landlocked include Afghanistan, Andorra, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bhutan, Bolivia, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Czech Republic, Ethiopia, Holy See (Vatican City), Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lesotho, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malawi, Mali, Moldova, Mongolia, Nepal, Niger, Paraguay, Rwanda, San Marino, Slovakia, Swaziland, Switzerland, Tajikistan, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Uzbekistan, West Bank, Zambia, Zimbabwe; two of these, Liechtenstein and Uzbekistan, are doubly landlocked |
Military expenditures - dollar figure | NA | aggregate real expenditure on arms worldwide in 1999 remained at approximately the 1998 level, about three-quarters of a trillion dollars (1999 est.) |
Military expenditures - percent of GDP | NA | roughly 2% of gross world product (1999 est.) |
Nationality | noun: NA
adjective: NA |
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Natural hazards | droughts | large areas subject to severe weather (tropical cyclones), natural disasters (earthquakes, landslides, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions) |
Natural resources | arable land | the rapid depletion of nonrenewable mineral resources, the depletion of forest areas and wetlands, the extinction of animal and plant species, and the deterioration in air and water quality (especially in Eastern Europe, the former USSR, and China) pose serious long-term problems that governments and peoples are only beginning to address |
Net migration rate | 2.88 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2005 est.) | - |
Population | 2,385,615
note: in addition, there are about 187,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank and fewer than 177,000 in East Jerusalem (July 2004 est.) |
6,233,821,945 (July 2002 est.) |
Population below poverty line | 59% (2004 est.) | - |
Population growth rate | 3.13% (2005 est.) | 1.23% (2002 est.) |
Ports and harbors | - | Chiba, Houston, Kawasaki, Kobe, Marseille, Mina' al Ahmadi (Kuwait), New Orleans, New York, Rotterdam, Yokohama |
Radio broadcast stations | AM 1, FM 0, shortwave 0
note: the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation broadcasts from an AM station in Ramallah on 675 kHz; numerous local, private stations are reported to be in operation (2000) |
AM NA, FM NA, shortwave NA |
Radios | - | NA |
Railways | - | total: 1,201,337 km includes about 190,000 to 195,000 km of electrified routes of which 147,760 km are in Europe, 24,509 km in the Far East, 11,050 km in Africa, 4,223 km in South America, and 4,160 km in North America; note - fastest speed in daily service is 300 km/hr attained by France's Societe Nationale des Chemins-de-Fer Francais (SNCF) Le Train a Grande Vitesse (TGV) - Atlantique line
broad gauge: 251,153 km standard gauge: 710,754 km narrow gauge: 239,430 km |
Religions | Muslim 75% (predominantly Sunni), Jewish 17%, Christian and other 8% | Christians 32.88% (of which Roman Catholics 17.39%, Protestants 5.62%, Orthodox 3.54%, Anglicans 1.31%), Muslims 19.54%, Hindus 13.34%, Buddhists 5.92%, Sikhs 0.38%, Jews 0.24%, other religions 12.6%, non-religious 12.63%, atheists 2.47% (2000 est.) |
Sex ratio | at birth: 1.06 male(s)/female
under 15 years: 1.05 male(s)/female 15-64 years: 1.05 male(s)/female 65 years and over: 0.74 male(s)/female total population: 1.04 male(s)/female (2005 est.) |
at birth: 1.05 male(s)/female
under 15 years: 1.05 male(s)/female 15-64 years: 1.02 male(s)/female 65 years and over: 0.78 male(s)/female total population: 1.01 male(s)/female (2002 est.) |
Telephone system | general assessment: NA
domestic: NA international: NA note: Israeli company BEZEK and the Palestinian company PALTEL are responsible for communication services in the West Bank |
general assessment: NA
domestic: NA international: NA |
Telephones - main lines in use | 301,600 (total for West Bank and Gaza Strip) (2002) | NA |
Telephones - mobile cellular | 480,000 (cellular subscribers in both West Bank and Gaza Strip) (2003) | NA |
Television broadcast stations | NA | NA |
Terrain | mostly rugged dissected upland, some vegetation in west, but barren in east | the greatest ocean depth is the Mariana Trench at 10,924 m in the Pacific Ocean |
Total fertility rate | 4.4 children born/woman (2005 est.) | 2.7 children born/woman (2002 est.) |
Unemployment rate | 27.2% (includes Gaza Strip) (2004 est.) | 30% combined unemployment and underemployment in many non-industrialized countries; developed countries typically 4%-12% unemployment (2001 est.) |