Historical Background
Bethlehem Governorate lies in the southern part of the West Bank south of Jerusalem. It extends from the western border of the West Bank to reach the Dead Sea in the east. Jerusalem governorate borders it from the north and Hebron Governorate from the south. Historically, the Governorate was always correlated with Jerusalem, due to the religious, economic and cultural ties.
In June 1967, Israel launched a war that ended in the Israeli occupation of the rest of mandate Palestine, the Syrian Golan Heights and the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula. Soon after the occupation, the Israeli Governorate embarked on a campaign to manipulate the demographic and geographical realities of the city in order to reinforce its claim to sovereignty over Jerusalem. The Israeli government expanded East Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries; increasing the city’s municipal area from 6.5 km2 to 71 km2; including areas from 28 surrounding Palestinian villages. As a result, [1]Bethlehem governorate lost 18,048 dunums of its lands, out of which 6,844 dunums belonged to the village boundary of Bethlehem, Beit Jala and Beit Sahour cities; whereby, 2,487 dunums of Bethlehem village boundary were confiscated, that is 8% of the total Bethlehem lands; 3,147 dunums of Beit Jala village boundary were confiscated, which constituted 22% of the total Beit Jala lands; and 1,210 dunums of Beit Sahour village boundary were confiscated, that is 17% of the total Beit Sahour lands. The
[1] Bethlehem Governorate lies in the southern part of the West Bank south of Jerusalem. It has an area of 658.6 Km2 and is home to 242,222 Palestinian inhabitants (PCBS, 2022).
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Prepared by:
The Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem
