The Withdrawal Percentages, What Do They Really Mean?

Lately there has been a lot of talk about the percentage of land the Israelis are 'willing' to withdraw from in the West Bank. And these percentages have caused a lot of confusion and ambiguity. The idea of dividing the withdrawals into percentages was first introduced in the Wye River Memorandum.

Unlike Oslo II, the Wye River Memorandum and the Sharm El-Sheikh Memorandum mention percentages of redeployments without negotiating with the Palestinian side where those redeployments should take place. For example, the Wye River Memo states that 3% should be 'Nature Reserves' and that 'Israeli officials acquaint their Palestinian counterparts as required with areas..,' while the Sharm El-Sheikh Memo doesn't mention the Nature Reserves and succinctly talks of percentage 'transfers.' This meant that Israeli officials would supply maps of the withdrawals only after the signing of the agreement. Here is the sequence of withdrawals in the West Bank (excluding Gaza) since Oslo II, which took place in 1995. Table 1: The Redeployment Sequence according to the agreements.

On the ground, area A comprises 1004 sq. km of the West Bank. In area B, the Palestinians have full control over civil society except that Israel continues to have overriding responsibility for security. These areas constitute now 1204.4 sq. km of the West Bank. In area C, Israel retains full control over land, security, people and natural resources. The jagged distribution of yellow and blue areas in the Gaza strip and areas A, B, C, H1 and H2 has partitioned the West Bank and Gaza into isolated cantons, which are physically separated from each other.

By dividing the area A over the overall area of the West Bank occupied in 1967 , the actual percentage of Area A comes to 17.15 % of the West Bank area. However, according to the Sharm El-Sheikh Memo, the percentage of Area A should have been 18.2 %. By the same token, the actual percentage of Area B amounts to 20.57 % of the West Bank whereas according to the Sharm El-Sheikh Memo, the percentage of Area B should have been 21.8%.

This discrepancy comes from the fact that Israel omits certain parts of the West Bank when calculating the area of the West Bank. Those parts are:

Thus, quite to the convenience of the Israelis, the percentage transfers appear larger than what they really are because they are calculated over a smaller patch of land. This is what happened when the Israelis claimed a 7 % withdrawal in Sharm El-Sheikh while actually it amounted to only 6.56 %. 

Figure 1: Territories that Israel omits from the West Bank's area.

Israel's hidden objective behind this discrepancy is to create the impression that the omitted areas are not part of the West Bank. That the No Man's Land, The territorial waters of the Dead Sea, and the annexed part of Jerusalem are beyond the scope of the legitimate rights of the Palestinians.

This scheme is continuing now during the deliberations concerning Israeli proposals for final status withdrawals. At first, Israel proposed a withdrawal from 85 % of the West Bank while annexing the remaining 15 %. Then that figure changed to 90 % and finally the highest proposed withdrawal has been 94 %. Here again the game of calculating the percentages is put into practice in order to amplify Israel's 'generosity'. An Israeli '94 %' withdrawal in effect corresponds to 88.9 % of the West Bank's actual area. Furthermore, if one considers that Israel is planning to annex some 220 sq. km from the West Bank as part of 'Greater Jerusalem' than that famous 94 % shrinks to 86.5 %. This way Israel gets to keep a sizeable portion of the West Bank while appearing as though it were relinquishing almost all of it.

Prepared by:
The Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem