# Proof Narrative: The claim that Israel maintains an illegal occupation of the entire West Bank is contradicted by the Oslo Accords designating Area C as remaining under full Israeli civil and security administration pending final-status negotiations.

## Verdict

**Verdict: PARTIALLY VERIFIED**

The Oslo Accords do establish exactly the administrative arrangement described — but that arrangement doesn't do the legal work the claim asks it to do.

## What was claimed?

The argument goes: if you say Israel illegally occupies the entire West Bank, you're wrong on both counts — the Oslo Accords show that large parts of the West Bank are under Palestinian civil administration, and the same accords authorized Israeli control of Area C as a mutually agreed interim arrangement, which undercuts calling it illegal. It's a rebuttal you'll encounter often in debates about Israeli-Palestinian policy, and it's worth taking seriously because it rests on real facts.

## What did we find?

The factual foundation of the claim checks out. The 1995 Oslo II Accord — the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement — did divide the West Bank into three zones. Area C, covering roughly 60% of the West Bank at the time, was placed under full Israeli civil and security control, explicitly described as temporary pending final-status negotiations that were supposed to resolve permanent boundaries and sovereignty.

The "entire West Bank" part of the challenge also has real substance. Areas A and B, together making up about 40% of the West Bank, were placed under Palestinian civil administration — Area A under full Palestinian civil and security control, Area B under Palestinian civil control with joint security arrangements. So anyone claiming Israel exercises civil control over the whole West Bank is overstating things, and Oslo is the evidence that shows it.

Where the claim runs into trouble is the third piece: the idea that these bilateral arrangements contradict the "illegal" label. Oslo II is an agreement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization about who administers which zones while final-status talks proceed. It was never meant to, and legally cannot, settle whether the underlying occupation is lawful under international humanitarian law.

The International Court of Justice addressed this directly in its July 2024 Advisory Opinion. The Court found Israel's continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory unlawful and stated explicitly that the Oslo Accords "cannot be understood to detract from Israel's obligations under the pertinent rules of international law." This isn't a close call in international law — the Fourth Geneva Convention has a specific provision (Article 47) written precisely to prevent bilateral agreements between an occupying power and local populations from being used to sidestep humanitarian law protections.

The result is a split verdict. Two of the three things the claim needs to be true are true. One isn't.

## What should you keep in mind?

The "entire West Bank" challenge lands, but it's somewhat a challenge to a straw man. Critics of Israeli policy typically use "Occupied Palestinian Territory" or "the occupied West Bank" — not "Israel civilly controls every square kilometer." They generally acknowledge Oslo's zone system while arguing Israel retains effective control over all areas through border management, movement restrictions, and the right to conduct security operations in Areas A and B. Oslo's zone lines don't settle that broader argument.

The legality question is the harder one, and it doesn't go away because of Oslo. The ICJ has now ruled twice — in 2004 and 2024 — that the occupation is subject to international humanitarian law regardless of what bilateral agreements say. Israel maintains that Palestinian consent via Oslo changes the legal picture; that argument has been consistently rejected by international tribunals.

All four verified citations here come from Wikipedia, which is adequate for non-controversial treaty content but falls short of the primary sources (the Oslo II treaty text via UN archives, the ICJ opinion itself) that a higher-stakes assessment would use.

## How was this verified?

This proof decomposed the claim into three sub-claims, verified each against independent sources, and ran adversarial checks specifically targeting the legal arguments Israel uses to contest the "illegal occupation" characterization. The full reasoning and evidence table are in [the structured proof report](proof.md); the step-by-step verification record, including citation checks and adversarial search logs, is in [the full verification audit](proof_audit.md); and you can [re-run the proof yourself](proof.py) to reproduce these results from scratch.