Welcome to Econ talk conversations for the curious part of the Library of economics and Liberty.
I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Shalem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
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Today is June 6, 2024.
My guest is Professor Eugene Kandorovich of the Scalia Law School at George Mason University.
His specialties are constitutional law and international law.
Our topic for today is what is sometimes called the West bank, sometimes called Judea and Samaria, and sometimes called the occupied territories and sometimes called the palestinian territories.
Eugene, welcome to Econ Talk.
Great to be with you, Ross.
The area we're talking about, which I'm going to try to call by the somewhat neutral name the West bank, was taken by Israel from Jordan in the Six Day War in 1967.
It is west of the Jordan river.
It consists of towns where Arabs live, where Jews live.
There are about 450,000 Jews in the West bank.
Another 250,000 live in what's called East Jerusalem, which is technically a separate area.
And there are about 2.7 million Arabs in the West bank.
Now, many people describe Israel's role in the West bank as an occupation, that Israel's towns and settlements violate international law.
Let's start with that case.