What year did the Israelis withdraw from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and give limited control to the Palestinians?

Answer 1

The British administered the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as non-unique parts of the British Mandate of Palestine. These territories were created by the 1949 ceasefires of the Egyptian army in Gaza, of the Jordanian army in Judea (the southern lobe of the West Bank), and of the Iraqi army in Samaria (the northern lobe of the West Bank). Initially, each of the these three armies imposed martial law on the regions that they conquered.

West Bank Under Jordanian Control

After a few months, the Iraqis found that maintaining such a long-distance colonization was not worth it to them and they ceded their territory to Jordan. Jordan then annexed the whole West Bank on April 24, 1950 in a move that was condemned internationally (save for Great Britain, Iraq, and Pakistan which approved the act). All West Bank Palestinians became Jordanian citizens. However, Jordan made no overt acts to open up the refugee camps and fully integrate the Palestinian Jordanian refugees into Jordanian society, making the refugees reliant on UNRWA for assistance. Most Palestinian Jordanians made their lives as farmers as Jordan did not invest significantly in modifying the infrastructure of the area. Finally, in violation of the terms of the Jordanian-Israeli armistice agreement, Jordan forbid both Israelis (including non-Jewish Israelis) and Jews (from outside of Israel) to visit any of the Jerusalem holy sites and proceeded to demolish numerous historic synagogues, abuse the Western Wall holy site, and to use gravestones from historic Jewish cemeteries to build latrines for Jordanian army barracks.

Gaza Strip Under the Egyptian Control

The Egyptians established the "All-Palestine Government" with a seat in Gaza City on September 22, 1948. The All-Palestine Government was supposed to be the forerunner to an eventual Palestinian State that would entirely replace Israel and occupy all of the former British Mandate. Hajj Amin Al-Husseini, one of the major Arab leaders in the former British Mandate of Palestine was declared President. However, this government was merely a puppet government with no administration, no civil service, no money, and no real army of its own. All of the economic, political, and social decisions were made by the occupying Egyptian military. There was no investment in the Gaza Strip during the All-Palestine Government period and the infrastructure began to crumble. Additionally, since Egypt made no moves to grant Egyptian citizenship to the Palestinians, all Palestinian refugees (whether in camps or not) were dependent on UNRWA making a Palestinian Crisis in the area.

When Israel overran Gaza in the Arab-Israeli War of 1956, the Egyptians relocated the All-Palestine Government's official offices to Cairo, Egypt. When Israel withdrew to the 1949 boundaries in 1957, the All-Palestine government remained in in Cairo, showing how its "independence" was just a joke. In 1959, Egypt abolished the All-Palestine Government and brought the Gaza Strip under the United Arab Republic (which would later also include Syria). In this way, the Egyptians proceeded to effect a direct military occupation without actually annexing the region, meaning that Palestinians now were under direct Egyptian military occupation. The situation remained like this from 1959 until Israel's conquest of Gaza in 1967.

Post-1967

Since many Palestinian-Jordanians had crossed from the West Bank to the East Bank during Jordan's annexation of the West Bank, they formed a large population within Jordan even after the Six-Day War brought the West Bank under Israeli Occupation. Angered by their historic mistreatment under the Jordanians and the Jordanian failure to hold onto the West Bank, Palestinian Militants rose up against the Jordanian Government in 1970. King Hussein's response was to violently crush the uprising. The two sides fought a war from September 1970 to July 1971 called "Black September" or the "Jordanian Civil War". Estimates of the Palestinian dead are between 300 and 20,000, but typical estimates are around the 15,000 mark, making this event in Jordan more deadly to Palestinians than the entire Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.

Answer 2

The first Israeli Withdrawal happened in the aftermath of the Oslo Accords in 1993. The Palestinian Authority, like the question notes, was only given limited control of those areas. In many cases, Israeli Military Occupation of those regions continued, but to a lesser degree.

Answer 3

Israel took control of the West Bank during the 1967 war.

Answer 4

Israel handed control of the Gaza Strip over to the Palestinian Authority in 2006,

and Hamas soon took it away from them.