March 16 in History
2005 – Israel officially hands over Jericho to Palestinian control
Jericho, a Palestinian city in the West Bank, located the Jordan Valley, is the administrative seat of the Jericho Governorate. It was annexed and ruled by Jordan from 1949 to 1967, and under Israeli occupation from 1967 until 1994, when administrative control was handed over to the Palestinian National Authority. It was officially handed over to the Palestinians on this day in 2005. The city is currently governed by the Palestinian National Authority and in 2007 had a population of 18,346.
Jericho is believed to be one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world, with the oldest known protective wall. It was thought to have the oldest stone tower in the world as well, but excavations at Tell Qaramel in Syria have discovered stone towers that are even older. Archaeologists have unearthed the remains of more than 20 successive settlements in Jericho, the first of which dates back 11,000 years (9000 BCE), almost to the very beginning of the Holocene epoch of the Earth’s history. Copious springs in and around the city have attracted human habitation for thousands of years. Jericho is described in the Hebrew Bible as the “city of palm trees”.
-Wikipedia
Photo Caption – Panorama (stitched from two images by scripts in Photoshop) of Jericho, West Bank, seen from the ruins of the “the walls that came tumbling down …” – Daniel Case/Wikipedia