Palestine

The Palestinian territories — the West Bank and Gaza Strip — straddle the Dead Sea Transform Fault, the major left-lateral plate boundary between the Arabian and African (Sinai) plates. The Jordan Valley, which forms the eastern border of the West Bank, is underlain by the active trace of the Dead Sea Transform, a [[fault]] system that has accumulated over 100 kilometres of left-lateral offset over approximately 18 million years. Active fault strands within the West Bank include the Jericho Fault Zone and related structures in the Jordan Valley. Gaza and the coastal plain sit on the western, more stable side of the fault, somewhat removed from the most active trace, but still subject to shaking from transform earthquakes.

The Palestinian territories have been affected by numerous historical and modern earthquakes generated on the Dead Sea Transform and related structures. The 1927 Jericho earthquake (magnitude 6.2) killed over 270 people across the region and caused widespread damage in Jericho, Nablus, Ramallah, and Hebron. Earlier, the 1837 Safed earthquake (magnitude approximately 7.0) devastated northern Palestine. The 749 AD and 1202 AD great earthquakes caused mass destruction across the entire Levant including Palestine. Paleoseismic trenching in the Jordan Valley has identified evidence for prehistoric earthquakes with estimated magnitudes of 6.5–7.5, revealing a seismic cycle of approximately 300–1,000 years for major events on individual segments.

The tectonic context of Palestinian seismicity reflects the same Dead Sea Transform system described for Israel and Jordan, with the fault being the active plate boundary running along the Jordan Rift Valley. The pull-apart basin structure of the Dead Sea, located just south of the West Bank, is a releasing bend in the transform where the valley floor drops more than 430 metres below sea level. The compressional features of the West Bank highlands — including the folds exposed in the Judean mountains — reflect the transpressional geometry of the fault system at restraining bends. The Gaza coastal strip sits on Quaternary eolian sands and beach deposits — soft soils with elevated [[liquefaction]] potential during strong shaking. The [[epicenter]] concentration in the Jordan Valley makes this the most hazardous zone within the Palestinian territories.