It's difficult to discuss terriorial issues between Israel and Palestine
without discussing the politics, but here are a few points of
information which I hope will provide some context for discussion of the
security barrier (the name used by the Israeli government) / Wall (as it
is widely referred to in Palestine, often prefixed by the word
'Apartheid'):
When people refer to the '1967 borders', what they actually mean are the
Armistice Demarcation Lines (ADLs) established in April 1949 between a)
Egypt and Israel around the Gaza Strip and b) Israel and Jordan around
the West Bank, as they existed on 4 June 1967, i.e. immediately before
Israel occupied the two territories. Although these lines became de
facto borders, they were not originally intended as such. They were
simply ceasefire lines and I very much doubt that anyone involved in the
armistice negotiations imagined that they would ever form the basis for
permanent international boundaries.... The ADL between Israel and Jordan
is often referred to as the "Green Line" because it was marked in green
on Israel's 1:100,000 topographic maps of the period (in the map
attached to the 1949 Armistice Agreement it was actually marked with a
thick blue crayon).
The significance of the '1967 borders' is that United Nations Security
Council Resolution 242 of November 1967 called for "withdrawal of
Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict".
Most Palestinians see Resolution 242 as the legal basis for their title
to all territory in the pre-1948 Palestine which was not occupied by
Israel prior to the 1967 war. Israel has repeatedly noted the absence of
the word "all" before "territories" in Resolution 242, and continues to
regard the West Bank and Gaza Strip as disputed territory. In practice,
most observers believe that the '1967 borders' will form the basis for
the boundaries of the a future Palestinian state. It is interesting to
note that the recent model peace agreement known as the Geneva Accord
specified that the boundary between Israel and Palestine "shall be based
on the June 4th 1967 lines with reciprocal modifications on a 1:1
basis"; see
http://www.tikkun.org/community/geneva/ for the text of the
accord and overview maps and
http://www.heskem.org.il/Maps.asp for
large-scale (1:50,000) maps of the proposed boundary (click on the
Hebrew text in the top green bar - the English version of the site does
not yet include links to the maps).
The best website I have found for maps and images of the infamous
security barrier is the Palestinian site
http://stopthewall.org About a
third of the barrier that has been constructed so far more or less
follows the old Armistice Line, but significant sections of it lie on
the Palestinian side of the '1967 border'. The
approved-but-yet-to-be-built and projected sections of the barrier cut
much deeper into territory claimed by the Palestinians. When considering
the implications of the barrier, it is important to bear in mind not
only the area of land that is affected but also land use: much of the
land from which Palestinians have been excluded by the barrier is
valuable agricultural land or land containing wells.
On 8 December last year the General Assembly of the United Nations
requested the International Court of Justice to give an Advisory Opinion
on the legal consequences of the construction of a wall in the occupied
Palestinian territory. Although an Advisory Opinion by the ICJ is not
binding, it will nevertheless have a significant bearing on the future
of the barrier. The oral hearings in the case begin on 23 February and I
assume that, as with other ICJ cases, the pleadings will posted daily on
the Court's website.
I hope these comments are of some help.
m a r t i n
> Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 13:26:49 -0800
> From: Doug Murray <doug@...>
> Subject: Re: New Wall -- discussion point
>
> The pictures I've seen are stunning. I can't believe how big it is.
> One website compared it to the Berlin Wall -- and how small it
> made that wall look.
>
> Unfortunately most of the information out there is slanted
> politically, one way or the other. And I don't want to get
> into the politics of it, but the fact that something like this is
> being created leaves mespeechless. Especially since it doesn't
> conform to any borders. There has been a lot of talk of it
> going into "Palestinian territory" and cutting off those lands.
> Is there a situation where it goes the other way, cutting off
> parts of "Israeli territory"?
>
> I'd love to see more images.