The Green Line is NOT a border!

For years in releation to the conflict between Israel and the "Arabs of the Mandated powers" (aka Palestinians) politicians and the news media have relayed a false statement by stating there are borders separating Israel from its surrounding Arab neighbors. This statement is a blatant untruth.

The Green Line, of 1949 was an Armistice and demarcation line set out in the Armistice Agreements between the armies of Israel and those of its neighbors (Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria) after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. 

This line was draw according to positions of the two warring powers and it served as the de facto borders of the State of Israel from 1949 until the Six-Day War in 1967. It still continues to represent Israel’s internationally recognized borders with Lebanon, Syria and the two Palestinian territories: the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

This false statement which is consistently used in refernce to the "West Bank" -the "Disputed Territories" and Gaza, infers the existance of the separation of territory by "Two High Contracting Parties" in a negotiated treaty, as ordainined in UNR 242. 

The truth of the matter is that the Arabs, "of the Mandated powers" (aka Palestinians) have never accepted any of the offers of generously negotiated peace treaties with the "Jewish State" of Israel.

So to clarify  the so called "Green line" IS NOT an international border. 

It refers only to the Armistice lines agreed to by all sides in the 1949 Rhodes Agreement after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Its name is derived from the green surveyor’s pencil that was used to indicate the Armistice lines on the map.

Justice Stephen M. Schwebel, who spent 19 years as a judge of the International Court of Justice at The Hague including three years as President. explained; 

"...modifications of the 1949 armistice lines among those States within former Palestinian territory are lawful (if not necessarily desirable), whether those modifications are, in Secretary Rogers's words, "insubstantial alterations required for mutual security" or more substantial alterations - such as recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the whole of Jerusalem.." and in a footnote he added "It should be added that the armistice agreements of 1949 expressly preserved the territorial claims of all parties and did not purport to establish definitive boundaries between them". 

Therefore the 1949 Armistice lines are not fixed, as purported by the Palestinians and their anti-Zionists/Israel supporters. 

It is a historically recorded and documented fact, that in 1948 the Jordanian Government Army invaded the territory of the Palestinian Mandate and at the end of the fighting illegally annexed the “West Bank” and East Jerusalem. An act which was recognized only by Britain and Pakistan. 

In terms of international law, between 1948 and 1967 the entire area of what remained of the Palestinian Mandated Territory in the “West Bank” was terra nullius, or "land belonging to no one" over which sovereignty may be acquired through occupation.

Armistice lines do not establish borders, and the 1949 Armistice Agreements in particular specifically stated (at Arab insistence) that they were not creating permanent or de jure borders.

In line with the above idea, the Israeli government has officially stated that its position is that the territories cannot be called occupied, as no nation had clear rights to them, and there was no operative diplomatic arrangement, when Israel acquired them in June 1967.

Territories are only "occupied" if they are captured in war from an established and recognized sovereign, but no state had a legitimate or recognized sovereignty over the West Bank, Gaza Strip or East Jerusalem prior to the Six-Day War.

The Fourth Geneva Convention is not applicable to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, since, under its Article 2, it pertains only to "cases of…occupation of the territory of a High Contracting Party" by another High Contracting party. (The representatives of states who have signed or ratified a treaty. .. the signatories)

The West Bank and Gaza Strip have never been the legal territories of any High Contracting Party.

The concept of terra nullius is well recognized in international law. Therefore the “Palestinians” never had sovereignty over the “West Bank” or East Jerusalem. Justice Schwebel concluded that since Jordan, the prior occupying power of the “West Bank” and East Jerusalem had seized that territory unlawfully in 1948; Israel, the “Jewish State” which subsequently took that territory in the lawful exercise of self-defense in 1967 has better title to it as one of the beneficiaries for the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine.

In fact, during negotiations for the 1995 peace agreement signed between Israel and Jordan, the Jordanian government made no claim to it. 

And as East Jerusalem came into Israel's possession in the course of a defensive war, Israel was entitled to annex it and create a united Jerusalem. 

Consequently, the Jerusalem City Council has jurisdiction over building approvals for Jewish and Arab resident in any part of the "Municipal Area".

As to the truth of the issue of LEGAL and INTERNATIONAL Borders issue.

As you may well know we signed two FULLY Negotiated Peace Treaties. The treaty with Egypt on 26 March 1979, following the 1978 Camp David Accords and the second at the southern border crossing of Arabah on 26 October 1994 with the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

Regretfully the Israeli-Lebanese Peace Treaty, signed on May 17, 1983; by Mr. William Drapper for the United States, Mr. David Kimche for Israel and Mr. Antoine Fattal for Lebanon and Lebanese President Amine Gemayel, failed due to severe and violent Syrian opposition to the agreement.

The violence by Syria and their proxies in Lebanon reached a climax on the 14th of  September 1982 when president-elect Bachir Gemayel was assassinated by an assassin sent by the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP).

By refusing to move its troops from Lebanese soil, Damascus effectively torpedoed its implementation, since Israeli withdrawal was contingent on Syria doing the same.

As a result, the Lebanese government repudiated the agreement on March 5, 1984.The agreement was revoked by the Lebanese parliament under the leadership of newly-elected speaker Hussein el-Husseini.

Ergo Israel has ONLY TWO official NEGOTIATED Borders.

As to Gaza, in the 1994 Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, it was agreed that "the security fence erected by Israel around the Gaza Strip shall remain in place and that the line demarcated by the fence, as shown on the map, shall be authoritative only for the purpose of the Agreement"  (i.e. the barrier does not necessarily constitute the border). The barrier was completed in 1996.  

I refer you and the critics to: "Draft Agreement on the Gaza Strip and Jericho Area", Palestine Israel Journal of Politics, Economics and Culture. 1994-04-26. Archived from the original (PDF) on August 12, 2007. https://tinyurl.com/y7me6ekw