The 1967 Border - The "Green Line"
(Updated May 2011)
Israel had sought
peace for nearly two decades before being forced to defend itself against
Arab aggression in 1967.
After defeating the Arab armies in just six days, Israelis thought the
Arab leaders would realize they could not defeat Israel militarily and
would instead choose the path of peace. Instead, after the war the Arab
League declared: "no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel,
no negotiations with it...."
Israel would not have captured the West
Bank or reunified Jerusalem if King Hussein had heeded
the warning of Prime Minister Eshkol to stay out of the
war. Instead Jordan attacked, and, in the course of defending itself,
Israel found itself in control of these territories.
The Arab states lobbied the UN to require that Israel withdraw from "all the" territories
it captured. This is the demand made by the Arab League in the plan
recently put forward by Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah. The UN
rejected this formulation when it adopted Resolution
242 because the Security Council understood the ‘67 border was not secure or defensible.
Since the war, Israel has consistently said that in
the context of a peace agreement it was prepared to withdraw to the
1967 border but with modifications - that is, to a new border that meets
Resolution 242's requirement of being secure and defensible.
After the 1967
War, Israeli Foreign Minister Abba
Eban told the United Nations:
“The June [1967] map is for us equivalent to insecurity and danger.
I do not exaggerate when I say that it has for us something of a memory
of Auschwitz.”
President
Lyndon Johnson also rejected the idea that Israel should withdraw
to the pre-war frontier: "There are some who have urged, as a single,
simple solution, an immediate return to the situation as it was on June
4....this is not a prescription for peace but for renewed hostilities."
The Joint Chiefs of Staff concluded in 1967: "From
a strictly military point of view, Israel would require the retention
of some captured territory in order to provide militarily defensible
borders." More than three decades later, Lieutenant General (Ret.)
Thomas Kelly, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff during
the Gulf War, reiterated Israel's strategic concern: "It is impossible
to defend Jerusalem unless you hold the high ground....An aircraft that
takes off from an airport in Amman is going to be over Jerusalem in
two-and-a-half minutes, so it's utterly impossible for me to defend
the whole country unless I hold that land."
In 1995, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak
Rabin - the leader who came the closest to making peace with the
Palestinians - reiterated that Israel cannot return to the 1967 boundary.
“The border of the State of Israel … will be beyond the
lines which existed before the Six Day War,” said Rabin. “We
will not return to the June 1967 lines.”
In 2004, President George
W. Bush sent a letter to Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon that outlined U.S. policy concerning the 1967 boundary lines.
“It is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status
negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines
of 1949,” Bush wrote. His letter was overwhelmingly
supported by both houses of the U.S.
Congress.
Within the 1967 borders Israel would lose almost all
of its tactical, strategic, geographic and topographic military advantages.
Tactically, a missile shot at Israel could land in any city in under
two minutes. Strategically, Israel would lose early warning radar stations
and its control over the Jordan Rift Valley where the IDF protects Israel from illegal weapons smuggling into the West Bank. Geographically,
within the 1967 lines Israel would be diminished to only 9 miles at
its narrowest point and every major city would fall within short missile
range. Topographically, the West Bank and Golan Heights provide more
than a 3,000 foot incline over the coastal plain and giving this up
would give the Palestinians unfettered access to attack major Israeli
population centers and transportation hubs.
President Bush put the border issue in perspective:
"For a Texan, a first visit to Israel is an eye-opener. At the
narrowest point, it's only 8 miles from the Mediterranean to the old
Armistice line: That's less than from the top to the bottom of Dallas-Ft.
Worth Airport. The whole of pre-1967 Israel is only about six times
the size of the King Ranch near Corpus Christi."
A withdrawal to the 1967 border would not satisfy
the radical Islamists. Hamas and Islamic Jihad have
made clear that they will not end their terrorist campaign against Israel even if it withdraws to the pre-war frontier.
These and other Muslim extremists have said they will not accept the existence of a Jewish
state in the Islamic world.
When Egypt's Anwar Sadat declared he
was prepared to make peace,
and matched his words with deeds, Israel withdrew completely from the
Sinai, dismantled Jewish settlements,
and gave up its oil fields. When King
Hussein agreed to make peace,
Israel agreed to return the small swath of Jordanian territory it held.
To date, Israel has withdrawn from approximately 94
percent of the territories it captured. In return for peace with Syria and an end to Palestinian terror, it is prepared to withdraw from most
of the remaining 6% in dispute. In truth, the whole fight over the West
Bank now boils down to an area of about 200 square miles out of
the more than 26,000 originally captured by Israel.
Israel remains committed to trading land for peace,
and never annexed the West Bank or Gaza Strip because it expected
to return part of these territories in negotiations. When the Palestinians
finally declared that they would recognize Israel and renounce terrorism,
Israel agreed to begin to withdraw. Plans to withdraw from additional
territory were scuttled by Palestinian terrorism and their violation
of the Oslo agreements.
For peace, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud
Barak offered to withdraw
from 100% of the Gaza Strip and 95-97% of the West Bank, that is, to the 1967 border with minor modifications. He also agreed
to dismantle settlements, and allow the Palestinians to establish a
state with east Jerusalem as its capital if they would end the conflict. Arafat rejected the
offer and did not even offer a counterproposal.
Israel offered to negotiate a return of the Golan
Heights to Syria, and
a succession of Prime Ministers declared a readiness to concede this
strategic high ground in exchange for peace. Neither Syrian President Hafez Assad nor his son,
who succeeded him, have been prepared to follow Sadat and Hussein's
example and offer peace in return.
In 2005, Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza
Strip. The disengagement
plan also involved the dismantling of four settlements in northen Samaria.
In 2006, Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert proposed a plan in which Israel would evacuate most of the
settlements in the West Bank,
while holding onto five large settlement
blocs. This plan, known as “Realignment” would be executed
unilaterally if Israel cannot negotiate an agreement with the Palestinians.
The plan sought to permanently define Israel’s borders with a
future Palestinian state, and ensure that Israel will maintain its Jewish
majority. The breakout of the Second
Lebanon War in the summer of 2006 and the EU's opposition to an
Israeli unilateral withdrawal led to the plan's demise.
In 2011, President Barak
Obama called on Israel to use the 1967 lines as a basis for peace
negotiations and assured that Israel's strategic depth would be maintained
through "mutually agreed land swaps." "Israeli and Palestinians," Obama pledged, "will
negotiate a border that is different than the one that existed on June
4th, 1967.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu has made clear that he is ready and willing to negotiate
the border as President Obama said, and he maintains that Israel cannot
be expected to move back to the 1967 lines. “I am willing to make
painful compromises to achieve peace,” Netanyahu said
before a joint session of Congress on May 24, 2011. “I recognize
that in a genuine peace, [Israel] will be required to give up parts
of the Jewish homeland.”
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