Borders of Israel
The modern borders of Israel exist as the result both of past wars and of diplomatic agreements between the State of Israel and its neighbours, as well as an effect of the agreements among colonial powers ruling in the region before Israel's creation. Only two of Israel's five total potential land borders are internationally recognized and uncontested, while the other three remain disputed; the majority of its border disputes are rooted in territorial changes that came about as a result of the 1967 Arab–Israeli War, which saw Israel occupy large swathes of territory from its rivals. Israel's two formally recognized and confirmed borders exist with Egypt and Jordan since the 1979 Egypt–Israel peace treaty and the 1994 Israel–Jordan peace treaty, while its borders with Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories remain internationally defined as contested.
According to the Green Line agreed upon in the 1949 Armistice Agreements, Israel is demarcated by Lebanon to the north, the Golan Heights under Syrian sovereignty as well as the rest of Syria to the northeast, the Palestinian West Bank and Jordan to the east, and by the Palestinian Gaza Strip and Egypt to the southwest. The Israeli border with Egypt is the international border demarcated in 1906 between the United Kingdom and the Ottoman Empire, and confirmed in the 1979 Egypt–Israel peace treaty; the Israeli border with Jordan is based on the border defined in the 1922 Trans-Jordan memorandum, and confirmed in the 1994 Israel–Jordan peace treaty.
Early background
The Sykes–Picot Agreement of 1916 secretly divided the Ottoman Empire lands of Middle East between British and French spheres of influence. They agreed that "Palestine" was to be designated as an "international enclave". This agreement was revised by Britain and France in December 1918; it was agreed that Palestine and the Vilayet of Mosul in modern-day Iraq would be part of the British sphere in exchange for British support of French influence in Syria and Lebanon. At the San Remo Conference the Allied Supreme Council determined that mandates for Palestine and Mesopotamia would be allocated to Britain without precisely defining the boundaries of the mandated territories.Border with Jordan
British Mandate
In March 1921, the Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill visited Jerusalem and following a discussion with Emir Abdullah, it was agreed that Transjordan was to be added to the proposed Palestine Mandate, but that the Jewish National Home objective for the proposed Palestine Mandate would not apply to the territory.In July 1922, the League of Nations approved the Palestine Mandate, which came into effect in 1923 after a dispute between France and Italy over the Syria Mandate was settled. The Mandate stated that Britain could 'postpone or withhold' application of the provisions dealing with the 'Jewish National Home' in the territory east of the Jordan River, then called Transjordan. In September 1922, following Abdullah's probation period, the British government presented a memorandum to the League of Nations defining the border of Transjordan and confirming its exclusion from all the provisions dealing with Jewish settlement.
Historian and political scientist Adam Garfinkle writes that the public clarification and implementation of Article 25, more than a year after its addition to the Mandate, misled some "into imagining that Transjordanian territory was covered by the conditions of the Mandate as to the Jewish National Home before August 1921". This would, according to professor of modern Jewish history Bernard Wasserstein, result in "the myth of Palestine's 'first partition' part of the concept of 'Greater Israel' and of the ideology of Jabotinsky's Revisionist movement". Palestinian-American academic Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, then chair of the Northwestern University political science department, suggested that the "Jordan as a Palestinian State" references made by Israeli spokespeople may reflect "the same understanding".
Independence
Transjordan gained independence from Britain in 1946 within the above borders, prior to the termination of Mandatory Palestine.On May 15, 1948, the Transjordanian Arab Legion entered from the east what had been the Palestinian part of the Palestinian Mandate, while other Arab armies invaded other parts of the territory. The 1948 Arab–Israeli War was brought to an end by the Lausanne Conference of 1949 at which the 1949 Armistice Agreements were concluded. The resulting armistice line is commonly referred to as the Green Line, and was expressly declared to be a temporary demarcation line, rather than a permanent border, and the Armistice Agreements relegated the issue of permanent borders to future negotiations. After the armistice, Transjordan was in control of what came to be called the West Bank. East Jerusalem, including the Old City, was considered part of the West Bank.
The West Bank was annexed by Jordan in 1950, with the border being the 1949 armistice line, though Jordan laid claim to all of Mandate Palestine. Jordan's annexation was only recognised by three countries. The West Bank remained part of Jordan until Israel captured it in 1967, during the Six-Day War, though Jordan continued to claim the territory as its own after that date. In July 1988, Jordan renounced all claims to the West Bank, in favour of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, as the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people".
The Israel–Jordan peace treaty, signed on October 26, 1994, resolved all outstanding territorial and border issues between the two countries that had existed since the 1948 War. The treaty specified and fully recognized the international border between Israel and Jordan, with Jordan confirming its renunciation of any claim to the West Bank. Upon its signing, the Jordan and Yarmouk Rivers, the Dead Sea, the Emek Ha'arva/Wadi Araba and the Gulf of Aqaba were officially designated as the borders between Israel and Jordan and between Jordan and the territory occupied by Israel in 1967. For the latter, the agreement requires that the demarcation use a different presentation, and that it carry the following disclaimer:
This line is the administrative boundary between Jordan and the territory which came under Israeli military government control in 1967. Any treatment of this line shall be without prejudice to the status of the territory.
Border with Syria and Lebanon
French Mandate: Paulet–Newcombe Agreement
The Paulet–Newcombe Agreement, a series of agreements between 1920 and 1923, contained the principles for the boundary between the Mandates of Palestine and Mesopotamia, attributed to Great Britain, and the Mandate of Syria and the Lebanon, attributed to France.A 1920 agreement defined the boundary between the forthcoming British and French mandates in broad terms, and placed the bulk of the Golan Heights in the French sphere. The agreement also established a joint commission to settle the border and mark it on the ground. The commission submitted its final report on February 3, 1922, and it was approved with some caveats by the British and French governments on March 7, 1923, several months before Britain and France assumed their Mandatory responsibilities on September 29, 1923. In this way the Golan Heights became part of the French Mandate of Syria. When the French Mandate of Syria ended in 1944, the Golan Heights remained part of the newly independent state of Syria.
File:GolanHistoricalBorders.svg|thumbnail|right|260px|Map 4: Borders in the region of the Sea of Galilee and Golan Heights, showing the Ottoman boundaries, the 1920 agreement and the 1923 agreement
In 1923, an agreement between the United Kingdom and France, known as the Paulet–Newcombe Agreement, established the border between the soon-to-be formalised territories covered by the British Mandate for Palestine and the French Mandate for Syria. The border was drawn so that both sides of the Jordan River and the whole of the Sea of Galilee, including a 10-metre-wide strip along the northeastern shore, were part of Palestine. The agreement added 227 square kilometers to the area of Palestine.
Syria: subsequent changes
The 1947 UN Partition Plan allocated this territory to the Jewish state. Following the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Syria seized some land that had been allocated to the Jewish state and under the 1949 Armistice Agreements with Israel retained 66 square kilometers of that territory in the Jordan Valley that lay west of the 1923 Palestinian Mandate border. These territories were designated demilitarized zones and remained under Syrian control. It was emphasised that the armistice line was "not to be interpreted as having any relation whatsoever to ultimate territorial arrangements."During the Six-Day War, Israel captured the territory as well as the rest of the Golan Heights, and subsequently repelled a Syrian attempt to recapture it during the Yom Kippur War. Israel annexed the Golan Heights in 1981 with the Golan Heights Law. Israel began building settlements throughout the Golan Heights, and offered the Druze and Circassian residents citizenship, which most turned down. Today, Israel regards the Golan Heights as its sovereign territory, and a strategic necessity. The Purple Line marks the boundary between Israel and Syria. Israel's unilateral annexation has not been internationally recognized, and United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 refers to the area as Israeli-occupied.
During the 1990s, there were constant negotiations between Israel and Syria regarding a mediation of conflicts and an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights but a peace treaty did not come to fruition. The main stumbling block seems to involve the 66 square kilometers of territory that Syria retained under the 1949 armistice agreement. Arab countries support Syria's position in the formula which calls on Israel to return to the 1967 borders.