GREEN LINE

The 1949 armistice lines between Israel and Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.

The Green Line designates Israel's borders as demarcated during the 1949 armistice negotiations following the establishment of the state of Israel and the first Arab–Israeli war. Among other things, the creation of this boundary brought into being the separate territory known as the West Bank. Following the Arab–Israeli war in June 1967, the Green Line boundary remained in situ as an administrative line of separation between the sovereign state of Israel and the Occupied Territories. The line was removed from all official Israeli maps in the post-1967 era and was opened up to movement of Palestinian workers who commuted into Israel for work. Following the onset of the first intifada in 1987, the Green Line was again closed, by road blocks and curfews, reverting to its former role as a boundary between the two peoples and their respective territories. In 2002 the Israeli government began to

construct a wall along, or close to, parts of the Green Line, arguing that this was a necessary security measure. All negotiations aimed at bringing about the establishment of a Palestinian state have considered the Green Line to be the default boundary, to which only minor territorial changes could be made.

Bibliography

Alpher, Y., and Brawer, M. "The Making of an Israeli-Palestinian Boundary." In The Razor's Edge: International Boundaries and Political Geography, edited by Clive Schofield, et al. New York: Kluwer Law International, 2002.

Newman, D. "Boundaries in Flux: The Green Line Boundary between Israel and the West Bank." Boundary and Territory Briefing 1, no. 7 (1995).

Newman, D. "The Functional Presence of an Erased Boundary: The Re-Emergence of the Green Line." In World Boundaries, Vol 2: The Middle East and North Africa, edited by C. Schofield and R. Schofield. New York: Routledge, 1984.

bryan daves
updated by david newman