Putting the Green Line Back on Our Maps — and Back in Our Minds
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Click here for a map of Israel and the Palestinian Territories (PDF)
[/icon-box]As a cycle of violence continues to horribly impact Israelis and Palestinians, it’s more and more clear that the status quo needs to end. Israelis and Palestinians need to be able to live side by side in peace and security – and this is only possible through reaching a two-state solution.
The 1967 border plays an important role in the discussions around a two-state solution, as the basis for negotiating the future borders between Israel and a Palestinian state. But with every new announcement of new construction in Israeli settlements over the Green Line, the line between Israel and a future Palestinian state becomes more blurred and a two-state solution becomes harder to achieve.
Meanwhile, in much of the American Jewish community, the Green Line has disappeared from our maps, our conversations and our collective consciousness. There simply isn’t awareness of where the Green Line is, what it represents, and why it matters.
That’s why the J Street Education Fund has implemented a nationwide initiative to bring the Green Line back into the communal and political conversation around Israel.
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The Green Line is the key to negotiating an agreement that can help create a better future
[/pullquote]Members of our Rabbinic Cabinet and other leaders around the country are asking synagogues and Jewish institutions to only display maps of Israel in their facilities that clearly show the Green Line, and are distributing new maps which display the Green Line. In our conversations, we’re emphasizing that awareness of the Green Line is essential to preserving the possibility of creating a two-state solution.
We have also developed a microsite devoted to educating around the Green Line. The site contains key background information and educational resources for learning and teaching others. The site includes a video we’ve created, which introduces viewers to the Green Line initiative by reviewing the history of how it was created – and explains why its so important to finally resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
By putting the Green Line back on our maps, we’re reminding those who love Israel that the current status quo and the Israeli occupation of the West Bank is unsustainable – and that recognizing the Green Line is the key to negotiating an agreement that can help create a better future for Israelis and Palestinians alike.
GREEN LINE WAS NOT INTENDED TO BE A BORDER
The author’s statement about “1967 border” is misleading on two counts to say the least. First, what the author was referring to were not borders, they are lines and they are not of 1967; they are the Armistice lines of 1949.
Armistice lines have no political or legal significance. Consequently, when Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty in 1994, the agreed upon Israel-Jordan border in NO way approximated the Green Line set under the 1949 armistice agreement .
Additionally, the author would be interested to learn that Israel’s first internationally recognized border did not come into existence until the Carter administration (Egypt). Furthermore, Israel still does not possess internationally recognized borders in 2015 (Israel is not recognized by Syria or Lebanon).
At its essence, this is not a bad idea as an educational tool for Jewish youth being brainwashed by J St. and sister organizations. If done properly, the pupils & students will learn the origin of the Green Line as the result of Arab aggression in launching against a UN resolution a war to eradicate Israel. That the Line was constantly violated by Arab terror, first by fedayeen and then, in 1965, the PLO. That Arab terror started well before any so-called ‘occupation’ and before any so-called ‘settlement’ was constructed and that the area of ‘Palestine’ they wished to liberate [PLO; L=liberation] was Israel and not Judea and Samaria. That most pf the historic land of Israel, the national homeland of the Jews was actually on the wrong side of the Green Line until 1967. And so much more.
” If done properly, the pupils & students will learn the origin of the Green Line as the result of Arab aggression in launching against a UN resolution a war to eradicate Israel.” The Arabs did not “launch an aggressive was against a UN resolution to eradicate Israel.” Had they done so, they would have been condemned by the UN General Assembly and the Security Council. They were not; on the contrary, both sides were criticized, and the United States moved to defer partition and to establish UN trusteeship. Bottom line: both sides were responsible for aggression, since both sides made war plans well before the UN GA resolution (one of the few, by the way, accepted by the Zionists). The stronger side won, and Palestine was partitioned by Israel and Jordan and later, Egypt took over the Gaza Strip. As for the rest, well, it depends on one’s point of view, as Israel Medad has repeatedly and rightly stressed.
What planet are you from? Do you think we don’t know history?
The Arabs rejected the Partition Plan, and the Jews accepted it. The Arabs nations attacked Israel simultaneously upon Israel declaring her independence. The Arabs could have had half a loaf of bread. But they gambled, and lost.
Your twisted logic would give an aspirin a headache.
The green line is a myth in as much as it was a ceasefire line where Jews were able to hold back incoming slaughter. It never represented a border of a Palestinian state rather a delineation of where Jordan’s aggression was stopped. Palestine has never been a state with borders. Rather always a province of a greater empire with the exception of Israeli sovereignty ancient and present. Jstreet is purpetuating a lie of Arab sovereignty and claims to the land
By not showing the green line on a map, we tell the interlocutor that we don’t recognize that there is an unsettled dispute, and some interlocutors will go ballistic. Showing it can in some cases “buy” time and space for a civilized conversation. And the conversation – along, perhaps, with relief maps, – can perhaps bring some interlocutors to realize how suicidal it would be for Israel to accept the green line as a final border.