Borders of Israel

and British influence and control proposed in the 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement during World War I 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 (April 19–26, 1920) 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' [which became] 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 [mis]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". 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 '', October 25, 1920, reporting on the active discussions regarding the boundary line; this was later formalised in the 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. 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. 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 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 (marked green on Map 4). These territories were designated demilitarized zones (DMZs) and remained under Syrian control (marked as DMZs on the map). It was emphasised that the armistice line was "not to be interpreted as having any relation whatsoever to ultimate territorial arrangements." (Article V) During the Six-Day War (1967), 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 (1973). 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. The area east of the Hasbani River is considered part of Syria and included in the Golan Heights. The armistice agreement between Lebanon and Israel was signed on March 23, 1949. The main points were: • The terms of the agreement were dictated exclusively by military considerations. • The armistice line (i.e., "Green Line") was the international border, which corresponds to the 1923 Mandate border between the Lebanon and Palestine (see: Treaty of Sèvres). • Unlike the other Green Line agreements, it contains no clause disclaiming this line as an international border, and was thereafter treated as it had been previously, as the de jure international border of Lebanon. • Israel withdrew its forces from 13 villages in Lebanese territory, which were occupied during the war. In 1923, 38 boundary markers were placed along the boundary and a detailed text description was published. The 2000 Blue Line differs in about a half dozen short stretches from the 1949 line, although never by more than . Between 1950 and 1967, Israeli and Lebanese surveyors managed to complete 25 non-contiguous kilometers and mark (but not sign) another quarter of the international border. The Secretary-General reported to the Security Council that Israel had withdrawn its forces from Lebanon on June 16, in accordance with Council Resolution 425, and met the requirements defined in his report of May 22, 2000. Since then, the term "Blue Line" has been the standard term for the withdrawal line in official UN communications. Conflict over the Shebaa Farms The Shebaa Farms conflict stems from Israel's occupation and annexation of the Golan Heights, with respect to that territory's border with Lebanon. Both Lebanon and Syria were within the French Mandate territory between 1920 and the end of the French Mandate in 1946. The dispute over the sovereignty over the Shebaa Farms resulted in part from the failure of French Mandate administrations, and subsequently from the failure of the Lebanon and Syria to properly demarcate the border between them. Documents from the 1920s and 1930s indicate that some local inhabitants regarded themselves as part of Lebanon, for example paying taxes to the Lebanese government. But French officials at times expressed confusion as to the actual location of the border. One French official in 1939 expressed the belief that the uncertainty was sure to cause trouble in the future. The region continued to be represented in the 1930s and 1940s as Syrian territory, under the French Mandate. Detailed maps showing the border were produced by the French in 1933, and again in 1945. They clearly showed the region to be in Syria. After the French Mandate ended in 1946, the land was administered by Syria, and represented as such in all maps of the time. The maps of the 1949 armistice agreement between Syria and Israel also designated the area as Syrian. Border disputes arose at times, however. Shebaa Farms was not unique; several other border villages had similar discrepancies of borders versus land ownership. Syria and Lebanon formed a joint Syrian–Lebanese border committee in the late 1950s to determine a proper border between the two nations. In 1964, concluding its work, the committee suggested to the two governments that the area be deemed the property of Lebanon, and recommended that the international border be reestablished consistent with its suggestion. However, neither Syria nor Lebanon adopted the committee's suggestion, and neither country took any action along the suggested lines. Thus, maps of the area continued to reflect the Farms as being in Syria. Israel—Lebanon maritime border As of April 2021, there was an ongoing dispute over the Mediterranean Sea border between Israel and Lebanon. Negotiations on the maritime border commenced in October 2020 and led to success, i.e. both sides reaching and ratifying an agreement in 2022. 2024 Israeli invasions of Lebanon and Syria Israeli invasions of Lebanon and Syria in 2024 have resulted in additional Lebanese and Syrian territory being occupied by Israeli forces. The Israeli military and Israeli settler movement has begun organizing trips for Israeli civilians inside the newly occupied part of Syria. ==Border with Egypt==

. The reason for the color difference is likely a higher level of grazing by the Bedouin-tended animal herds on the Egyptian side of the border. A border between the Ottoman Empire and British controlled Khedivate of Egypt was drawn in the Ottoman–British agreement of October 1, 1906, after a prolonged border dispute and a military crisis earlier that year. According to the personal documents of the British colonel Wilfed A. Jennings Bramley, who influenced the negotiations, the border mainly served British military interests—it furthered the Ottomans as much as possible from the Suez Canal, and gave Britain complete control over both Red Sea gulfs—Suez and Aqaba, including the Straits of Tiran. At the time, the Aqaba branch of the Hejaz railway had not been built, and the Ottomans therefore had no simple access to the Red Sea. The British were also interested in making the border as short and patrollable as possible, and some contest that it did not take into account the needs of the local residents in the negotiations, although its clauses did allow free access to the water sources west of the line to civilians, military and gendarmes from the Ottoman side, as well as full transhumance rights according to tribal rules for the Naqb (Negev) and Sinai Bedouin. It was defined as an "administrative separating line" for diplomatic reasons, allowing the Ottoman Empire to hold to its nominal sovereignty over Egypt. The 1949 armistice agreement between Israel and Egypt was ratified on February 24, 1949. The armistice line between these countries followed the international border except along the Gaza Strip, which remained under Egyptian occupation. The Egypt–Israel peace treaty, signed on March 26, 1979, created an officially recognized international border along the 1906 line, with Egypt renouncing all claims to the Gaza Strip. A dispute arose over the marking of the border line at its southernmost point, in Taba. Taba was on the Egyptian side of the armistice line of 1949, but Israel claimed that Taba had been on the Ottoman side of a border agreed between the Ottomans and British Egypt in 1906, and that there had previously been an error in marking the line. The issue was submitted to an international commission composed of one Israeli, one Egyptian, and three outsiders. In 1988, the commission ruled in Egypt's favor, and Israel withdrew from Taba later that year. ==Borders with Palestine==

End of British Mandate , founder of modern Zionism On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 181 (II) recommending the adoption and implementation of a plan to partition Palestine into "Independent Arab and Jewish States" and a "Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem" administered by the United Nations. The Jewish Agency for Palestine, on behalf of the Jewish community, despite its misgivings, indicated acceptance of the plan. With a few exceptions, the Arab leaders and governments rejected the plan of partition in the resolution and indicated that they would reject any other plan of partition. Britain declared that the Mandate was to end on May 15, 1948. On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion, in a ceremony in Tel Aviv, declared "the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the State of Israel." Epstein, Agent, Provisional Government of Israel said in a letter to President Truman seeking recognition from the U.S. government, sent immediately after the Declaration of May 14, 1948, "that the state of Israel has been proclaimed as an independent republic within frontiers approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations in its Resolution of November 29, 1947", (i.e., within the area designated as the "Jewish state" in the partition plan). On May 15, regular Arab armies entered what had been Mandate Palestine. This intervention/invasion marked the transition of the 1947–1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine into the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. The tide of battle soon turned against the Arabs, and Israel then launched a series of military offensives, greatly expanding its territorial holdings. The end of the war saw the Lausanne Conference of 1949. Following internationally supervised Arab-Israeli negotiations, a boundary based on the cease-fire lines of the war with minor territorial adjustments, commonly referred to as the Green Line, was agreed upon in the 1949 Armistice Agreements. The Green Line was expressly declared in the Armistice Agreements as a temporary demarcation line, rather than a permanent border, and the Armistice Agreements relegated the issue of permanent borders to future negotiations. The area to the west of the Jordan River came to be called the West Bank, and was annexed by Jordan in 1950; Subsequent events In 1988, Palestine declared its independence without specifying its borders. Jordan extended recognition to Palestine and renounced its claim to the West Bank to the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, which had been previously designated by the Arab League as the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people". Together with this renunciation, Jordan revoked citizenship from all Palestinians residing in the West Bank. In 2011, Palestine submitted an application for membership to the United Nations, using the borders for military administration that existed before 1967, effectively the 1949 armistice line or Green Line. As Israel does not recognize the State of Palestine, Jordan's borders with Israel remain unclear, at least in the sector of the West Bank. By the Egypt–Israel peace treaty of 1979, Egypt renounced all claims to the Gaza Strip. In 1988, Jordan renounced all claims to the West Bank; The purported annexation of East Jerusalem was criticised by Palestinian, Arab and other leaders, and was declared by the United Nations Security Council "a violation of international law" and "null and void" in Resolution 478, and has not been recognized by the international community, and all countries moved their embassies from Jerusalem. On December 6, 2017, US President Donald Trump announced the United States recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson clarified "that the final status [for Jerusalem], including the borders, would be left to the two parties to negotiate and decide." Since then, several other countries have formally recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and moved their embassies there. ==See also==