WOULD JUSTICE BE SERVED BY ISRAEL RETURNING TO THE PRE-1967 BORDERS

WOULD JUSTICE BE SERVED BY ISRAEL RETURNING TO THE PRE-1967 BORDERS?

There have been many calls by certain Christian peace and justice advocates demanding that Israel return to the pre- June 4, 1967 borders as part of any comprehensive peace plan. But is that a just demand? What, if anything, is sacred about that border?

HOW WERE THE PRE-67 BORDERS ESTABLISHED?

• On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 181 partitioning what remained of the Mandate for a Jewish homeland after the creation of Jordan into a Jewish Palestinian state, an Arab Palestinian state and a corpus separatum under international jurisdiction for Jerusalem.

• Just over two weeks later, at a public meeting on December 17, the Arab League adopted a resolution totally rejecting this UN resolution, declaring that they would use all means at their disposal, including armed force, to prevent it.

• Israel declared Independence on May 15, 1948.

• The very next day the League of Arab States collectively attacked the new Jewish State -- Egypt, Trans‑Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. The then president of Iraq announced “Our goal is clear -- to wipe Israel off the map.”

• The territory that was to have been the Arab Palestinian State under U.N. Resolution 181 disappeared. Gaza/Sinai was taken over and administered by Egypt. Jordan annexed the area West of the Jordan River (the “West Bank” and East Jerusalem).

• From 1948 to 1967, after Jerusalem's Old City came under Jordanian control, its Jewish residents were expelled, 58 synagogues were destroyed or desecrated, and Jews of all nationalities were denied access to the Western Wall.

• At the end of the 1948-49 war, the Arab countries who invaded Israel signed cease fire agreements -- not peace treaties -- and temporary boundaries, known as the Green Line, were established. These were not intended as permanent or legal borders.

• When Israel signed actual peace treaties with Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994), both countries renounced their claims to the Palestinian territories and would not negotiate land for peace with respect to Gaza and the West Bank. So while permanent, legal borders were drawn with respect to Egypt and Jordan, this was not and to this day is not the case with Gaza and the West Bank.

THE PRE-67 BORDERS BETWEEN ISRAEL AND GAZA AND ISRAEL AND

THE WEST BANK WERE NEVER INTENDED BY ANY PARTY TO BE PERMANENT

AND HAVE NO INTERNATIONAL LEGAL SIGNIFICANCE

ISRAEL ACQUIRED GAZA AND THE WEST BANK IN SELF-DEFENSE

• On May 16, 1967, Egyptian President Gamal Nasser ordered U.N. forces that had kept peace for 10 years out of the Sinai Peninsula. The U.N. complied, at which point Nasser imposed a naval blockade of Israel’s only outlet to the south -- an open act of war.

• Although Israel had “guarantees” of peace after the 1956 Suez war when it evacuated the Sinai in return for the U.N. forces and assurances from the Western powers of free passage through the Straits of Tiran, all this disappeared with a wave of Nasser’s hand.

• During the three weeks from May 16 to June 5 2007, Egypt, already in an alliance with Syria, formed an emergency military pact with Jordan. Iraq, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, Libya and Morocco and began sending forces to join the coming onslaught. With troops and armor massing on Israel’s every border, triumphal broadcasts from the Arab nations hailed the imminent final war for the extermination of Israel. “We shall destroy Israel and its inhabitants," declared PLO head Ahmed Shuqayri, "and as for the survivors -- if there are any -- the boats are ready to deport them.”

• For Israel, the waiting was debilitating. Israel’s reserve army had to be mobilized. As its soldiers waited, hoping the world would rescue the nation from an impending attack, Israeli society and economy ground to a halt. Then Army Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin, later to be hailed as a martyred man of peace, was incapacitated to the point of incoherence by the unbearable tension of waiting with the life of his country in the balance. Rabin knew that waiting too long would be suicidal if the armies of 100 million Arabs were allowed to strike his country of 3 million first.

• Israeli survival hinged on a successful attack on Egypt’s air force on the morning of June 5. It was a significant, but ultimately successful, gamble. Israel had a 200-plane air force compared to the combined Arab air forces of 900 planes.

• Having no desire to open a new front just yards from Jerusalem and just miles from Tel Aviv, Israel pleaded with Jordan to stay out of the conflict. Jordan refused, and it was in defending itself from the Jordanian army that Israel acquired the West Bank.

• In the pre-1967 borders Israel was barely 10 miles wide at its narrowest point. The bulk of Israel’s population lived within artillery range of surrounding hostile Arab armies.

• Many military experts believe the ‘67 borders would leave Israel indefensible in an era of modern warfare. That is why some people call those borders the “Suicide Borders”

It Is Unreasonable And Unjust To Expect Israel To Go Back To The Pre-67 Borders Based On Assurances of Peace That Have Historically Not Been Upheld