There is no “the” (and no 1967 Borders)

Last week President Obama called for any Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement to be based on the pre-June 1967 borders:

Forgetting for a moment whether Obama was right or wrong for making that declaration, there is a serious problem with his statement as a pre-1967 border does not exist!

That “green line” running through the West Bank is the 1949 Armistice Line. The armistice line was created solely because that’s Israeli and Arab forces stopped fighting at the end of the War of Independence. It was if the whistle blew and everyone dropped their gear. That 1949 line, which people call the 1967 border, is only a military line. Don’t take my word for it; take the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan’s. Article II of the 1949 Armistice Agreement with the Jordanians explicitly specified that the line that was designated did not compromise any future territorial claims of the two parties, since it had been “dictated exclusively by military considerations.”

The “famous” UN Resolution 242 which was passed by the UN Security Council five months after the Six-Day War recognized that the 1949 Armistice line wasn’t supposed to designate final Israeli borders.

Anti-Israel forces change the meaning of 242 by adding one simple article to the resolution, the word “the.” They claim that 242 calls for Israel to withdraw from “the” territories taken during the Six-Day War (meaning all territories.) The resolution actually says that “Israel should withdraw from territories” taken during the war (no article-meaning some of the territories.)

It was no accident “the” was left out. During the negotiations to create resolution 242, Arab governments tried three times to have “the” inserted in the resolution and their request was rejected. By repeating what they wanted the resolution to say all these years, the Arabs succeed in convincing many people to accept their distorted interpretation of 242.

Statements made by the drafters of 242 prove there is no ambiguity about what they meant.Michael Stewart, (Great Britain) Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, in reply to a question in Parliament, 17 November 1969: “The Resolution speaks of secure and recognized boundaries. These words must be read concurrently with the statement on withdrawal.”

George Brown, British Foreign Secretary in 1967, on January 19, 1970: “I formulated the Security Council Resolution. Before we submitted it to the Council, we showed it to Arab leaders. The proposal said ‘Israel will withdraw from territories that were occupied’, and not from ‘the’ territories, which means that Israel will not withdraw from all the territories.”

Arthur Goldberg, US representative, in the Security Council in the course of the discussions which preceded the adoption of Resolution 242: “To seek withdrawal without secure and recognized boundaries … would be just as fruitless as to seek secure and recognized boundaries without withdrawal. Historically, there have never been secure or recognized boundaries in the area. Neither the armistice lines of 1949 nor the cease-fire lines of 1967 have answered that description… such boundaries have yet to be agreed upon. An agreement on that point is an absolute essential to a just and lasting peace just as withdrawal is…”

When it comes to Israel, President Obama has a very short memory. Not only were there no 1967 borders, there was never an intention for Israel to move back to the 1949 armistice lines. That’s also why the President’s call for Israel to stop building communities outside the 1949 armistice lines is so absurd. It’s also why the UN is being disingenuous every time they call for Israel to retreat to the 1967 borders; after all it was the UN who first declared that there was no such thing as 1967 borders.