50 years after Six-Day War in Mideast, a blurred line remains
Israel’s borders contested to this day
Fifty years ago this week, Israel fended off attacks by its Arab neighbors in the lightning-quick Six-Day War and captured territory beyond its original borders — some still occupied by the military.
The land in dispute is mainly in the West Bank, which Palestinians want for an independent state. It extends west of the “Green Line,” the demarcation between Israel and the Arab states it fought in 1948 that was named for the color of ink used to outline the Jewish state’s borders on a flimsy paper map.
The Green Line was supposed to be temporary, with final borders to be worked out in the future.
Instead, in the half-century since it was breached by the SixDay War on June 5-10, 1967, the Green Line has represented a major divide over the terms of a lasting Middle East peace.
For Palestinians and some Israelis, the only viable solution to the conflict is to use the Green Line as the outline of a Palestinian state that has East Jerusalem as its capital.
Israel’s government, which insists that a united Jerusalem remains its capital, is unwilling to dismantle settlements where 500,000 Israeli Jews live west of the Green Line on lands that were ruled by Jordan and populated by Palestinians from 1948 to 1967.
Israel wants to negotiate new borders, which Palestinians might accept if the plan included land swaps.
A visit to three sites revealed how blurred the Green Line has become 50 years after the SixDay War.
BARTA’A
When the Green Line was drawn, tiny Barta’a, a Galilean town of about 8,300 Arabs 70 miles north of Jerusalem, was cut in two.
In the center of the village, a low spot between two hills, an inscription on a large stone explains: “On the 3rd of April 1949, Jordan and Israel signed the Rhodes Aomistia Agreement, in which Barta’a was partitioned into the eastern part that belongs to Jordan and the western part that belongs to Israel. The valley was adopted as the Green Line.”
From 1949 to 1967, its perplexed citizens did their best to maintain family ties. Every once in a while, they would smuggle a loaf of bread beneath a barbedwire fence to someone craving it on the other side.
Barta’a represents both Israel’s recognition of the Green Line as a legal international border and the paradox that the border has no real meaning.
There isn’t a physical barrier, but the dividing line is clear: The Israeli side is bustling and prosperous, showing new construction and bright signs in Arabic and Hebrew; the Palestinian side is dusty and neglected, with poorly paved streets, crumbling facades and peeling signs in Arabic.
Israeli Barta’a belongs to the thriving Haifa District. The Palestinian side is administered by the Palestinian Authority’s Jenin Governorate.
If central square shopkeepers want to expand, they need approval either from Israel’s cumbersome but functional bureaucracy or from the cumbersome but non-functional Palestinian Interior Ministry, depending on where the shops are located.
Rashid Kabaha, 79, has clear memories of the war for Israeli independence in 1948 and the conflict in 1967 and is proud that Barta’a never saw combat.
“This town hasn’t seen a single bullet. Fighter jets flew overhead, but there was never violence here,” he said of the Six-Day War. “The Israelis took over as smoothly as if they were drinking a glass of water.”
Kabaha, who is a Muslim, was born a subject of the British mandate and has been an Israeli citizen since he was 9 years old.
Ahmad Mustafa, 35, owner of a popular hummus restaurant, said nearly everyone on both sides of the Green Line hopes for peace.
“Only 10% want problems,” he said.
Lior Aviv, 46, a Jewish resident of the tiny West Bank settlement of Mevo Dotan, (pop. 360), near Barta’a, blames the conflict between Israel and Palestinians on politicians and extremists, not the Muslims, Jews, Druze and Christians who co-exist here.
“We have peace among ourselves, and the governments make all the problems. I’m disgusted by all sides,” Aviv said. “Religious extremists on both sides wreck everything.”
JERUSALEM
A sleek tram glides along Paratroopers’ Road, named in honor of the men who died fighting for Israel in 1967.
From 1949 to 1967, that road was a no-man’s land of barbed wire and rocks marking the Israeli-Jordanian border that cut Jerusalem in half and kept Jews from the Old City, where they had lived through history.
Jaffa Gate, the portal of the city’s ancient wall, lies in an area once held by Jordan.
On the Israeli side is the old City Hall, still pockmarked with holes where it was hit with bullets and mortars. Successive mayors of Jerusalem have decided to leave the scars in place as a reminder.
A modern municipal building has gone up behind the historic one.
People wander by with little awareness that they tread along what had been a war zone.
Just inside Jaffa Gate, Jacob Hani, 39, stood at the entrance to his cafe, Vesavee, his open shirt displaying a large cross. He said he has no memory of a divided Jerusalem and no desire to see the city divided again.
While Christians flee wars in much of the Middle East, the Christians of Jerusalem, who have been here since the time of Christ, remain. There are about 14,000.
In mid-May, Hani watched as the archbishop of Canterbury and chief rabbi of the United Kingdom strolled by his coffee shop during a visit.
Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis said he hoped their joint prayer might “send out a message that it is important for people to be in dialogue together. ... The world is so fractured that we need a lot more harmony and understanding in our midst.”
Jerusalem, a metropolis of nearly 1 million people, has a diverse population that can be divided into thirds: secular Jews, ultra- Orthodox Jews and Arabs.
Israel demands that the world recognize a united Jerusalem as its capital, which the global community hasn’t done.
But Israel does not treat East and West Jerusalem equally when it comes to spending on infrastructure. The western side gets most of the improvements.
Jerusalem attorney Khalil Aleyane, a Muslim, was 14 when the war in 1967 broke out.
At the time, he was living in Beit Safafa, one of the city’s neighborhoods that, like Barta’a, was cut in two by the Green Line. Aleyane and his family have lived on the Israeli side since 1948, and he refers to Jewish residents as lifelong friends, “like brothers.”
During the war, he wanted the Arabs to win. By the sixth day, he was on the roof watching a dogfight between Israeli and Jordanian jets. When the magnitude of Israel’s victory became clear, “I felt all around me, from the adults, disappointment and anger ... at the Arabs because throughout the entire war, they had lied” by saying they were defeating Israel.
In Beit Safafa, the fence came down, and families were reunited.
Aleyane described an ambivalence that lasts today: “Joy that the families came together but depression at the situation that brought us together.
“I’m Jerusalemite, I’m an Israeli citizen but not an Israeli,” he said.
SANSANA
About 700 Jews live in this village, which straddles the Green Line 47 miles south of Jerusalem. Sansana is an accidental settlement.
Established in 1997 as an outpost for soldiers guarding the Israeli side of the border, it was redistricted to be an unincorporated residential area.
Since Sansana was considered a temporary community until late 2014, most of its inhabitants live in expanded caravans.
After residents received permission from the Israeli government to build permanent homes in 2015, the hamlet expanded about a half-mile across the Green Line into West Bank brush land.
Avi Barash, a physical therapist, and his wife, Aviv, a marketer, estimate that more than 90% of the residents support the Jewish Home, an ultra-right-wing religious political party that favors permanently annexing the West Bank as Israeli territory.
Nothing marks the international border. “There is no line,” said Benny Sofer, 43, a founding resident.
His wife, Shira, recalled with amusement a few years ago when hapless state assessors “came here with maps and markers and tried to figure their way around,” and she mentioned with annoyance that Sansana is consistently referred to as “a settlement” by the Israeli media.
Shira Sofer repeated what many Palestinians on the other side of the Green Line said: A resolution of the long-running Israeli-Palestinian dispute “will come from people, not politicians.”
“People here got along until politics got involved,” she said.
“We have peace among ourselves, and the governments make all the problems. ... Religious extremists on both sides wreck everything.” Lior Aviv, 46, of Mevo Dotan