page_title: Borders of Israel
section_title: End of British Mandate
hierarchical_section_title: Borders of Israel / Borders with Palestine / End of British Mandate
caption_attribution_description: English: David Ben-Gurion (First Prime Minister of Israel) publicly pronouncing the Declaration of the State of Israel, May 14 1948, Tel Aviv, Israel, beneath a large portrait of Theodor Herzl, founder of modern political Zionism, in the old Tel Aviv Museum of Art building on Rothshild St. The exhibit hall and the scroll, which was not yet finished, were prepared by Otte Wallish. עברית: דוד בן-גוריון מכריז על הקמת מדינת ישראל, 14 במאי 1948 בתל אביב, ישראל, מתחת לדיוקנו של בנימין זאב הרצל מפתח רעיון הציונות המדינית ומייסד הציונות כתנועה לאומית-מדינית ממוסדת. Čeština: David Ben Gurion (první izraelský premiér) čte 14. května 1948 veřejně deklaraci nezávislosti Státu Izrael. Toto prohlášení se uskutečnilo pod velkým portrétem Theodora Herzla, zakladatele moderního politického sionismu, ve staré budově Telavivského muzea umění v Rothschildově ulici. العربية: دافيد بن غوريون (أول رئيس وزراء إسرائيلي) يلقي خطاب ​​إعلان دولة إسرائيل في 14 مايو (أيار) 1948، تل أبيب، إسرائيل، تحت صورة كبيرة لثيودور هرتزل، مؤسس الصهيونية السياسية الحديثة، في متحف تل أبيب القديم للفنون في شارع روثشايلد صمم قاعة العرض والممر، التي لم تنته بعد وقتها، أوت واليش.
context_page_description: The current borders of the State of Israel are the result both of war and of diplomatic agreements among Israel, her neighbors, and colonial powers. Only two of Israel's five potential land borders are internationally recognized while the other three are disputed. Israel's borders with Egypt and Jordan have now been formally recognized and confirmed as part of the peace treaties with those countries. The borders with Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories are still in dispute.
  According to the Green Line of the 1949 Armistice Agreements, Israel borders Lebanon in the north, the Golan Heights and Syria in the northeast, the West Bank and Jordan in the east, the Gaza Strip and Egypt in the southwest. The border with Egypt is the international border demarcated in 1906 between the United Kingdom and the Ottoman Empire, confirmed in the 1979 Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty, and the border with Jordan is based on the border defined in the 1922 Trans-Jordan memorandum, confirmed in the 1994 Israel–Jordan peace treaty.
context_section_description: 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", (ie., 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; and the Gaza Strip was occupied by Egypt. During the Six-Day War of 1967, Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan, Gaza Strip and Sinai peninsula from Egypt, and Golan Heights from Syria, and placed these territories under military occupation.
  On September 22, 1948, during a truce in the war, the Provisional State Council of Israel passed a law to annex all land that Israel had captured in the war, and declaring that from then on, any part of Palestine taken by the Israeli army would automatically be annexed to Israel. This, effectively, annexed to Israel all land within the Green Line, though the armistice agreements were declared to be temporary and not permanent borders.
caption: David Ben-Gurion proclaiming independence beneath a large portrait of Theodor Herzl, founder of modern Zionism
exif: {}