Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: The Myth of the 1967 Borders

http://www.dore-gold.com/2010/04/the-myth-of-the-1967-borders.php
In rejecting, the proposal for a Palestinian state with temporary 
borders, that Haaretz reported last Friday, Abu Mazen insisted that the 
only basis for any future political arrangements with Israel is "the 
1967 borders". He is not the only one today talking about the 1967 
lines. President Carter's, national security adviser, Zbigniew 
Brzezinski, just wrote an article in the Washington Post on April 11, 
along with former congressman Steve Solarz calling for a territorial 
solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict "based on the 1967 
borders." Brzezinski had recently been invited to discuss the Middle 
East with the President Barack Obama's National Security Adviser Jim Jones.
Even Secretary of State Hillary Clinton seemed to slip by using the same 
language during a visit to Bahrain on February 4, 2010: "we believe that 
the 1967 borders, with swaps, should be the focus of the negotiations 
over borders." That sentence contradicted the formal policy of the Obama 
administration, that she carefully crafted herself, which said that the 
U.S. believed that it was possible to reconcile the Palestinian position 
demanding the 1967 lines with the Israeli position calling for secure 
boundaries, which took into Israeli security requirements and realities 
on the ground. Clinton subsequently corrected herself.
In short, the 1967 lines are coming back as a common reference point 
when many officials and commentators talk about a solution to the 
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is increasingly assumed that there was 
a recognized international border between the West Bank and Israel in 
1967 and what is necessary now is to restore it. Yet this entire 
discussion is based on a completely distorted understanding of the 1967 
line, given the fact that in the West Bank it was not an international 
border at all.
Formally, the 1967 line in the West Bank should properly be called the 
1949 Armistice Line.  Looking back to that period, on the Egyptian and 
Syrian fronts there had been a history of international boundaries 
between British Mandate and its neighbors. But along the Jordanian front 
what created the armistice line was solely where Israeli and Arab forces 
stopped at the end of the War of Independence, with some added 
adjustments in certain sectors. As a result, the 1949 line, that came to 
be known also as the 1967 border, was really only a military line.
In fact, Article II of the Armistice with the Jordanians explicitly 
specified that the agreement did not compromise any future territorial 
claims of the parties, since it had been "dictated by exclusively by 
military considerations." In other words, the old Armistice Line was not 
a recognized international border. It had no finality. As a result, the 
Jordanians reserved the right after 1949 to demand territories inside 
Israel, for the Arab side. It was noteworthy that on May 31, 1967, the 
Jordanian ambassador to the UN made this very point to the UN Security 
Council just days before the Six-Day War, by stressing that the old 
armistice agreement "did not fix boundaries".
After the Six-Day War, the architects of UN Security Council Resolution 
242 insisted that the old armistice line had to be replaced with a new 
border. Thus Lord Caradon, the British ambassador to the UN admitted at 
the time: "I know the 1967 border very well. It is not a satisfactory 
border, it is where the troops had to stop." He concluded: "it is not a 
permanent border." His U.S. counterpart, Ambassador Arthur Goldberg, 
added that "historically, there have never been secure or recognized 
boundaries in the area"; he then added that the armistice lines did not 
answer that description.
For the British and American ambassadors, at the time, Resolution 242, 
that they drafted involved creating a completely new boundary that could 
be described as "secure and recognized," instead of going back to the 
lines from which the conflict erupted. President Lyndon Johnson made 
this very point in September 1968: "It is clear, however, that a return 
to the situation of 4 June 1967 will not bring peace. There must be 
secure and there must be recognized borders." It is for this reason that 
Resolution 242 did not call for a full withdrawal from all the 
territories that Israel captured in the Six Day War; the 1949 Armistice 
lines were no longer to be a reference point for a future peace process.
Yet in recent years a reverse process has been underway to re-establish 
the 1949 Armistice line, calling it the 1967 border and sanctifying it 
as a legitimate international boundary. This is one of the side effects 
of the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, which talks about the 1967 lines. 
The 2003 Road Map introduced a problematic terminology that a peace 
settlement "ends the occupation that began in 1967." This was partially 
offset by the reference to Resolution 242 in the Road Map, as well, with 
its caveats against a full Israeli withdrawal from the territories and 
its call for establishing secure boundaries.
Under President Obama, the 1967 lines have become a reference point for 
the peace process again. President Bush made clear in his 2004 letter to 
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that "it is unrealistic to expect that the 
outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return 
to the armistice lines of 1949".
But while the Bush letter was approved by massive bipartisan majorities 
in both houses of the US Congress, the Obama administration has avoided 
stating that it is legally bound by the contents of the letter. This 
came out in a long exchange between a Fox News reporter and the State 
Department's Deputy Spokesman, Robert Wood, on June 1, 2009. At the UN 
General Assembly in September 2009, Obama used in his address the 
road-map phrase of "ending the occupation that began in 1967," but he 
did not refer to Resolution 242 as his predecessors did.
Over the last decade, Israel has made repeated mistakes in allowing the 
restoration of the 1967 lines and the downgrading of Resolution 242. It 
should have fought harder over the language of the Road Map back in 
2003. Israel's right to defensible borders, that must replace the 1967 
lines, has a strong foundation in international law and in the past 
policies of the UN Security Council. It would be a cardinal error to 
allow these rights to be eroded now, especially if new peace begin and 
the Palestinians seek to win international support for a Palestinian 
state next year that will undoubtedly be based on their demand to see 
Israel pull back to the 1967 lines.

 future peace process.
Stronzata.
<CUT stronzate varie>
-Stefano