Boundaries
See also: Borders of IsraelThe Palestinian Territories consist of two distinct areas: the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. The boundaries are defined by the "1967 borders", which correspond with the Green Line. The Green Line represents the armistice lines under the 1949 Armistice Agreements, which brought an end to the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and expressly declared armistice lines, not international borders. The Palestinian negotiators claim a return to those lines as the boundary for a future Palestinian state. The Arab League has supported these boundaries as the borders of the future State of Palestine in the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative.
The eastern limit of the West Bank is the border with Jordan. The Israel–Jordan peace treaty defined that border as the international border, and Jordan renounced all claims to territory west of it. The border segment between Jordan and the West Bank was left undefined pending a definitive agreement on the status of the territory.
The southern limit of the Gaza Strip is the border with Egypt. Egypt renounced all claims to land north of the international border, including the Gaza Strip, in the Israel-Egypt peace treaty. The Palestinians were not parties to either agreement.
The Gaza Strip is bounded by the Mediterranean Sea. The natural geographic boundary of the West Bank, as the name implies, is the Jordan River. To the Territories belong the territorial waters of the Gaza Strip and the part of the Dead Sea between the West Bank and the Jordan border-line (see adjacent CIA-map), which are also completely controlled by Israel.
Read more about this topic: Palestinian Territories
Famous quotes containing the word boundaries:
“Not too many years ago, a child’s experience was limited by how far he or she could ride a bicycle or by the physical boundaries that parents set. Today ... the real boundaries of a child’s life are set more by the number of available cable channels and videotapes, by the simulated reality of videogames, by the number of megabytes of memory in the home computer. Now kids can go anywhere, as long as they stay inside the electronic bubble.”
—Richard Louv (20th century)
“Whereas the Greeks gave to will the boundaries of reason, we have come to put the will’s impulse in the very center of reason, which has, as a result, become deadly.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)