Borders of Israel - Border With Syria

Border With Syria

In 1923, an agreement between the United Kingdom and France established the border between the British Mandate of Palestine and the French Mandate of Syria. The British handed over the southern Golan Heights to the French in return for the northern Jordan Valley. The border was re-drawn so that both sides of the Jordan River and the whole of the Sea of Galilee, including a 10-metre-wide strip along the northeastern shore, were made a part of Palestine. The 1947 UN Partition Plan put this territory area inside the Jewish state.

During the Six-Day War, Israel captured the territory, and subsequently repelled a Syrian attempt to recapture it during the Yom Kippur War. Israel annexed the Golan Heights in 1981 with the Golan Heights Law. Israel began building settlements throughout the Golan Heights, and offered the Druze and Circassian residents citizenship, which most turned down. Today, Israel regards the Golan Heights as its sovereign territory, and a strategic necessity. The Purple Line marks the boundary between Israel and Syria. Israel's unilateral annexation has not been internationally recognized, and United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 refers to the area as Israeli-occupied.

During the 1990s, there were constant negotiations between Israel and Syria regarding a mediation of conflicts and an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights but a peace treaty did not come to fruition. The main stumbling block seems to involve 25 square kilometers of territory in the Jordan Valley that lies west of the 1923 Palestinian Mandate border, but which had been seized by Syria in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and retained by it under the 1949 Armistice Agreement with Israel. Arab countries support Syria's position in the formula which calls on Israel "to return to the 1967 borders". (See 2002 Arab Peace Initiative)

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