Green Line (Israel) - Overview

Overview

The Green Line is not an international or permanent border. Professor Stephen M. Schwebel, at the time a deputy legal advisor to the U.S. Department of State, Legal Adviser Office (1961–1981), wrote in the American Journal of International Law (1970) that "...modifications of the 1949 armistice lines among those States within former Palestinian territory are lawful (if not necessarily desirable), whether those modifications are...'insubstantial alterations required for mutual security' or more substantial alterations - such as recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the whole of Jerusalem." In a footnote, he wrote: "It should be added that the armistice agreements of 1949 expressly preserved the territorial claims of all parties and did not purport to establish definitive boundaries between them."

While the line is only an Armistice Demarcation Line, in practice it is used to differentiate between those areas which are administered as part of the State of Israel, and the areas outside it, which are administered by the Israeli military or the Palestinian National Authority. The extended municipality of Jerusalem constitutes one exception to this: although the parts ruled by Jordan until 1967 fall outside the Green Line, Israel declared Jerusalem "complete and united" as the capital of Israel according to the Basic Jerusalem Law (1980). While other nations' positions on Jerusalem vary, the UN Security Council confirmed that Israel's measures at changing the status of Jerusalem were invalid.

The Golan Heights are another exception, having been informally annexed with the Golan Heights Law (1981), which the UNSC announced as null and without any international legal effect Israeli settlements are also essentially subject to the laws of the State of Israel rather than the PNA's laws.