The Old City of Jerusalem is divided into four religious quarters: Armenian, Christian, Jewish and Muslim areas. The overall population of the Old City is 34,000, 11 percent of whom are Jews. Jews account for 59 percent of the population of the Old City’s Jewish Quarter and 49 percent of the Armenian Quarter.
To test Egypt’s intentions, Israel took eight years, from January 1974 to April 1982, to withdraw from virtually all of Sinai.
In the last days of the June 1967 War Israel secured a portion of the Syrian Golan Heights, estimated at 1300 sq km or 500 sq mi; Israel forces sit some 40 miles, 60km from Damascus. Before the June War, Israeli villages and populations in the valley were fired upon by Syrian forces from the Heights. In addition to being an important catchment for Jordan River waters which helps supply Israel’s water needs, the heights contain not fully explored hydrocarbon sources. In the northern Heights is Mt. Hermon which has strategic value for observing military movements into southern Lebanon and to Damascus.
For Sadat, who had gone to war against Israel three months earlier, securing a military disengagement agreement was important. In addition, diplomatically engaging the US to secure the agreement meant entrenching Washington as a friend of Egypt. The US embraced the opportunity to quell tensions between Israel and Egypt, while squiring Cairo away from decades of Moscow’s embrace. Israel had its POWs returned and slowly tested Sadat’s broader intentions toward Jerusalem.
Israel troop crossings with Egyptian counterattacks during the Yom Kippur War (October 1973). Israeli forces were led by Generals Sharon, Aden and Magen. Description of the Israeli Suez Canal crossing, Israel State Archives, October War
October 6, 2023, was the 50th anniversary of the outbreak of the October 1973 war. Six months prior, Egyptian President Sadat sent his national security adviser to meet with Secretary of State Kissinger to determine whether the U.S. would engage Egypt and Israel in serious mediation for a Sinai agreement, or a series of them, all focused on Israeli withdrawal and gradual acceptance of Israel. Kissinger did not take Sadat’s overtures seriously. Would American action then have avoided the October 1973 war? All informed analyses say no.
Drafted by Minister of Labor Yigal Allon after the June 1967 war, the plan envisages Israeli retention of a series of settlements and military installations along the Jordan Valley as buffers to a potential Arab land attack from the east.
Following the conclusion of the June 1967 War, the Israeli government sent word to Egypt and Syria seeking peace plan that was intended to jumpstart a peace process with Israel’s belligerent neighbors, Egypt and Syria. The messages were sent through the US, but no response was apparently received.
As a result of the June 1967 War, Israel increased its size seven fold to include Eastern Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, the West Bank of the Jordan River, and the Gaza Strip.
With its six-day victory in the June 1967 war, Israel added the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights and the West Bank (Judaea and Samaria) to the territory under its control. Israelis moved…
In the aftermath of the 1948 War of Independence, Israel signed armistice agreements with Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. These armistice lines lasted until the immediate aftermath of the June 1967 War. Israel has 1068 kilometers in land borders. Egypt 208 km, Gaza Strip 59 km, Jordan 307 km, Lebanon 81 km, Syria 83 km, and the West Bank 330 km; its Mediterranean coastline 273 km. CIA The World Factbook – Israel
The area of Israel expanded and the potential area for a Palestinian Arab state decreased because of the 1948-49 war, Israel’s War of Independence. The Arab rejection of the 1947 U.N. partition plan thus hurt…
This map shows the territories controlled by Israel, Jordan (including the West Bank(, Lebanon, Syria and Egypt (including the Gaza Strip) at the end of Israel’s War of Independence in 1949. An Arab state was…
The United Nations General Assembly approved Resolution 181 on Nov. 29, 1947, to divide the British Mandate of Palestine into an Arab state and a Jewish state along the lines in this map, with an…
The UN suggested partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states with an economic union between them and an internationalization of Jerusalem.
Jewish land acquisition in 1944.
A map shows the partition of Palestine proposed by the Peel Commission in 1937.
Stein, Kenneth W. The Land Question in Palestine, 1917-1939. North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1984 and 2003. Copyright, Ken Stein and the Center for Israel Education, 2024.
Jewish land acquisition in 1930 mostly in the valley and coastal regions.
When Britain controlled Palestine, she lopped off 80% of it and assigned it to the Hashemite family leader, Emir Abdullah. It became today’s Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
As shown in this map, the British in 1921 separated a new emirate, Transjordan, from what officially became the Mandate for Palestine the next year. The British officially maintained political and military control of both…
The European agreement that identified the states of the Middle East, 1920.
The British and French zones of influence, or mandates, in the eastern Mediterranean region were ratified by the San Remo Agreement in 1920 and approved by the League of Nations in 1922.
Great Britain and France secretly negotiated the Sykes-Picot Agreement in 1916. The two European powers agreed, according to their respective spheres of influence, to divide the Middle East territories previously administered by the Ottoman Empire.
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