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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 international zone around Jerusalem.
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 not created in Palestine. Jordan annexed the West Bank, and Egypt maintained administrative control of the Gaza Strip. Israel captured Gaza and the West Bank in the June 1967 war.
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 the Arab side, as the maps demonstrate.
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
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 into all of those areas over the next decade.
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.
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.
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
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.
After Israel secured the Golan Heights in the June 1967 War, the Israeli government offered to negotiate its return, some 1300 km, for a peace treaty with Israel. Israel withdrew from a small portion of the Heights after the 1973 War. It continued to build Israeli settlements in strategic locations and in 1981 applied Israeli law to the area. Some 20,000 Israelis live there in 32 settlements, along with 20,000 Druze.
From 1977 to 1979, the settler population in the territories grew from 3,200 to 17,500, plus 80,000 in East Jerusalem. Of the 225,000 Israel settlers in the “territories” in 2005, all 8,500 settlers living in Gaza (5% of the total) were evacuated with the area turned over to the Palestinian Authority. In 2006, Hamas won Palestinian legislative elections, and in 2007 the terrorist group conducted a coup and ousted the Palestinian Authority from Gaza.
The map includes the Israeli border and the Litani River, which is about 18 miles north of the Israeli-Lebanese border and runs roughly parallel to it. U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701 from 2006 calls for Hezbollah to withdraw north of the Litani.
Maps of the Gaza Strip, Israel’s villages and kibbutzim around the Gaza Strip, former Israeli settlements there, and Israel’s requested zone of civilian withdrawal 10.14.2023
Courtesy of the University of Texas, Map Collection, https://maps.lib.utexas.edu/maps/
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