Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
the Golan Heights — a strip that runs along the ceasefi re line and is now a demilitarized zone
patrolled by UN peacekeeping forces. Syria has consistently demanded that all of the land on
Israel's side of the international border be turned over to it, in addition to the Golan Heights.
This issue is important because possession would give Syria a claim on the Jordan River and
the Sea of Galilee waters.
From 1967 until 1981, Israel placed the Golan Heights under military administration. Then,
in 1981, several months before it gave the Sinai back to Egypt, Israel's parliament passed the
Golan Heights Law, placing the region under Israeli civilian law, jurisdiction, and adminis-
tration. The Druze and the handful of Alawite inhabitants were offered Israeli citizenship,
although only a minority accepted, in part because those living there feared reprisals and the
eventual return of the territory to Syria.
The Israel-Palestinian Peace Process and Territorial Shifts, 1993-2000
In 1993, Israel and the PLO signed the Oslo Accords, which established the Palestinian Author-
ity (PA). The plan was for Israel to turn over the Arab-inhabited portions of the Gaza Strip
and the West Bank to the PA, with Israel retaining control over parts of the territory, includ-
ing key roads and Jewish settlements. The fi nal borders between Israel and a Palestinian state,
including the one in east Jerusalem, were to be set by bilateral negotiations leading up to a full
peace treaty.
In 1994, Israel turned over to the PA control of the Gaza Strip — except for certain roads
and Israeli settlements — and the Jericho area in the West Bank. The following year, it turned
over to the PA's political control all the West Bank towns — except for Hebron — and villages,
although Israel retained the right to exercise security control in the villages. In 1996, Israel
turned over 80 percent of Hebron to the PA but kept the other 20 percent, inhabited partly by
Jewish settlers, under Israeli administration.
The 1994 peace treaty with Jordan secured Israel's longest frontier with an existing state.
Since Jordan had given up its claim to the West Bank and east Jerusalem in 1988, the future of
those areas was left to the PA to negotiate. Israel did return to Jordan a small, 116-square-mile
(300-square-kilometer) piece of Jordanian territory captured in 1967. Part of this territory was
renamed Peace Island, which Israelis could visit, and a small portion of this land was leased by
Israeli farmers for their orchards. The two countries also agreed to cooperate on management
of the Jordan River, which formed part of their border.
In 2000, Israel offered Syria all the Golan Heights up to the international border in exchange
for full peace. Syria rejected the proposal, as it had previously done when Israel had made the
offer secretly. At both the Camp David summit in July 2000 and in the December 2000 Clinton
plan, Israel offered to negotiate a peace agreement with the PA that would include an indepen-
dent state of Palestine comprising the entire Gaza Strip, almost all of the West Bank, and part
of east Jerusalem. Arafat rejected this as even a framework for further negotiations.
So no further major change in Israel's borders came until August 2005, when Israel unilater-
ally withdrew all military forces and settlements from the Gaza Strip. The goal was to give the
PA a chance to show its ability to govern the territory and move toward peace. Instead, the PA
