Israel Boundary Disputes with Arab Neighbours 1946–1964

The documents focus on two different types of borders; those that coincided with the British Mandate for Palestine, and the lines that resulted from the war-won divisions of land following the 1949 cease-fire and the final location of the opposing armies. The armistice lines basically followed the course of mandate boundaries with Transjordan, Syria and Lebanon with small modifications. The operative border between Israel and Jordan on the West Bank was based exclusively on an armistice line that had no geographical or historical foundations; other complications arose because of the vagueness of the original definitions of the mandatory boundaries. The major events, in this period, which established Israel´s modern borders were the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan, the war that followed the creation of Israel in 1948 and the subsequent United Nations Armistice Agreements negotiated between Israel and each of its Arab neighbours: Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt.