(Washington Times) Eli Lake - The 1967 lines separate the territory of the West Bank that the Jewish state won in the 1967 war from the borders of Israel created after the 1948 war that established the state. Since the 1967 war, Israel has built settlements throughout the West Bank, but most of them are suburbs of Jerusalem, Israel's capital. Palestinian negotiators in 2008 were prepared to allow the presence of many settlements within Israel's final borders in exchange for swaps of land with Palestinian majorities inside the 1949 armistice lines, according to a negotiating record first disclosed this year by Al-Jazeera. Aaron David Miller, an adviser to six secretaries of state on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, said, "This is the first time an American president in a high-profile, much-anticipated speech put out the concept of 1967 borders and mutually agreeable swaps without softening it for the Israelis with any kind of context....This administration has not validated the Bush letters and apparently they will not."
2011-05-20 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive