1949 Armistice Agreements
The 1949 Armistice Agreements were signed between Israel and Egypt,[1] Lebanon,[2] Jordan,[3] and Syria.[4] They formally ended the hostilities of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War and also demarcated the Green Line, which separated Arab-controlled territory (i.e., the Jordanian-annexed West Bank and the Egyptian-occupied Gaza Strip) from Israel until the latter's victory in the 1967 Arab–Israeli War.
To monitor the agreed-upon de facto border, the United Nations (UN) established supervising and reporting agencies; discussions related to the ceasefire's enforcement led to the signing of the separate Tripartite Declaration of 1950, in which the United States, the United Kingdom, and France pledged to take action within and outside of the UN in order to prevent violations of the frontiers. It also outlined their commitment to peace and stability in the area, their opposition to the use or threat of force, and reiterated their opposition to the development of an arms race between Arab countries and Israel.
Agreements
With Egypt
On 6 January 1949, Ralph Bunche announced that Egypt had finally consented to start talks with Israel on an armistice. The talks began on the Greek island of Rhodes on 12 January. Shortly after their commencement, Israel agreed to the release of a besieged Egyptian brigade in Faluja, but soon rescinded their agreement.[5] At the end of the month, the talks floundered. Israel demanded that Egypt withdraw all its forces from the former area of Mandate Palestine. Egypt insisted that Arab forces withdraw to the positions which they held on 14 October 1948, as per the Security Council Resolution S/1070 of 4 November 1948, and that the Israeli forces withdraw to positions north of the Majdal–Hebron road.
The deadlock culminated on 12 February 1949 with the murder of Hassan al-Banna, leader of the Islamist group Muslim Brotherhood. Israel threatened to abandon the talks, whereupon the United States appealed to the parties to bring them to a successful conclusion.
On 24 February the Israel–Egypt Armistice Agreement was signed in Rhodes.[1] The main points of the armistice agreement were:
Iraq
Iraq, whose forces took an active part in the war (although it has no common border with Israel), withdrew its forces from the region in March 1949. The front occupied by Iraqi forces was covered by the armistice agreement between Israel and Jordan,[3] and there was no separate agreement with Iraq.
The new military frontiers for Israel, as set by the agreements, encompassed about 78% of mandatory Palestine as it stood after the independence of Transjordan (now Jordan) in 1946. The Arab populated areas not controlled by Israel prior to 1967 were the Jordanian ruled West Bank and the Egyptian occupied Gaza Strip.
The armistice agreements were intended to serve only as interim agreements until replaced by permanent peace treaties. However, it took three decades to achieve a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, and it took another 15 years after that to achieve a peace treaty between Israel and Jordan. To this day, no peace treaty has been signed between Israel and Lebanon[N 1] nor between Israel and Syria.
The armistice agreements were clear (at Arab insistence) that they were not creating permanent borders. The Egyptian-Israeli agreement stated "The Armistice Demarcation Line is not to be construed in any sense as a political or territorial boundary, and is delineated without prejudice to rights, claims and positions of either Party to the Armistice as regards ultimate settlement of the Palestine question."[1]
The Jordanian-Israeli agreement stated: "... no provision of this Agreement shall in any way prejudice the rights, claims, and positions of either Party hereto in the peaceful settlement of the Palestine questions, the provisions of this Agreement being dictated exclusively by military considerations" (Art. II.2), "The Armistice Demarcation Lines defined in articles V and VI of this Agreement are agreed upon by the Parties without prejudice to future territorial settlements or boundary lines or to claims of either Party relating thereto." (Art. VI.9)[3]
As the Armistice Demarcation Lines were technically not borders, the Arabs considered that Israel was restricted in its rights to develop the DMZ and exploitation of the water resources. Further that as a state of war still existed with the Arab nations, the Arab League was not hindered in their right to deny Israel the freedom of navigation through the Arab League waters. Also it was argued that the Palestinians had the right of return and that the Israeli use of abandoned property was therefore not legitimate.[13]
In the Knesset then Foreign Minister and future Prime Minister Moshe Sharett called the armistice lines "provisional boundaries" and the old international borders which the armistice lines, except with Jordan, were based on, "natural boundaries".[14] Israel did not lay claim to territory beyond them and proposed them, with minor modifications except at Gaza, as the basis of permanent political frontiers at the Lausanne Conference, 1949.[15]
After the 1967 Six-Day War several Israeli leaders argued against turning the Armistice Demarcation Lines into permanent borders on the grounds of Israeli security:
The internationally recognized border between Egypt and Israel was eventually demarcated as part of the Egypt–Israel peace treaty. The border between Israel and Jordan (except for Jordan's border with the post-1967 West Bank) was demarcated as part of the Israel–Jordan peace treaty.[16] This occurred after Jordan had recognized Palestine, which had not declared its borders at the time. In its application for membership to the United Nations, Palestine declared its territory to consist of the West Bank and Gaza, implying that some of Jordan's previous border with Israel is now with Palestine.[17]
The complete texts of the Armistice Agreements can be found at The Avalon Project at Yale Law School
A search at the United Nations web site for "Mixed Armistice Commission" will reveal many of the reports made to the UN by those commissions.