Israel-Palestine conflict: 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps.

• Author: Roberts, Walter R.

In his wide-ranging Mideast speech of May 19, 2011 at the Department of State, President Barack Obama also referred to the Israel-Palestine conflict. And in that segment of his address he urged the parties to negotiate the core issues, the basis of which, he said, is clear. "A viable Palestine, a secure Israel. The United States believes that negotiations should result in two states, with permanent Palestine borders with Israel, Jordan and Egypt, and permanent Israeli borders with Palestine." And then the President added a sentence that received the greatest attention: "We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states."

There is a great deal of history behind this last sentence. As one who covered for the Voice of America the United Nations deliberations regarding the future of the British Palestine Mandate at Lake Success in New York in 1947, I have followed developments in that part of the world with particular interest.

After the British Government informed the United Nations that it would surrender its Mandate over Palestine by May 14, 1948, the UN drafted a Partition Plan that was discussed intensely by the UN General Assembly in the fall of 1947. The plan was adopted on November 29 as Resolution 181. It divided the Mandate into three entities: a Jewish state, a Palestinian state and Jerusalem as a UN administered corpus separatum. The Jewish Agency, acting in behalf of a future Jewish state, accepted the Resolution, The Arab states and the Palestinian leadership rejected it. On the next day, November 30, irregular Palestinian forces, later joined by volunteers from Arab countries, started attacking Jewish communities.

On May 14, the day the British Mandate over Palestine ended, the leaders of the Jewish Agency proclaimed a Jewish state based on the UN General Assembly Resolution 181 and named it Israel. On the following day, the adjacent Arab states - Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, as well as Iraq - attacked the new Jewish state. It was generally assumed that Israel, only one day old, could not survive the combined Arab states' attack. The new citizens of Israel had lived in the British mandate. Where and how would they have obtained weapons - large and small - to defend themselves? Obviously, they did. Jewish organizations readied themselves for possible military actions. Many of the citizens who would...