 Hey guys, welcome back to my YouTube channel. This is Daniel Rosal here. I recorded yesterday a video which I termed the invisible borders of Jerusalem. And I called it that because as I mentioned, there is a green line running through Jerusalem. I explained actually the map of Jerusalem on Google Maps is pretty interesting. You see all these lines and I try to explain what they were. Do check out that video if you are interested in borders and geopolitics. I explained that there is a green line running through Jerusalem which essentially has no geographic. It's not demarcated today. It was an armistice line. There was also the border around the Hebrew University enclave visible from when there was an enclave. It's still on the map, at least on Google Maps and on most maps. And I explained there was actually two lines on Google Maps. And I explained that when Moshe Dayan and Abdullah Atel, the Jordanian commander, met to negotiate what was an armistice agreement basically. And they put down an armistice line that ended up serving as a de facto international border for the period of 19 years with Jordan on the east and Israel on the west. I explained that Dayan and Atel didn't exactly agree on the course of what that ceasefire line should be. And their little disagreements ended up creating between a green line that Dayan grew with using a green pencil and a red line that Atel drew using a red pencil. Ended up creating a little pocket, a strip of land that runs through Jerusalem. And that in the 19 years when there was an international border here, that was called the Shatakh Hafqar, which means in English the No Man's Land. It was essentially sort of a DMZ that existed between where they both put down the border. So I explained that today that border area is still referred to as the seam zone because it represents the sort of invisible divide that separates between Palestinian Jerusalem, East Jerusalem, and Jewish Jerusalem, even though there are some Israeli, it's impossible to use words here without offending people, settlements, groups of houses in East Jerusalem. But I explained that the relevance of the green line and why it's still depicted on international maps is that it's what the international community uses to define as a legal Israeli building over the green line. Right? So that's why it still is relevant even though, as I said, if you take a bus in Jerusalem between a point on the west of the green line on the east of the green line, you're not going to see anything. It's just, it's going to be air, right? You're going to have to be watching a map to say, oh, here's where the green line is. And I explained yesterday that there was also the Jerusalem municipality border, and that's what I wanted to talk about today for those very interested in the geopolitics of the city and region. I explained that when Israel put down the West Bank security barrier, which now services a sort of de facto border, if you want to use that language or, you know, that they followed roughly the course of the East Jerusalem. So if you ask me, if you ask what is considered East Jerusalem today, the best answer is what the territory to the east of the green line and to the west of the Jerusalem municipality border. In other words, the Jerusalem municipality created a border that went to the east of the green line. And after in 1947 Israel annexed, conquered, whatever term you used, both East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, right? So today I thought it would be a fun video to show where that border is and mention one interesting feature of the border. Let's go border, let's go virtual border spotting again. Okay, so this is the Jerusalem GIS, which as I mentioned, the GIS systems are tremendous resources. I'll go back to it in a second. Jerusalem has a GIS and Israel's national government also maintains a GIS, a GIS stands for a geographic information system. And it's like kind of Google Maps on a large dose of steroids you have instead of just streets and houses, you have hundreds of different layers of information you can toggle on and toggle off. So if I go back to the Jerusalem GIS, and by the way, I'm not sure if this is accessible outside of Israel. This is what it looks like. And you can see if I zoom out, we're just going to see everywhere around Jerusalem is just kind of white. So this is the Jerusalem municipality GIS will only show areas in the Jerusalem municipality. Where you say, where I hear you ask, is the Jerusalem municipality? Sorry, it's Ghul Ha'il, I think is what the layer is termed here. There we go. I'm going to turn on the Jerusalem municipal boundary layer Ghul Ha'il. And now you can see our map has the addition of this dotted blue line. Now you also see a black line. Let me explain the difference. It's easiest to actually show this via satellite imagery. So what I'm going to do is turn on the satellite imagery for a second. Now the municipal boundary is in blue, as I mentioned, and I'm trying to find the Israel, here it is, the security barrier. The security barrier is actually visible from satellite imagery because it's a weird looking thing. It's got a patrol road here. You can kind of see this isn't a civilian road. It's just got one, it's got that one white line running through. You can actually see the fence. Look, you can see the pickets of the fence here. And this is the wall. These are what the concrete slabs look like. And I'm as far as I can go on the satellite imagery. So this is the wall, right? What you're looking at right here is the wall. This house is on the Palestinian side of the wall. This, where I'm waving my mouse, is all on the Israeli side of the wall. Now what's interesting is you can see that the municipal boundary in the blue line is running here. Oh, this is a checkpoint, by the way. This is what you can see checkpoints from satellite imagery because they have kind of a distinctive white roof structure. What you may notice as we continue, now watch where the wall goes, right? It starts here and it continues right here. So this is an area where, no, these are on the right side. It's going to be confusing. This is the, these houses are on, these houses are in the Jerusalem municipality on the left. And these ones are outside the boundary of the Jerusalem municipality on the right. But as I mentioned yesterday, there are some interesting, it's not quite that simple, there are some interesting features of this boundary that we can actually find if we continue. So you can see that the Jerusalem municipality, the wall, which we can see snaking its way around here, right? You can see it on the map. Again, it's very distinctive from satellite imagery. But we can see there are some slivers of land such as this unpopulated area that are on the Palestinian side of the wall where my mouse is here. But they're inside the Jerusalem municipality boundary. Now this happens to be a bad example because it's an uninhabited area. But I mentioned a much better example, which was a Koffar Aqab. And that is basically a Palestinian town that comes before Ramallah. Now you can see this is the northernmost boundary of the Jerusalem municipality where the dotted blue line is. This is the abandoned airport at Atarot. And I believe if we zoom in, we'll see the Kalandia checkpoint, right? This is Kalandia checkpoint, one of the main checkpoints, actually the main checkpoint coming into Ramallah. And wherever we see a checkpoint, we're probably going to see the wall. So we can actually see the wall here, here, here, here. See where my mouse is? You can see it again from satellite imagery, the sand, sand, sand. So we have all these houses in Koffar Aqab from here all the way down to Kalandia. These are all kind of a no-man's land. Now let me explain what this no-man's land is about. You can see all these houses here where I'm waving my mouse. These are all on the Palestinian side of the wall, but they're inside the bounds of the Jerusalem municipality border. Now that creates a very interesting situation because the Jerusalem Israeli law forbids the Palestinian authority from having anything effectively to do in Jerusalem. They can't provide garbage services. They can't do anything. They can't run police services. But Israel has put itself in a very difficult situation of a can't really provide services on the Palestinian side of the wall. Two reasons, as you mentioned, firstly to give the balance necessary here. Frequently they are attacked when they attempt to provide services there, but you've also got the wall. So these guys are this area of the map where I'm highlighting has become, for want of a better word, kind of a cesspool of lawlessness. There's huge problems of drugs, crime, because the Palestinian police are not allowed to enter this area or to enforce the law in this area. And Israel doesn't, it just doesn't really, from what media reports say, just does not really go in, right? They'd have to go through the Calandia checkpoint anyway. It just wouldn't work. So that is the story of the Jerusalem municipality boundary. I think you can actually find, if you're a really hawk-eyed observer, you can actually find other bits of land here where they put the wall. And you can find the odd house that's been positioned on the like and Kaffiraka. Kaffiraka would be the most famous example. So that's the Jerusalem municipality boundary. It's where Israel says this is what we're going to call the city of Jerusalem. The international community says you can call the west of the Green Line Jerusalem, but anything to the east of the Green Line, we consider it illegal and illegal annexation. We consider any building you do there to be illegal. And that's pretty much the story. That's why that's the significance of the Jerusalem boundary alongside the Green Line. I hope this has been interesting. If you're a fellow border enthusiast or really just interested in the geopolitics of this very complicated part of the world. And if you do want to subscribe to get more videos on this and other topics, do please consider subscribing to this YouTube channel. Thank you for watching.