 Hey guys, welcome back to my YouTube channel. This is Daniel Rossell here, bringing you another video today on the fascinating topic of borders. Folks who have subscribed to this YouTube channel may know. I'm a border nut. I am one of those rare weirdos who spends some of their free time visiting borders. I've actually at this point, and sadly, I've no more borders left to see in Israel because I've been now to Egypt, Jordan, Syria, the West Bank, so I'm bordered out. So as I'm bordered out, I'm going to do a video on the borders of Jerusalem, which, by the way, is actually a very interesting subject, I think, and I'm planning. It's a long-term plan, but I would love to make a documentary about the border of Jerusalem, what was called the Kavironi, the municipal line, which was essentially when the green line ran through Jerusalem and when what was to the east of the green line was still held by the Jordanian army. There was an actual physical border going through Jerusalem. People are very sensitive to this word. When I asked quite innocently in a Facebook group on the internet a few weeks ago, saying, I'm planning on making this video, was anyone alive at the time there was a border in Jerusalem? Has stories about it? I'd love to hear from you. People say, it's not a border, it's not a border. And it took me a while to understand why were people getting so worked up because I'm not talking about the technical difference between a demarcation line and a border. I was just using border in the colloquial sense, meaning that this country's here, this country's here, there's a wall you can't cross, to me, that's a border. Whether you, whatever the treaty says, I just meant it like that and I was surprised by the kind of vitriolic response it got. And it became clear to me afterwards when you read the Wikipedia page about the green line and you understand that it was certainly not intended as a border, but if you want to further that case, you want to avoid using the word border at all costs. If it was an armistice line, then the people who would argue that Israel's activity to the east of the border, in other words, East Jerusalem and the West Bank, which was captured in 67 after the Six-Day War, if you regard what was proceeding that as a mere demarcation line, then Israel was just taking back its territory. If you agree, and I'm using sort of my Talmud voice here, if you agree that between 1948 and 1967, there was a binding border, then indeed Israel is somewhat say in violation of the Geneva Convention and that's basically why the whole international community is annoyed about Israel building over the green line because if you read the, not the Wikipedia is of course the Beol and Endol source on this matter, but it's pretty interesting what they have to say about it. The green line or the 1949 armistice is the demarcation line set out in the 49 armistice agreements between the armies of Israel and those of its neighbors, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria. After the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, it served as the de facto borders of the state of Israel from 49 until the Six-Day War in 67 and now of course the de facto border was after that moved eastward with Jordan to the kind of course along, roughly along the Jordan River. So that's why again, it's kind of very important to people on the right of the political spectrum to say that between 48 and 67 what existed in Jerusalem was merely a demarcation line which it was and not a binding international border even one that was created post facto. I know this is all very confusing and my head is kind of spinning trying to say it but that's their position and therefore that's why people when you say hey, there was a border because if you say between 48 and 67 in Jerusalem that was a binding international border binding in the future then in 67 when Israel captured, liberated or annexed depending on where you stand in the political spectrum the territory to the east of that well the status of it for that 19 year period changes a lot. So that's why people get their knickers in a twist because usually people don't get their knickers in a twist about whether you call a line between two countries a border or an armistice line or a demarcation line or a fence, someone stuck in the sand or whatever. So there you go. Anyway, let's come back to our topic regarding the lines in Jerusalem. So you may have been planning to visit Jerusalem or staying in Jerusalem or planning a trip to Israel or whatever and you may have for whatever reason opened Google Maps and looked at Jerusalem and you see all these lines, right? As I mentioned earlier, you see there's a broken line here and there is a weird looking line around Hebrew and you might think, why does Hebrew University have a line on the map? Is that like the campus fence? And if so, why is that on Google Maps? Usually private boundaries aren't put on a public map, right? And if you zoom in further, the situation might get more interesting. There's a line here, there is a line here and that kind of creates this area in the middle. So let me explain the interesting story of the green line in Jerusalem. So what you're looking at here, let me just explain. This is the green line. So we talked about the green line earlier and if I'm not mistaken, it was called green because Moshe Dayan drew it with a green crayon or some say pencil and actually it's quite interesting. The story, whether it's apocryphal or based on reality is that when Dayan drew the green line using a green pencil or a crayon and the map was one to 20,000 scale, the inaccuracies created by the thick crayon and the low scale map together created an ambiguity that worked out to like tens of meters on the ground for where the actual course of the border was. But anyway, so that's the, so it starts here with Ramat Rachel, which is, it's actually technically if I'm not mistaken, to add more complication to the topics of border in Jerusalem, I think it's got its own municipality. Not shown on this map, by the way, is the boundary of the Jerusalem municipality, which is a different boundary. Let's keep that for another video. So this is a green line coming into Jerusalem, right? Then it goes into Jerusalem. Then a bifurcates left, right, and a bifurcates here, right? Where I have my, where I'm circling on the map. Now, and then there's this zone in the middle coming around to the old city, at which case the bifurcation, I'm gonna zoom in closer so this is all visible. Then coming into the southern wall of the old city at Zion Gate, at which point the bifurcation looks like it stops, but if you actually zoom in, you can see there is technically still this gap between two lines. Continuing through the north city, we're still seeing a gap on the lines. And I actually searched for a museum on the seam intentionally because the museum on the seam is built at when there was a boundary through Jerusalem, the caviarone, which is basically when the green line as a travel through Jerusalem was demarcated by a real physical border. There was one crossing at the border called the Mandelbaum Gate. And the museum of the seam is built where the Mandelbaum Gate was. The Mandelbaum Gate will come back to it in a second because it was, it has historical significance. It was a checkpoint. And who could go through the checkpoint? Well, not Israelis, clearly, because East Jerusalem at the time between 48 and 67 was basically it going through a process of Islamization or de-judification. All the synagogues were kind of trashed. And Israel had access to the Mount Scopus enclave. And I'm giving away the secret now of why Mount Scopus has this green line around it. But that was a border crossing. So it's like the Roshanikra border crossing, which is the border crossing between Israel and Lebanon. Israel and Lebanon are officially a war. But even when countries are at war, same as Israel and Syria, sometimes you need border crossings. Why UN people? Clergy people who have special status under international law, also diplomats. So for instance, the Roshanikra crossing was used when Israel and Lebanon are having their maritime talks. They actually met at the UN base in Nakoura just across that border from Roshanikra. Nakoura is the Lebanese town just across the border. And likewise, their UN people can pass between the two countries at that border crossing. If I show up to Roshanikra crossing tomorrow and say, hey, yeah, I want to go to Beirut, I will be turned back. And if someone from Beirut comes to say, I want to come to Jerusalem, they will be turned back. So the Mandelbaum Gate was kind of a similar situation. It was a border crossing for special limited groups of people who could legally pass between West and East Jerusalem when it was divided by this border. Let's go back to the border. Let's go back to the border. This is the easy border spotting. Doing it from Google Maps. You don't have to drive around the desert in Southern Israel to do this kind of spotting. So it bifurcates, bifurcates, bifurcates, bifurcates, bifurcates, bifurcates. And then I'm just gonna skip to where it stops bifurcating. I think we missed it already. Yeah, it's here. Rubens Garden. This is the northern tip of the bifurcation. So we have a bifurcation in Jerusalem and then we have an enclave. So two unusual features of the map. So the enclave was part, was Israel Reserved managed to keep access to the enclave and they would send convoys through the Mandelbaum Gate to the enclave. And that is the boundary of the enclave. It's still on the map. Now, the reason there are two lines is because there is a famous line called the Green Line and it continues through Jerusalem. And there's a less famous line called the Red Line. Now what I read is that Moshe Dayan drew in red and Abdullah Atel, the Jordanian commander, drew in, sorry. Moshe Dayan grew in green, Abdullah Atel drew in red. And their points almost matched, but didn't, so Atel was saying, okay, here's R.C.'s Fire Line for the Jordanian forces, Red Line. Dayan was saying, here's where we're gonna stop, Green Line. And there was a little bit where they didn't actually agree and that created a no-man's land in Jerusalem called in Hebrew Ashedah HaFkar, which is also quite interestingly the name of an investigative documentary program by Khan. How many facts am I delivering in this YouTube video today? So what you're actually looking at is what was the DMZ? It was left between the two countries for 19 years. And that's why you have a relatively big, this is its biggest portion in what is today that has Promenade and Armona-Naziv, narrow portion by the old city and an almost very, very narrow portion here by the old city. And where the border came was, and you can see historical photos of Kikar-Sahal, Sahal Square, the border was actually placed here. Now one thing I'm not 100% sure about and people can correct me, I've attempted to find this from the Israel State Archive is whether the Cavier-Oni, the actual physical border that Israel put down for 19 years, whether that exactly followed the green line or whether there was slight deviation because for instance, the course of the West Bank barrier slightly deviates from the green line a little bit in places. So I'm not sure if it was the same or the border was built exactly on the green line. I'm not sure about that fact. If you do know, please drop me a comment, but it continues and skirts around the old city. So basically those gaps in Jerusalem, to answer the question I posed myself at the start of this video, the gaps in Jerusalem are the former no man's land, the gaps in Hebrew University are the former enclave. Now, why is this still on the map? That's a question. Now, the green line does not exist as a border in Jerusalem. Does the green line exist as a real border? By the way, by the real border, I'm talking about a physical border where there's some kind of obstacle. In the West Bank, mostly the West Bank barrier follows a course of the green line. So Jerusalem is actually the anomaly in this respect. The border doesn't go through Jerusalem intentionally because Israel captured annexed or liberated again, depending on whether you're on the right or the left of the political spectrum, Jerusalem and in Jerusalem, there is no boundary. The reason the boundary is still there, I'm guessing, I'm presuming, is because for the international community, when you read in the news that Israel's built a settlement or the Israeli government's approved housing in East Jerusalem or the West Bank and people are annoyed, blah, blah, blah, blah, the definition of what's considered the West Bank or annexation or illegal building for that purpose is what's considered east of the green line. So if you go back to Jerusalem here and we look at where the green line falls, technically the old city in the eyes of the international community, look at where the green line is, it's to the west of the old city, right? Because when the green line ran through Jerusalem, that was part of the line, the east was to the old city was part on the Jordanian side in its entirety, right? The green line, as you can see here, skirts around the walls. So that's why it's still relevant, but on the ground, if I take a taxi from here, okay? A Bukharian quarter to here, route 417, or to here, I need to have the map open to actually know there was a border. You won't see anything, you won't feel anything, there's no boundary, so it's an invisible line. It's a line on the map that doesn't actually exist in real life. Now, just one final thing to wrap up this video. The seam is a term in Hebrew used to refer to the green line as it goes through Jerusalem. So as I've already said, the border, the green line through Jerusalem was between 48 and 67, a real border, it was a real line, there was barbed wire, there was fences, there were soldiers, east was Jordan, west was Israel, it was a real border. Now it's not. But the course of the green line still, there was a reason they picked out those two, they drew the line where they did, because it reflected the demographics of, to the east was Muslim, to the west was Jewish. And that's still the case. So Jerusalem is not divided by physical border anymore, but there is still this invisible cultural gap between Palestinian Jerusalem or East Jerusalem and West Jerusalem, Jewish Jerusalem, and they kind of function de facto to a certain extent as separate cities, even though the Jerusalem Municipal Boundary, which if I'm not mistaken is where the wall is placed to the east. In other words, the wall, for instance, cuts Abu Dis off from Ras al-Amoud. I have done a YouTube video where I walked all the way out to the wall in Jerusalem. It's about an hour's walk from the old city. It's a little bit sketchy. Do it with extreme caution, but I'm pretty sure that's where the wall is now. In any event, I've lost my train of thought, unfortunately. Terrible. So that is the story of the wall and to the east. That is the story of the Boundary to the east was Jordan, but now it is, it's still called the seam zone. Sorry, that was what I was talking about. It's still called the seam zone because it reflects the invisible divide. And when I said the cities are de facto, separate cities, they're all one city within the Jerusalem Municipality Boundary, but here's where it gets even more complicated. Israel built a wall, as I mentioned, but there are actually a couple of neighborhoods that are over the wall. The famous one is, I'm struggling to remember its name, the one just before Amal-e-Kafir-Aqab. There's a neighborhood like Kafir-Aqab that is within the boundary of the Jerusalem Municipality, but over the wall. And that Kafir-Aqab has become a kind of lawless enclave because the Palestinian Authority is prevented from acting in Jerusalem. And the boundary for Jerusalem is the Jerusalem Municipality, but Israel can't really provide municipal services to the territory because A, it's a hostile population, and B, it's located over the West Bank-Israel wall. So to say it's complicated is probably an understatement, but that is what those lines are about on the map in Jerusalem. That's why they're still there. The summary version, the lines in Jerusalem reflect the green line, even though the green line doesn't really exist in Jerusalem as a boundary anymore, neither visibly nor does Israel regard it as a boundary. It says that's the international community. You guys think it's still an applicable boundary, and what we're doing to the East is illegal. We disagree, and the international community says, no, that's what you agree. That was the boundary and anything you do here. We're gonna call it a settlement, or we're gonna call it problematic. So there's actually, this may seem like nitpicking, but you could say there's a lot writing on this little argument over the border from the perspective of the international community. I hope that was interesting. I'm sorry if your head is spinning. My head is spinning a little bit now. I need to drink some water. Interesting topic. Maybe this is made a little bit more clear why I find borders in Israel so interesting, because there is a lot, an awful lot going on at borders in this part of the world. Thank you guys for watching. I hope this video was interesting. Do leave me a comment if you know more than me. I'm by no means the expert on this. I'm simply interested. So if you know more, if I got stuff wrong, don't hesitate to correct me. I'm not embarrassed. I'd love to learn from folks in the comment section, if you have other little nuggets of information to add to this YouTube video. Chip in with them please. Thank you guys for watching and have a good day.