I used to think geography was so boring

[stilltrucking]

Op-Ed Contributor
A Green Line in the Sand
By DAVID NEWMAN
Published: January 9, 2007
Beersheba, Israel

NEARLY 40 years after it was removed from official maps, atlases and school books, the Green Line has made a significant comeback. Israel’s education minister, Yuli Tamir, has ordered the Green Line border, which separates Israel from the West Bank, to be reintroduced in all texts and maps used in the Israeli school system. From now on, Israeli children will know exactly where the Green Line is and what it signifies — a political border that, at some point, will almost certainly become the line separating neighboring Israeli and Palestinian sovereign territories.
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There may never be peace in this troubled region. But if there is to be a return to the negotiation table, the issue of boundary demarcation will be of paramount importance in determining the territorial configuration of the respective sovereignty to be practiced by each of the two states. On the ground, there are many reasons for drawing a completely new line, but it will always be easier for the politicians to return to what was once — however briefly — there. The Green Line is the default boundary, and it has finally been recognized anew by the Israeli government.


David Newman, a professor of political geography at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, is a co-editor of the journal Geopolitics.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/09/opinion/09newman.html