Tour Guide, Jerusalem, Israel
| 3 mins read
Every time I give private tours in Israel, people ask me about the ever changing borders of the country. The key to understand the modern borders of Israel is connected to this map that is seen to the left. This map was cartographed by the U.N and was used to part Palestine to two states, a Jewish one and an Arab state. Today, for the private tours that I provide in Israel, I cannot reach the areas that are today under the control of the Palestinians, including areas what we call the “West Bank” a jordanian term; actually that was coined after the 1948 war when they annexed the “West Bank” of the river Jordan (the area in yellow at the center of the map). In any case you can see that the green area that was given to the Jewish settlement to build their state has a shape of an “N”. Also the area Down south of the Negev, was added very close in this map drafted by the U.N. This 'N' shaped area was actually given to the Israelis because this is where the JNF (Jewish National Fund) was able to purchase land. The reason why the JNF could purchase this land, is because, the entire area that is today a part of the state of Israel, actually belonged to the wealthy families based in Syria or Lebanon, who were willing to sell the entire area as they were interested in buying the Jewish settlement. Those areas that were along the shore line of Israel today. Areas that were located in the valleys, were not good for agriculture and was not cultivated by the local villagers. Now the JNF, if you would have left up to them; would have bought the entire country but they had very limited funds. Luckily those wealthy families were very much willing to sell them those areas full of swamps and marshes and on the way to make a nice profit for themselves.
What is even more intresting, is that today when I give private tours in Israel, I am reaching areas like Nazareth or Akko, but looking carefully on the map from 1947, you could see clearly that those areas are in yellow i.e in the area of the Palestinian state. In those days the Palestinians were supposed to get about 12,000 square km, but today if any negotiation is being conducted with the Israelis, they would get at the best of terms - about 6000 square km. So by rejecting the 1947 decision of partition, they actually lost half of their country, something that is troubling their leaders till this very day; who would have thought that giving private tours in Israel could be so complicated.