Yuval Ben-Ami
My country once had internationally accepted borders, but that ended with the Six Day War in 1967. On that week in June we took bites from our neighbors’ territories: we bit the Golan Heights off from Syria, the West Bank from Jordan, the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt. Since then, the Golan and East Jerusalem were annexed to Israel, the Sinai was returned to Egypt, the West Bank is still being heavily settled by Israelis and the Gaza Strip settled and then vacated of its settlers. The degree to which we treat the various lines as proper borders varies from Israeli to Israeli. All in all we can’t say we know where our borders run, or what the hell is going on.
I believe that the only way to enjoy living in this slender, tiny, corral of a country, is to be a border enthusiast, which is what I’m planning to become for the next three weeks. “The Round Trip,” the third in my three-part travel-writing portrait of Israel/Palestine, will be a journey along the borders as they were charted in 1948.
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