Minutes of top-secret cabinet meetings in 1967 reveal how the decision to erase the Green Line from Israel’s official map was made. And it wasn't the only thing that was erased
A media storm sprang up last month over the decision by the Tel Aviv Municipality to hang in the city’s classrooms maps of Israel showing the Green Line – the armistice line that Israel and its neighbors agreed upon in 1949, following Israel’s War of Independence. Until 1967, that line signified Israel’s de facto eastern border and demarcated its sovereign territory. The line has not appeared on the State of Israel’s official maps throughout all the years of the occupation, and deliberately so, in the wake of secret decisions made by the security cabinet at the end of 1967. Instead of the Green Line, it was decided to denote Israel’s (unofficial) borders via the cease-fire lines of the Six-Day War fought in June of that year, encompassing the territories of the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights.