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BackThe Green Line can play a prominent role under an “emancipatory peacebuilding” paradigm (ibid.) by being a border between two internationallyrecognized states, on the one hand, and a porous membrane in everyday nation- and state-building on a local, national and supranational level, on the other.
A pen with green ink was used in order to demarcate - on the two-dimensional space of a cartographic map - the ceasefire lines between several Arab states and the State of Israel following the first Arab-Israeli war of 1948/1949. Palestinians were notably absent from these negotiations, lacking a formal state structure - a persistent feature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict until today in spite of a widespread recognition, since the 2010s, of the State of Palestine by the UN and a large share of UN member states – a recognition for which the Green Line played an important legal-political role.1 As I will elaborate in this paper – focusing on the Israeli-Palestinian arena and not on the armistice lines with Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria in their entirety - this two- dimensional line-drawing had tremendous, yet often quite ambivalent repercussions in practice: in the three-dimensional spatial reality on the ground both in everyday life and diplomatic affairs; in relation to the “semiological battle” (Peristianis and Mavris 2011: 191) over the terminologies used in order to refer to the Green Line; as well as from a temporal (four-dimensional) perspective, since such discursive and non- discursive practices related to the Green Line are far from static, until today.
What the Green Line means to whom and how it affects everyday life on the ground differs strongly, depending on which population is concerned. Thus, the Green Line affects lived realities on both sides of the line, e.g. for Palestinians in Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank living under different legal regimes shaped by the Oslo accords and Israeli military-political regulations; for Israeli settlers living in this territory, and for Israelis on the Israeli side of the Green Line, amongst them Jewish and Arab/Palestinian. This underlines that the Green Line is not only a spatial parameter but an identity marker too, thereby highlighting that neither Israelis nor Palestinians are homogenous groups. However, one effect of the Green Line is that it equips these groups, both bilaterally and internally, with different social, political, economic and cultural capital and often leads to insecurities and power asymmetries. Moreover, over time the meaning given by key stakeholders (local, national, international) to the Green Line has changed, both in the respective Israeli and Palestinian national arenas as well as on the international, diplomatic scale which involves state actors, international organizations and non-governmental organizations. The Green Line was initially drawn, in 1949, as a temporary cease-fire line. But over time it developed an institutional life of its own and turned into a strong, yet dynamic marker of the intricacies of the evolving Israeli-Palestinian conflict, on the ground and internationally.