Until 2000, there was a bipartisan recognition in both Israel and the United States -- shared by Likud and Labor, Republicans and Democrats -- that Israel would not return to the 1967 borders, and would retain permanent control of a significant portion of Judea and Samaria.
In 1968, President Johnson said that ´´a return to the situation of June 4, 1967 will not bring peace. There must be secure and there must be recognized borders.´´ In 1982, President Reagan noted that ´´In the pre-1967 borders, Israel was barely 10 miles wide at its narrowest point. The bulk of Israel´s population lived within artillery range of hostile Arab armies.´´ Reagan promised, ´´I am not about to ask Israel to live that way again.´´ In 1991, the Bush administration assured Prime Minister Shamir that the ´´United States does not intend to issue a call for a return to the 1967 borders or for only cosmetic changes in these borders.´´
Secretary of State Powell´s four most recent predecessors all expressed similar sentiments. George Shultz said, ´´Israel will never negotiate from, or return to, the lines of partition or to the 1967 borders.´´ When James Baker was asked whether Judea, Samaria and Gaza are ´´occupied Arab territories´´ or disputed territories, he responded, ´´They´re clearly disputed territories. That´s what resolutions 242 and 338 are all about.´´ Warren Christopher assured Prime Minister Netanyahu, ´´Israel is entitled to secure and defensible borders.´´ Madeleine Albright stated: ´´We simply do not support the description of the territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 as occupied Palestinian territory.´´
In contrast, Powell recently called the Green Line ´´a recognized border´´ and territories beyond it ´´Palestinian areas.´´
Among Israelis, there was almost unanimous agreement that secure borders require a united Jerusalem and annexation of the Jordan Valley along with a number of settlement blocs. Labor initiated settlement of the Jordan Valley and Gush Etzion, and the Allon Plan, under which Israel would keep about one-third of Judea and Samaria, guided its peace plans. In the early 1980´s Yitzhak Rabin visited Lincoln Square Synagogue and urged congregants to move to the new community of Efrat that their rabbi, Shlomo Riskin, was founding.
Even the Oslo Accords did not shatter this consensus. In October 1995, one month before he was murdered, Prime Minister Rabin told the Knesset that Israel´s permanent borders ´´will be beyond the lines which existed before the Six Day War. We will not return to the 4 June 1967 borders.´´ Rabin called for a ´´united Jerusalem, which will include both Ma´aleh Adumim and Givat Zeev,´´ and the annexation of the entire Jordan Valley, Gush Etzion (including Efrat) and of settlement blocs. Rabin opposed the formation of a Palestinian state, preferring a limited ´´entity which is less than a state.´´
Similarly, in a visit to Beit El, Ehud Barak promised that ´´Israelis will remain here in Beit El forever,´´ and that ´´a united Jerusalem must remain under full and unequivocal Israeli sovereignty... under no circumstances will we return to the 1967 lines.´´ After he was elected prime minister in 1999, Barak insisted that Israel could make peace while annexing towns such as Beit El, Ofra and Ariel. A June 4, 1999 Jerusalem Post editorial stated what then seemed obvious: ´´No mainstream Israeli leader, and certainly not Ehud Barak, can imagine Israel leaving the towns of Ariel, Ma´aleh Adumim, or Efrat.´´
