This Tuesday, Spain, Ireland and Norway recognized the Palestinian State within the borders left after the war of the Six Days of 1967, which are those agreed upon in the Oslo Accords in 1993, which gave birth to a State that never materialized. However, these borders have been blurred by the occupation, between settler settlements, concrete walls and the Israeli military presence.

Sánchez wanted to make clear in his speech what the Government understands as a Palestinian State and what its borders are, given the debate sparked by this issue, since Palestine is made up of through the West Bank, governed by the Palestinian Authority led by Mahmoud Abbasand Gaza, which Hamas has controlled since 2007, and whose capital would be East Jerusalem.

In this regard, he has maintained that “the State of Palestine must be, first of all, viable, with the West Bank and Gaza connected by a corridor, and with East Jerusalem as its capital, and unified under the legitimate Government of the Palestinian National Authority.” Although it is not up to Spain to “define the borders of other countries”, he added, the Government’s vision “is fully aligned with the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council.” and with the traditional position of the EU, which refers to the 1967 borders, before the Six Day War.

For this reason, he pointed out, “we will not recognize changes in the 1967 border lines other than those agreed upon by the parties.” The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, had already indicated that it is not necessary to recognize a State with specific borders and had indicated that the Government believes that this issue is one of those that should be resolved in the peace conference that follows the conflict.

But what does it mean to recognize a Palestine with the borders agreed in 1967?

After the war of the Six Days of 1967According to the UN, “Israel occupied those territories (the Gaza Strip and the West Bank), including East Jerusalem, which it subsequently annexed. This war caused a second exodus, of approximately half a million Palestinians.”

For this reason, the UN in its resolution 242 formulated the principles “of a just and lasting peace, which included the Israeli withdrawal from the territories occupied during the conflict, a just solution to the refugee problem and the termination of all situations of belligerence or allegations of its existence”. However, Israel continued to occupy territories. In fact, These divisions already represented a considerable loss of territory as established in the UN Partition Plan of 1947.prior to the creation of the State of Israel.

The borders of ’67 included the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Stripbut much of that territory is today controlled by Israel. 60% of the occupied West Bank is today under civil and military administration of Israelwhere more than 140 Jewish settlements that are legal under Israeli law – and dozens of illegal ones – have proliferated, in which more than 700,000 Israeli settlers live, including East Jerusalem.

What about East Jerusalem, called to be the capital?

The current map of the West Bank is a ‘Gruyer cheese’ where Palestinian cities and villages have been left disconnected due to the proliferation of Jewish coloniesroads whose use is prohibited to Palestinians, and Israeli military posts that make movement difficult.

In the case of Gaza, it is unknown how the territory will be delimited when the war ends, which has caused more than 36,000 deaths, most of them civilians. The absence of a postwar plan leaves all possibilities open. The hardline wing of the Israeli Government insists on reoccupying the enclave, although Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denies that interest.

The Palestine Partition Plan devised The 1947 UN conferred special status on Jerusalem, but the 1949 armistice, after the first Arab-Israeli war, de facto separated the city into two halves, leaving the western part under Israeli control, and the eastern part in Palestinian hands, at that time Transjordan. However, the Six Day War of 1967 changed the situation in the Middle East with consequences to this day.

Israel militarily occupied Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, where the Old City and the holy places are located. East Jerusalemcalled to be the capital of a future Palestinian State, It was annexed in 1980 by Israel, which considers the city its “single and indivisible” capital, and since then has exercised political and administrative control although more than 300,000 Palestinians live there. The Palestinian Authority government has been de facto removed from East Jerusalem.

Why do you support the ANP Government?

The 1993 Oslo Accords divided the occupied Palestinian territories into three areas depending on whether civil and military control was exercised by the Palestinians or Israel, in a transitional model that was to culminate in a few years in its own State. For this, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) was created. It was the first formula of self-government for the Palestinians, which should be provisional but which today is maintained with increasingly diminished power and which can only be exercised in small areas of the West Bank, in the face of the growing Israeli occupation and military presence.

In the Gaza Strip, disputes between Fatah – a secular faction formed by Yasser Arafat that controls the ANP – and Hamas They ended with the expulsion of the ANP and the seizure of power by the Islamists in 2007, deepening the fragmentation, not only of Palestinian society, but also of its territory. The two main Palestinian territories, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, have been territorially disconnected for decades, creating two different political and social realities.

Israel has eliminated any form of territorial continuity, even preventing family ties. The separation has deepened due to the political division and because both territories are in practice governed by different entities.

To this we must add the 4 million Palestinians who live outside Palestine – the majority in Jordan and Lebanon, but also in Europe or the US -, descendants of those who fled their homes during what they call the Nakba (catastrophe, in Arabic), in 1948, when the State of Israel was created, and they were never allowed to return.