The line separating Israel from Palestine has been erased—What comes next?

For 55 years, the Green Line has shut down our political imagination. Its disappearance gives us a chance to do things differently.

By Meron Rapoport | The Nation | Aug 10, 2022

The collapse of the Green Line, and no less important the collapse of the ability to imagine it, has set a new stage in the decades-long conflict.

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL-PALESTINE—More than a year after a wave of violence, rage, and resistance swept through the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, the events of May 2021 are still very much present in the minds of Israeli Jews and Palestinians. Two hundred and eighty-six Palestinians, most of them in Gaza, and 13 Israelis were killed during the 11 most intense days, but it was not only the number of casualties that left a mark. It was also the fact that the drama unfolded all over historical Palestine: in Jerusalem, in Gaza, in the West Bank, and most important, in Israel’s “mixed cities” such as Lydd, Ramle, Acre, and elsewhere, which was almost unprecedented since 1948.

As one would expect, Palestinians and Israeli Jews have nearly diametrically opposed views on these events, including their causes and the lessons to be learned from them. Yet in one regard there is a peculiar consensus: The conflagrations that broke out across the country revealed that the Green Line—the demarcation drawn after the 1948 war that many hoped would serve as a border between Israel and a future Palestinian state—is no longer relevant.

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