43 Fall 2025 The war ended through a series of armistice agreements with most of the invading states, based on military positions at the time of such agreements and agreed-upon modifications. On 30 November 1948 a ceasefire for the Jerusalem area was agreed upon by Jordanian and Israeli military officers, who drew a rough map of the military positions at the time, and on 3 April 1949 a general armistice agreement was entered into by Israel and Jordan, incorporating the Jerusalem ceasefire agreement and conducting agreed-upon territory swaps. The lines reflect the positions of the Israeli, Iraqi and Transjordanian forces at the time of the ceasefire, with agreed-upon swaps, and did not denote lines based on any principled political considerations. 177. General Armistice Agreement, Isr.-Jordan, art IV, ¶ 2, Apr. 3, 1949, 654 U.N.T.S. 304. David Ben Gurion, the first Israeli prime minister to the Knesset stated in a Knesset session as follows “This agreement, like those with Egypt and Lebanon, is purely military. It does not determine anything political or territorial for the moment. It merely fixes a certain line, extending from Eilat to the southern end of Lake Tiberias, from there via the Gilboa and Samaria mountain ridges to the mountain ridges of Judea and thence to Jerusalem, on either side of which the military forces of both sides can move under certain conditions. These negotiations were perhaps the hardest of those we have conducted to date, even though they were limited solely to military matters.” see DK, 1st Knesset, Session No. 20 (1949) (Isr.) translated in The Constituent Assembly First Knesset 1949-1951, https://www.jcpa.org/art/knesset2.htm. 178. Isr.-Jordan Agreement, supra note 41, § II2 ¶ . 179. Id. § VI ¶9. 180. Press Release, United Nations Department of Public Information, 200 Displaced Arabs Return to Their Village Under UN Auspices, U.N Doc. PAL/537 (Nov. 4, 1949), https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-208243/. The Armistice Agreement between Israel and Jordan did not affect any issues of sovereignty; its clear and stated purpose was to delineate the lines beyond which the armed forces of the respective parties shall not cross.177 The Agreement explicitly stated that it shall not “…prejudice the rights, claims and positions of either Party hereto in the ultimate peaceful settlement of the Palestine question…”,178 and that the armistice lines are “without prejudice to future territorial settlements or boundary lines or to claims of either Party relating thereto.”179 The lines were also subject to negotiated amendments in the months following the agreement.180
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