No man's land in the Latrun area (NML) was a strip of territory covering , in the area of

Latrun Latrun (, ''Latrun''; , ''al-Latrun'') is a strategic hilltop in the Latrun salient in the Ayalon Valley. It overlooks the road between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, 25 kilometers west of Jerusalem and 14 kilometers southeast of Ramla. It was the si ...

. Israel considers the area of the NML to be a part of its state, while Palestinians regard it as a part of the West Bank.

Legal status

The strips of territory known as no man's land in the Latrun and Jerusalem regions were among the territories occupied by Israel following the 1967 war. Under international law, the territory is not considered to be occupied. Both the United Nations and the European Union consider Israeli localities in the Latrun no man's land area to be illegal settlements.

Background

The

1949 Armistice Agreements The 1949 Armistice Agreements were signed between Israel and Egypt,Six-Day War The Six-Day War, also known as the June War, 1967 Arab–Israeli War or Third Arab–Israeli War, was fought between Israel and a coalition of Arab world, Arab states, primarily United Arab Republic, Egypt, Syria, and Jordan from 5 to 10June ...

. On Israeli maps since then, both the Armistice line and the no man's land enclave have disappeared. The

Separation Barrier A separation barrier or separation wall is a Barricade, barrier, wall or fence, constructed to limit the movement of people across a certain line or border, or to ethnic segregation, separate peoples or cultures. A separation barrier that runs a ...

cuts off the entire Latrun area within the Israeli side of the fence. Four settlements were established in the NML area, Kfar Ruth, Lapid, Maccabim and Shilat. The Israeli-Palestinian village of

Neve Shalom Neve Shalom (), also known as Wahat as-Salam () is a cooperative village in Israel, jointly founded by Israeli Jews and Arabs in an attempt to show that the two peoples can live side by side peacefully, as well as to conduct educational work f ...

, founded on a project of creating a model for Israeli-Palestinian communities, was also established in the NML, cultivating land partially leased from the Catholic authorities. Israeli municipal jurisdiction was extended over these five settlements. By 2010 1,200 Israeli settlers had established homes in the area. According to

Raja Shehadeh Raja Shehadeh (Arabic: رجا شحادة, born 6 July 1951) is a Palestinian lawyer, human rights activist and writer. He co-founded the award-winning Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq in 1979. In 2008, he won the Orwell Prize, a Bri ...

, Israeli effectively annexed the area of no man's land in 1967. No formal act of annexation exists. In

peace negotiations A peace treaty is an agreement between two or more hostile parties, usually countries or governments, which formally ends a state of war between the parties. It is different from an armistice, which is an agreement to stop hostilities; a surr ...

, according to Gideon Biger, the Israeli position has been that they retain as sovereign property half of the NML, while the other half, while belonging to Palestinians, should remain part of Israel, and the Palestinians compensated for its loss by accepting an area of similar dimensions elsewhere.

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* * * * * * * * * * * * {{refend Disputed territories in Asia Territorial disputes of Israel Geography of the West Bank Politics of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict

Legal status

Background

See also

Notes

Citations

Sources