Why today’s Israel/Jordan map is late and colonial in formation
22.1 Purpose and thesis
This episode explains why the present-day political map separating Israel/Palestine and Jordan is not an “ancient” or “biblical” border, but the cumulative product of (i) Ottoman collapse, (ii) Great Power wartime diplomacy, (iii) the League of Nations mandate system, and (iv) the post-1948 war armistice framework. The core argument is that modern borders emerged through imperial–legal instruments and administrative decisions—then hardened through conflict and international diplomacy—rather than through uninterrupted continuity from earlier polities. (Encyclopedia Britannica)
22.2 From Ottoman provinces to imperial plans
Before the First World War, the region was governed within the Ottoman imperial system rather than as modern nation-states. The war’s end created a power vacuum, and Britain and France planned for post-Ottoman administration through agreements that pre-dated any local plebiscite or settled constitutional order. A pivotal example is the Sykes–Picot Agreement (1916)—a secret wartime convention envisaging British and French spheres of influence in the former Ottoman Arab provinces, including arrangements for Palestine’s governance. (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2025). (Encyclopedia Britannica)
Analytical implication: the “border question” begins not as a local boundary dispute, but as a metropolitan planning problem: security routes, ports, and imperial influence were treated as strategic variables in map-making.
22.3 The mandate system as a border-making technology
After the war, the League of Nations mandate system provided a legal wrapper for imperial administration. In the case of Palestine, the mandate text formalised Britain’s administrative authority and articulated political commitments, including provisions concerning the “Jewish national home” and administrative cooperation with a recognised Jewish agency (League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, 1922). (avalon.law.yale.edu)
Crucially for the Israel/Jordan map, the mandate framework also enabled administrative differentiation east of the Jordan River. Article 25 of the Palestine Mandate provided the legal mechanism by which the Mandatory power could withhold or suspend application of certain provisions in territories east of the Jordan, creating a distinct administrative trajectory for what became Transjordan (UN, 2021). (United Nations)
Analytical implication: mandates did not merely “govern territories”; they produced jurisdictions, and jurisdictions became the scaffolding on which later sovereign borders were built.
22.4 The British “dual track”: Palestine and Transjordan
Two interlocking decisions shaped the future Israel/Jordan divide:
- Commitments and declarations during wartime diplomacy. The Balfour Declaration (1917) expressed British support for the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine, a statement later embedded (in effect) into the mandate architecture (UK National Archives, 1917/2022 catalogue record). (The National Archives)
- Administrative separation east of the Jordan. Using the mandate’s legal latitude, Britain supported the development of an Arab-led polity in Transjordan under Hashemite leadership, while the land west of the Jordan remained under direct mandatory administration until 1948 (UN, 2021; Encyclopaedia Britannica, n.d.). (United Nations)
This is why it is historically accurate to say that the Jordan River functioned less like an “ancient national border” and more like a policy hinge: a convenient line along which British governance could be differentiated.
22.5 Independence timelines: why the modern states are late
The timing matters because it shows how recent statehood is relative to the biblical and classical periods:
- Transjordan’s independence was formally recognised in a 1946 treaty relationship with the United Kingdom (US Office of the Historian, FRUS, 1946). (Office of the Historian)
- Israel’s declaration of independence occurred in May 1948 at the termination of the mandate (Avalon Project, 1948; UN documentation reproducing the cablegram text). (avalon.law.yale.edu)
- The 1947 UN General Assembly Resolution 181 recommended partition into Arab and Jewish states, with Jerusalem under a special international regime—an international proposal that shaped political expectations and diplomatic arguments even as conflict determined realities on the ground (UN, n.d.; Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2025). (United Nations)
Analytical implication: the border between Israel/Palestine and Jordan is fundamentally a mid-20th-century state formation outcome, not a stable inheritance from antiquity.
22.6 War and armistice: how lines hardened into “facts”
Even after state declarations and international proposals, the decisive “map hardening” occurred through war and subsequent armistice arrangements. The 1949 Armistice Agreements established demarcation lines—often referred to as the Green Line—that structured control and administration in the aftermath of the 1948 war (UN terminology record; Encyclopaedia Britannica’s account of the 1949 armistice outcome). (unterm.un.org)
This is the point at which “borders” become more than ink: they become bureaucratic jurisdictions (taxation, policing, movement control), and then—over time—identity markers.
22.7 Why “colonial in formation” is historically defensible (and what it does not mean)
Calling the modern map “colonial in formation” is defensible in a strictly historical sense because:
- key legal frameworks were authored in imperial centres (mandates, wartime agreements), (Encyclopedia Britannica)
- administrative divisions (notably the Transjordan arrangement) were enabled through mandate legal mechanisms, (United Nations)
- subsequent sovereignty crystallised through mandate termination, treaty recognition, and armistice demarcation. (Office of the Historian)
It does not mean local actors lacked agency. On the contrary, competing national movements, leadership strategies, and conflict dynamics decisively shaped what the international instruments could (or could not) achieve. The point is about the origin of the governing framework: modern sovereignty emerged through a mandate-to-state pipeline, not through uninterrupted indigenous state continuity.
22.8 Theological–political bridge back to the Gospel material
This episode strengthens (rather than distracts from) the earlier Passion narrative analysis:
- In Jesus’ time, “borders” were imperial–administrative, not national; that same pattern reappears in the 20th century when imperial administration becomes the precondition for modern state borders.
- The Triumphal Entry’s political sensitivity (kingdom claims under empire) becomes a durable interpretive template: imperial governance produces order through jurisdiction; the Kingdom of God interrogates authority at the level of legitimacy, not merely administration.
In other words, the New Testament’s “Rome + local rulers + religious authority” matrix is not an isolated phenomenon; it is a recurrent political grammar in the region’s later history—albeit with different empires, legal instruments, and parties.
22.9 Discussion prompts for teaching or preaching
- If jurisdictions are often produced by law and administration, what does Scripture mean by true authority and legitimate rule?
- How should Christians think about “peoplehood” and “land” when modern borders are historically recent and contested?
- What does it look like to pursue justice and peace when maps are the legacy of empire, war, and trauma?
References
- Encyclopaedia Britannica (2025) Sykes-Picot Agreement: Map, History, & Facts.
- Encyclopaedia Britannica (2025) United Nations Resolution 181.
- Encyclopaedia Britannica (n.d.) Jordan: Transjordan, the Hashemite Kingdom and the Palestine war.
- League of Nations (1922) Mandate for Palestine (text reproduced in the Avalon Project, Yale Law School). (avalon.law.yale.edu)
- United Nations (2021) League of Nations memo by the British Representative on Article 25 of the Palestine Mandate (UNISPAL document). (United Nations)
- United Nations (n.d.) General Assembly: Question of Palestine / Resolution 181 (II) materials (UNISPAL data collection). (United Nations)
- United Nations Terminology (n.d.) General Armistice Agreements of 1949 (UNTERM record). (unterm.un.org)
- UK National Archives (1917/2022 catalogue record) Balfour Declaration material and related records. (The National Archives)
- US Department of State, Office of the Historian (1946) Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), reference to the 1946 Treaty recognising Trans-Jordan’s independence. (Office of the Historian)
- Yale Law School, Avalon Project (1948) Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel (text reproduction). (avalon.law.yale.edu)