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One Hundred Years of Reshaping 
the Borders of the Middle East

David Newman

Good Fences and Poor Neighbours

Why Don’t Borders Work  in the Middle East?

Lines in the Sand

Two State Solutions and Potential Borders

Professor David Newman is emeritus professor of Geopolitics at Ben-Gurion University in Israel. Originally from the UK, he received his PhD from the University of Durham in 1981. He has been at BGU since 1987, where he founded the Department of Politics & Government in 1999, and was Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences between 2010-2016. In 2013, Newman received the OBE for promoting scientific cooperation between Israel and the UK. In 2023, he hosted the world conference of border scholars and practitioners at the Eilat campus of BGU, the meeting place of four major international borders. In March this year, he will present the keynote presentation at the annual meeting of the Association of Border Scholars, in honour of his retirement.

Even after nearly eighty years since the establishment of Israel, many of the country’s borders remain undetermined. Based on the redrawing of the Middle East which was imposed on the region by the victorious Allied powers the end of WWI, we will look at the many changes which have taken place during the past century and especially since the establishment of the State of Israel. How do recent geopolitical events in Gaza, and the region as a whole, impact the way we think about borders and boundaries in general?   The ease with which Israel’s perceived iron strong border with the Gaza Strip was overcome in October 2023, or the firing of missiles over and beyond any form of State border, raises many questions concerning the future defensive role of such borders and boundaries.