Israel borders four countries by land, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt, and also the two Palestinian territories, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Added together, Wikipedia’s land-border figures come to about 1,017 km: 307 km with the West Bank, 266 km with Egypt, 238 km with Jordan, 79 km with Lebanon, 76 km with Syria and 51 km with the Gaza Strip. The status of these lines varies a great deal. Only the borders with Egypt (confirmed by the 1979 peace treaty) and Jordan (1994 treaty) are internationally recognised and uncontested; the line with Lebanon is the UN-identified Blue Line of 2000, the line with Syria runs across the Golan Heights, and the boundaries with the Palestinian territories follow the 1949 armistice line, the Green Line. At sea, Israel faces Cyprus and Lebanon in the Mediterranean and Jordan and Egypt in the Gulf of Aqaba.
Lebanon: the 79 km Blue Line from Rosh HaNikra to the Hasbani
The northern boundary runs inland from the white chalk cliffs of Rosh HaNikra on the Mediterranean, across the hills of the Galilee to the Hasbani River. It was first drawn between the British and French mandates after the First World War; in 1923 38 boundary markers were placed along its 78 km and a written description published. The armistice agreement signed on 23 March 1949 reaffirmed that line, and unlike Israel’s other armistice agreements it contained no clause disclaiming it as an international border.
The line most people refer to today is the Blue Line, published by the United Nations on 7 June 2000 to confirm Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon under Security Council Resolution 425. The UN describes it as a line of withdrawal rather than a formal border. It differs from the 1949 line in about half a dozen short stretches, never by more than 475 m. Both governments stated reservations but said they would respect it. Its eastern end touches the Shebaa Farms (Mount Dov), a strip of land that Israel captured in 1967 as part of the Golan. Lebanon claims it, and Syria agrees with that position; Israel holds that it is part of the Golan Heights, and maps of the mandate period and the 1949 armistice showed it as Syrian.
There is no regular civilian crossing. UNIFIL, the UN force set up under Resolutions 425 and 426 in 1978, operates on the Lebanese side, and Israel has been building a barrier on its side of the line, planned at about 130 km and mostly a concrete wall topped with steel mesh, with steel fencing in rugged stretches. In 2025 UNIFIL reported that part of a new wall crossed the Blue Line, which the Israeli army denied. Israeli operations in Lebanon in 2024 also left Israeli forces holding additional Lebanese territory. More on Lebanon’s other frontier is in our guide to the countries that border Lebanon.
Syria: the Golan Heights ceasefire line
Israel’s boundary with Syria has no agreed status at all. The 1923 Paulet–Newcombe agreement placed the Golan Heights, a basalt plateau between the Yarmouk River, the Sea of Galilee and Mount Hermon, in French-mandated Syria. The 1949 armistice left Syria holding about 66 km² west of the 1923 line as demilitarised zones. In the 1967 war Israel captured the Golan, and a 1974 disengagement agreement after the 1973 war returned about a third of the area, including Quneitra, to Syrian civil administration, with a UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) buffer zone of about 266 km² in between. The ceasefire line on the Israeli-held side is often called the Purple Line.
On 14 December 1981 the Knesset passed the Golan Heights Law by 63 votes to 21, applying Israeli law, jurisdiction and administration to the territory. Three days later the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 497, declaring the law “null and void and without international legal effect”. Israel regards the Golan as its sovereign territory. The United States recognised Israeli sovereignty on 25 March 2019 and Colombia did so in 2026; most other states and the UN regard the Golan Heights as Israeli-occupied Syrian territory. In late 2024, after the fall of the Assad government, Israeli forces entered and took control of the UN-monitored buffer zone.
The Quneitra crossing, opened after 1973 on the ceasefire line, has been used mainly by UN personnel and by Druze residents of the Golan; in 2010 about 10,000 tonnes of apples grown by Golan Druze farmers were sent across it to Syria.
Jordan: the 1994 Wadi Araba treaty border
The 238 km eastern border with Jordan follows the Jordan Rift Valley: the Yarmouk and Jordan rivers in the north, the Dead Sea, and the dry Arava (Wadi Araba) south to the Gulf of Aqaba between Eilat and Aqaba. Its origin is a September 1922 British memorandum that set the limits of Transjordan; full international agreement came only when the two states signed their peace treaty at the Arava crossing on 26 October 1994. The treaty’s line along the West Bank sector is treated separately, as an administrative boundary “without prejudice” to the status of that territory.
Two crossings link Israel and Jordan directly: the Jordan River Crossing (Sheikh Hussein Bridge) near Beit She’an, opened in November 1994, and the Yitzhak Rabin Crossing, which Jordan calls the Wadi Araba Crossing, opened on 8 August 1994 between Eilat and Aqaba. A maritime boundary in the Gulf of Aqaba followed on 18 January 1996. The Jordanian view of the same line is set out in our article on the neighbouring countries of Jordan.
Egypt: the 1906 line confirmed in 1979
The 266 km south-western border runs from Kerem Shalom near the Gaza Strip across the Negev and Sinai deserts to Taba on the Gulf of Aqaba. It is the oldest of Israel’s lines, drawn in an Ottoman–British agreement of 1 October 1906 after a border crisis earlier that year; Britain wanted to keep Ottoman forces as far as possible from the Suez Canal. The 1949 armistice of 24 February followed it except around the Gaza Strip, which Egypt then held.
Israel occupied the whole Sinai Peninsula in 1967. The Egypt–Israel peace treaty, signed on 26 March 1979, restored the 1906 line as the agreed international border, and Egypt renounced claims to Gaza. One small piece remained in dispute: Taba, where Israel argued the 1906 boundary marker had been misplaced. An international commission of one Israeli, one Egyptian and three outside members ruled for Egypt in 1988, and Israel withdrew from Taba later that year.
The Taba crossing, opened on 26 April 1982, handles tourist traffic between Eilat and Sinai; in 1999 it recorded 1,038,828 travellers. Between 2010 and 2013 Israel built a steel barrier along most of the border, initially to stop irregular migration from Africa and later upgraded with radar and cameras after insurgency spread in Sinai.
The West Bank and the 1949 Green Line
Israel’s longest land boundary, about 307 km, is with the West Bank. It follows the Green Line, the 1949 armistice line between Israel and Jordan, which the agreements described as a temporary demarcation line, not a permanent border. Jordan annexed the West Bank in 1950, a step recognised by few states. Israel captured it in the 1967 war, and in 1988 Jordan gave up its claim, leaving the Palestine Liberation Organization to pursue it. The State of Palestine’s 2011 UN membership application used the pre-1967 lines.
Most states regard the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as occupied Palestinian territory. Israel applied its law to East Jerusalem after 1967 and passed the Jerusalem Law in 1980; UN Security Council Resolution 478 declared that law “null and void”. The final boundary is one of the issues reserved for Israeli–Palestinian negotiations.
On the ground the line is marked by the West Bank barrier, begun by Israel in 2002 during the Second Intifada. Israel describes it as a necessary security barrier; Palestinians describe it as a tool of segregation, often calling it the “apartheid wall”, and an International Court of Justice advisory opinion found it contrary to international law. Wikipedia gives its planned length as 708 km, more than twice the Green Line, with about 15% on or inside the Green Line and 85% inside the West Bank, up to 18 km from it.
The Gaza Strip: 51 km since the 2005 disengagement
The 51 km boundary with the Gaza Strip also follows the 1949 armistice line. Egypt administered Gaza from 1949 until 1967, when Israel captured it. In 2005 Israel withdrew its forces and evacuated 21 settlements, while keeping control of Gaza’s airspace, territorial waters and, apart from the 11 km Egypt–Gaza border at Rafah, its land boundaries. Israel says the occupation ended in 2005; the UN, many legal bodies and a 2024 International Court of Justice advisory opinion regard Gaza as still occupied.
A fence was first built along the line in 1971 and has been rebuilt several times. Before the current Gaza war, the Erez Crossing at Beit Hanoun in the north was the only crossing for people between Israel and Gaza, and Kerem Shalom in the south, upgraded in the early 2010s to handle about 450 lorries a day, carried goods. During the war Israel took control of the Rafah crossing on the Egypt–Gaza border on 7 May 2024, withdrew under the January 2025 ceasefire, returned in March 2025, and the crossing reopened under later ceasefire arrangements on 2 February 2026.
Israel’s maritime boundaries with Cyprus and Lebanon
Offshore, Israel signed an agreement with Cyprus on 17 December 2010 dividing their exclusive economic zones in the eastern Mediterranean. Its sea boundary with Lebanon was disputed until negotiations that began in October 2020 produced an agreement ratified by both sides in 2022. In the Red Sea, Israel’s 1996 agreement with Jordan covers the gulf’s innermost waters, where Egypt, Israel and Jordan meet and Saudi Arabia’s coast begins a little further south. For the landscapes these lines cross, from the Galilee to the Negev, see our guide to Israel’s geography.