Israel says border should follow separation barrier Dividing line: Palestinian protesters wave their national flag as their comrades climb Israel's controversial separation barrier during clashes with Israeli security forces. Israeli negotiators have told their Palestinian counterparts that the "separation barrier" that cuts through the occupied West Bank should serve as the border of a future Palestinian state. Just hours before US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived for top-level talks on peace negotiations, two press reports quoted the Israeli team making the proposal. "Israel's opening position was that the border be the route of the separation barrier, and not the 1967 lines as the Palestinians have demanded," public radio and the top-selling daily Yediot Aharonot reported on Tuesday. Since the talks began in late July, ending a three-year freeze, the Palestinians have insisted they be based on the lines that existed before the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel occupied the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including east Jerusalem. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected any return to the 1967 lines as "indefensible." Israel began work on its "security fence" in 2002, and has defended its construction as a crucial protective measure, pointing to a drop in attacks inside Israel as proof of its success. But the Palestinians say the barrier is a land grab, and that when complete, 85 per cent of it will have been built inside the occupied West Bank. Former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, who oversaw the start of the barrier's construction, repeatedly insisted that it was not a border for a future Palestinian state but only a measure to keep out suicide bombers.