President Obama stirred up a hornets’ nest when he declared during his highly anticipated Middle East speech Thursday that Israel’s borders should be based on the pre-1967 lines. He added enough caveats to render his demand unattainable from a practical standpoint, but, as a matter of political and strategic perception, Obama has inflicted a serious wound on America’s most reliable ally. For that reason, it’s important to understand what Obama is demanding of Israel. If Israel were to return to the lines that existed before its defeat of invading armies from three of its Arab neighbors in the 1967 Six Day War, the nation would be left with a constricted sliver of land only nine miles wide at its narrowest point. That would be roughly equivalent to the distance between the downtown areas of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota’s Twin Cities. Israel would lose control of Jerusalem and its holy sites. When Arabs controlled the sites before 1967, Jews were banned from visiting them and they fell into disrepair. Since then, Israel restored them and has preserved them for access by all religions for future generations. In addition, reverting to the pre-1967 status quo would mean that the 300,000 Jews currently living in Judea and Samaria would end up in the new Palestinian state.