Legal status of Jerusalem
Before the establishment of Israel in 1948, Jerusalem was a unified city of Palestine, home to Muslims, Jews, and Christians. According to the 1947 UN Partition Plan, which called for the creation of separate Arab and Jewish states in Palestine, Jerusalem was to be governed by a special international regime administered by the UN. After the establishment of Israel in 78% of Palestine and the mass expulsion of most of the indigenous Palestinians, western Jerusalem came under Israeli control and eastern Jerusalem came under Jordanian control.
Since 1948, the UN and the international community, in the absence of a final peace treaty between the Palestinians and Israelis, have not recognized the sovereignty of either country over any part of Jerusalem.
Since 1967, East Jerusalem – including the Old City and its historic Muslim, Jewish and Christian holy sites – has been under Israeli military occupation. Under international law, it is considered occupied Palestinian territory, not legally considered part of Israel, and forms a single territorial unit with the West Bank.
Following the occupation of East Jerusalem, Israel significantly expanded the city's municipal boundaries into the West Bank and annexed it, a move that the UN, along with numerous Security Council resolutions, has repeatedly declared illegal and rejected.
Israeli policy in occupied East Jerusalem
Since its military occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967, Israel has worked to limit and reduce its Palestinian population while increasing its Jewish population—part of a plan to consolidate control over the entire city. As the 2009 U.S. State Department Religious Freedom Report noted, „A number of national and municipal policies in Jerusalem are designed to limit or reduce the city’s non-Jewish population.” Or as B’Tselem—the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories—put it: „[Israel] has treated the city’s Palestinian residents as unwanted immigrants and has systematically worked to expel them from the area.”
This process of reducing the Palestinian population and increasing the Jewish population, known as "Judaization," includes the following:
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Restricting the ability of Palestinians to build or expand homes in East Jerusalem by making it nearly impossible for them to obtain building permits.
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Demolition of Palestinian homes, shops and other structures built without permits.
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Aggressive encouragement of Jewish settlers to move into East Jerusalem in violation of international law, often resulting in the forced displacement of Palestinians from their homes.
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The construction of a wall on occupied Palestinian land, which the International Court of Justice declared illegal in its 2004 advisory opinion. The wall cuts off Palestinian neighborhoods from the city and geographically isolates them from the West Bank.
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Systematic discrimination of Palestinian neighborhoods in urban planning and in the distribution of funding and services, starving them of resources.
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The withdrawal of residency rights and social benefits for Palestinians who stay outside the city for seven years or more for study or work, or who cannot prove that the „center of their lives” is Jerusalem.
Israel denies Palestinians freedom of worship in East Jerusalem
Israel frequently denies Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem access to the revered Noble Sanctuary (Al-Aqsa Mosque) complex and Christian holy sites such as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It also denies millions of Muslim and Christian Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, occupied Gaza, and the diaspora the right to visit East Jerusalem and pray at its holy sites.
Messianic Jewish extremists seek to seize the Noble Sanctuary
Since the early 2000s, a once-marginal Messianic Jewish extremist group has been growing and becoming increasingly mainstream in Israel. They have been raising tensions in East Jerusalem and beyond with their incursions into the Noble Sanctuary mosque complex. It is Islam’s third holiest site, which they want to occupy in order to build a Jewish temple in its place. With the support of the Israeli government, the so-called Temple Mount movement threatens to ignite a major religious conflict.
East Jerusalem: In Numbers (2024)
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More than 350,000: The number of Palestinians living in East Jerusalem.
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Approximately 230,000: The number of Israeli settlers living illegally in 14 settlements on occupied Palestinian land in East Jerusalem.
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35%: The proportion of East Jerusalem covered by illegal Israeli settlements.
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13%: The proportion of East Jerusalem that Israel has allocated for Palestinian construction (much of which is already built on).
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More than 17,200 hectares: The amount of Palestinian land in the West Bank that Israel annexed to East Jerusalem after occupying the city in 1967.
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More than 14,600: The number of Palestinian residents of Jerusalem whose residency rights have been revoked by Israel since 1967.
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Approximately 1,000: The number of Palestinians in East Jerusalem who are threatened by settler organizations and the Israeli government with being forced to leave their homes.
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Approximately 5,000: The number of Palestinian homes demolished by Israel in East Jerusalem since 1967 because they were built without building permits – which are almost impossible for Palestinians to obtain.
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At least 33%: Percentage of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem that were built without a building permit and are therefore at risk of demolition.
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More than 5 million: The number of Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank and occupied Gaza who are unable to enter Jerusalem without a difficult-to-obtain permit from the Israeli occupation army.
