Summary
The eastern side of Jerusalem, occupied in 1967 and illegally annexed by Israel, declared the capital of the envisioned Palestinian state in the PLO’s 1988 Declaration of Independence but relegated by the Oslo Accords to a permanent-status issue, and severed from the West Bank since 1991; in Hania Assali’s chapter its approximately 330,000 Palestinian residents are effectively stateless residents of an occupying state (Rethinking Statehood in Palestine, PDF p.99, p.114).
Details
- Israel expanded the annexed area to 108 square kilometers — 38 of West Jerusalem, 6 of Jordanian-administered East Jerusalem and 64 belonging to twenty-eight adjacent Palestinian villages — with a population ratio of 74.2 percent Jewish to 25.8 percent Palestinian Arab, applying Israeli law by the Law and Administration Ordinance (Amendment No. 11) of 1967 without explicitly declaring annexation (PDF p.100-101).
- The 1980 Basic Law declaring Jerusalem the complete and united capital of Israel was declared null and void by UN Security Council Resolution 478; the annexation has never been recognized internationally, the sole exception being the Trump administration’s December 2017 recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital (PDF p.101).
- Palestinians present at the June 1967 census received “permanent resident” status under the 1952 Entry into Israel Law, revocable under the “Center of life” principle; between 1995 and 2017 Israel revoked the status of 11,555 East Jerusalem Palestinians, against 3,078 revocations in 1967-1994 (PDF p.101, p.111).
- By 2018 East Jerusalem had fifteen Israeli settlements with 213,000 settlers in an estimated sixty thousand housing units, and about 3,000 settlers in outposts in the “visual basin of the Old City”; the Greater Jerusalem and Metropolitan Jerusalem plans aimed to secure Israeli domination over the central West Bank (PDF p.105-106).
- The Separation wall in Jerusalem runs approximately 140 kilometers, of which only four run along the Green Line; 140,000 East Jerusalemites live beyond it and receive no municipal services from Jerusalem and none from the Palestinian Authority, which has no jurisdiction (PDF p.108).
- Legislation from 2000 to 2018 entrenched the barriers to any transfer of Jerusalem authority: Basic Law amendments requiring a basic law, then a two-thirds Knesset majority and referendum, then 80 of 120 Knesset members (PDF p.109).
- East Jerusalemites hold Jordanian passports as travel documents without Jordanian citizenship, Israeli identity cards without Israeli citizenship, and may vote for the Palestinian Legislative Council, which is not allowed to act in East Jerusalem (PDF p.114).
- In the October 2018 municipal elections under 1 percent of eligible East Jerusalemite voters cast ballots; of 4,152 citizenship applications in 2014-September 2016, only 84 were approved (PDF p.115-116).
Where sources disagree
- Assali gives the wall around Jerusalem at approximately 140 kilometers (PDF p.108); Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation gives 168 kilometres around East Jerusalem. Both figures stand as printed in their sources.
Related pages
Rethinking Statehood in Palestine, Hania Assali, Center of life, Judaization, Separation wall, Orient House, Al-Aqsa Mosque, Oslo Accords