History

British Mandate and the War of 1948

During the British mandate, Jerusalem (the old City and Palestinian neighborhoods such as Talbiyeh, Baq’a, and Katamon south-west of the city) was surrounded by 66 Palestinian villages (e.g., Deir Yassin,Lifta, Malha, Ein Karem), while the mainly ultra-orthodox Jewish population was concentrated in part of the Old City and neighborhoods north-west of it. Palestinians formed the overwhelming majority in the Jerusalem district and owned most of the land. The last British Survey of Palestine (Dec.1946) made the following demographic estimates:

1947-49

In April 1947, the UN established a special Committee on Palestine (UN-SCOP) to investigate the situation in Palestine and propose a solution to the Palestine Question. The committee published a majority and a majority report containing different proposals. In Nov. 1947, the UN General Assembly voted with 33-13 and 10 abstentions for the majority scheme (Res. 181), recommending the partition of Palestine into an Arab and Jewish state with an international enclave comprised two-thirds of the population and owned most of the land, rejected the resolution. The ensuing disturbances culminated in the first Arab Israeli war, after the Jewish Agency declared the establishment of the State of Israel on 14 May 1948 in the part of Palestine allocated to the Jews in UN Res. 181.

The balance of power was very unequal with a well-equipped and trained Zionist army fighting against poorly armed Palestinian resistance groups, and many Palestinian civilians fled in panic after Jewish forces committed a series of massacres in their villages.

Before the entry of the Arab armies, the Zionist forces launched two offensives – one from Tel Aviv and one from Jerusalem itself (Dec. 1947- May 1948)- which resulted in the conquest of the West Jerusalem and the corridor leading to the coast – in violation of the UN Partition Resolution. Until today the international community, incl. the US, has never explicitly recognized Israeli sovereignty over even West Jerusalem.

Some 64,000-80,000 Palestinians were forcibly driven out of West Jerusalem and the villages in its immediate vicinity. In June 1948, their property (incl. 10,000 homes, furniture, and businesses) came under the control of the Israeli ‘Custodian of Absentee Property’. In 1950, the Israeli government passed the Absentee Property Law’, which transferred the ownership of ‘left’ property to the Jewish state.

The War of 1948 and after

During the course of the War of 1948, Jewish forces captured much of the territory assigned to the proposed Arab state, incl. 885% of Jerusalem (mainly in the city’s western part and surrounding neighborhoods). The Jordanian Arab Legion took control of the West Bank, incl. 11% of the eastern part of Jerusalem (incl. the old City and adjacent villages). The remaining 4% of the Jerusalem area were considered no-man’s land in which the UN headquarters were established.

The 1949 cease-fire agreement between Jordan and Israel formally divided the city into Jordanian-controlled East and Israeli-controlled West Jerusalem.

On 2 Feb. 1949, Israeli PM David Ben-Gurion unilaterally declared that Israeli held (West) Jerusalem was no longer occupied territory but an integral part of the Israeli state, and on 13 Dec. 1949, West Jerusalem was illegally declared the capital of Israel.

On 19 Dec. 1949, the UN General Assembly voted for Res. 303, restating its intention to place Jerusalem under a permanent international regime, which should envisage appropriate guarantees for the protection of the Holy Places, both within and outside Jerusalem, and confirm the provisions of the Partition Resolution 181 of 1947.

Israeli Occupation, 1967

Israel occupied the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, incl. East Jerusalem, in the course of the June War of 1967. Ever since, Israeli objectives and policies regarding Jerusalem have followed a clear pattern: to establish irreversible facts in the city that allow Israel to secure and maintain exclusive control. Immediately after the June War of 1967, the Israeli government began to redefine the municipal boundaries of both parts of Jerusalem.

The Arab East Jerusalem municipal boundaries, comprising 6.5 km² , were expanded through the annexation of an additional 70 km² (70,000 dunums) f East Jerusalem and some 28 surrounding villages into the State of Israeli’s territory (added to the 38,000 dunums of West Jerusalem at the time). The new municipal boundaries, now embracing 108 km2 (East and West Jerusalem) and representing an area of 28% of the West bank, were designed to secure geographic integrity and a demographic Jewish majority in both parts of the city. Thus, many Palestinian populated areas such as Ar-Ram, Abu Dis, Izzariya and Qalandia Camp were excluded. On 28 June 1967, the Knesset amended the low of 1950, which proclaimed Jerusalem as Israeli’s capital, to extend illegally Israeli jurisdiction to the eastern part of the city. One of the first moves after the war was the forceful eviction of over 6,000 Palestinians from the Old City’s Mughrabi Quarter and the destruction of their houses (numbering at least 135) in order to create a plaza in front of Al-Buraq (Western Wall). On 4 July 1967, UN General Assembly Res. 2253 called upon Israel to “rescind all measures taken (and) to desist forthwith from taking any action which would alter the status of Jerusalem.” In total disregard of the resolution, Israel confiscated over 18,270 dunums of Palestinian land in Jerusalem in the first three years of occupation alone.

Israel’s strategies regarding Jerusalem, enacted at municipal level with the unconditional support of the national government, were masterminded by former mayor Teddy kollek whose plans and policies, which are enthusiastically carried out until this day, were driven by the idea of cutting ‘Greater Jerusalem’ off from the West Bank and facilitating its annexation to Israel proper.

The Israeli strategy of ‘Judaization ’ has involved colonization of the Old City and its immediate and extended surroundings, and building of suburbs with new road links in order to populate heavily the metropolitan area of annexed East Jerusalem. The Kollek administration was extremely concerned about the growth of the Palestinian population in Jerusalem. It was a common act to refer to Palestinian-owned land as vacant or unused in order to justify expropriation and to block Palestinian development and housing to drive Palestinians out of the city. As stipulation in the Land Ordinance; Acquisition Public Purposes of 1943, the Israeli finance Minister was authorized to issue expropriation orders for privately owned land if a ‘public purpose’ existed, which had simply to be defined as such by the Finance Minister. Between 1967 to 1996, some 23,500 dunums were expropriated from Palestinians in Jerusalem under this ordnance.

On 30 July 1980, the Israeli government reaffirmed the 1967 de facto annexation and declared Jerusalem the ‘eternal undivided capital’ of Israel through its Basic law on Jerusalem. Consisting a harsh violation of international Law and the Forth Geneva Convention, it was condemned by the UN in Security Res. 478 (20 Aug. 1980), which declared “that all legislative and administrative measures and actions taken by Israel, the occupying power, which have altered or purport to alter the character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem, and, in particular, the recent ‘Basic Law’ on Jerusalem, and null void and must be rescinded forthwith.”

Annexation, population transfer, settlement construction, and destruction of private property are violations of Israel’s obligations under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Fourth Geneva Convention and the letter and spirit of the Oslo Accords.

Source: Palestinian Academic Society for the Studies of International Affairs. (PASSIA )