The legal status of Jerusalem is complicated. Anyone wishing to determine the validity of the legal claims made against the city must go back to the turmoil during and after the First World War.
At that time, Jerusalem fell under British control for the first time after 400 years of Ottoman rule. The international agreements establishing the post-war order of that era (San Remo, British Mandate for Palestine), which form the legal foundation of the modern State of Israel, did not mention Jerusalem by name. The city was implicitly part of the negotiating and treaty framework.
The British Peel Commission of 1937 was the first to propose treating Jerusalem separately from the rest of Palestine. Jewish leaders rejected this. The Peel Commission's proposal was never implemented, but the idea persisted and was revived in the UN Partition Plan of 1947.
On November 29, 1947, following the British resignation, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 181, the "UN Partition Plan." This plan stipulated that Jerusalem, with expanded borders, would be placed under the control of the United Nations as a corpus separatum, neither under Jewish nor Arab rule. The Jewish Agency had reluctantly agreed to the ten-year partition plan on October 2, 1947. This allowed them to facilitate the establishment of the State of Israel without having to relinquish their Jewish claim to Jerusalem.
During Israel's subsequent War of Independence, the UN did nothing to protect the population or the status of Jerusalem. Jordan had illegally occupied Judea and Samaria, as well as East Jerusalem, expelling the Jews and desecrating or even destroying their holy sites. Accordingly, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion reacted coldly in a speech before the Knesset on December 5, 1949, when the United Nations, after the war's end, again discussed plans for the internationalization of Jerusalem: "From our perspective, the decision of November 29, 1947 (UN Partition Plan) regarding Jerusalem is null and void." The Jordanian occupation of Jerusalem continued until 1967. Then, in the Six-Day War, Israel liberated all of Jerusalem in an act of self-defense on June 7, 1967.
The original English version of UN Resolution 242, adopted by the UN Security Council to resolve the conflict, did not explicitly call for the return of all captured territories. The then US ambassador to the UN, Arthur Goldberg, wrote in the "New York Times" in 1980 that Jerusalem was deliberately omitted, even as "occupied territory," because "Jerusalem should not be divided again." However, his successor, Charles Yost, under US President Jimmy Carter, was the first to refer to East Jerusalem as "occupied territory.".
Jerusalem, capital of Israel
In 1980, the Israeli parliament, in accordance with existing legal claims, passed the "Basic Law: Jerusalem Capital of Israel." It declared Jerusalem the "complete and unified capital of Israel," which effectively meant the annexation of East Jerusalem. The UN Security Council condemned this move in Resolution 478 and declared the law null and void. Nations around the world moved their embassies to Tel Aviv.
Since the Oslo Accords in the mid-1990s, the status of Jerusalem was supposed to be decided in direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. However, the Palestinians have rejected all proposals to date. The international community supports this refusal. In UN Security Council Resolution 2334 of December 23, 2016, under the leadership of the US administration of President Barack Obama, it reworked Resolution 242 into a weapon against any legal claim by Israel to Jerusalem and the West Bank: Resolution 242 asserts "that the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity" and constitutes a violation of international law. The wording grants the Palestinians "the Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem." This is a clear betrayal by the international community of the principle of a bilateral negotiated solution. The next US president, Donald Trump, rejected Resolution 2334, recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and moved the US embassy there.
But the status of Jerusalem remains contested. The Jewish state of Israel is the de facto sovereign over the Holy City and has a strong legal, religious, and historical claim to Jerusalem, which continues to be vehemently disputed by the international community. Jerusalem is and remains a burden for nations.
This article first appeared in our newspaper "Israelaktuell," issue 129. You can order the newspaper free of charge here: https://csi-aktuell.de/israelaktuell. We would also be happy to send you several copies for distribution.
