Disentangling politics and law in East Jerusalem

Israeli construction in East Jerusalem is nothing new; since 1967, when Israel conquered the territory along with the rest of what had come to be known as the West Bank from neighbouring Jordan and extended Israeli administration over the entire city, Israel has settled close to 200,000 of its Jewish citizens in Jerusalem’s eastern sector (which has an Arab population of approximately 230,000).[1] Due to the acceleration of Israeli construction in recent months and renewed political will within the US administration to aggressively advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, East Jerusalem construction has increasingly become a source of tension between Israel and its Western allies and a focal point of media attention.

The status of Jerusalem is one of the most contentious issues in the Middle East and has no clear-cut solution. I would not presume to offer one. I will, however, attempt to disentangle and analyze some of the various legal and political considerations that are implicated in Israel’s construction in East Jerusalem.

Historical overview

Faced with rising internecine conflict between Jews and Arabs in Mandatory Palestine and the incompatible nationalist aspirations of both groups, Britain in 1947 placed the question of Palestine before the United Nations. The UN General Assembly proposed to partition Palestine (Resolution 181) into two sovereign states, with Jerusalem a corpus separatum to be administered by an international regime under the control of the…

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