·     Under international law, East Jerusalem is part of the occupied territory, which means that the fourth Geneva Convention is applicable and Israel has no claim to East Jerusalem by virtue of having taken control of it militarily.

·     The international community has rejected Israel's claim to both West and East Jerusalem as its "eternal undivided capital'' and has consistently denounced Israeli attempts to change the status of the city.

·    On December 16, 1949 Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion announced that Jerusalem will become the capital of Israel as of January 1, 1950.

·    In 1948, 40% of the property of West Jerusalem belonged to Palestinians, 34% to the Waqf, Churches and the Government of Palestine, and only 26% belonged to Jews.

·    On June 27, 1967, the Israeli Parliament approved the draft law for the annexation of Jerusalem, in violation to article 47 of the fourth GC that forbids annexation of occupied territories.

·    The Legal and Administrative Matters Law, 1968, came to complement the administration Ordinance (Amendment No. 11) Law of 1967 which laid the legal ground for applying the Israeli law and administration to East Jerusalem, was enacted. It aimed at ensuring that the annexed area and its population became subject to Israeli law. According to article 64 of the 4^th GC, the occupying power should not change the laws that are in effect in the occupied territory unless it is done in order to enable it to fulfill its IHL obligations, to maintain the orderly government of the territory, and to ensure the security of the occupying power.

·    On 30 July 1980, the Israeli government issued the Basic Law: Jerusalem, Capital of Israel, where article 1 stipulates that, ''Jerusalem, eternal and indivisible, is the capital of the state of Israel.'

·    UN Security Council resolutions: 242, 252, 253, 254, 267, 298 and UN General Assembly resolutions:  2253 2254 do not recognize the illegal Israeli annexation of the city and consider it as null and void.

Land and settlements:

Jerusalem suffers from a complicated housing system as a result of Israeli occupation policies whereby decreasing the Palestinian population in the City is an overarching objective. This can be noticed very clearly in the Municipality Master Plan 2000 which aims to "secure an absolute Jewish majority in the city by creating a framework to proceed with the development of the city of Jerusalem as a capital for the “Jewish” state and a seat for its government," and “to achieve a long term goal which reflects the future vision for the city as conceived by the city’s ‘fathers.’”

·    According to Art. 53 of the IV GC "Any destruction by the Occupying Power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons, or to the State, or to other public authorities, or to social or cooperative organizations, is prohibited, except where such destruction absolutely necessary by military operations."

·    In order to make the annexation of East Jerusalem a matter of fact, the Israeli government gave explicit priority to controlling the land, mainly confiscating land for "public purposes'' under the 1943 (Land Acquisition for public purposes) Ordinances.

·    Since 1967, the Israeli government redrew the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem to include East Jerusalem and land adjacent to it in the West Bank. This is the area which came to be known as East Jerusalem.

·    Some 70,000 dunums (17,500 acres) owned exclusively by Palestinians, including the lands of 28 villages (excluding its inhabitants) annexed de facto to Israel. In this regard, on June 28, Israeli parliament (Knesset) decided to expand the boundaries of Jerusalem by 10 times. Jerusalem is now the biggest city in historic Palestine.

·    Two years after signing the Declaration of Principles between PLO and Israel in 1993, an Israeli inter-ministerial committee finalized a new large-scale development plan for a region covering 40% of the West Bank (the Metropolitan Jerusalem Plan). The Metropolitan Jerusalem measures 950 sq km, only 30 percent of which is within pre-1967 Israel.

·    Today only 7,000 dunums, or 10% of the land, are used by its Palestinian owners. Thirty five percent of this land was immediately confiscated by Israel for public purposes which were not disclosed, and was turned into Jewish settlements.

·    58% of land use was frozen by the municipality’s spot planning and zoning policy. (The spot zoning policy was the alternative for developing a policy statement which would translate into a planning map and regulations for the “United City.”

·    As a result, 23% remained unplanned areas; 17% remained in the planning process; 25% was planned (of which only 7.3% was allocated for residential construction in East Jerusalem) and 14% of this land was used for settlement roads.

·    15 Israeli settlements were built in East Jerusalem since 1967.

·    Currently, there are 6,000 dunums of land allocated for Jewish industrial zones in Jerusalem while none is allocated for the Palestinian population.

·    Some 200,000 Jewish settlers live in settlements locating in East Jerusalem.

·    By the 2015, the number of Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem and around it is projected to reach half million.

·    According to the recently presented Master Plan by the Israeli Jerusalem municipality, in the coming five years, Israel authorities will establish 32,000 settlement units in East Jerusalem, which means that some 120 Jews will move to live in the city, knowing that the current percentage of Jews in the eastern part of the city equals 43%.