14 June 2015 | Author/Destination: Levant / Levante | Rubric: General, Theme Weeks, UNESCO World Heritage, Union for the Mediterranean
Reading Time: 7 minutes
Orient House, the unofficial town hall of East Jerusalem © Abutoum
East Jerusalem is the sector of
Jerusalem that was
occupied by Jordan in 1948 and had remained out of the Israeli-held
West Jerusalem at the end of the
1948–49 Arab–Israeli War. It includes Jerusalem’s
Old City and some of the holiest sites of
Christianity,
Islam, and
Judaism, such as the
Temple Mount,
Western Wall,
Al-Aqsa Mosque,
Dome of the Rock and the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre, as well as a number of adjacent neighbourhoods. Israeli and Palestinian definitions of it differ; the Palestinian official position is based on the
1949 Armistice Agreements, while the Israeli position is mainly based on the current municipality boundaries of Jerusalem, which resulted from a series of administrative enlargements decided by Israeli municipal authorities since the June 1967
Six-Day War (
United Nations Security Council Resolution 478,
international positions on Jerusalem,
City Line, which has survived to this day due to the repeatedly annulled Jerusalem Law by the UN and is a part of the
Green Line). Despite its name, East Jerusalem includes neighborhoods to the north, east and south of the
Old City (UNESCO World Heritage Site), and in the wider definition of the term even on all these sides of
West Jerusalem. East Jerusalem is now regarded by the international community as part of
Palestine.
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