to be placed under a “permanent international regime,” by which it meant a special
authority answerable to the UN’s Trusteeship Council.
Israel and Jordan both acted quickly to establish facts on the ground to prevent
the resolution from being implemented. On December 13, the Knesset approved a
plan to move most Israeli government agencies from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The Knes-
set held its first session in the city just two weeks later, and most government offices
were moved there by January 1950. On January 1, 1950, King Abdallah issued a decree
granting Jordanian citizenship to residents of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem,
and four months later formally annexed those areas to Jordan. Israel and Jordan con-
ducted secret negotiations that produced several tentative agreements, but ultimately
failed to reach a final settlement because neither side was able or willing to make the
necessary compromises. The negotiations ended after Abdallah’s assassination by a
Muslim extremist on July 20, 1951.
Jerusalem remained divided until Israel captured its eastern portion from Jordan
in the June 1967 war. Israel immediately annexed East Jerusalem and its majority Arab
population, declaring Jerusalem as “one city indivisible, the capital of the State of
Israel.” The Knesset also enacted a law guaranteeing access to Jerusalem’s religious
shrines for Christians, Jews, and Muslims; in contrast, Jordan had refused from 1948
to 1967 to allow Jews to pray at the Western, or Wailing, Wall, the exposed portion
of the remains of the Second Temple. (Despite its law, Israel often did bar young Mus-
lim men from worshiping at the al Aqsa Mosque in the Old City, fearing that Friday
prayers there could result in violence.) In later years, Israel encouraged Jewish migra-
tion to East Jerusalem and enacted regulations that “encouraged” Arabs to leave. Nearly
four decades later, Jerusalem once again became a divided city when the Israeli gov-
ernment erected what it called a security barrier separating the main part of the city
from its Palestinian neighborhoods to the east.
The United Nations has never formally accepted or recognized Israel’s control of
East Jerusalem, declaring in numerous resolutions that this part of the city remains
“occupied Palestinian territory,” along with the West Bank. Several dozen countries
have established embassies in Jerusalem, but the United States and most other pow-
ers continue to maintain their embassies in Tel Aviv (although often with consulates
or other satellite offices in Jerusalem). The future status of Jerusalem is considered one
of the major obstacles to any final settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as both
sides claim the city as their capital. To date, the most comprehensive proposal for the
city is one put forward by President Bill Clinton in December 2000. His “parame-
ters” envisioned Jerusalem serving as the capital of Israel as well as of any new Pales-
tinian state (Camp David and the al-Aqsa Intifada, p. 276).
Following is the text of a statement delivered to the Knesset on December 13, 1949,
by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion.78 ARABS AND ISRAELIS