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Numerous international laws affirm the right to housing, property, protection against forced evictions, and reparations. Yet Israel repeatedly violates them. Consider Jerusalem. The UN Partition Plan designated it an international city under a UN Trusteeship Council. But contrary to international laws, Israel claims sovereignty, imposed control, and is incrementally removing Palestinians to make it exclusively a Jewish city.
On June 7, 1967, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan proclaimed: The Israeli Defense Forces have liberated Jerusalem. We have reunited the torn city, the capital of Israel. We have returned to this most sacred shrine, never to part from it again."
Yet General Assembly and Security Council resolutions called for the city's immediate, unconditional "demilitarization" and "internationalization."
Nonetheless, in 1967, historic Palestine became belligerently occupied. Jerusalem was declared its capital, and Palestinians have been systematically removed, despite UN resolutions declaring all:
"measures taken by Israel to change the status of the city to be invalid, (and ordering its government to) rescind all such measures already taken and to desist forthwith from taking any further actions which tend to change the status of Jerusalem."
July 1980 was defining when Israel passed its Basic Law: Jerusalem, Capital of Israel (the Jerusalem Law), declaring the city "complete and united (as) the capital of Israel."
East Jerusalem was effectively annexed in violation of international law and Israel's noncompliance with Security Council and General Assembly resolutions. SC Resolution 478 (August 20, 1980) declared the law null and void, a violation of international law, and required it be rescinded forthwith. The vote was 14 - 0, America abstaining.
Israel categorically rejected it, announcing "It will not undermine the status of Jerusalem as the capital of a sovereign Israel and as a united city which will never again be torn apart."
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