A report on East Jerusalem, State of Palestine, Israeli-occupied territories and Israel

It is bordered by Jordan and the Dead Sea to the east and by Israel (see Green Line) to the south, west, and north.

The West Bank's borders also include the lands that comprise East Jerusalem.

A 2004 advisory ruling by the International Court of Justice concluded that events that came after the 1967 capture of the West Bank by Israel—including the Jerusalem Law, the Israel–Jordan peace treaty, and the Oslo Accords—did not change the status of the West Bank and East Jerusalem as Israeli-occupied territory.

Alongside the self-governing Gaza Strip, the Israeli-occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem are claimed by the State of Palestine as its sovereign territory, and thus remain a flashpoint of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

The city straddles the Green Line between Israel and the West Bank; both Israelis and Palestinians claim Jerusalem as their capital.

Israel controls the entire city and maintains its primary governmental institutions there while the Palestinian National Authority and Palestine Liberation Organization ultimately foresee it as the seat of power for the State of Palestine.

During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, West Jerusalem was among the areas captured and later annexed by Israel while East Jerusalem, including the Old City, was captured and later annexed by Jordan.

However, during the 1967 Six-Day War, East Jerusalem was captured from Jordan by Israel, after which it was effectively annexed and incorporated into the other Israeli-held parts of the city, together with additional surrounding territory.

Despite various wars and exoduses, roughly one half of the world's Palestinian population continues to reside in the territory of former British Palestine, now encompassing the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (the Palestinian territories) as well as Israel.

In this combined area,, Palestinians constituted 49 percent of all inhabitants, encompassing the entire population of the Gaza Strip (1.865 million), the majority of the population of the West Bank (approximately 2,785,000 versus some 600,000 Israeli settlers, which includes about 200,000 in East Jerusalem), and almost 21 percent of the population of Israel proper as part of its Arab citizens.

Tsvi Misinai, an Israeli researcher, entrepreneur and proponent of a controversial alternative solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, asserts that nearly 90% of all Palestinians living within Israel and the occupied territories (including Israel's Arab citizens and Negev Bedouin) are descended from the Jewish Israelite peasantry that remained on the land, after the others, mostly city dwellers, were exiled or left.

Followed by the PLO's 1988 proclamation of a State of Palestine, these developments served to further reinforce the Palestinian national identity.

The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO; منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية, Munaẓẓamat at-Taḥrīr al-Filasṭīniyyah) is a Palestinian nationalist political and militant organization founded in 1964 with the initial purpose of establishing Arab unity and statehood over the territory of former Mandatory Palestine, in opposition to the State of Israel.

In 1993, alongside the Oslo I Accord, the PLO's aspiration for Arab statehood was revised to be specifically for the Palestinian territories under an Israeli occupation since the 1967 Arab–Israeli War.

As the official recognized government of the de jure State of Palestine, it has enjoyed observer status at the United Nations (UN) since 1974.

In 1988, however, the PLO officially endorsed a two-state solution, contingent on terms such as making East Jerusalem capital of the Palestinian state and giving Palestinians the right of return to land occupied by Palestinians prior to 1948, as well as the right to continue armed struggle until the end of "The Zionist Entity."