East Jerusalem is the part of Jerusalem that came under Israeli occupation after the 1967 war, as opposed to the part of Jerusalem that has been under Israeli control since the 1948 war, which is often referred to as "West Jerusalem". East Jerusalem is considered a part of the West Bank and, therefore, of the Palestinian territories under international law. Israel occupied East Jerusalem during the 1967 Six-Day War, and since then, the entire city has been under Israeli control. The 1980 Jerusalem Law declared unified Jerusalem the capital of Israel, formalizing the effective annexation of East Jerusalem. Palestinians and many in the international community consider East Jerusalem to be the future capital of the State of Palestine.

East Jerusalem has been effectively annexed, in an act internationally condemned, by Israel in 1980. The Israeli government has established a two-tiered legal and political system that provides comprehensive rights for Jewish Israeli settlers while imposing military rule and control on Palestinians without any basic protections or rights under international law. According to a March 2022 report by the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the OPT, Israel’s political system of entrenched rule in the OPT satisfies the prevailing evidentiary standard for the crime of apartheid.

Israeli forces killed 151 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and injured 9,875, according to OCHA-OPT, amid a surge of military incursions that involved excessive use of force, including unlawful killings and apparent extrajudicial executions. Israeli authorities demolished 952 Palestinian structures across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, displacing 1,031 Palestinians, and affecting the livelihoods of thousands of others. Tens of thousands of Palestinians remained at risk of forced evictions in Israel and the OPT, including some 5,000 living in shepherding communities in the Jordan Valley and South Hebron Hills.