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Originally Posted by Fuzz

Thank you, I appreciate an honest answer. If it is disputed, then why is Israeli law being imposed there? Does using the wording "disputed" justify the illegal settlements(so named by basically every court and legal expert outside of Israel)? Further, and ultimately, does this help move towards or away from peace?

Disputed means that there are two or more parties that are disputing claims to the land.

In this case Israeli law is enforced for the simple reason that Israel won the wars and holds the land. As stated Jordan had invaded the land in 1948 and later annexed it. Israel gained control of the land in a later war in 1967.

For the record, I do not support the settlers generally. I think that any one ethnicity claiming exclusive occupancy over the land, including the West Bank, is wrong. However, in order to have a two state solution, Palestinians need a large and continuous area of land to live in.

I, however, do not think anti-settler arguments should apply to Jerusalem and its immediate surrounding area. There's nothing in the history of Jerusalem that provides that any area of it (apart from portions of the old city) should be exclusively Arab and/or under Arab vs. Jewish control.

This is particularly true when you put the history of the city into context. There have been multiple massacres of and restrictions placed on Jews through history in Jerusalem. This included systems of high taxation on Jews, which forced them out of the city under Ottoman rule. Some of it being recent enough to be totally relevant to the current conflict:

1720, due to failure to repay the debts, Arab creditors broke into the synagogue, set it on fire, and took over the area. The Ottoman authorities held both HeHasid's group and the pre-existing Ashkenazi community collectively responsible and expelled all Ashkenazi Jews from Jerusalem

In 1740, Rabbi Haim Abulafia, the rabbi of İzmir, renewed Jewish settlement in Tiberias and the surrounding area under the patronage of local governor Zahir al-Umar. In 1742, a group of Jewish immigrants from Morocco and Italy led by Moroccan rabbi Chaim ibn Attar arrived in Palestine, and most settled in Jerusalem. At the time, the vast majority of Jews in Palestine were Sephardi or Mizrahi Jews, with only a small number of Ashkenazi Jews. The Ottoman authorities restricted the number of Jews permitted to live in Jerusalem.

The growth of the Jewish community of Palestine, which was known as the Yishuv, was disrupted by the outbreak of World War I in 1914. During the war, many Jews were expelled from Palestine by the Ottoman authorities as enemy nationals, since they had immigrated from countries now at war with the Ottoman Empire. In 1917, the Ottoman authorities carried out the Tel Aviv and Jaffa deportation, expelling the entire Jewish civilian populations of Tel Aviv and Jaffa. Many deportees subsequently died from hunger and disease

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histor...Land_of_Israel

This is why I take issue with a lot of the argument about there was only X percentage of Jews in the land on X date....well yes, the Muslim ruler had historically practiced brutal campaigns of economic and regular violence against non-Muslim inhabitants. Modern day Israel shouldn't have to abide by the effects of that historical violence.