It is a simple question with a lot of sensitivity and passion: what is the capital of Israel, or in other words, is Tel Aviv the capital of Israel?
The short answer is no: Tel Aviv is not the capital of Israel. Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.
The long answer is a bit more complex.
What is the Capital of Israel?
As far as Israeli law and the Israeli public are concerned, it’s Jerusalem. No doubt.
Tel-Aviv was never designated as the capital. It was the de-facto seat of the government for a few months after the declaration of independence, and mainly due to the ongoing independence war that was going on, but a few months later the parliament building in Jerusalem was built and the Israeli government is operating from it since. The only city that Israel has ever defined as its capital is Jerusalem.
Jerusalem is one of the oldest cities in the world and is considered holy to the three major Abrahamic religions. It has long been fought over, and throughout its history, Jerusalem has been destroyed, besieged, attacked, captured, and recaptured many, many times.
More recently, the city had long been under the reign of the Ottoman Empire before falling under British administration during World War I. In 1947, with the British planning to leave the region, the UN General Assembly approved a plan which would partition Mandatory Palestine into two states: one Jewish, and one Arab. Jerusalem was to be an “international city” under the jurisdiction of the UN. This plan would never come to be, however, as the Arab side did not accept it (the Jewish did), and the war had started.
On May 14, 1948, amidst this violence, Israel declared independence, and a force of Arab Nations invaded, setting off the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. By the end of the war (in 1949), West Jerusalem was captured and annexed by Israel, while East Jerusalem was captured and annexed by Jordan. Years later, during the Six-Day War of 1967, Israel would capture all of Jerusalem from Jordan, along with surrounding territory.
Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty in 1991, by the way.
In 1980, “Jerusalem Law” was passed by the Israeli government, declaring Jerusalem as Israel’s “eternal and indivisible” capital. All branches of the Israeli government are currently located in Jerusalem.
Public Opinion
Because Jerusalem’s status as Israeli territory was never completely declared by the UN, its designation as the capital was not recognized by the UN either. At least in the eyes of Israelis, after almost eighty years it’s becoming quite silly, and most of the Israeli public doesn’t mind it. There are few things in the Jewish Israeli public discourse that enjoy a consensus as wide as Jerusalem’s status as the country’s capital: with even the harshest internal critics of the Israeli government and left-wing movement challenging this notion.
What is even more silly in the Israeli view is the question “Is Tel Aviv the capital of Israel”. It never was. I mean, yea, Tel-Aviv is Israel’s main cultural and financial center – but no more than Mumbai in India and New York in the U.S., both are not the capital cities of their countries.
World View
Because of the divisive nature of the contradictory and non-negotiable claims to Jerusalem by both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the United Nations, along with virtually every western Government, have treated Jerusalem as an international city and refused to pick sides on this question.
This changed a bit on December 6, 2017, when President Donald Trump and his administration officially recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, announcing his intention to move the American embassy to Jerusalem before the end of 2019. The CIA World Factbook, a major source for common geography standards, is listing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
Following President Trump’s announcement to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, the UN voted overwhelmingly to condemn this decision, with 128 countries in favor of condemnation, 35 abstained (and another 21 did not participate), and only 9 countries in support. However, as it stands now, no countries have an embassy in Jerusalem, while 86 have embassies in Tel Aviv. Some others in Ramat Gan, some in Herzliya, and the Embassy of Bolivia is even placed in a suburb of Jerusalem.
All this does not affect the simple fact that since 1949 the official capital city of Israel is Jerusalem.
