The Governance of the City 30 While the legislation avoided the term “annexation,” semantic ambi guity did not obscure the fact of annexation.*? As already noted, Israel's sovereignty over West Jerusalem had not been recognized in international law or by the international commu- nity other than through the Armistice Agreements of 1949. which merely confirmed the fact of its presence there. Israel had established its own legal basis for its sovereignty over West Jerusalem through the first law of the Israeli Provisional Government, the Law and Admin- istrative Ordinance of 1948, which applied Israeli jurisdiction over all areas held by Israeli military forces. It was through an amendment of that same law from which Israel in 1967 proceeded to the incorpora- tion of East Jerusalem and adjacent parts of the West Bank. Thus, on June 27, 1967, the Knesset passed an amendment to the 1948 law stating that “the law, jurisdiction and administration of the state shall extend to any area of Eretz Israel designated by the Goverment by order” (emphasis added).° The next day, the Israeli government car- ried out two important legislative acts. The first was to issue an order designating an area of 30,000 dunams of East Jerusalem and the West Bank stretching from Qalandia airport in the north to Sur Bahir in the south, and including the Old City of Jerusalem," for coverage by the amendment of the previous day (see map 2.5).The second was to pass yet another and no less important amendment enabling the Israeli Municipality of West Jerusalem to extend its boundaries over exactly the same area to which the Law and Administrative Ordinance was applied. The amendment empowered the Isracli Minister of Interior “at his discretion and without an enquiry ... to enlarge, by procla- mation, the area of a particular municipality by inclusion ofan area by