2. Jerusalem: Biblical History
• Jerusalem is the holiest city in Judaism. It
is mentioned 638 times in the Bible
• Binding of Isaac- First time Jerusalem is
explicitly mentioned in the Bible (Mt.
Moriah)
• 1003 BCE : King David makes it the Jewish
capital
• King Solomon builds the Temple in
Jerusalem, and establishes it as a major
city
• Jerusalem remains the capital for 400
years until the Babylonian invasion, when
the First Temple is destroyed.
• 538 BCE: After the Babylonian exile, Jews
are granted return to Israel by King Cyrus.
Temple is rebuilt.
• 70 CE : Jerusalem remains the Jewish
capital until the destruction of the 2nd
Temple by the Roman Empire.
3. Jerusalem After the Temple
• 135 CE: After the Bar Kochba revolt, Jews are
forbidden from entering Jerusalem and Romans
rename it Aelia Capitolina.
• 324 CE: Byzantine Rule under Emperor Constantine
• 634 CE: Muslims invade and in 691 CE the Dome of
the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque are built.
• 1099-1187: Crusades- Jews and Muslims are killed
and their holy places are destroyed or transformed
into churches. Jerusalem is established as the capital
of the Crusader Kingdom.
• 1187: Saladin, Kurdish Muslim, captures Jerusalem
• 1260: Mamluks begin rule in Jerusalem, making
Jerusalem an exclusively Muslim city, and running it
into economic failure.
• 1517: During the Ottoman Empire, Suleiman the
Magnificent builds up the city (including the walls
around the city)
4. The Beginning of Modern Jerusalem
• 1858-1860: Mishkenot Sha'ananim, built by Montefiore,
becomes first Jewish neighborhood outside the Old City
walls.
• 1917-1948: Jerusalem is built up during the British
Mandate, establishing a new city that pushes Westward
from the Old City.
• 1929: Thousands of armed Arabs attack the residents of
Jerusalem’s Old City during the Western Wall Uprising,
initiating a week of riots in which at least 116 Arabs and
133 Jews are killed.
• 1936-1939 Arab Revolts: The three-year Arab uprising
results in the deaths of more than 5,000 Arabs, 400 Jews,
and 200 Britons.
• 1937: The British offer the Peel Commission Partition
Plan: a Jewish state, an Arab state, and a British corridor
in between, including Jerusalem. The Jews accept, but the
Arabs reject the Peel Commission and continue to riot.
5. War of Independence
• 1948: Jordan captures the Old City of
Jerusalem during the War of Independence
• The Jews of eastern Jerusalem were either
forced out or killed
• The 58 synagogues in the Jewish Quarter
are all destroyed
• The 2,500 year old cemetery on the Mount
of Olives is desecrated when a road is dug
through it, and Jewish tombstones are used
to make a path to a latrine.
• The Arabs decree that selling land to a Jew
is a crime punishable by death.
6. Jordanian Rule
• 1948-1967: The Armistice lines drawn at
the end of Israel’s War of Independence
gave control of Eastern Jerusalem to
Jordan. Israel retains control over Western
Jerusalem.
• The city is divided by concrete walls and
barbed wire between 1948-1967.
• In open violation of the Armistice
Agreement, Jordan refuses to set up a
special committee for rule and order in
Jerusalem, and bars Jews from their Holy
Places. It is the only time since King David
made it the capital that there are no Jews
in the Old City.
7. Religious Discrimination Under
Jordanian Rule
• Non-Muslim institutions and individuals are
legally prohibited acquisition of property in
the Old City, and Christian schools are
required to teach the Quran and the
Arabic language and to close on Friday, the
Muslim holy day.
• There are limits on the numbers of
Christian pilgrims permitted into the Old
City and Bethlehem during Christmas and
Easter. Muslim Israeli Arabs are unable to
visit Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the
Rock. Jews are not allowed to visit the
Western Wall.
8. Six Day War (1967)
• Jerusalem is reunified, following Israel’s victory in
the Six Day War.
• Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan orders
soldiers to remove an Israeli flag that had been
raised over the Temple Mount, and immediately
cedes control of the Temple Mount to the
Jordanian Waqf.
• Prime Minister Levi Eshkol meets with spiritual
leaders of different faiths and issues a declaration
of peace, including giving various religions
internal management of their own Holy Places.
• The Knesset passes the Protection of Holy
Places Law, granting special legal status to Holy
Sites and making it a criminal offense to
desecrate them or impede access to them.
10. Jerusalem Neighborhoods: The Old City
• During the Roman period,
following the destruction of
the Second Temple, the Old
City was divided into Jewish,
Armenian, Muslim, and
Christian Quarters.
• Since 1967, the Waqf, the
Islamic Movement, and
various Islamic groups have
exploited their control of
the Temple Mount, and have
seriously damaged Temple
Mount antiquities in
renovations and disregard
for the archaeological finds
they turn over.
11. Jerusalem Neighborhoods: Gilo
• Gilo is a 40,000 resident neighborhood in
southern Jerusalem.
• In 2000, Gilo suffered from unprovoked
nightly shooting from the bordering
Christian Arab neighborhood of Beit Jalah.
• Residents stayed away from their windows
and reinforced them with sandbags. A
reinforced wall was built around the area of
Israeli schools to protect children from the
shooting during the day. (insert photo)
• “In the beginning, the Palestinian Authority
claimed that the shooting was being done
against their will and against their efforts to
stop it. We have good evidence that in the
last few days not only is it not done against
their will, but it is coordinated and
encouraged by the officials of the Palestinian
Authority in Bethlehem.” – Jerusalem
Mayor, Ehud Omert Oct. 24, 2000 (briefing)
12. Jerusalem Neighborhoods: Ma’ale Adumim
• The first Jewish city founded in Judea
and Samaria after the Six Day War,
Ma’ale Adumim is a suburb of
Jerusalem.
• Located four and half miles east of
Jerusalem, Ma’ale Adumim connects the
Judean desert to Jerusalem making it a
strategic defensive point for Jerusalem.
• Named after the border between the
tribes of Judah and Benjamin which
gave off a reddish hue from the rocks.
• In 2005, Ma’ale Adumim’s population
was 32,000.
13. Jerusalem Neighborhoods: Mt. Scopus
• The Hebrew University campus is located on Mt.
Scopus in the eastern part of Jerusalem.
• Hebrew University opened in 1925, but was shut down
from 1948-1967 during the Jordanian occupation
• Hadassah Hospital was founded by Hadassah, the
Woman’s Zionist Organization.
• Different stones were used in the building of the
hospital due to an Arab riot at the excavation site.
These differences are noticeable today during rain
storms.
• Hadassah is used as Hebrew University’s teaching
hospital.
• Hadassah Hospital was used to treat patients in WWII.
• April 13th, 1948- a group of doctors and nurses were
ambushed by Arabs on their way to the hospital and 78
of them were killed.
• The hospital was shut down after this ambush, and did
not reopen until 1978.
14. Jerusalem Basic Law (1980)
“The Holy Places shall be
protected from desecration
and any other violation and
from anything likely to violate
the freedom of access of the
members of the different
religions to the places sacred
to them or their feelings
towards those places.”
15. Terror in Jerusalem: Past
• Jerusalemite Palestinians were exploited for their
Israeli identity cards and knowledge of the area and
population. They were used to gather information
for the planning of attacks, acquiring arms and
materials not available in Judea and Samaria, and for
transporting terrorists to the locations of terror
attacks, under the direction of organized groups (ie:
Fatah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad).
• Between 1949 and 1956, 1,300 Israelis all over the
country, including Jerusalem, were killed and
wounded by Fedayeen, Arab militants.
• Terror attacks continued until the Six Day War in
1967.
• Since 1967, 2,149 people have been killed in
Palestinian terror attacks all over Israel, including in
Jerusalem.
16. Terror in Jerusalem: Present
• Local cells initiate and carry out attacks
without external direction.
• Lone Wolf attackers
• Most attacks involve shootings,
vehicular borne assaults, and
stabbings.
• Significant Recent Attacks
– Vehicle Attack: July 2, 2008. Husam Dwayat
plowed a tractor into a crowd of pedestrians on
Jaffa Street killing 3 Israelis and wounding 42.
– Shooting Attack: March 6, 2008. Ala’ Abu
Dahim opened fire with an automatic assault
rifle in the Mercaz Ha Rav Yeshiva (Jewish
seminary). He killed 8 Israeli students and
wounded 12 others.
17. Terror Trends
• 28% of total terror arrests during the
Intifada were in 2008.
• 2001-2007: 270 East Jerusalem
residents involved in terror were
arrested.
• January-September 2008: 104 East
Jerusalem residents involved in
terror arrested.
• Increases not just in number of
arrests, but also in the escalating
severity of attacks.
19. Dealing with the Threat
• Increasing options for deterrence:
– Strengthening sanctions against
families of terrorists.
– Greater presence of security forces
(strategy which has succeeded in
curbing attacks from originating in
Judea and Samaria).
– Strengthening existing laws against
the illegal sale or transfer of arms.
21. Rejecting Jewish Ties to Jerusalem
• Denying Jewish Ties to Jerusalem and
the Temple Mount has become a
central theme of Palestinian
Propaganda.
• This pattern stretches back many
years and was central to Yasser
Arafat’s rejection of the Israeli peace
plan at Camp David in 2000.
• Denial of Jewish ties has manifested
itself in Palestinian media, speeches
by politicians and religious leaders,
and even academia.
22. PA Politicians: Yasser Arafat
• “That is not the Western Wall at all, but a
Moslem shrine” (Ma’ariv, October 11,
1996)
• “For 34 years they [Jews] have dug tunnels,
the most dangerous of which is the great
tunnel. They found not a single stone
proving that the Temple of Solomon was
there, because historically the Temple was
not in Palestine [at all]. They found only
remnants of a shrine of the Roman Herod.”
(Al Hayat, October 5, 2002,
Translation: MEMRI)
23. PA Politicians: Mahmoud Abbas
• “They demand that we forget what happened 50
years ago to the refugees – and I speak as a living,
breathing refugee – while at the same time they
claim that 2000 years ago they had a temple. I
challenge the assertion that this is so [that there has
ever been a Jewish Temple}.” (Kul Al-Arab (Israel),
August 25, 2000; Translation: MEMRI)
• Adnan Husseini, advisor to Mamhoud Abbas: “This is
part of Islamic heritage that cannot be given up, and
it must be under Muslim control,” Husseini told
Israel’s NRG website, adding that all of Jerusalem’s
Old City should be part of a future Palestinian
state” (‘Abbas aide: Western Wall is ours,’ Jewish
Telegraphic Agency, October 11, 2007).
24. PA Religious Leaders:
Tayseer Al-Tamimi
• “ [the Al-Aqsa Mosque] is
subject to an [Israeli] conspiracy
that threatens its structure and
identity, to cause it to collapse
and to establish the "alleged
Jewish Temple" upon its ruins.”
(Al-Hayat Al-Jadida (Fatah), July
29, 2009)
25. PA Religious Leaders:
Sheikh Ikrima Sabri
• “There is not [even] the smallest
indication of the existence of a
Jewish Temple on this place in the
past. In the whole city, there is not
even a single stone indicating Jewish
history... The Jews cannot
legitimately claim [the Western] wall,
neither religiously nor historically.”
[Die Welt, January 17, 2001]
28. PA Study
• “The Zionist occupation falsely
and unjustly claims that it owns
this wall, which it calls the
Western Wall or Kotel… Al-Buraq
Wall is in fact the western wall of
Al-Aksa Mosque… This wall was
never part of the so-called Temple
Mount, but Muslim tolerance
allowed the Jews to stand in front
of it and weep over its
destruction” [Jerusalem Post,
November 22, 2010]
29. Summary
•Only under Jewish sovereignty has there been respect
for all religions.
•Creating a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem would
pose significant security threats.
•It is not simple to divide Jerusalem into East and West
due to the mixture of neighborhoods.
•The cause of an Undivided Jerusalem has near uniform
support in the Jewish community (94% in last month’s
AJC survey of American Jewish Opinion).
•The Arab world never declared Jerusalem as its capital
city during its time ruling the city.
•Divided cities have never worked anywhere else in the
world.
30. Sources
• Jerusalem History: http://www.jafi.org.il/education/jerusalem/timeline.html
• War of Independence: CAMERA: Jennings’ Jerusalem Jihad. December
31,1996. Andrea Levin.
• Jordanian Rule: CAMERA: BACKGROUNDER: History of
Jerusalem. August 28, 2007. Ricki Holander.
• Terrorism:
http://www.jewishagency.org/NR/exeres/86314008-E729-4282-AD78-
8B0C0E24B36B
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Terrorism-
+Obstacle+to+Peace/Palestinian+terror+before+2000/Which+Came+First-
+Terrorism+or+Occupation+-+Major.htm
• Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs: http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Facts%20About
%20Israel/State/JERUSALEM
• Old City Map: http://www.bu.edu/mzank/Michael_Zank/Jerusalem/35.gif
• Gilo Photo:
http://www.honestreporting.com/a/images/communiques/upload1/gilo.jpg
• Six Day War Photo: http://www.judaicaposters.com/Images/jp71.jpg
• 2nd
Temple Model Photo:
http://holylandarchive.com/section_images/387_TempleMap01.jpg
• Crusader Map:
http://static.newworldencyclopedia.org/f/f3/Jerusalemcrusades.jpeg
• Dome of the Rock Photo:
