Jerusalem

Overview

Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, the seat of its government, and a city holy to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The Knesset, Israel’s parliament, sits in Jerusalem, as do major national institutions including Yad Vashem. King David established Jerusalem as Israel’s capital about three thousand years ago, and his son Solomon built the First Temple there. The city remained central to Jewish worship and national memory through conquest, exile, and the restoration of Jewish sovereignty. The modern city also contains living Arab and Christian communities whose institutions, schools, and places of worship form part of its civic life.

Jerusalem’s Old City, covering about one square kilometer, contains Muslim, Jewish, Christian, and Armenian quarters. Its landmarks include the Temple Mount, site of the Jewish Temples; the Western Wall, part of the Temple Mount’s retaining enclosure; the Church of the Holy Sepulchre; and the Dome of the Rock. The Al-Aqsa Mosque also stands on the Temple Mount. These sites give the city religious importance far beyond its population or physical size. They also make access, preservation, and security enduring responsibilities of Jerusalem’s authorities.

Geography

Jerusalem stands in the Judean Mountains, between Israel’s Mediterranean coastal plain and the Dead Sea. Ridges and valleys shaped its ancient defenses, water supply, roads, and later neighborhoods. Ancient Jerusalem’s City of David lies south of today’s Old City walls. Its landmarks include the Gihon Spring and Hezekiah’s tunnel, an approximately 530-meter water passage dug from two ends to carry spring water into the city. The tunnel helped secure Jerusalem’s water during a period of Assyrian military pressure. During Sennacherib’s campaign against Judah, the Assyrian official Rabshakeh addressed Jerusalem’s inhabitants in their own language in an attempt to weaken resistance before battle.

The Old City’s walls enclose only a small part of present-day Jerusalem. Historic neighborhoods, religious institutions, government buildings, museums, and residential districts extend across surrounding hills. The Western Wall was reached for centuries through a narrow alley; after Israel captured the Old City in 1967, houses beside it were removed to create the large plaza used by worshippers and visitors today. Within the Muslim Quarter, the Small Western Wall stands closer to the traditional site of the Holy of Holies than the exposed section commonly called the Western Wall. The Valley of Hinnom outside the ancient city is associated in biblical tradition with child sacrifice and later gave rise to the concept of Gehenna.

Ancient and biblical history

Jerusalem’s biblical history begins its long role as a center of Israelite government and worship. King David established the city as his capital; Solomon built the First Temple on the site remembered in Jewish tradition as the Temple Mount. Biblical accounts also preserve moral criticism of David: he took Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, arranged for Uriah to be placed in a dangerous battle where he died, and then married her. Later kings fortified and supplied the city. The prophet Jeremiah warned that Jerusalem and the First Temple would be destroyed unless Judah’s people repented, confronting the prevailing belief that the city could never fall. Babylon destroyed the First Temple in the sixth century BCE.

After Jewish return from Babylonian exile, the Second Temple became the center of worship. Nehemiah rebuilt Jerusalem’s defensive wall amid opposition from Sanballat the Horonite, Tobiah the Ammonite, and Geshem the Arab. Three biblical pilgrimage festivals—Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot—brought Israelites to the Temple. Animal offerings were central to Temple worship, while ritual purity shaped ordinary objects and movement: stone vessels were valued because Jewish law held that they did not contract ritual impurity. At the Temple Mount, ordinary pilgrims entered from the right and exited from the left; mourners walked the opposite way, inviting even strangers to stop and comfort them.

Jerusalem later became the center of the Hasmonean state. After Queen Salome Alexandra’s death, her sons Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II fought over succession. Hyrcanus, advised by Antipater, appealed to Pompey; the brothers and priests drew Rome into Judea’s internal dispute. Pompey entered the land in 63 BCE, beginning a decisive period of Roman intervention. Herod later secured Roman backing for his kingship and rebuilt the Second Temple on an enlarged platform supported by monumental retaining walls. Most Temple-period pilgrims entered through gates in its southern wall. Roman forces destroyed the Temple in 70 CE during the Great Revolt. Jerusalem’s defenders were divided: Shimon Bar Giora and John of Gischala fought for control, and destruction of food stores weakened the besieged city. Rome’s Arch of Titus depicts soldiers carrying away the Temple menorah, which later became the emblem of the modern State of Israel.

Archaeology preserves physical evidence of these periods. Excavations at Ketef Hinnom in 1979 uncovered two small silver amulets bearing words of the Priestly Blessing from the Book of Numbers; their dating was examined through independent methods. Work near the historic Temple Mount entrance exposed a ritual bath with alternating long and short steps, which researchers interpret as a deliberate interruption of routine movement before entry to a sacred place. The Temple Mount Sifting Project, led by Gabriel Barkay and Zachi Dvira, has recovered more than half a million artifacts from soil dumped in the Kidron Valley, among them a clay seal bearing the name Immer, associated with a priestly family mentioned in Jeremiah. A half-shekel coin found in the sifted soil recalls the Temple tax paid by Jews when the Temple stood.

Jewish history

Jerusalem remained central to Jewish peoplehood after the Second Temple’s destruction. Religious life shifted from Temple sacrifice toward synagogue prayer and rabbinic leadership, while prayer continued to face Jerusalem. The city appears repeatedly in the Hebrew Bible, in the Psalms, and in Jewish liturgy. Passover’s hope of return and the wedding custom of recalling Jerusalem’s destruction kept its memory within family and communal life. Jewish communities in Iraq, Spain, Morocco, and Yemen preserved shared customs and directed prayers and hopes toward Jerusalem across nearly two thousand years of exile. Jewish identity encompasses peoplehood and communal history as well as religious practice; attachment to Jerusalem was sustained across those dimensions.

The Jewish people’s call to return to Jerusalem predates modern political Zionism by more than two millennia. Zionism is the Jewish national movement for self-determination and return to the people’s historical homeland, the Land of Israel. Theodor Herzl helped organize its modern political movement without originating Jewish attachment to Zion. Herzl died in 1904, aged 44, and requested burial in an iron coffin until his remains could be taken to a Jewish state. Israel was established 51 years after he wrote that he had founded the Jewish state in Basel; his remains were reburied in Jerusalem the following year.

The Temple Mount remains Judaism’s most sacred site because the First and Second Temples stood there. The Western Wall became a focus of Jewish prayer after destruction of the Second Temple and through centuries when Jews could not worship at the Temple site itself. Jewish expectations of a future Messiah include rebuilding the Temple, gathering Jews in the Land of Israel, and establishing world peace. Isaiah’s vision of nations turning weapons into agricultural tools is set in Jerusalem, where they ascend to the house of God and accept divine judgment. Roman emperor Julian sought to rebuild the Temple in the fourth century, but the project did not restore it.

Christian tradition places events in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus in Jerusalem. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre marks a traditional site of his crucifixion and burial. Jewish burial caves from Jesus’s era survive within the church, although his precise burial place cannot be established with certainty. The church is shared by six Christian denominations; major changes require agreement among its principal Catholic, Orthodox, and Armenian custodians. The Upper Room is traditionally identified with the Last Supper and the gathering of Jesus’s disciples at Pentecost, which came 50 days after Passover and coincided with Shavuot. The Church of All Nations in Gethsemane opened in 1924 with contributions from twelve countries, including former enemies in the First World War. Jerusalem’s Armenian Christian history also includes families who arrived after the Armenian genocide, while the Coptic Razzouk family has tattooed Christian pilgrims in the city for centuries.

Islamic tradition also holds Jerusalem holy. The Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque stand on the Temple Mount, a site associated in Islamic tradition with Muhammad’s night journey. Jerusalem’s successive Jewish, Christian, and Muslim sacred histories remain visible in its closely situated buildings and continuing worship. Their proximity makes precise naming important: the Temple Mount refers to the whole elevated compound, while the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque are distinct structures within it.

Modern history

Jerusalem was governed by the Ottoman Empire for four centuries. As Ottoman power weakened in the late nineteenth century, European governments and churches built compounds and institutions, including the Austrian Hospice. During the First World War, British forces under General Edmund Allenby captured Jerusalem from Ottoman forces in December 1917. Allenby entered the Old City on foot on December 11. British rule lasted until 1948 and brought new urban development alongside intensifying conflict between Jews and Arabs. Anti-Jewish violence before Israel’s establishment included the 1920 Nabi Musa riots and the 1929 attacks in Jerusalem, Hebron, and Safed.

In November 1947, the United Nations proposed partition into Jewish and Arab states and a separate international regime for Jerusalem. The Jewish Agency accepted the internationalization proposal in the hope of protecting the city from bloodshed and the new Jewish state from conflict. Arab leaders rejected the partition plan and the proposed arrangement for Jerusalem. Fighting soon threatened the city’s Jewish communities and access roads. On March 10, 1948, the Haganah adopted Plan Dalet to secure the proposed Jewish state and defend Jewish settlements outside its borders, including communities along the Jerusalem road. During the siege, Israel built the Burma Road through the mountains to bypass Latrun and reach the city.

Fighting around Jerusalem included the April 9, 1948, Irgun and Lehi attack on Deir Yassin, an Arab village west of the city. Five Jewish fighters and about 100 Arabs died. Arab civilians were killed during combat, and approximately 10 to 20 civilians were shot after surrendering. The Jewish Agency condemned the attack in a message to Jordan’s King Abdullah. The episode remains part of the history of violence against civilians during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.

Jordan took control of eastern Jerusalem and the Old City in 1948 and held them until 1967. Its forces expelled the Jewish Quarter’s residents. Jews were barred from living in the Old City and denied access to the Western Wall and other Jewish holy places, despite provisions for access in the 1949 armistice. Synagogues were destroyed or desecrated, and graves on the Mount of Olives were damaged. Israel governed western Jerusalem and established its capital there. After Arab states rejected the 1947 plan, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion declared that Israel would no longer accept internationalization of the city.

Jordan attacked Israel during the Six-Day War in June 1967. On the war’s third day, Israeli paratroopers entered the Old City through Lion’s Gate and reached the Western Wall and Temple Mount. Israel unified Jerusalem, restoring Jewish access to its holy places and the ability of Jews to live in the Old City. Defense Minister Moshe Dayan preserved the Temple Mount’s religious arrangements to avoid a wider conflict. Israel returned day-to-day religious administration of the compound to the Muslim Waqf, retained security responsibility through its police, and restricted Jewish prayer there. The arrangement continues to shape access: non-Muslims enter through the Mughrabi Gate during limited hours, and since 2000 have generally been barred from entering the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Jerusalem remained central to later diplomacy. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin required Jerusalem’s exclusion from the secret Oslo talks. In negotiations discussed in 2009, former prime minister Ehud Olmert proposed joint management of a Holy Basin containing major sacred sites, including the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, by Israel, Jordan, Arab representatives, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. In December 2017, the United States recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. It opened its embassy there on May 14, 2018, seventy years after Israel’s establishment.

Security

Jerusalem’s religious and political importance has made it a target for incitement and attacks. On January 8, 2017, Fadi Ahmed Hamdan al-Qunbar drove a truck into Israeli soldiers at the Armon Hanatziv promenade, killing four and wounding thirteen. In 2021, Hamas, a terrorist organization, used tensions around Damascus Gate and the Temple Mount, together with riots in Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan, as the setting for an ultimatum issued by its commander Mohammed Deif. Hamas then launched rockets toward Jerusalem and other Israeli cities. Under Ismail Haniyeh’s leadership, Iranian regime backing helped Hamas acquire longer-range rocket technology capable of striking Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of the Iranian Revolution, established annual Al-Quds Day in 1979. Events held under its name have carried calls for Israel’s destruction and support for armed groups attacking it. At a 2022 rally in Gaza City, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Hossein Salami praised attackers who had killed Israeli civilians. Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri had likewise invoked Jerusalem in a 2013 appeal to jihadist forces fighting in Syria. Such uses of the city’s name connect its sacred status to campaigns of incitement and violence; they do not define the beliefs of Jerusalem’s Muslim residents.

Israel’s security measures also affect ordinary life and worship. During Iranian missile attacks, the Home Front Command limited gatherings to 50 people and barred gatherings without an available shelter. These rules applied to Christians, Muslims, and Jews alike. Protecting the city’s holy places requires responding to threats while maintaining access and religious freedom. Israel’s police and the Muslim Waqf share responsibilities at the Temple Mount under the arrangements established after 1967.

Present day

Jerusalem functions as Israel’s capital, a place of pilgrimage, and a large, socially varied city. Its Arab neighborhoods face substantial questions of municipal services, infrastructure, schooling, economic opportunity, and civic participation. Israeli policy researchers have documented neglect and barriers affecting parts of eastern Jerusalem and proposed improvements to living conditions and public services. Debates over curricula have also drawn local religious leaders, education officials, and outside organizations into the city’s schools. These issues concern residents’ daily lives as well as Jerusalem’s long-term stability.

Religious institutions continue to govern many sacred spaces through established arrangements. Israel maintains security and public-order responsibilities while Christian denominations administer the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Muslim Waqf administers religious affairs on the Temple Mount. Disagreements over access can arise even when general rules apply across faiths; public officials must address particular incidents while preserving freedom of worship. Museums and archaeological work add another dimension to the city’s public life. The Israel Museum holds finds from Jerusalem and sites across Israel alongside collections devoted to Jewish culture and history.

Jerusalem’s enduring importance rests in the coexistence of these roles. It is the capital of a modern state, the historic center of Jewish national and religious life, and home to Christian and Islamic holy places. Its history includes periods of shared civic life, conquest, exclusion, and restored access. Understanding the city requires attention both to that record and to the people who live, govern, study, and worship there today.