Jerusalem is one of the oldest cities in the world. Located in the Middle East between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea, the city is considered holy to all three of the major Abrahamic religions — Judaism, Christianity and Islam – and it remains the most contentious city on the planet to this day. Jewish Israelis and Arab Palestinians both claim Jerusalem as their capital; however, neither of these claims are widely recognized internationally. During its long history, Jerusalem has been completely destroyed twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, and captured and recaptured 44 times. It’s been quite the ride. Here’s a potted history:

The region is believed to have been first settled almost 6,000 years ago in the 4th millennium BCE by a Semitic tribal people (likely the Canaanite tribe who named it Jebus). According to religious legend, King David of Israel established and named the city of Jerusalem after conquering the Jebusites around 3,000 years ago in the 1st millennium BCE. David’s son, King Solomon, is said to have commissioned the building of the First Temple (also known as Solomon’s Temple) on Mount Zion. These events assumed a central symbolic importance for the Jewish people and Jerusalem became their holy city, remaining under the Kingdom of Israel (which later became known as the Kingdom of Judah/ Kingdom of Judea following a split between the Jewish tribes) until the Babylonians conquered the city in the 6th Century BCE and laid waste to the First Temple.

The Persian King Cyrus the Great later defeated the Babylonians and invited the Jews to return to Judah where the Second Temple was built. Alexander the Great of Macedonia conquered the Persian Empire (and with it Judah and Jerusalem) in the 4th Century BCE. Alexander’s rule was followed by the Hellenistic (Greek-influenced) Seleucid Empire. The Jewish rebel Maccabees then rose up against the Seleucids in the 2nd Century BCE and established the Hasmonean Empire, taking Judea (and Jerusalem) back under the control of the Jews, but only until the expanding Roman Republic extended its influence in the 1st Century BCE, the province of Judea then resting under the command of the controversial local King Herod (later referenced in the Christian Gospels), and later under the direct control of Rome. The Jewish prophet Jesus entered Jerusalem and was executed around this time, hailed by some Jews as their savior and by others as a false prophet. The new religion of Christianity spread following Jesus’s death and Jerusalem thereby came to be regarded as a holy city to the Christian religion as well as Judaism.

Becoming weary of Roman rule, the Jews rebelled against the Romans in the 1st then again in the 2nd Century. The resulting Roman backlash led to the destruction of the Second Temple and the Romans re-naming the province of Judea as Syria-Palestina. Jews were also banned from the city of Jerusalem, Rome’s attempt to make the city completely secular. In the 4th Century, however, the Roman Emperor Constantine adopted Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire and constructed holy Christian sites in Jerusalem, including the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (at the place where Jesus Christ is said to have been crucified and resurrected). The ban on Jews in Jerusalem remained in force right up until the 7th Century, when the Jews of Palestina rose up against the Christian Byzantines (from the now-Eastern Roman Empire), destroying the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the process. The Christian Byzantines regained Jerusalem – only to quickly lose the city again, this time to the Arab Muslim armies of the new religion of Islam. The new Islamic Caliphate (state) oversaw the building of the Dome of the Rock and Al-Asqa mosque on Temple Mount (honouring the Prophet Muhammad’s ‘night journey’ from where he is said to have ascended to Heaven to speak with God). Muslims at this point welcomed Jews back into Jerusalem for the first time in centuries and promised Christians that their holy places would also be protected.

After living side by side for several centuries under Islamic rule, the Muslims eventually expelled the Christians from Jerusalem in the 11th Century which led to the Crusades – huge Christian armies under the command of the Roman Catholic Church gathering forces from across Europe to expel the Muslims from Jerusalem. They did so, establishing the ‘Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem’ and rapidly repopulated the city with Christians. The Muslims – under the renowned military leader Saladin – regained the city for Islam in the 12th Century and held onto it for a long time, repelling various attacks from Christian Crusaders, Tartars and Mongols. Muslim control of Jerusalem passed from Saladin’s Ayyubid dynasty (12th-13thC) to the Egyptian Mamluks (13th-16thC) to the Ottoman Turks (16th-20thC). In the 16th Century, Suleiman the Magnificent (the then-Sultan of the Ottoman Empire) rebuilt the walls around Jerusalem. Today those walls still define the Old City, which has been traditionally divided into four quarters: the Armenian, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Quarters. Jews – and later Christians – were allowed to live in Jerusalem and practice their faiths under Islamic oversight during this period.

The tolerant approach of the Ottomans was not universally welcomed and in the 19th Century an Arab Revolt attacked the Jews and Christians living there. World War 1 in the early 20th Century saw the fall of the Ottoman Empire – Jerusalem and the surrounding regions were placed under the ‘Palestinian mandate’ of the British Empire. The city remained under British control until after World War 2, when the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan recommended Jerusalem become an ‘international city’ under the administration of the U.N. The Partition Plan never came to fruition, however: after the British withdrew, the 1948 Arab-Israeli War broke out – the Palestinian Arabs attacked the Jews, the Jews responded with force and established the state of Israel, the Israelis took control of vast swathes of Arab residential areas in Jerusalem and created tens of thousands of Arab refugees. The city had essentially divided into east and west Jerusalem; Israel had control of the west of the city, Jordan had annexed the east on behalf of the Arabs. Many Jewish holy sites and synagogues in the east were destroyed, as were Muslim sites in the west of the city. The mutual religious respect of days gone by had disappeared. The 1967 Six Day War saw Israel take east Jerusalem from Jordan too, Jewish forces now controlling the entire city and declaring it the united capital of Israel – a move not legally recognised and one which met with international criticism. It remains a point of immense controversy within the international community to this day – foreign embassies to Israel are based in the city of Tel Aviv, not in Jerusalem.

Today, the status of Jerusalem remains one of the core issues in the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian Conflict. Israel’s Basic Law (the Jerusalem Law) refers to Jerusalem as the country’s undivided capital. The international community rejected the annexation as illegal and treats East Jerusalem as Palestinian territory occupied by Israel. Although the international community does not recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, all branches of the Israeli government are in fact located in Jerusalem. Palestinians, by contrast, fully see East Jerusalem as the capital of a future, fully recognised Palestinian state. U.N Resolution 58/292 (passed in 2004) affirmed the Palestinian people have the right to sovereignty over East Jerusalem. In 2009, U.N Secretary General Ban Ki Moon reaffirmed his view that Jerusalem must be the capital of both Israel and Palestine if lasting peace between the two peoples is to be achieved. While Palestinians have more recently been open to both a divided Jerusalem with the east as their capital (including Temple Mount and the al-Asqa mosque) and to it being an ‘open city’, Israel has made it clear it does not want to consider re-dividing Jerusalem now that they have full control of it, in particular refusing to cede control of Temple Mount which millions of Jews around the world face towards when praying daily as the original site of the First Temple where the Ten Commandments were kept.

Jerusalem has been a holy city to the Jews for 3,000 years, to Christians for 2,000 years and to Muslims for 1,500 years. Resolving the conflict over Jerusalem is key to resolving the wider Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, which is key to resolving the wider-still conflict between the Abrahamic religions. How to actually do all that is another matter entirely. The end goal has to be a combined Israeli/Palestinian government, surely? But a two-state solution can never work while there remains the impossibility of agreement over Jerusalem – Israel wants the city as its own, as does Palestine. Perhaps a U.N-controlled Jerusalem within a two-state – or even one-state – Israel-Palestine could be the way forward? Should we look again at the 1947 U.N. Partition Plan?

In ancient times, Jerusalem was said to be surrounded by forests of almond, olive and pine trees – now centuries of warfare and neglect have left it all but bare. Jerusalem is perhaps the most significant city in the world. It’s time for the world to stop looking away, hoping these issues resolve themselves on their own. It’s time for everyone to replant Jerusalem’s trees.

To learn more about Israel and its people, jump to Chapter 66: Israel – content to follow

To learn more about Palestine and its people, jump to Chapter 67: Palestine – content to follow

To learn more about the partition plan that came so close but remains so distant, jump to Chapter 68: 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine – content to follow