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Eastern Jerusalem: Where Jews Have Lived for Millennia

(CAMERA) Ricki Hollander - While Palestinians reject Israeli sovereignty over any part of Jerusalem, they claim eastern Jerusalem - with holy sites to three religions - as the capital of their future state. Israel considers Jerusalem - both western and eastern - the country's eternal, undivided capital based on its historical, religious and political claims to the holy city. In 1980, the Israeli Knesset passed a Basic Law declaring reunified Jerusalem the eternal capital of Israel, while providing for freedom of access to each religion's holy sites. For over three millennia, since King David established Jerusalem as the capital of his kingdom in 1004 BCE, there has been an almost continuous Jewish presence in Jerusalem, the holiest city in Judaism. And for most of that time it was concentrated in east Jerusalem, where Judaism's holy sites lie. Jews have constituted the largest single group of residents in the city since the mid-1800s. The area was only exclusively Arab for the 19-year period between 1948 and 1967 during which Jordan occupied eastern Jerusalem. In the 1948 war, Transjordan's Arab Legion seized east Jerusalem, expelled its Jewish residents, destroyed Jewish property and religious sites, and made it Judenrein (Jew free). Far from being ethnically cleansed, the Arab population of Jerusalem has grown rapidly under Israeli rule, from 68,600 in 1967 to 268,600 in 2008, with the increase in Jerusalem's Arab population outpacing the growth of the city's Jewish population.
2013-12-26 00:00:00
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