Jerusalem is the capital of the modern State of Israel.  Jews are indigenous to Jerusalem and the rest of the country, having maintained a continuous, unbroken presence in the land of Israel for over 3,000 years.  Since King David made the city his capital in the 10th century BCE, Jerusalem has been the geographic center of the Jewish people.
 

Tisha B’Av – a fast day of mourning.  The Western Wall is the last standing remnant of the Jewish Temple, the holiest site for Jews.
 

Jerusalem is also of great importance for Christianity and Islam, containing holy sites held in deep reverence by billions of people around the world.  For Christians, these include the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the Garden Tomb, and the Garden of Gethsemane.  For Muslims these include the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa Mosque.
 

No Arab or Muslim power ever claimed Jerusalem as its capital.
 

After Israel declared independence on May 14, 1948, the Arab Legion of Jordan, commanded by British officers, attacked Jewish Jerusalem. After bitter fighting, the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City fell on May 27 to the Arab Legion’s vastly superior arms and numbers.  The Jordanians evicted all the Jews from the Old City and other neighborhoods, which were then looted by Palestinians.  For the next 18 years, Jerusalem was a city divided by mine fields and barbed wire.
 

Jordan occupied the eastern sector of Jerusalem until 1967.  This was the only time in over a thousand years (since the Crusader Kingdoms) that Jews were prohibited from living in Jerusalem’s Old City.  The Jordanians destroyed and looted nearly 60 Jewish synagogues, some centuries old, turning many into animal stalls or latrines.  The 2,500-year-old Jewish cemetery on the Mt. of Olives was vandalized and thousands of ancient tombstones were shattered and used for building materials.  Jordan built the intercontinental hotel on the cemetery and paved the hotel’s access road over ancient Jewish graves.
 

During the 1967 Six-Day War, following unprovoked attacks by Jordan against Israel, Israel’s army liberated Jerusalem’s Old City from Jordan, finding the Jewish Quarter completely neglected and virtually destroyed. Since 1967, under Israeli control, members of all faiths have enjoyed full religious freedom and access to their holy sites in Jerusalem.  There are over 50 churches and 33 mosques operating freely in Jerusalem today.
 

Jews became a plurality of Jerusalem’s population in the early 1800s and have been a majority since 1864, a generation before the Zionist movement’s founding.
 

Jerusalem is Israel’s largest city at nearly 50 square miles.
 

Jerusalem has 1.578 public gardens and parks.
 

Jerusalem has over 2,000 archeological sites.
 

Jerusalem has over 70 cultural centers that teach art, music, poetry, literature, and performance to young people.
 

Throughout Jewish history, Jews have wanted to be buried on Mount of Olives.  There is estimated to be about 150,000 graves dating back to the 15th century till now.
 

Jerusalem is the focal point of the three Jewish holidays of Sukkor, Pesach, and Shavuot.
 

King David was buried on Mount Zion.
 

Jerusalem by virtue of the number and diversity of people who have held it sacred, may be considered the most holy city in the world.
 

Jerusalem is important to the Jewish people because it is Ir Ha-Kodesh (the Holy City).  The Biblical Zion, the City of David, the site of Solomon’s Temple, and the eternal capital of the Israelite nation.
 

Jerusalem is important to Christians because it is where the young Jesus impressed the sages at the Jewish Temple, where he spent the last days of his ministry, and where the Last Supper, the Crucifixion and the Resurrection took place.
 

Jerusalem is important to Muslims because it is where the prophet Muhammad ascended to Heaven.  After the holy sites of Mecca and Medina.  Jerusalem is the third most sacred place of Islam.
 

While highly charged with intense religious devotion and visited by countless pilgrims and sages Jerusalem has also been ravaged by thirty centuries of warfare and strife.
 

The First Temple of the Jews was built during the reign of David’s son, Solomon.  The Temple’s construction took seven years and was completed in 957 BCE.  Soon after the Temple’s construction, Nebuchadrezzar II of Babylon forced the Jews into exile, removed their temple treasures in 604 BCE and 597 BCE, and finally completely destroyed the temple in 586 BCE.
 

In 64 BCE, the Roman General Pompey captured Jerusalem, ushering in several centuries of Roman rule.  During this period Herod the Great (ruled 37 BCE-4CE) rebuilt and enlarged the Second Temple and created the famous Western Wall (also called the Wailing Wall) as part of the supporting structure for the enlarged Temple Mount.
 

Foremost among the Christian shrines was the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.  This church marked the site of the Resurrection and soon became the supremely sacred place in all of Christendom.  Finished in 335 CE, the great basilica was apparently built upon the foundations of an earlier Roman shrine dedicated to the goddess Aphrodite.  It was during this splendid era of church construction that the tradition of Christian pilgrimages to Jerusalem began.
 

The most visited pilgrimage sites were Bethlehem where Jesus was born.  Golgatha, the site of his supposed crucifixion (and where legend says the skull of Adam is buried); the Church of the Holy Sepulchre; and the Mount of Olives, where Jesus (supposedly) ascended to heaven.  The Christian glorification of Jerusalem continued until 615 CE when the Persians invaded the city, killed many of its inhabitants and destroyed numerous churches and monasteries.
 

At this hallowed site, known in Arabic as Haram al Sharif, the 9th Caliph.  Abd al-Malik, built the great Dome of the Rock between 687 and 691.  Besides its association with the ‘Night Journey’ of Muhammad, Jerusalem was also chosen as the site of this first great work of Islamic architecture for political reasons.
 

The Muslims in power before and during the Dome’s construction period had tolerated Christianity and Judaism allowing pilgrims of both religions to freely visit the Holy City.  This era of peaceful coexistence ended in 969 however, when control of the city passed to the Fatimid caliphs of Egypt (a radical and somewhat intolerant Shiite sect) who systematically destroyed all synagogues and churches.
 

The entire area of the Old City of Jerusalem has been charged since antiquity with the powerful energy of holiness, devotion and spiritual love.  Over more than three millennia the control of the city’s primary sacred places has shifted frequently between the religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
 

Jerusalem has been attacked 52 times, captured recaptured 44 times, besieged 23 times and destroyed twice during the past 3,000 years.
 

The name “Jerusalem” most likely comes from “Urusalim,” a word of Semitic origin meaning “Foundation of Shalem (wholeness)” – or “Foundation of God.”
 

Jerusalem has more synagogues per capita than any city in the world.
 

Jerusalem is the only city in which some 15 different Christian sects live alongside one another, according to the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies.
 

Jerusalem is mentioned more than 600 times in the Hebrew Bible, but not once in Islam’s Quran.
 

In the Middle Ages, Jews were banned from Jerusalem by Christians, but Muslims later lifted the ban.
 

The Old City of Jerusalem is divided into a Muslim Quarter, Christian Quarter, Jewish Quarter and Armenian Quarter.
 

Jerusalem has separate educational and religious systems for its Christian, Muslim and Jewish populations.
 

Jerusalem’s population is 61 percent Jewish, 36 percent Muslim, 1 percent Arab Christian and 1 percent non-Arab Christian.
 

While Israel’s self-identified “secular” Jewish population is 44 percent, Jerusalem’s secular Jewish population is just 19 percent.
 

Jerusalem represents approximately 0.001 percent of the land mass of the Middle East.
 

The number of high-tech start-ups in Jerusalem has tripled from 200 to more than 600 since 2012.
 

Throughout the Jewish Diaspora, Jerusalem has always remained foremost in the thoughts of the Jewish people as they turn to Jerusalem three times a day in prayer.  No wedding or other celebration is without references to the Jewish people for their ancient capital, Jerusalem is mentioned in everyday prayers and on holidays and festivals.  At the end of the Passover Seder and the Yom Kippur services, Jews proclaim, “Next Year in Jerusalem.”
 

Jewish independence in the land of Israel, which ended in 70 CE and was renewed in 1948, marks the longest period of sovereignty over Jerusalem by any nation.  No other nation can claim such a long political existence in the recorded history of this unique city.  Jerusalem was never the capital of any other state.
 

Throughout all the periods of foreign rule over Jerusalem (Roman, 70CE 324; Byzantine, 324 614 Persian 614 640 1099; Crusader, 1099 1291; Mamluk, 1291 1516; and Ottoman Turk 1516 1918) Jews were persecuted, massacred, and subject to exile.  Even so, the Jewish presence in Jerusalem remained constant and enduring.
 

On June 5, 1967, an unprovoked Arab attack was launched on the Jewish-populated western neighborhoods of Jerusalem. Indiscriminate artillery bombardment damaged religious sites, hospitals, and schools across the 1949 armistice line.  The UN headquarters south of Jerusalem was seized, and enemy troops began to enter nearby Jewish neighborhoods.
 

Following the reunification of Jerusalem in 1967, together with the extension of Israeli jurisdiction and administration over East Jerusalem, the Knesset passed the ‘Preservation of the Holy Places Law of 1967’, which ensured protection and freedom of access to all holy sites of the city to members of all faiths.
 

There has always been a national consensus in Israel on the status of Jerusalem.  Since the reunification of the city in 1967, all Israeli governments had declared their policy that united Jerusalem, Israel’s eternal capital, is one indivisible city under Israeli sovereignty.
 

Until the 7th century CE the city repeatedly changed hands between the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, and the Sassanid Empire.  In 638 the Islamic Caliphate extended its dominion to Jerusalem, which is considered Islam’s third holiest city after Mecca and Medina.  With the Arab conquest, Jews were allowed back into the city.  Until the Crusades, Jerusalem remained under Arab control.
 

No Arab or Muslim power ever claimed Jerusalem as its capital.
 

There are 30 annual festivals in Jerusalem, the most in all of Israel. Thee 26 wineries in Jerusalem.
 

There are more than 70 different Hebrew names for Jerusalem in Jewish scripture.
 

Jerusalem Day is an Israeli national holiday that commemorates the reunification of Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Day War.