Six-Day War: Israeli soldiers enter Jerusalem.
Jerusalem (; Hebrew: Yerushalyim; Arabic: al-Quds) is a city in Western Asia. Situated on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea, it is one of the oldest cities in the world, and is considered holy for the three major Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The city straddles the Green Line between Israel and the West Bank; both Israelis and Palestinians claim Jerusalem as their capital. Israel controls the entire city and maintains its primary governmental institutions there while the Palestinian National Authority and Palestine Liberation Organization ultimately foresee it as the seat of power for the State of Palestine. Due to this long-running dispute, neither claim is widely recognized internationally.Throughout its long history, Jerusalem has been destroyed at least twice, besieged 23 times, captured and recaptured 44 times, and attacked 52 times. The part of Jerusalem called the City of David shows first signs of settlement in the 4th millennium BCE, in the shape of encampments of nomadic shepherds. During the Canaanite period (14th century BCE), Jerusalem was referred to as Urusalim on ancient Egyptian tablets, which probably referred to Shalim, a Canaanite deity. During the Israelite period, significant construction activities began throughout the city in the 9th century BCE (Iron Age II), and by the 8th century BCE, Jerusalem had developed into the religious and administrative centre of the Kingdom of Judah. In 70 CE, an unsuccessful Jewish revolt against the Romans resulted in the destruction of the city and the Second Temple. In 1538 CE, the surrounding city walls were rebuilt for a last time under Suleiman the Magnificent of the Ottoman Empire. Today, these walls define the Old City, which has traditionally been divided into four sections, individually known since the early 19th century as (going clockwise from the southeastern end): the Jewish Quarter, the Armenian Quarter, the Christian Quarter, and the Muslim Quarter. The Old City became a World Heritage Site in 1981, and has been on the List of World Heritage in Danger since 1982. Since 1860, Jerusalem has grown far beyond the Old City's boundaries. In 2015, Jerusalem had a population of some 850,000 residents, comprising approximately 200,000 secular Jewish Israelis, 350,000 Haredi Jews, and 300,000 Palestinian Arabs. In 2016, the city's population was 882,700, of which Jews comprised 536,600 (61%), Muslims comprised 319,800 (36%), Christians comprised 15,800 (2%), and unclassified subjects comprised 10,300 (1%).According to the Hebrew Bible, the city was conquered from the Jebusites by the Israelite king David, who established it as the capital of the United Kingdom of Israel. David's son and successor, Solomon, later commissioned the building of the First Temple in the city. Modern scholars argue that Jews branched out of the Canaanite peoples and culture through the development of a distinct monolatrousand later monotheisticreligion centred on El/Yahweh. These foundational events, straddling the dawn of the 1st millennium BCE, assumed central symbolic importance for the Jewish people. The sobriquet of "holy city" ( , 'Ir ha-Qodesh) was probably attached to Jerusalem in post-exilic times. The holiness of Jerusalem in Christianity, conserved in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible that was adopted by Christians as the Old Testament, was reinforced by the New Testament's account of Jesus' crucifixion and subsequent resurrection there. In Sunni Islam, Jerusalem is the third-holiest city after Mecca and Medina in present-day Saudi Arabia. This is due to its status as the first qibla (the standard direction for Muslim prayers) before Mecca. In Islamic tradition, the Islamic Prophet Muhammad made his Night Journey to Jerusalem in 621 CE, from where he ascended to heaven and spoke to God, according to the Quran. As a result of all of these events, despite having an area of only 0.9 km2 (38 sq mi), the Old City is home to many sites of seminal religious importance; namely the Temple Mount with its Western Wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque.
Today, the status of Jerusalem remains one of the core issues of the IsraeliPalestinian conflict and its peace process. During the 1948 ArabIsraeli War, West Jerusalem was among the areas captured and later annexed by Israel while East Jerusalem, including the Old City, was captured and later annexed by Jordan. However, during the 1967 Six-Day War, East Jerusalem was captured from Jordan by Israel, after which it was effectively annexed and incorporated into the other Israeli-held parts of the city, together with additional surrounding territory. One of Israel's Basic Laws, the Jerusalem Law of 1980, refers to "complete and undivided" Jerusalem as the country's capital. All of the institutions of the Israeli government are located within Jerusalem, including the Knesset, the residences of the Prime Minister (Beit Aghion) and President (Beit HaNassi), and the Supreme Court. While Israel's claim to sovereignty over West Jerusalem is more widely accepted by the international community, its claim to sovereignty over East Jerusalem is regarded as illegitimate, and East Jerusalem is consequently recognized by the United Nations as Palestinian territory that is occupied by Israel.
The Six-Day War (Hebrew: מִלְחֶמֶת שֵׁשֶׁת הַיָּמִים, romanized: Miḥemet Šešet HaYamim; Arabic: النكسة, romanized: an-Naksah, lit. 'The Setback' or حرب 1967, Harb 1967, 'War of 1967'), also known as the June War, the 1967 Arab–Israeli War or the Third Arab–Israeli War, was an armed conflict fought from 5 to 10 June 1967 between Israel and a coalition of Arab states primarily comprising Jordan, Syria and Egypt (then known as United Arab Republic).
Relations between Israel and its Arab-majority neighbouring states were not normalized after the First Arab–Israeli War ended with the signing of the 1949 Armistice Agreements. In 1956, Israel invaded Egypt, triggering the Suez Crisis; among Israel's rationale for the invasion was its goal of forcing a reopening of the Straits of Tiran, which had been closed by Egypt for all Israeli shipping since 1950. Israel was eventually forced to withdraw its troops from Egyptian territory under international pressure, but was guaranteed that the Straits would remain open. A peacekeeping contingent known as the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) was subsequently deployed along the Egypt–Israel border, but there was no demilitarization agreement between the two sides.In the months prior to the outbreak of the war in June 1967, tensions in the region became dangerously heightened. Israel reiterated its post-1956 position that another closure of the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping by Egypt would be a definite casus belli. In May, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser announced that the Straits of Tiran would again be closed to Israeli vessels, and subsequently mobilized the Egyptian military along the border with Israel, ejecting the UNEF. On 5 June, Israel launched a series of airstrikes against Egyptian airfields, initially claiming that it had been attacked by Egypt, but later stating that the airstrikes were pre-emptive; the question of which side caused the war remains one of a number of controversies relating to the conflict.Egyptian forces were caught by surprise, and nearly the entire Egyptian Air Force was destroyed with few Israeli losses in the process, giving Israel the advantage of air supremacy. Simultaneously, the Israeli military launched a ground offensive into the Egyptian-occupied Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula, which again caught the Egyptians by surprise. After some initial resistance, Nasser ordered an evacuation of the Sinai Peninsula. The Israelis continued to pursue and inflict heavy losses on the retreating Egyptian forces, and conquered the entire Sinai Peninsula by the sixth day of the war.Jordan had entered into a defence pact with Egypt a week before the war began; the agreement envisaged that in the event of a war, Jordan would not take an offensive role, but would attempt to tie down Israeli forces to prevent them from making any significant territorial gains. Approximately an hour after the initial Israeli air attack, the Egyptian commander of the Jordanian military received orders from Cairo to mount attacks against Israel. In the initially confused situation, the Jordanians were falsely informed that Egypt had successfully repelled Israel's air raids.
Egypt and Jordan agreed to a ceasefire on 8 June, and Syria agreed on 9 June; a ceasefire was signed with Israel on 11 June. In the aftermath of the war, Israel had crippled the entirety of the Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian militaries. The war saw over 20,000 Arab troops killed while Israel lost fewer than 1,000 of its own. Israel's sweeping success was the result of a well-prepared and enacted strategy combined with the poor military and political leadership and strategy of the Arab coalition. At the cessation of hostilities, Israel had seized the Golan Heights from Syria, the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) from Jordan, and the Gaza Strip as well as the entire Sinai Peninsula from Egypt. Israel's international standing greatly improved in the years following the Six-Day War; the overwhelming Israeli victory had humiliated Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, and led Nasser to resign in shame. However, following widespread protests throughout Egypt against his resignation, he was later reinstated as president. The speed and ease of Israel's victory would later lead to dangerous overconfidence within the ranks of the Israel Defense Forces—one of the primary factors that led to initial Arab successes in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, although that war also ended in an Israeli victory. The displacement of civilian populations as a result of the Six-Day War would have long-term consequences, as around 280,000 to 325,000 Palestinians and 100,000 Syrians fled or were expelled from the West Bank and the Golan Heights, respectively.