Original subtitles

GUNSHOTS

GUNFIRE

Jerusalem, the Holy City.

Coveted, prized and disputed by three of the world's great faiths,

Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Jerusalem has been conquered and occupied

more than any other city in history.

In Jerusalem, the history is drenched in blood.

It's been destroyed and rebuilt many times.

The more it's destroyed, the more revered it's become.

These stones have been fought over for centuries.

The holiness of the city dates back long before the arrival of Islam,

long before the advent of Christianity,

long, even, before Judaism.

Each borrowed the sanctity of those who came before,

making Jerusalem the centre of the world.

Today, it's a divided city, the capital of two peoples.

Its sacred sites have never been more intensely contested

nor with such universal implications.

So why did this holy city become the object of such violent competition?

And how did the nationalist struggle for Jerusalem

become so infected with apocalyptic religious fervour?

I'm a historian but I also have a personal connection to the city,

I've been coming here with my family, since I was a boy.

Some 4,000 years ago, Jerusalem was a minor Canaanite stronghold,

with a vital spring and a pagan shrine.

With the arrival of the Hebrews,

Jerusalem became the holy city of the Jews.

In the Hebrew Bible, it's described as the City of the temple,

existing in heaven and on earth,

the setting for the final day of judgement.

With the spread of Christianity,

the fame of Jerusalem's holiness became truly global.

When the new faith of Islam was revealed to the Prophet Mohammed,

he too revered Jerusalem.

At first Mohammed directed his prayer not to Mecca but to here.

And it was here that Muslims built the Dome of the rock

on the very place sanctified by the Jews before them.

This is the place where some believe Adam's skull was buried,

where Abraham almost sacrificed Isaac,

where the Jewish Holy of Holies supposedly stood.

This is the place whence Mohammed the Prophet ascended to heaven.

In the Middle Ages,

this became the epicentre of a clash of civilisations.

Christian Crusaders competed for control of the Holy City

with its Islamic rulers.

The conflict that followed left the city in ruins.

By the late 13th century, the prospect of Jerusalem becoming

once again a city of world renown, must have seemed highly unlikely.

After the bloody trauma of the Crusades,

Jerusalem had been devastated by the Tartars

and laid waste by the Mongol hordes.

Not for the first time in its history,

most of the population had either been slaughtered or had fled.

Even the walls had been reduced to rubble.

And now, scarcely 2,000 ragged souls struggled to survive

amongst the ruins.

Indeed, Jerusalem's very survival as a city was in doubt.

Jerusalem was in need of a saviour.

When he emerged, it was in the form of a brutal Islamic soldier

who'd risen to power from the slave markets of Central Asia.

Baibars was a pagan orphan, sold as a boy into

an Egyptian army of slaves, known as the Mamluks.

As he climbed the ranks, he was freed by his master

and rose to become a general.

By the time he was 30,

Baibars was the most formidable officer in this new empire.

And he was ready to take on the might of the Mongol hordes.

Baibars' Mamluk army defeated the Mongols in the hills of Galilee.

Baibars then declared himself ruler from Egypt to Syria.

Jerusalem lay at the centre of his new domain.

Baibars was a spectacularly cruel warlord,

he liked to build towers of the skulls of his fallen enemies,

his favourite punishment was public bisection, slicing in half.

No wonder he adopted the prowling panther as his personal symbol.

The Mamluk capital was in Cairo,

but Jerusalem was the religious heart of their world.

Although they were born pagans,

these former slaves had been forced to convert to Islam.

The Mamluks possessed all the fanaticism of the convert

and they revered Jerusalem as the jewel of their faith.

Baibars embarked on a mission to re-embellish

and re-sanctify the Holy City.

The Mamluks' religious enthusiasm for Jerusalem gave rise to

some of the city's finest buildings.

Baibars also helped to restore its sacred status in Islam.

The most important legacy that Baibars left Jerusalem

was not a building, it was a festival.

Baibars borrowed from Christian

and Jewish traditions to create a new religious celebration.

Every Easter Jerusalem was still dominated by Christian pilgrims

and so, at the time of Christian Easter and Jewish Passover,

Baibars gave Jerusalem its own festival.

After Baibars, every year

thousands of Jerusalemites and Palestinian Arabs

from the rest of Palestine would gather here on the temple mount,

they would party, they would celebrate and they would gallop out

on horses and camels all the way to the shrine, near Jericho,

of Nebi Musa, the Prophet Moses.

And this festival remained

Jerusalem's own special festival for 700 years.

The festival celebrated Moses, originally a Jewish patriarch,

now revered as a prophet in Islam.

Eventually, Baibars himself became a victim

of his own murderous instincts.

Baibars, that most talented but also most cruel of generals,

died after absentmindedly drinking a glass of poisoned qumiz,

fermented mare's milk,

that he'd meant to give to one of his dinner companions.

I guess that's bound to happen sooner or later

if you're in the habit of poisoning too many of your dinner guests.

Baibars' successors may have lacked his manic style,

but they were his equal in piety

and surpassed him in their love of architecture.

They built many of the finest buildings in the Old city.

Some of them were rediscovered in the 1970s

by the architectural historian Michael Burgoyne.

This is, I think, one of the most interesting Mamluk buildings

in Jerusalem, it has fabulous architecture,

architecture that's as good as any in the world, in my view.

It's beautifully built

with joints that you can hardly get a razor blade into for instance,

this stalactite canopy here, is something that a stonemason today

couldn't even begin to think about building

and yet, this is now 700 years old and still standing.

How important was Jerusalem for the Mamluks?

Well, judging by the architecture they built here, very important.

The Mamluks really re-ignited

the idea of pilgrimage to Jerusalem,

it had kind of fizzled out during the period of the crusades

and it was re-introduced right at the start of the Mamluk period.

Throughout history, Jerusalem has been most prosperous

when it's been most holy.

Pilgrimage has always been its greatest industry.

With this religious renaissance,

Jerusalem under the Mamluks once again became splendid and affluent.

But their affluence was not to last.

By the early 16th century the Mamluk Empire was exhausted

by war, corruption and plague.

Its hold on the Middle East was starting to look tenuous.

The Mamluks were now threatened by a dynamic new Islamic empire

that had already conquered the Balkans and Turkey.

The battle that followed would decide Jerusalem's destiny

for the next 400 years, right up into the twentieth century.

North of Jerusalem, in what is now Syria,

a sophisticated, modern army from Turkey confronted the Mamluks

with their old-fashioned swords and lances.

The Mamluks were routed by what would become the world's

greatest Islamic Empire.

The ruler of this great empire exulted in the name Selim the Grim.

Selim was given the keys to the Haram al Sharif,

the Islamic Noble Sanctuary.

When Selim the Grim arrived in Jerusalem,

he came here to the al Aqsa mosque. He prostrated himself and declared,

"I am the now possessor of the first qibla",

the direction of prayer, because Mohammed had originally decreed

the Muslims should pray towards Jerusalem,

only later changing it to Mecca.

Like all the Muslim rulers before him,

Selim agreed to tolerate the Jews and Christians

as long as they paid a tax of submission

and recognised the supremacy of Islamic rule.

He had earned his macabre soubriquet by killing all his brothers,

and probably some of his sons.

When he died, he was survived by just one son, Suleiman.

At the age of 25, shrewd, lean and inscrutable,

Suleiman became the most powerful man in the world.

His empire stretched from the Balkans to the borders of Persia,

and from Egypt to the Black sea.

Ottoman expansion seemed unstoppable,

challenged only by a coalition of Christian monarchs in the West.

In a dream, the Prophet came to see Suleiman and told him that,

if he wished to defeat the Christians and be a great emperor,

he must first rebuild the walls of Jerusalem

and restore the Haram al Sharif, the temple mount.

The Haram al Sharif had become Jerusalem's most important shrine,

an Islamic site of global renown.

Surrounded by high retaining walls,

it housed the Aqsa mosque

and the Dome of the rock.

The Dome was built on a rock that

had already been revered for 2,000 years.

The site of the first Jewish temple during the reign of King Solomon.

Suleiman regarded himself as a world emperor and a monarch of Islam.

His name Suleiman actually means Solomon.

Therefore he took his responsibilities in Jerusalem

especially seriously.

He immediately set about, restoring this,

the Dome of the rock.

He began by replacing its fading mosaics with tiles.

So many tiles were needed, 450,000 in fact,

that Suleiman ordered that

a factory be created up here, on the temple mount.

And this is a beautiful tribute to the glory of Suleiman,

the majesty of his new Ottoman dynasty

and, of course, the splendours of Islam.

Jerusalem had been without walls for 300 years.

Now Suleiman embarked on the enormous task

of building new defences for the city.

Today's walls and gates, including the magnificent Damascus Gate,

are all the work of Suleiman.

Suleiman's achievements in Jerusalem were so colossal

that it's true to say that the Old City today,

belongs as much to him as it does to anyone else.

Under Suleiman, Jerusalem, though still small, began to thrive again.

The population more than tripled to 16,000.

But among the Muslim population there was also

a growing minority of Jews.

The Jews had been stateless since they were expelled from Jerusalem by the Romans.

Most Jews now lived scattered across Europe and the Middle East,

but they never lost their longing for a return to Jerusalem,

which they called Zion,

after the Biblical name for David's original stronghold.

During the Spanish inquisition,

the Christian king expelled tens of thousands of Arabic speaking Jews.

They sought refuge in the more tolerant Ottoman Empire.

By the time of Suleiman, many of these Jews, known as Sephardi,

from the Hebrew word for Spain, had come to the Promised Land.

The Sephardic Jews now felt safe enough to build

four new Synagogues in what was becoming the Jewish Quarter.

This is one of them, the Ben Zaki synagogue.

And it would have been the centre of all Jewish life

in Suleiman's Jerusalem.

There was also a new influx of Jews

fleeing persecution in eastern Europe.

They were known as the Ashkenazis,

after the son of Noah,

said to be the original ancestor of the northern tribes.

Since the construction of the Islamic Haram al Sharif,

the Jews had been banned from visiting their holiest site.

But the temple mount was so holy

that Jews continued to pray as close to it as they could get.

For generations, Jews had prayed

at all the gates and walls of the temple mount.

But Suleiman the Magnificent saw himself as the Islamic emperor

and custodian of the Dome of the Rock sanctuary,

so he restricted the Jews to one small section of wall

with a narrow passage way, just nine feet wide.

From now on, this narrow section of the western wall of Herod's temple

became the focal point for the prayers of the Jewish faithful.

They were subject to bouts of repression

and with no outside champions, they were ultimately powerless.

But, according to Islamic tradition,

the Jews were tolerated, as people of the book.

The Ottomans also tolerated the city's other religious minority, the Christians.

Some of the Christians were indigenous to Palestine,

some lived here as monks and thousands more came annually,

as pilgrims to the Sepulchre, where Jesus had been buried.

Since its foundation, Christianity had spread throughout Europe,

the Middle East and the horn of Africa.

Many competing denominations had arisen.

And all of them wanted a piece of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

The competition between the three faiths, for Jerusalem's holy places

was mirrored by an equally intense competition

between the Christian churches themselves.

Since most of the Christian sects were backed

by different Christian kings,

disputes fought in Jerusalem had reverberations around the world.

This is special leave. I've never been at a night service.

This is yours, isn't it? Yes, this is ours but ...

George Hintlian has studied how the Ottoman rulers manipulated

and exploited the Christians' interminable squabbles.

By the 16th century, when the Ottomans came,

there were about nine communities on the spot

and the Ottomans had the simple rule whoever pays stays,

so the minor ones like the Georgians, the Maronites, the Serbians

couldn't afford and they dropped out, while the stronger ones

could consolidate their hold on the church.

The Ottomans' simple system meant

only the wealthiest churches could remain.

The denominations who controlled the church by the end of the 16th century

were the Catholics, backed by Europe,

the orthodox, backed by Russia,

and Armenians who had strong representation of the court of the Sultan.

So by the end of the 16th century

this was three communities who could stay.

Even these three churches seldom agreed

on who should be allowed to pray at the tomb itself.

The communities were struggling for dominance.

Sometimes the tomb of Christ changed hands

sometimes the Latin's would get it

and sometimes the orthodox would get it.

The Catholics, or Latins,

were supported and encouraged by the French government,

while Russia promoted the Orthodox church.

Both attached great importance to the prestige of

controlling the holy places and they lobbied, bribed and threatened

the Ottoman Sultans to give more space in the church

to their own priests.

As a result, even the most mundane tasks in the church

were laden with international and sacred significance.

In this church, there are no fences and hedges,

it's open spaces.

The churches have their own private areas

but there are many shared and common areas.

Cleaning the holy sepulchre means possessing the area.

You would only be able to clean what you possess

and slowly some of these sacristans were trying to clean

several inches of the property and the territory of the other person.

So this is where the other sacrosanct would be very vigilant

that his broom doesn't progress into his own area.

Even an imagined conception,

that his broom moved a little further, could ignite a fight.

The Ottomans kept the church locked

so they could charge a fee to anyone going in or out.

The key was held by an Arab Muslim family, the Nusseibehs.

To this day, each morning before dawn,

they still climb up to unlock the ancient church door.

The Ottomans let the Nusseibehs keep a share of the income

from the entry fees to the Church.

They were one of a select group of aristocratic Arab families

allowed by the Ottomans to run the city's affairs.

One family controlled the temple mount,

another family controlled access the church of the holy sepulchre.

I'm standing in the library of the Khalidi family

that controlled the Islamic law courts.

They were great connoisseurs and collectors.

And, over many centuries,

they amassed this extraordinary collection

of early Islamic manuscripts and books.

As Muslims, these elite Arab families had

far more power in Ottoman Jerusalem than any Christian or Jew.

But even the Arabs were often harassed

by their Turkish Ottoman masters.

In 1702, the Ottoman governor demanded a massive rise

in taxes, throughout Palestine.

He had to raise money to help fund wars in distant Europe and Russia.

According to the historian Adel Manna,

these tax rises were the last straw for the ruling Arab families.

The notable families of Jerusalem

were angry on this new policy.

What they did after the Friday prayer

on the mosque at Al Aqsa

they had a gathering of all the elite

and they decided together that we would rebel against

the policy and the governor.

The local people of Jerusalem took control of the city

and then they closed the gates.

The rebels succeeded to have the control of the city

for about two years and a half.

The Ottomans came with a stronger army

and put siege again on the city,

they were besieging the city from all sides,

from the north, from the south, from east, from west.

Inside, life under the siege was harsh.

The rebels split.

Those who wanted to hold out for victory

and those in favour of a compromise.

Some of the people against the rebellion opened the gate

for the Ottoman soldiers, who were able to get into the city.

Thousands of Ottoman soldiers went in

it was a matter of time until

the Ottomans were able to crush the rebellion.

The Ottomans may have crushed the rebellion

but the great powers of Europe sensed

that their hold on Jerusalem was weakened.

The British, the French and the Russians all began to compete

for influence in the city's holy places.

Jerusalem's status as the holy city of Christianity

made it a great prize for the Christian rulers of Europe.

They promoted their interests through their clients in the city.

The French backed the Catholics, the Russians backed the orthodox.

The British, as Protestants, had a particular reverence for Jerusalem.

Ever since the time of Cromwell and the Puritans,

Protestants had prayed for the return of the Jews

to the Biblical Holy Land.

British foreign secretary Lord Palmerston

built a consulate in Jerusalem to promote British interests

and a church to convert Jews to Christianity.

Imperial ambition dovetailed perfectly with evangelical zeal.

Evangelical Christians,

who were hugely influential in Victorian Britain,

believed that the longed-for second coming of Christ

would only happen once the Jews had returned to Jerusalem

and been converted to Christianity.

This belief was based on Biblical prophecies

of the events that would bring about the final day of judgment.

All the kings of Europe, motivated by the same combination

of religious faith and imperial ambition,

began to build churches in Jerusalem.

But, of all the European governments vying for power in the city,

it was the Russians who were most aggressive.

And their aggression was about to spark a war.

On good Friday 1846, the never-ending competition for territory

in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, erupted in a fight.

The French-backed Catholics and the Russian-backed Orthodox churches

both wanted to pray in the tomb at the same time.

It's a continuing dispute that sometimes erupts in violence

even now.

Back then, the priests came armed with guns and daggers,

hidden under their vestments.

Forty were killed.

The Ottoman Sultan divided the Church between the Christian sects

in a power sharing deal that still stands.

But it wasn't enough to prevent the Russians going to war with the French and the British.

All the great powers were vying for influence in Jerusalem,

but Tsar Nicholas The First of Russia had greater ambitions.

He saw himself, not just as the heir to the Ottoman Empire,

but as the actual ruler of Jerusalem.

When he invaded Ottoman territories to force the Sultan's hand

Britain and France went to war against him, to stop him.

They fought the war in the Crimea,

but even though the battles were far away,

it was also a war for Jerusalem.

The Russians lost the Crimean war

but then set about conquering Jerusalem culturally,

building their own Russian compound.

Over 10,000 Russian Christian pilgrims

visited the city every year.

Meanwhile, most of the Jews of Jerusalem

were living in abject poverty.

Appalled by their conditions, a British Jew named Moses Montefiore,

a financier, philanthropist and friend of Queen Victoria,

built the first suburb outside Jerusalem's city walls,

complete with a Kentish windmill,

to encourage the Jews to bake their own bread.

Montefiore was my great, great uncle and it was thanks to him

that I started coming here.

The old city was so filthy and poverty stricken

that Montefiore decided to build his new village

out here in the clean countryside, outside the city walls,

it became the first Jewish suburb of Jerusalem.

At the same time, the elite Arab families were building mansions

in their own new suburbs, east of the old city.

But as the century wore on,

Jerusalem was set to become increasingly Jewish.

The millions of Jews of the Russian Empire

had faced persecution throughout the 19th century,

but in the 1880s anti-Semitic violence became official Tsarist policy.

Now they faced waves of attacks and massacres, known as the pogroms.

Thousands of Russian Jews started to plan their escape to Jerusalem.

The idea of returning to Jerusalem had inspired Jews for centuries,

ever since they'd been expelled by the Romans in 70AD.

It wasn't just about finding refuge from persecution,

but also about a spiritual idea, returning to the Promised Land

and living closer to God.

In 1895 an Austrian journalist published a book

that would change the history, not only of Jerusalem,

but of the entire Middle East.

The journalist's name was Theodor Herzl.

The book was called The Jewish State.

Herzl observed the new racial anti-Semitism

spreading across Europe

and he predicted that persecution was about to get worse.

He argued, the only way Jews could be safe

was to have their own country.

His project became known as Zionism.

Many of Jerusalem's Jews had been here for centuries,

speaking Arabic and living alongside

their Christian and Muslim neighbours.

The diaries of a Palestinian musician, Wasif Jawariyeh,

give a surprising insight into the decadence of life

in this cosmopolitan city.

"It was the period of total anarchy in my life, sleeping all day

"and partying all night, I only went home to change my clothes.

"Sleeping in a different house every day.

"My body totally exhausted from drinking and merry-making.

"One moment I'm picnicking with members of Jerusalem's noble families.

"The next day I'm holding an orgy with thugs and gangsters

"in the back alleys of the old city."

The most fascinating thing about this

is how all these different worlds

Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Arab and Turk

continued to mix and coexist.

But this cultural coexistence was about to come to an end

with consequences no-one could have foreseen.

The growing number of European Jews arriving

to settle in Palestine had started to alarm the Arabs of Jerusalem

as well as the Ottoman authorities.

When the First World War broke out in 1914,

the Ottomans sided with Germany, against Britain and her allies.

By 1916-17 things were going badly for the British.

In order to secure their support,

they made promises to the Arabs and the Jews

that they never would have made in any other circumstances.

To get Arab support for the war,

the British promised to hand over

virtually the entire Middle East to Arab rule,

if the Arabs would rise up against the Ottomans.

But Prime minister David Lloyd George was also keen

to get Jewish support for the British campaign.

Lloyd George was steeped in the stories of the Bible.

He longed to see the Jews returned to the Holy Land

after centuries of exile and repression.

He also believed that backing the Jewish cause might win the support

of the millions of Jews in America and Russia,

Britain's most important allies.

So he declared his approval

for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

When General Allenby, the British commander in Egypt, invaded Ottoman Palestine,

Lloyd George demanded that he capture Jerusalem

as a "Christmas present to the British nation".

When Allenby arrived to take possession of the city,

he received a telegram from the foreign office

"Strongly advise dismounting", it said.

The government was keen that he avoid any Christ-like pretension.

He duly got off his horse at the Jaffa Gate

in reverence of the city's holy status.

In a speech on the steps of the Citadel,

Allenby promised protection and tolerance to all religions.

Soon afterwards, the defeated Ottoman Empire collapsed.

The map of the Middle East was redrawn.

The territory lost by the Ottomans was divided between the victors.

Syria and Lebanon went to the French,

while the British took Jordan and Palestine.

They agreed to rule their new territories, not as colonies,

but under international mandates

from the newly formed League of Nations.

They built a palatial new governor's residence

on a hill above the city. Government House.

For the first time since the crusader kingdom,

Jerusalem under the British mandate, was a capital city.

The British set about creating a modern,

elegant and cosmopolitan Jerusalem.

The economy flourished and the standard of living rose.

Honouring their promise to the Zionists,

Britain welcomed tens of thousands of Jewish immigrants.

Many were idealistic Europeans who wanted to build a secular,

socialist country for Jews from around the world.

But as they bought more and more land from the Arabs,

tension with their new neighbours grew.

As so often in her history, it was Jerusalem's holiest site

that would become the focal point of conflict.

The Palestinian Muslim leader, the Mufti of Jerusalem,

was from one of the elite Arab families, the Husseinis.

He gave voice to a widespread Arab fear of Jewish immigration.

He feared the Jews were planning to destroy the Haram al Sharif

to build a Jewish temple in its place.

He launched a campaign against Jews praying at the Western Wall.

The Mufti ordered that the Jewish worshippers at the wall

would be harassed from above and below

he knocked through a doorway

that turned the narrow space in front of the wall into a thoroughfare,

through which donkeys were driven, to interrupt the Jewish prayers.

The Mufti was trying to make life,

for the Jewish worshippers here, impossible and unbearable.

In response, 300 Jewish nationalists

staged an angry protest.

The next day after Friday prayers,

2,000 Arabs descended from the Al Aqsa Mosque

and attacked the Jewish worshippers.

The tension between Arabs and Jews turned the city into a tinderbox.

In a totally unrelated and tragic incident,

some Jewish schoolboys were playing football in street,

when they kicked the ball into an Arab garden.

When one went to get it back, he was stabbed to death.

At his funeral, Jewish youths attacked Arab passers by

and at Friday prayers, thousands of armed Arabs, screaming for revenge,

descended on Jewish neighbourhoods with the cry, "Death to the Jews."

131 Jews were killed by Arabs.

116 Arabs were also killed,

mostly by the British security forces.

A decade of surprisingly calm British rule was brought to an end.

When Hitler came to power in 1933,

the flow of Jews fleeing Europe reached a new high.

Never, since the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans,

had so many Jews lived in the city.

But while it may have felt like a return to Zion for these refugees,

their presence convinced many Palestinians

they'd have to fight to keep hold of their land.

The British were caught completely unawares when the first shots were fired.

Here in Jerusalem the Mufti assumed leadership of the revolt,

and soon it was a full scale uprising, throughout Palestine.

The rebels attacked the British and the Jews.

And, at one point, they even managed to capture this,

the citadel of Jerusalem.

Jerusalem descended into chaos.

Palestinians attacked the British and Jews.

The Jews responded in kind.

Both committed atrocities against civilians.

The British suppressed the revolt brutally,

punishing whole Palestinian villages for the crimes of individual rebels.

One in ten Palestinians was killed, arrested or exiled.

Britain had defeated the Arabs,

but as they faced the prospect of a second world war,

they regretted their promises to the Jews.

Jerusalem's fate would once again be determined

by events beyond her borders.

As war with Nazi Germany became inevitable,

Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain

decided the British needed the backing of the Arabs.

"If we have to offend one side or the other," he said,

"let it be the Jews and not the Arabs."

He believed the Jews would want to fight Hitler regardless

but the Arabs would need encouragement.

He offered to put a cap on Jewish immigration

and give the Palestinians total independence within ten years,

with no Jewish state at all.

It was the best offer the Palestinians were to receive

throughout the 20th century.

But for the Mufti, it wasn't enough, he rejected it out of hand.

When war broke out, many Arab Jerusalemites supported the Germans,

not out of anti-Semitism but out of nationalism,

they hoped if Britain was defeated, they would get their own state.

The Mufti himself went further.

He moved to Berlin where he publicly supported Hitler and Nazi policies.

After the end of the Second World War,

the British forces found themselves

completely out of their depth in the Holy Land.

To appease the Arabs,

they continued to enforce a limit on Jewish immigration.

Even after the scale of Hitler's slaughter

of European Jews was known,

they intercepted ship-loads of survivors from the Nazi death camps.

The Jews turned firmly against them.

And it wasn't enough to secure Palestinian support anyway.

Now it was the Jews turn to rebel.

"Tight security measures are imposed by the British.

"Scores of Jewish leaders are jailed

"and rigid searches are conducted for terrorist weapons.

"Palestine becomes an armed camp."

In retaliation, fighters from the underground Jewish militia,

the Irgun, planted a massive car bomb at the unofficial headquarters

of the British Mandate, the King David Hotel.

The bomb destroyed an entire wing of the King David Hotel.

92 people were killed including British, Jews and Arabs.

The British called it "An act of terror aimed at civilians."

And certainly, it remains the bloodiest bombing of the entire war.

The British were now caught between the Jews of Palestine,

determined to found their own Jewish state,

and the larger Arab population,

equally determined to stop them and win their own independence.

Both wanted Jerusalem.

The British lost their will to rule Palestine

and turned to the newly formed United Nations for an exit strategy.

The United Nations voted to partition Palestine into two states,

one Jewish and one Palestinian.

Jerusalem was to have a unique status, under UN protection.

For Jews it was a cause for celebration.

After 2,000 years the Zionist dream of a Jewish state

in the Holy Land was finally possible.

But the Palestinians rejected the resolution and civil war broke out.

The partition was never enforced.

As the British made their ignominious exit,

the Zionists declared the existence of the State of Israel.

Immediately, the surrounding countries of the Arab League

invaded to destroy the fledgling Jewish state.

The Jordanians had the best trained

and most effective of the invading armies.

They made straight for Jerusalem.

Both sides committed appalling atrocities,

civilians were massacred, neighbourhoods were lost, captured and destroyed.

Both Israelis and Arabs feared desperately

they were losing Jerusalem.

The Israeli forces in the old city were soon surrounded and cut off.

The battle for the Jewish quarter

was especially intense and desperate.

The crack troops of the Jordanian Arab legion

fought their way in, house by house, alleyway by alleyway,

until, for the Jews of the Jewish quarter, there was no way out.

2,000 Jews were expelled from their homes.

The Jordanians looted the empty houses

and then blew up 22 of the 27 synagogues.

Jews were banned totally from the Western wall.

Once again, the Jews had lost access to their holiest shrine.

They, in turn, expelled thousands of Palestinians

from the Jewish suburbs they now held.

Jews, Christians and Muslims,

many of whom had lived side by side for centuries, were driven apart.

Jerusalem became a divided city,

according to historian Salim Tamari.

By the end of May, most of the Arabs had fled

and then the Jewish forces came

and cleared all the Arabs from West Jerusalem.

Jerusalem became ethnically pure, if you like.

The Jewish population in the old city

were also cleared from the Jewish Quarter.

But the people cleared in the Jewish side

were much more than the Arab side.

The city was sealed, you have barbed wire

and then a wall was built

to separate the Arab city,

the eastern part,

from the Jewish city, the western part.

It was absolutely hermitically sealed,

there was nobody allowed to move in and out.

Israel was engaged in a desperate,

but ultimately victorious, struggle for survival.

The real losers were the Palestinians.

Over three quarters of a million lost their homes.

Some were expelled by force,

some left to avoid the fighting hoping to return,

many of them ended up in camps of tents

around the west bank of the Jordan river.

About half became citizens of Israel.

The tragedy of the Palestinians became known as the Naqba,

the Catastrophe.

In 1949, Israel and Jordan signed an Armistice treaty

that divided the city along a mile and a half of frontier.

The Jordanians controlled East Jerusalem and all of the old city,

the Israelis kept the western suburbs.

The Armistice line was not meant to be a permanent border.

It just happened to be where the armies stood

when the fighting stopped.

But for 20 years it formed an impenetrable, impassable barrier

between the Israelis on one side and the Arabs on the other.

It's futile to divide any city,

but it's especially tragic to divide Jerusalem.

Jerusalem was to remain divided until June of 1967,

when another conflict broke out

between Israel and her Arab neighbours.

Threatened with war on three fronts, Israel struck first

and soon got the upper hand.

"And that victory is a swift, smashing and total one.

"As crack air force, infantry, artillery and tank corps combine,

"thousands of prisoners are taken while Jordan announces

"she lost 15,000 troops in the sudden and devastating campaign."

In just six days of fighting, Israel conquered the Gaza strip,

the Golan heights, the Sinai peninsular

and the West Bank of the Jordan river.

But the conquest of the old city of Jerusalem was the climax of the war.

"Without doubt, the most personally moving moment for Israeli troops

"was the capture of the old city of Jerusalem.

"The location of an ancient Jewish holy place, revered by the Israelis."

When Israeli soldiers captured the wall,

it was an event of absolute exultation.

They danced, they sang, they prayed, they kissed the stones.

Even for secular Jews it was a moment of religious joy.

For the Jews, Israel was at last in Zion

and the cosmic order had been restored,

it was the end of exile, the fulfilment of Biblical prophecy.

But for thousands of Palestinians it was the beginning of a long

and bitter military occupation.

Winning the war presented the Israelis with the challenge faced

by all who have conquered Jerusalem, how to share its holy sites

They wanted to rule a Jerusalem of the three great Abrahamic faiths,

and that meant left leaving the Haram al Sharif to the Muslims.

The eyes of the world were upon them and they wanted to show that Israel

was a fit and suitable custodian for the Holy City.

Israel prided itself on being a young and open democracy,

and for that reason they wanted to show that they would have tolerance

for all the other faiths in Jerusalem.

But the challenge of giving all religions equal access

to their holy sites was not so easily achieved.

So many Jews were coming to pray at the newly captured western wall,

there was a demand for more space.

The Israeli authorities needed to clear a plaza.

But this meant destroying a historic Palestinian neighbourhood.

Deputy mayor Meron Benvenisti has mixed feelings about this.

We destroyed the whole area and removed the people

which caused us great distress, on the one hand,

and criticism of the world,

people said that it was similar to ethnic cleansing,

but I think it was inevitable.

This is the area of the plaza of the wall today.

Suddenly the reality of Jerusalem,

the earthly Jerusalem,

suddenly tarnished that heavenly Jerusalem,

Israelis began to understand

that still there is a problem,

because there cannot be peace

with exclusive possession.

This fundamental contradiction, that has plagued the city for centuries,

made the Haram al Sharif, yet again,

the focus of intense religious rivalry.

When Al Aqsa mosque was set on fire in 1969,

many of Jerusalem's Muslims rioted,

believing the fire bomb was a Jewish attempt to destroy the mosque.

Actually, the attack turned out to be the work

of an Australian Christian fundamentalist,

Dennis Rohan.

"The trial of Dennis Michael Rohan was a top security affair.

"Rohan later admitted starting the blaze, but pleaded insanity."

When Rohan was brought to court, it became clear he was suffering

from a special form of religious madness, peculiar to Jerusalem.

The psychotic condition is known as Jerusalem Syndrome.

An affliction that affects visitors to the Holy City

when their hopes of heavenly transcendence

collide with the reality of earthly life.

The intensity of Jerusalem's holiness has infected

not only believers, but visitors and conquerors alike,

with obsession, if not madness.

How to reconcile the dream of sanctity

with the chaos, complexity and violence of the real city.

The contradiction has never been more acute.

The long struggle for possession of the city continues,

aggravated on both sides by intolerant nationalism

and religious fundamentalism.

It has placed Jerusalem, once again

at the very centre of global politics.

The conflict has given rise to a vast concrete wall

between the Israelis and Palestinians,

the most visible symbol of the curse of Jerusalem

its division by nation and by religion.

4,000 years since it was founded,

Jerusalem today has never been larger, or more prosperous.

But it's also anxious, angry, and divided,

facing an uncertain future.

I can imagine a future where the insane acts

of a few outrageous fanatics would destroy Jerusalem altogether,

a catastrophe that would break the heart of the world.

But I can also foresee a future

when the Holy City would be shared

by its two peoples and its three faiths.

Jerusalem's holiness has been passed down

through generations of believers, Jew, Christian and Muslim.

Each generation has distilled and intensified

the city's sanctity and claimed it as their own.

Who will find it in their faith to share this hallowed place

where God meets man?