Under the 1947 UN Partition Plan to divide historical Palestine between Jewish and Arab states, Jerusalem was granted special status and was meant to be placed under international sovereignty and control. The special status was based on Jerusalem's religious importance to the three Abrahamic religions.
Jerusalem is a city located in modern-day Israel and is considered by many to be one of the holiest places in the world. Jerusalem is a site of major significance for the three largest monotheistic religions: Judaism, Islam and Christianity, and both Israel and Palestine have claimed Jerusalem as a capital city.
In 1980, Israel passed the Jerusalem Law, which declared that "Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel". The Security Council declared the law null and void in Resolution 478, which also called upon member states to withdraw their diplomatic missions from the city.
According to biblical accounts, Jerusalem, on the frontier of Benjamin and Judah and inhabited by a mixed population described as Jebusites, was captured by David, founder of the joint kingdom of Israel and Judah, and the city became the Jewish kingdom's capital. This has been dated to about 1000 bce.
Within Judaism, Israel is the Holy Land. It is the land where the faith began – and Jerusalem is the Holy City. For Jews, Jerusalem is at the core of their faith and their world. According to Jewish tradition, all of creation began in Jerusalem.
Historically, Jerusalem became the capital of Israel by decree of King David 3,000 years ago, based on his understanding of God's own choice. It has remained Israel's capital ever since, and though other nations conquered and settled in the Land of Israel, none ever declared Jerusalem as their capital.
Israel is masculine, and Zion/Jerusalem is feminine. The difference between the two is more visible in Hebrew which distinguishes masculine and feminine in the verbs as well as in the adjectives.
According to the Gospels, Jesus was a Jewish man born in Bethlehem and raised in the town of Nazareth, in Galilee (formerly Palestine, now northern Israel) during the first century.
This division, which took place approximately 975 B.C., after the death of Solomon and during the reign of his son, Rehoboam, came about as the people revolted against heavy taxes levied by Solomon and Rehoboam.
Bethlehem lies 10 kilometres south of the city of Jerusalem, in the fertile limestone hill country of the Holy Land. Since at least the 2nd century AD people have believed that the place where the Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem, now stands is where Jesus was born.
For the Christian, the Holy Land is birthplace of Jesus of Nazareth and the site of his ministry; for the Moslem, Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock marks the spot from which the Prophet Mohammed is said to have ascended to heaven.
The city of Jerusalem was first built on the hill south of temple mount by the ancient Canaanites in the 18th century b.c.e. David son of Jesse, King of Israel, conquered the small Jebusite (Canaanite) city and made it his capital, which he called - the City of David (2nd Samuel 5).
The oldest fossils of anatomically modern humans found outside Africa are the Skhul and Qafzeh hominids, who lived in northern Israel 120,000 years ago. Around 10th millennium BCE, the Natufian culture existed in the area.
Indigenous Peoples in Israel
Israel's Arab Bedouin citizens are Indigenous to the Negev (Naqab, in Arabic) desert, where they have lived for centuries as a semi-nomadic people, long before the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.
The British controlled Palestine until Israel, in the years following the end of World War II, became an independent state in 1947.
Of the land that the Jews bought, 52.6% were bought from non-Palestinian landowners, 24.6% from Palestinian landowners, 13.4% from government, churches, and foreign companies, and only 9.4% from fellaheen (farmers).
While the State of Israel was established on 15 May 1948 and admitted to the United Nations, a Palestinian State was not established. The remaining territories of pre-1948 Palestine, the West Bank - including East Jerusalem- and Gaza Strip, were administered from 1948 till 1967 by Jordan and Egypt, respectively.
Israel has cited several reasons for retaining the West Bank within its ambit: a claim based on the notion of historic rights to this as a homeland as claimed in the Balfour Declaration of 1917; security grounds, both internal and external; and the deep symbolic value for Jews of the area occupied.
The 1948 war ended with Israeli forces controlling approximately 78 percent of historical Palestine. The remaining 22 percent fell under the administration of Egypt and Jordan. In 1967, Israel absorbed the whole of historical Palestine, as well as additional territory from Egypt and Syria.
Bethlehem (/ˈbɛθlɪhɛm/; Arabic: بيت لحم Bayt Laḥm; Hebrew: בֵּית לֶחֶם Bēṯ Leḥem) is a city in the West Bank, Palestine, located about 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) south of Jerusalem.
The State of Israel is a country in southwestern Asia on the eastern side of the Mediterranean Sea. Israel is the only Jewish country, and the spiritual home for Jews all over the world. Israel's population was 8.1 million people in 2013 and 6.04 million are Jewish.
Archaeologists working in Nazareth — Jesus' hometown — in modern-day Israel have identified a house dating to the first century that was regarded as the place where Jesus was brought up by Mary and Joseph.
| Origin of Everything. Jesus' name in Hebrew was “Yeshua” which translates to English as Joshua.