Allenby Square - The First Allenby Square

The First Allenby Square

The hill where the first surrender took place was at that time on the western edge of Jerusalem just beyond the walls of the old city. Allenby held his ceremony at the square near Jaffa gate, which was then named "Allenby Square."

Throughout the years of British rule in Mandatory Palestine, Allenby Square was in the midst of a bustling thoroughfare. However, with the outbreak of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the square became part of the battlefield, separating first the Jewish and Arab militias from each other, and later the newly-formed IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) from the Jordanian Arab Legion.

The 1949 Armistice Agreements fixed the position of Allenby Square as part of the no-man's-land, and it remained such until the conquest of East Jerusalem and its annexation to Israel in 1967.

In the first flush of victory euphoria, the Israeli authorities decided to change the name of the square to "IDF Square" (ככר צה"ל), which is its name up to the present, a conspicuous location on the invisible seam line that roughly divides the largely Israeli-inhabited West Jerusalem and the largely Palestinian-inhabited Eastern sector, forty years after the unification of the city.