Jewish Quarter (Jerusalem) - Israeli Occupation

Israeli Occupation

The quarter remained under Jordanian occupation until the Six-Day War in June 1967. During the first week after taking the Quarter, the Mughrabi Quarter was razed to create a plaza at the foot of the Western Wall. In April 1968, the government expropriated 129 dunams (about 32 acres) of land which had made up the Quarter before 1948. In 1969, the Jewish Quarter Development Company was established under the auspices of the Construction and Housing Ministry to rebuild the desolate Jewish Quarter. At this stage the Arab population of the Quarter reached approximately 1,000, most of whom were refugees who had appropriated the vacated Jewish houses in 1949. Although many had originally fled the Quarter in 1967, they later returned after Levi Eshkol ordered that the Arab residents not be forcefully evacuated from the area. With Menachem Begin's rise to power in 1977, he decided that 25 Arab families be allowed to remain in the Jewish Quarter as a gesture of good will, while the rest of the families who had not fled during the Six-Day War were offered compensation in return for their evacuation, although most declined. The quarter was rebuilt in keeping with the traditional standards of the dense urban fabric of the Old City. Residents of the quarter hold long-term leaseholds, leased from the Israel Lands Administration. As of 2004 the quarter's population stood at 2,348 and many large educational institutions have taken up residence.

Before being rebuilt, the quarter was carefully excavated under the supervision of Hebrew University archaeologist Nahman Avigad. The archaeological remains, on display in a series of museums and outdoor parks to visit which tourists descend two or three stories beneath the level of the current city, collectively form one of the world's most accessible archaeological sites.