Category: ISRAEL BEFORE 1967

In May and early June of 1967, tensions between Israel and the surrounding states built to a crisis.

At the end of the War of Independence, Jerusalem was divided between Israel and Jordan. Armistice lines were determined in November 1948 by Moshe Dayan, Israeli Commander of the Jerusalem district, and Abdallah el-Tal, Legion Commander of Jordan’s Jerusalem front. Between the lines drawn by the two commanders, areas left undefined became “no-man’s land.” The area around Armon Hanatziv was used as UN territory, and Mount Scopus became an Israeli enclave containing the Hebrew University, Hadassah Hospital and, officially, the village of Issawiyya. This map was adopted in April 1949 in an armistice agreement signed in Rhodes. The westernmost point between the two parts of the city was at the edge of the Musrara neighborhood, near the Mandelbaum Gate.

In 1947, Great Britain turned over Mandatory Palestine to UN responsibility. The General Assembly appointed a committee which after much study and discussion recommended partitioning the land into Jewish state and Arab states, wi­­th Jerusalem under international supervision. On November 29, the partition resolution was accepted by a vote of 33-13.