Judaization of Jerusalem

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Judaization of Jerusalem (Arabic: تهويد القدس, romanized: tahwīd al-Quds; Hebrew: יהוד ירושלים, romanized: yehud Yerushalayim) is the view that Israel has sought to transform the physical and demographic landscape of Jerusalem to enhance its Jewish character at the expense of its Muslim and Christian ones.

The city's Jewish character first emerged as the capital of the Kingdom of Judah during the Iron Age, which saw the construction of the First Temple as a symbolic center of Jewish worship. Jerusalem was destroyed by the Neo-Babylonian Empire in 586 BCE, and many of its elites exiled, only to return decades later following the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid Empire, who allowed the building of the Second Temple.^[1] Jerusalem was once again placed at the center of Jewish religious and national life during the Second Temple period, which lasted between 516 BCE and 70 CE.^[1] The city retained its Jewish character up until its destruction by the Romans at the height of the First Jewish–Roman War, and remained central in Jewish religion and identity ever since.

The "Judaization of Jerusalem" claims often involve the increasing Jewish presence in Jerusalem in the modern era, referring to the Jewish Old Yishuv becoming increasingly dominant since the Ottoman era; this process continued until Jews became the largest ethnoreligious group in Jerusalem since the mid-19th century and until the 1948 War when East Jerusalem became under Jordanian control.

The claim that Israel is promoting the "Judaization" of Jerusalem, and especially the Temple Mount, has been promoted by Palestinian Islamist groups such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.^[2][3][4][5]