Jerusalem is a city divided. That seems clear enough even to someone not conversant with the political geography of the city. Jerusalem is divided. Although the United Nations (UN) in its first act as a body, on 29 November 1947, established Resolution (II), which was a plan for the governing of Jerusalem that would make, as Naim Ateek states in Justice and Only Justice, ‘Jerusalem as a corpus separatum, internationalized’ (Ateek 1989: 173), belonging to and serving both Arabs and Jews as a common capital city of the Holy Land. The reality of this hoped for act has never been realized, enforced or enacted. Just looking within the walled city of Old Jerusalem one can see an intricate, tightly compressed, overlapping and intermingling of sacred and historical places that are divided, though one, within the walls of the Old City.

The Old City of Jerusalem is a walled city, enclosed and divided into sections or quarters. The present day walls and gates were built between 1537 and 1542 BCE, during the reign of the Turkish ruler, Suleyman the Magnificent. They have been modified in ensuing centuries, but in essence remain the same. Within the Jewish Quarter, which is found in the southeast sector, there are six synagogues and many areas of archaeological interest including a Hasmonean Walk, left from the time of the Hasmonean Kingdom (167–63 BCE, when Pompey took control of the region).