You must claim for yourselves a national existence as states among states, and your unencroachable right to bow down before God according to your faith, publicly and forever. His Majesty s government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people. Arthur J. Balfour , British Foreign Secretary in a letter to Lord Lionel Rothschild to become known as the Balfour Declaration, November 2, 1917. Jerusalem has never been the capital of any people except the Jewish people. The unity of Jerusalem must be preserved.
Internationalization is an idea which never worked in history.
Rev. Douglas Young , Statement by Evangelical Christians in 1971. The Jewish claim, therefore, is not based on biblical and historical rights alone. Jews have always been permanent residents of the Old City, and since 1820, the Jews constituted the largest single community there. Thirty thousand out of 40,000 people in Jerusalem are Jews. Muslim agitation leads to country-wide riots, culminating in the massacre of the Hebron and Safed Jewish communities.