page_title: Jewish Quarter (Jerusalem)
section_title: 1947/8
hierarchical_section_title: Jewish Quarter (Jerusalem) / History / 1947/8
caption_attribution_description: English: Mordechai Weingarten with his daughter Yehudit negotiating surrender of Jewish Quarter, 28 May 1948.
context_page_description: The Jewish Quarter is one of the four traditional quarters of the Old City of Jerusalem. The 116,000 square meter area lies in the southeastern sector of the walled city, and stretches from the Zion Gate in the south, along the Armenian Quarter on the west, up to the Street of the Chain in the north and extends to the Western Wall and the Temple Mount in the east. In the early 20th century, the Jewish population of the quarter reached 19,000.
  The quarter is inhabited by around 2,000 residents and is home to numerous yeshivas and synagogues, most notably the Hurva Synagogue, destroyed numerous times and rededicated in 2010.
context_section_description: Between 1910 and 1948, the number of Jews in Jerusalem rose from 45 to 100 thousand and within these totals the Old City population fell from 16 to 2 thousand over the same period. According to Benny Morris,quoting a British diplomat, the nearly all Orthodox community were "on good terms with their Arab neighbours," resented the Haganah presence, and “were loath to see their homes sacrificed to Zionist heroics,".
  Following a battle on the 11 December 1947, the day after Jewish forces in the quarter had been reinforced by Irgun and Haganah units, the British set troops to positions between the Arabs and Jews and after this, the Old City remained largely quiet until the British evacuation.
  After Irgun bomb attacks outside the Damascus Gate on 13 and 29 December 1947, resulting in the death of 18 Arabs and 86 injured including women and children, the Arabs set roadblocks outside the Old City cutting off the Jewish Quarter. The British approved this while ensuring supplies of food and the safety of the residents.
  On  April 28, 1948 Francis Sayre, the President of the United Nations Trusteeship Council announced that both  Moshe Shertok of the Jewish Agency and Jamal al-Husayni of the Higher Arab Committee had agreed to  recommend to their respective  communities in Palestine: (a) the immediate cessation of all military  operations and acts of violence within the Old City; (b) the issue of cease-fire  orders to this effect at the earliest possible moment; and (c) that the keeping of the truce should be observed by an impartial commission reporting to the Trusteeship Council. At the May 3 Trusteeship Council meeting, Sayre announced that a cease-fire order had been issued the previous day. On May 7, General Cunningham, the High Commissioner met Arab League representatives including Azzam Pasha, the Secretary-General of the League and obtained approval for a cease-fire agreement covering all of Jerusalem provided that the Jews also agreed, this being forthcoming later the same day when the Haganah issued a cease-fire order to its troops in the Jerusalem area.
  According to a diary covering the period 12 May to July 16 1948, of Hugh Jones, a British clergyman with Christ Church, British troops were withdrawn from their positions protecting the Jewish Quarter in the evening of May 13, 1948. Haganah forces occupied the positions vacated by the British army and the High Commissioner left Jerusalem early the next morning. Morris says that there were 90 mostly Haganah defenders, joined by 100 more after the British left their positions.
  The defenders surrendered on May 28, 1948, and Mordechai Weingarten negotiated the surrender terms. In a letter sent to the United Nations in 1968, in response to Jordanian allegations, Israel noted that Colonel Abdullah el Tell, local commander of the Jordanian Arab Legion, described the destruction of the Jewish Quarter in his memoirs (Cairo, 1959):
  "... The operations of calculated destruction were set in motion.... I knew that the Jewish Quarter was densely populated with Jews who caused their fighters a good deal of interference and difficulty.... I embarked, therefore, on the shelling of the Quarter with mortars, creating harassment and destruction.... Only four days after our entry into Jerusalem the Jewish Quarter had become their graveyard. Death and destruction reigned over it.... As the dawn of Friday, May 28, 1948, was about to break, the Jewish Quarter emerged convulsed in a black cloud - a cloud of death and agony." 
  — Abdullah el-Tal according to Yosef Tekoah (Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations).
  The Jordanian commander is reported to have told his superiors: "For the first time in 1,000 years not a single Jew remains in the Jewish Quarter. Not a single building remains intact. This makes the Jews' return here impossible." Abdullah al-Tal justified the destruction of the Jewish quarter by claiming that had he not destroyed the homes, he would have lost half his men. He adds that "the systematic demolition inflicted merciless terror in the hearts of the Jews, killing
caption: Weingarten negotiating the surrender with Arab Legion soldiers
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