Cheap car rentals in Jerusalem

Jerusalem (; Hebrew: יְרוּשָׁלַיִם Yerushaláyim; Arabic: القُدس al-Quds)^{[note 2]} is a city in Western Asia. Situated on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea, it is one of the oldest cities in the world, and is considered holy for the three major Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The city straddles the Green Line between Israel and the West Bank; both Israelis and Palestinians claim Jerusalem as their capital, as Israel controls the entire city and maintains its primary governmental institutions there while the Palestinian National Authority and Palestine Liberation Organization ultimately foresee it as the seat of power for the State of Palestine. Due to this long-running dispute, neither claim is widely recognized internationally.

Throughout its long history, Jerusalem has been destroyed at least twice, besieged 23 times, captured and recaptured 44 times, and attacked 52 times. The part of Jerusalem called the City of David shows first signs of settlement in the 4th millennium BCE, in the shape of encampments of nomadic shepherds. During the Canaanite period (14th century BCE), Jerusalem was named Urusalim on ancient Egyptian tablets, which probably referred to Shalim, a Canaanite deity. During the Israelite period, significant construction activities began throughout the city in the 9th century BCE (Iron Age II), and by the 8th century BCE, Jerusalem had developed into the religious and administrative centre of the Kingdom of Judah. In 1538 CE, the surrounding city walls were rebuilt for a last time under Suleiman the Magnificent of the Ottoman Empire. Today, these walls define the Old City, which has traditionally been divided into four sections, individually known since the early 19th century as (going clockwise from the southeastern end): the Jewish Quarter, the Armenian Quarter, the Christian Quarter, and the Muslim Quarter. The Old City became a World Heritage Site in 1981, and has been on the List of World Heritage in Danger since 1982. Since 1860, Jerusalem has grown far beyond the Old City’s boundaries. In 2015, Jerusalem had a population of some 850,000 residents, comprising approximately 200,000 secular Jewish Israelis, 350,000 Haredi Jews, and 300,000 Palestinian Arabs. In 2016, the city’s population was 882,700, of which Jews comprised 536,600 (61%), Muslims comprised 319,800 (36%), Christians comprised 15,800 (2%), and unclassified subjects comprised 10,300 (1%).