---
title: "Fact check: Jerusalem Demographics And History"
description: "Jews have constituted the demographic majority in Jerusalem since the mid-nineteenth century, and the city's Arab population has grown significantly under Israeli municipal administration since 1967."
url: "https://hasbara.co.il/facts-myths/myth-jerusalem-demographics-and-history"
type: "fact-check"
locale: "en"
published: "2026-11-01T13:01:20.000Z"
updated: "2026-11-01T13:11:38.057Z"
categories: ["Historical"]
---

# Fact check: Jerusalem Demographics And History

*Jews have constituted the demographic majority in Jerusalem since the mid-nineteenth century, and the city's Arab population has grown significantly under Israeli municipal administration since 1967.*

## Myth

Jerusalem maintained a continuous Arab majority throughout history until Israel seized the city in 1967 and systematically displaced its indigenous Arab Settler residents.

## Fact

Jews have constituted the demographic majority in Jerusalem since the mid-nineteenth century, and the city's Arab population has grown significantly under Israeli municipal administration since 1967.

## Nineteenth-Century Demographics and Official Census Records

The claim that Jerusalem maintained an unbroken Arab majority until 1967 is directly refuted by extensive demographic data and archival censuses conducted by Ottoman authorities, foreign consulates, and the British Mandate. By the mid-nineteenth century, decades before the development of modern political Zionism, Jews had already established themselves as the largest single religious group in the city. An 1844 census recorded 7,120 Jews, 5,000 Muslims, and 3,390 Christians. By the 1870s, as the Jewish population expanded beyond the historic walls of the Old City to construct the first modern neighborhoods, such as Mishkenot Sha'ananim, Jews became the absolute majority of Jerusalem's inhabitants. The 1896 Ottoman census confirmed this reality, documenting 28,112 Jewish residents out of an aggregate population of 45,420.

Subsequent censuses administered by the British Mandatory government recorded the continuation of this clear Jewish majority. The comprehensive British census of 1922 documented 33,971 Jews out of 52,081 residents, representing roughly 65 percent of the municipality. The 1931 census similarly verified this demographic predominance, counting 51,222 Jews in an overall urban population of 90,451, or nearly 57 percent. By May 1948, on the eve of Israel's War of Independence, Jerusalem's total population had expanded to roughly 165,000, with more than 100,000 Jewish residents living throughout both western and eastern municipal sections.

## The 1948 Jordanian Occupation and Expulsion of Jews

The only historical instance in the modern era where Jerusalem experienced targeted ethnic cleansing occurred during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, perpetrated by the invading Arab Legion of Transjordan. In May 1948, Jordanian forces besieged, bombarded, and captured the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. Jordan forcibly evacuated or exiled roughly 2,000 Jewish residents whose families had inhabited the Old City for generations. The Jordanian military commander, Colonel Abdullah el-Tell, openly declared that he had cleared the Jewish Quarter and destroyed its buildings to ensure that not a single Jew remained.

Throughout the subsequent nineteen years of Jordanian military occupation (1948–1967), the eastern sector of Jerusalem was subjected to systematic devastation:

- Expulsion of all Jewish inhabitants, leaving the historic eastern half of the city entirely devoid of Jews.
- Destruction and desecration of 58 historic synagogues and study centers across the Jewish Quarter, including the centuries-old Hurva and Tiferet Yisrael synagogues.
- Ransacking of the historic Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives, where tens of thousands of tombstones were ripped out to pave roads, line footpaths, and construct Jordanian military latrines.
- Denial of access for Jews to their holiest sanctuary, the Western Wall, in direct violation of Article VIII of the 1949 Israel-Jordan Armistice Agreement.

## Arab Demographic Expansion in Reunified Jerusalem Since 1967

When Israeli forces reunited Jerusalem during the Six-Day War in June 1967, municipal administration was established over the entire urban area without the systematic displacement or expulsion of the local Arab population. Official municipal records demonstrate that the Arab population of Jerusalem has grown rapidly and consistently under Israeli governance.

In 1967, approximately 68,000 Arab residents lived within the municipal boundaries of the newly reunified city, accounting for approximately 26 percent of its total population. According to verified records published by the [Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research](https://jerusaleminstitute.org.il/en/yearbook/) and the [Israel Central Bureau of Statistics](https://www.cbs.gov.il/he/mediarelease/DocLib/2024/165/11_24_165b.pdf), Jerusalem's Arab population surged to over 390,000 by 2024. Far from declining, the Arab proportion of Jerusalem's population increased from roughly 26 percent in 1967 to approximately 39 percent in 2024, experiencing an overall growth rate higher than that of the Jewish population over that same span. Arab residents of eastern Jerusalem received permanent residency rights, complete access to Israel's national health insurance and national insurance system, the right to vote in municipal elections, and the legal mechanism to apply for full Israeli citizenship.

## Sources

- [cbs.gov.il](https://www.cbs.gov.il/he/mediarelease/DocLib/2024/165/11_24_165b.pdf)
- [jerusaleminstitute.org.il](https://jerusaleminstitute.org.il/en/yearbook/)
- [jcfa.org](https://jcfa.org/article/jerusalems-changing-demographics-an-overview-of-the-new-jerusalem-statistical-yearbook/)
- [jcfa.org](https://jcfa.org/article/creation-western-wall-plaza-1967-necessary-legal/)