Epilogue

Abstract

Abstract On 11 December 1917, following the withdrawal of Ottoman forces, General Edmund Allenby dismounted from his horse and entered the Jaffa Gate on foot to formally accept Jerusalem’s surrender to the British Crown. The British public viewed the city’s surrender as the culmination of the Crusader wars. Allenby’s entry was rooted in millennia of precedent, from David to Jesus to Heraclius to Umar to Godfrey de Bouillon. As a result, Jerusalem, which for Christians is the center of universal salvation and the capital of a symbolic world empire, became part of the British Empire and the capital of Mandatory Palestine. But just three decades after Allenby walked through the Jaffa Gate, the British, unable to stem the rising tide of violence between Jews and Arabs, relinquished the Mandate and withdrew from Palestine.