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The Department reminds U.S. citizens of the continued need for caution and increased personal security awareness as security incidents often take place without warning. The security environment remains complex and can change quickly depending on the political situation and recent events. Please see the latest Israel Security Alert .

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Jerusalem   Travel Guide

Courtesy of Yulia_Malinovskaya | Getty Images

Why Go To Jerusalem

Jerusalem is suspended between many different crosshairs. First and foremost, it serves as the Holy City for the three primary western religions: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. The narrow streets and alleyways that make up the labyrinth-like Old City reverberate with the sounds of spirituality. Whispered Hebrew prayers uttered by tefillin -clad Jews at the Western Wall mingle with the hauntingly beautiful Muslim call-to-prayer sounding from Temple Mount . The voices from the Jewish and Muslim quarters are then accompanied by melodic bells sounding from the Christian Church of the Holy Sepulchre . For many visitors, the rumor of a constant Almighty presence suddenly becomes very real; even the most adamant non-believer will find it hard to deny that there's something ethereal about Jerusalem.

While the image of ancient Jerusalem—a city still ruled by King David and his followers—is what most travelers expect, you'll find instead a destination in flux. Beyond the historic walls of the Old City lies a buzzing metropolis where traditional lifestyles collide with cosmopolitan developments. West Jerusalem is littered with trendy restaurants and bars, while East Jerusalem resonates with the cries of market vendors. The city's diverse offerings have transformed Jerusalem from a pilgrimage spot to a well-rounded vacation destination. So whatever your reason for visiting, you can be sure that this is a city you’ll never forget.

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Best of Jerusalem

Best hotels in jerusalem.

• in American Colony Hotel The Leading Hotels of the World
• in The David Citadel Hotel
• in Inbal Hotel

Best Things to Do in Jerusalem

• # 1 in Old City
• # 2 in Western Wall (Wailing Wall)
• # 3 in Israel Museum

Popular Tours

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Jerusalem Travel Tips

Best months to visit.

The best times to visit Jerusalem are April through May and October through November, when the weather is mild and the crowds are thin. However, make sure to cross-check your travel dates with major Jewish celebrations such as the High Holy Days, Sukkot, and Passover. A strong surge of visitor traffic drives hotel prices up during these holidays. Summer is Jerusalem's peak tourism season, despite sweltering daytime temps. Winters boast good deals on hotels, but the weather remains fickle: One day can be sunny and fairly warm, while the next can be rainy and chilly.

Weather in Jerusalem

Data sourced from the National Climatic Data Center

What You Need to Know

• You're safe in tourist areas In Jerusalem, differing ideological views regularly spur heated religious and political debates, which have occasionally led to violent outbursts in the past. But aggressive instances are rare and do not take place in tourist areas.
• Be respectful This city is considered holy by Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike, meaning you should be considerate of traditions and conform to the more conservative dress code. Save your shorts and tank tops for Tel Aviv .
• Stock up for the weekend Many of Jerusalem's businesses and restaurants (Christian, Jewish, and Muslim) close for the Sabbath. Make sure to buy all food or other need-to-have items by Friday afternoon.

How to Save Money in Jerusalem

• Avoid major holidays Jerusalem's prices skyrocket during major Jewish festivals, especially Passover (March or April), Sukkot (September or October), and the High Holy Days ( fall). You'll find better deals if you avoid these holidays.
• Don't stay in West Jerusalem Hotels in West Jerusalem are more modern and more expensive. You'll find better rates within the Old City , but be prepared for possible nighttime curfews. East Jerusalem also has affordable lodging, but try to stay close to Damascus or Herod's Gate for convenience's sake.
• Rely on street eats Jerusalem has its fair share of swanky restaurants, but you can save some shekels by relying on food carts and markets for a good meal. Vendors throughout the city sell everything from bagels to falafel at a reasonable price, while the Mahane Yehuda market in West Jerusalem is a go-to spot for fresh produce.

Culture & Customs

Jerusalem acts as the Holy City by the three major Abrahamic religions: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. This mingling of spirituality has led to a mélange of culture. For example, you’ll hear a multi-lingual soundtrack on a stroll through the Old City ; Hebrew and Arabic are the dominant languages, but you'll also catch whispers of Yiddish and other languages. Many Israelis, especially those working in the food and hospitality industries, also speak English.

Many Jerusalem residents still fervently following guidelines listed in their bible. You will witness some of these customs during your visit. For example, Jews and Muslims do not eat pork; therefore, if you get a craving for ham and cheese, you'll be out of luck. Many restaurants throughout Jerusalem, particularly in Jewish neighborhoods, maintain a kosher menu, meaning they observe strict religious rules about food consumption and preparation. But chances are that you won't give this a second thought as you thumb through a menu. Also, many businesses (especially in the Old City) close during the weekend to honor the various sabbaths. Jewish establishments close their doors on Friday afternoon and don't open again until Saturday night or Sunday morning. Many Christian businesses are closed on Sundays. All of these businesses—no matter their affiliation—accept Shekels (ILS), Israel's official currency.

You'll also encounter a variety of clothing styles, from the heavy black attire and wide-brimmed hats worn of Haredi Jews to the lighter, more casual tunics sported of Arab merchants. Keep in mind you should dress more conservatively in Jerusalem. Avoid wearing anything too revealing, especially if you plan to visit the city's religious sites. Note that the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Me'a She'arim (just northwest of the Old City) requires extremely conservative attire, such as long sleeves, ankle-length skirts, and covered heads, as well as very modest behavior.

In the decades of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, contention over the city’s ownership has resulted in violent outbursts, most notably riots. That said, visitors should not feel threatened, as these incidents usually do not take place in tourist areas. You will likely come across a large number of Israeli soldiers, but don't let that alarm you: Many of these soldiers are tourists, just like you. You may also encounter armed guards performing security screenings at the Old City gates at night.

Getting Around Jerusalem

The best ways to get around Jerusalem are on foot or by taxi. Many of the city's top attractions are within walking distance of one another inside or just beyond the Old City walls. When you're looking to expand your stomping grounds, taxis are extremely convenient (albeit a little pricey). The transportation company, Egged, provides public bus service within the city and many points around the country. Egged also services Ben Gurion International Airport (TLV), about 38 miles northwest of Jerusalem on the outskirts of Tel Aviv . However, the bus system isn't intuitive for foreign visitors. Travelers usually will have better luck with the new light rail system, which opened in 2011.

Entry & Exit Requirements

The Israeli government does not require your passport to be valid for at least six months after your arrival, but many airlines do. You will also need to show a return or onward ticket and sufficient proof of funds to enter the country. Expect heightened security screenings at the airport; the Israeli government has been known to deny travelers entry based on background checks. The government will also deny entry to anyone looking to travel to the West Bank or Gaza. You can learn more by visiting the U.S. State Department website .

This stunning domed shrine resides on Temple Mount .

Explore More of Jerusalem

Things To Do

Best hotels.

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Destroyed and rebuilt over thousands of years, Jerusalem's spiritual magnetism endures. With interlacing histories, clashing cultures and constant reinvention, the city is an intense, multisensory experience.

Attractions

Must-see attractions.

Church of the Holy Sepulchre

Four magnificent arches, their lintels richly decorated with Crusader crosses, herald the entrance to one of Christianity's most sacred sites. The church…

Temple Mount/Al Haram Ash Sharif

There are few patches of ground as holy – or as disputed – as this one. Known to Muslims as Al Haram Ash Sharif (The Noble Sanctuary) and to Jews as Har…

Western Wall

The air is electric at Judaism's holiest prayer site, where worshippers recite scriptures, lay their hands on 2000-year-old stone and utter impassioned…

Israel Museum

More than 5000 years of cultural treasures are assembled around the vast Israel Museum's indoor and outdoor galleries. Highlights are the titanic statues…

City of David

East Jerusalem

As teeming with controversy as it is with ancient history, the City of David is one of Jerusalem's most active archaeological sites. The oldest part of…

Israel's official memorial to the six million Jews who died at the hands of the Nazis is powerful, poignant and a masterpiece of design. The museum's name…

Dome of the Rock

The jewel in the crown of Temple Mount/Al Haram Ash Sharif is the gold-plated Dome of the Rock, the enduring symbol of the city and one of the most…

Mahane Yehuda Market

All of Jerusalem meets in Mahane Yehuda, from first-time visitors to residents filling their trolleys with fruit and veg. Market tables are laden with…

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Jerusalem and beyond

20 Top-Rated Things to Do in Jerusalem

Written by Jess Lee Updated Mar 24, 2023

The most contested city on Earth is also one of the most beautiful.

Jerusalem's scope of history is staggering, and the major role the city plays in the traditions of all three major monotheistic faiths has led to it being continually fought over, across the centuries.

This is the heart of the Holy Land , where the Jews raised the First Temple to keep the Ark of the Covenant safe, where Jesus was crucified and rose again, and where the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven to receive God's word.

For believers, a visit to Jerusalem is a pilgrimage to one of the most sacred sites in the world. The number of religious tourist attractions here can be baffling for first-time visitors, but luckily most of the top sightseeing landmarks and things to do are secreted within the lanes of the compact Old City district .

With so much to see and do, the best way to tackle a trip here is to decide on a few key points of interest and places to visit that are must-dos and break your sightseeing down into sections of the city.

Don't try to do too much and wear yourself out. It would take a lifetime to see everything that Jerusalem offers.

Help plan your city sightseeing with our list of the top tourist attractions and things to do in Jerusalem.

1. Haram Al-Sharif (Temple Mount)

2. western wall and jewish quarter, 3. church of the holy sepulchre, 4. armenian quarter, 5. follow the route of the via dolorosa, 6. explore the citadel (tower of david) and surrounds, 7. churches of the christian quarter, 8. muslim quarter, 9. mount of olives, 10. mount zion, 11. walk the old city walls, 12. east jerusalem, 13. west jerusalem central city sites, 14. israel museum, 15. kidron valley, 16. monastery of the cross, 17. yad vashem (hill of remembrance), 18. herzl museum, 19. take a day trip to ein kerem and abu ghosh, 20. visit latrun, map of things to do in jerusalem, jerusalem, israel - climate chart, history of jerusalem.

Follow in the footsteps of centuries of pilgrims, and enter one of the holiest sanctuaries on Earth .

Lauded by both Jews and Muslims, this is the site where Abraham (father of all three monotheistic faiths) is said to have offered his son up as a sacrifice to God, where Solomon built the First Temple for the Ark of the Covenant, and where the Prophet Muhammad is said to have ascended to heaven during his early years of preaching Islam.

Haram Al-Sharif is a place of deep significance (and contention over ownership) for those of faith.

The wide plaza, above the old city, is centered around the glittering Dome of the Rock , which is Jerusalem's most iconic landmark .

Beneath the golden dome is the sacred stone both Jews and Muslims believe to be where Abraham offered his son to God and where Muslims also believe the Prophet Muhammad began his journey to heaven.

The southern side of the plaza is home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque . First established in 705 CE, it's among the oldest mosques in the world .

Location: Entry from Western Wall Plaza, Old City

The Western Wall is the surviving retaining wall of Jerusalem's First Temple.

Sometimes also called the Wailing Wall due to the people's laments for the loss of the temple in 70 CE, it is now the holiest site in Judaism and has been a place of pilgrimage for the Jewish people since the Ottoman era.

The Jewish Quarter of the old city runs roughly from the Zion Gate east to the Western Wall Plaza . This part of the Old City was destroyed during the Israeli-Arab fighting in 1948 and has been extensively rebuilt since 1967.

A major highlight here for history fans is the Jerusalem Archaeological Park at the southern end of the Western Wall Plaza, where archaeologists have unearthed fascinating remnants of old Jerusalem.

The Western Wall Tunnels , which take you under the city, back to the level of the original city, are also not to be missed.

Jewish Quarter Street (Rehov HaYehudim) is the main lane of the district, and veering off this road onto the surrounding side streets are a cluster of interesting synagogues to visit.

For Christian pilgrims, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is Jerusalem's holiest site and is said to have been built on the site where Jesus was crucified.

The site for the church was picked by Saint Helena–mother to Constantine the Great–during her tour of the Holy Land. She was the one to announce to the Byzantine world that this spot was the Calvary (or Golgotha) of the gospels.

The original church (built in 335 CE) was destroyed by 1009, and the grand church you see now dates from the 11th century.

Although often heaving with pilgrims from across the world, the church interior is an opulently beautiful piece of religious architecture.

This is the ending point for the Via Dolorosa pilgrimage , and the last five Stations of the Cross are within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre itself.

The interior contains various holy relics, and the quarters inside the church are owned by different Christian denominations.

Location: Christian Quarter, Old City

Running south from the Citadel, Armenian Patriarchate Road is the main street of what is known as the Old City's Armenian Quarter.

Within the narrow lanes here are the Armenian Orthodox Cathedral of St. James and the Syriac Orthodox St. Mark's Chapel , which receive much fewer visitors than others in the Old City.

Armenians have been part of Jerusalem's community for centuries, first arriving in the city during the 5th century. Many more arrived during the Ottoman era and after the Armenian massacres in Turkey during the early 20th century.

Jerusalem's Armenian Quarter is the Old City's most tranquil corner to explore and a good place to wander if the press of pilgrims gets too much.

For many Christian visitors, the Via Dolorosa (Way of Sorrow) is the highlight of a visit to Jerusalem.

This walk follows the route of Jesus Christ after his condemnation as he bears his cross towards execution at Calvary.

The walk is easily followed independently, but if you're here on a Friday, you can join the procession along this route led by the Italian Franciscan monks.

The course of the Via Dolorosa is marked by the fourteen Stations of the Cross , some of which are based on the Gospels' accounts and some on tradition.

The walk begins on Via Dolorosa Street (1st station, east of the intersection with Al-Wad Street) from where you follow the street west. Then proceed south onto Al-Wad Street and west onto Via Dolorosa Street again, through eight stations until you reach the 9th station at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre where the last five stations are.

The current route stretches for around 600 meters and has been the accepted trail since the 18th century, replacing earlier processional ways that Christian pilgrims to the city had used since around the 8th century.

Of particular interest along the way is the Chapel of the Flagellation (2nd station), built on the site where Jesus is believed to have been flogged.

Address: Via Dolorosa Street, Old City

The Citadel, popularly known as the Tower of David, actually has no connection with David, having been erected by King Herod to protect the palace he built in approximately 24 BCE.

His original citadel had three towers named after his brother Phasael, his wife Mariamne, and his friend Hippicus.

After Titus' conquest of the city in 70 CE, the Romans stationed a garrison here, but later the citadel fell into disrepair. It was successively rebuilt by the Crusaders, Egypt's Mamelukes, and the Ottomans, during their years of reign over Jerusalem.

The building you now see was built in the 14th century on the foundations of the original Phasael Tower.

Inside is the Tower of David Museum , which relays the story of Jerusalem . A permanent display of archaeological exhibits can be viewed, along with temporary exhibitions that explore facets of Jerusalem's culture and heritage.

If you climb up to the citadel's rooftop, you are rewarded with one of the best Old City vistas in town .

During the evening, there is a Sound and Light show here, with visuals projected onto the city walls, which is particularly good for traveling families who want to introduce their children to some of the city's history.

Location: Jaffa Gate, Old City

There are churches throughout Jerusalem's Old City, but the area, running north from Jaffa Gate and centered around the Church of the Holy Sepulchre , is known on most tourist maps of the Old City as the Christian Quarter.

Within this tangle of alleyways are some of the Old City's most popular tourist souvenir souks and a whole caboodle of churches that are well worth exploring.

Protestant Christ Church (Omar ibn al-Khattab Square) has a quirky museum with interesting document exhibits and a decent café to rest your weary old city-plodding feet.

The Ethiopian Monastery , squeezed into the corner of The Church of the Holy Sepulchre's courtyard, contains interesting frescoes portraying the Queen of Sheba's Jerusalem visit.

The Lutheran Church of the Redeemer (Muristan Road) is where you come to climb the bell tower for incredible Old City views. And the Church of St. John the Baptist (off Christian Quarter Street) is worthy of a visit as it is Jerusalem's oldest church .

The most bustling and alive district, with the best souk shopping in the Old City, is known on most tourist maps as the Muslim Quarter.

This district roughly runs from Damascus Gate through the northeast chunk of the Old City.

Plenty of fine surviving remnants of Mamluk architecture line the streets here, including the 14th-century Khan al-Sultan (Bab al-Silsila Street), where you can climb up to the roof for excellent views across the higgledy-piggledy lanes.

If you wander down Antonia Street , you'll come to the beautiful crusader-built St. Anne's Church (believed to be built on top of the site of the house of the Virgin Mary's parents) and the Pool of Bethesda next door.

Overloaded with churches and home to the oldest continually used cemetery in the world , the Mount of Olives holds particular interest to religious pilgrim travelers to Jerusalem, but even the non-devout can appreciate the spectacular Old City panoramas from the peak.

This sacred hill is believed to be the place where God will begin rising the dead on Judgement Day. For Christian believers, this is also where Jesus ascended to heaven after his crucifixion and subsequent resurrection.

The Church of the Ascension on the top of the mount dates from 1910 and has the best views across Jerusalem.

Walking down the slope, you come to the Church of the Pater Noster built next to the site where, according to tradition, Jesus instructed his disciples.

Farther down, the Church of Dominus Flevit is claimed to be built over the site where Jesus wept for Jerusalem, and farther along is the onion-domed Russian Church of Mary Magdalene .

The Gardens of Gethsemane (where Jesus was arrested) and the Church of All Nations are next, while the Tomb of the Virgin Mary is the last big attraction on the Mount of Olives.

Mount Zion (the small hill immediately south of the Old City's Zion Gate ) is home to Jewish and Muslim shrines as well as a number of churches.

Since the Byzantine Age, Mount Zion has been revered as the place where Christ celebrated the Last Supper and where the Virgin Mary spent the last years of her life, according to some Christian traditions (another tradition says her last days were spent in Ephesus in Turkey).

For Jews, Mount Zion's importance stems from this being the place of King David's Tomb . If you climb up the stairs from the tomb's courtyard, you'll come to the Last Supper Room , which has served as both church and mosque throughout its long history.

The Church of the Dormition nearby is where the Virgin is supposed to have died, while just to the east is the Church of St. Peter of Gallicantu where Peter is said to have denied Jesus.

The Old City fortifications date from the Ottoman period, and nine magnificent gates at junctions within the wall's length lead into the Old City.

The Damascus Gate is one of the most famous. Lion's Gate (sometimes called St. Stephen's Gate ) leads onto the Mount of Olives outside the city walls. Zion Gate is the main entry into the Jewish Quarter, while Jaffa Gate is the main passageway for the Christian Quarter.

Walking the wall ramparts is a wonderful way to experience the Old City. There are two sections that can be walked on: Jaffa Gate heading north to Lion's Gate or Jaffa Gate heading south to Dung Gate .

The entire old city is officially part of East Jerusalem (the Palestinian sector of Jerusalem that is occupied by Israel). The main entrance into the "newer" section of East Jerusalem, outside the old city walls, is through Damascus Gate .

Just to the east of the gate, within the gardens at the foot of the wall, is Solomon's Quarries , a cave system that extends under the Old City. According to ancient tradition, the stone for Jerusalem's First Temple was quarried from here.

The cave is also known as Zedekiah's Grotto as in Jewish tradition, Zedekiah, the last king of Judah, hid here from the Babylonian forces in 587 BCE.

Slightly east from here (along Sultan Suleiman Street) is the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum . Inside are exhibits from the Stone Age right up to the 18th century.

If you're short on time, some of the highlights of the collection are the skeleton unearthed on Mount Carmel, known as the Carmel Man, in the South Gallery, the 6th century BCE Lachish letters in the North Gallery, and the ornately carved beams from the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the South Room.

If you walk down Nablus Road, you'll come to the Garden Tomb , which dates from the Roman or Byzantine period. It was found and identified as Christ's tomb by General Gordon in 1882, and some Protestant Christians still believe that this is the true site that Christ was buried and rose again.

Heading north along Nablus Road is the French Dominican Monastery of St. Stephen where its namesake, the first Christian martyr, is believed to have been stoned to death.

Veer off onto St. George Street from here, and you'll come to the site of the Mandelbaum Gate . Between 1948 and 1967, it was the only crossing-point between the Israeli and Jordanian sectors of Jerusalem. The site is marked with a plaque.

Also on St. George Street, is the Museum on the Seam , a contemporary art museum that exhibits works dealing with social commentary on human rights and conflict.

From the Old City's Jaffa Gate , you enter West Jerusalem's modern central city district with Jaffa Road running northwest to Bar Kochba Square and Zion Square .

Northeast from Bar Kochba Square , you reach the Russian Compound , dominated by the green-domed Russian Orthodox Cathedral. This area grew up in the late 19th century as a large walled complex for Russian pilgrims.

On the northeast side of the complex were the Russian consulate and a hospice for women, and to the southwest were a hospital, the mission house, and a large hospice for men that lies beyond the cathedral. The buildings are now occupied by various government institutions.

North from here is Ethiopia Street where you'll find the Ethiopian Church . The reliefs of lions above the doorway recall the style of Lion of Judah borne by the Abyssinian dynasty, which traced its origins back to the Queen of Sheba.

Farther north from Ethiopia Street is the Mea Shearim district , home to a community of ultra-orthodox Jews. If you'd like to enter this area, be aware that modest dress (covering arms and legs) is mandatory, and taking photographs of inhabitants is not allowed.

The people of Mea Shearim still wear their old East European dress and speak mostly Yiddish. Some extreme groups refuse to recognize the state of Israel because it was not established by the Messiah and regard themselves as a ghetto of true orthodoxy within the Jewish state.

South from Jaffa Road is the Time Elevator (Hillel Street), a child-friendly introduction to Jerusalem's history, and the Museum of Italian Jewish Art & Synagogue with an extensive collection of Judaica.

Running west from Zion Square on Jaffa Road is the pedestrianized Ben Yehuda Street , Jerusalem's main vortex for dining and shopping.

Opened in 1965, this complex of museums is the only place in the country that collects and displays both archaeological finds and art.

The Shrine of the Book building displays Israel's portion of the Dead Sea Scrolls (the rest of the scrolls are displayed in Amman's Jordan Museum in Jordan), which were unearthed in the Dead Sea area during the 1940s.

In the main building of the complex, the Judaica wing has an impressive display of sacred Jewish art and ethnographic displays from Jewish life in various countries.

The archaeological wing contains fascinating exhibits from sites throughout the country ranging from the neolithic era through to the Ottoman era.

There are also adjacent galleries displaying art and artifacts from neighboring cultures that influenced the culture and history of this land. The galleries cover ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, ancient Greece, ancient Rome, and the Arabian Peninsula.

The museum's art wing has a good collection of works by Israeli painters as well as pieces by Gauguin, Renoir, Van Gogh, and a range of works by international artists. There's also a regular program of contemporary art exhibitions.

Location: Givat Ram district, West Jerusalem

Official site: https://www.imj.org.il/en

The Kidron Valley lies between the Mount of Olives and Mount Zion and is one of the oldest areas of Jerusalem .

Both Jews and Muslims believe that the Last Judgement will take place here, a rope will extend from the battlements of the Temple Mount , over the valley to the Mount of Olives , and the righteous will cross over, supported by their guardian angels, while the sinners will be cast down into damnation.

Archaeological excavations here have uncovered a settlement that dates back more than 4,000 years. The archaeological site is known as the City of David and archaeologists are still working here.

Area G is the oldest part of the site, dating from the 10th century BCE. From here, you can walk down into the tunnels known as Warren's Shaft and Hezekiah's Tunnel and proceed onto the Pool of Siloam and Shiloach Pool , which some people think may be the site where Jesus performed the miracle of healing a blind man.

According to legend, the massive fortress-like bulk of the medieval Monastery of the Cross is built on the site where the prophet Lot lived.

The trees he is said to have planted in the surrounding area are also believed to have provided the wood for Christ's cross. In Greek Orthodox tradition, a church was first founded here by the Empress Helena.

Georgian monks controlled the church until the 18th century, when it passed back into the hands of Jerusalem's Greek Orthodox community.

Until a few decades ago, the monastery lay well to the west of Jerusalem, but the city's creeping expansion has now surrounded it.

Location: Rehavia district, West Jerusalem

Israel's major Holocaust memorial is Yad Veshem.

In the main building, the Hall of Remembrance , the names of the Nazi death camps are set into the floor and an eternal flame burns in memory of the dead.

Opening off the main hall is a room containing victim's names, a photographic exhibition, the extremely moving children's memorial, and an art museum with work produced by inmates from the concentration camps.

The extensive surrounding grounds hold numerous works of sculpture and memorials.

Official site: www.yadvashem.org

Mount Herzl commemorates the founder of Zionism.

The remains of Theodor Herzl, who died in Austria in 1904, were brought to Israel in 1949, a year after the foundation of the independent Jewish state for which he advocated, and buried in a free-standing sarcophagus on the summit of this hill, which was then named after him.

Near the main entrance is the Herzl Museum with a reconstruction of Herzl's study and library.

The large park also contains the graves of Herzl's parents and several leading Zionists.

Ein Kerem Road in Jerusalem runs down into the Ein Kerem Valley where, according to Christian tradition, the village of Ein Kerem was the birthplace of St. John the Baptist.

The Franciscan Friary of St. John here was built in the 17th century over the Grotto of St. John (believed to be his birthplace).

In the center of the village is the Church of the Visitation with beautiful frescoes.

Farther west of the city is the village of Abu Ghosh. This Palestinian village is dominated by a crusader church that has belonged to the Lazarists since 1956. With its four-meter-thick walls, the three-aisled church is fortress-like and is full of crusader character.

Abu Ghosh is also home to the Church of Our Lady of the Ark of the Covenant , which is believed by some to stand on the site where the ark was kept before being transferred to Solomon's temple.

Latrun Monastery , about 28 kilometers west of Jerusalem, was built in 1927 by French Trappist Monks.

Until very recent times, Latrun was of strategic importance. During the British Mandate period, UK authorities had a fortified police post here and up until 1967, it stood on the armistice line between Jordan and Israel.

The monastery is part of the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance who practice silence. The extensive grounds that surround the monastery building are beautifully laid out.

In the garden are a collection of late Classical and early Christian capitals and reliefs.

The first settlement in the Jerusalem area probably dates back to the 20th century BCE.

In 997 BCE, King David and the Israelites arrived, and his son (Solomon) constructed the first temple in 950 BCE.

In 587 BCE, the town was captured by Nebuchadnezzar and many of the inhabitants were carried off to Babylon. After the end of the Babylonian Captivity, in 520 BCE, the Second Temple was built.

In 332 BCE, Jerusalem came under Greek rule and was increasingly Hellenized. The desecration of the temple by Antiochus IV sparked off the Maccabean rising of 167 BCE.

Under the Maccabees and the Hasmoneans, the town expanded westward on to Mount Zion. In 63 BCE, it passed into Roman control, and in 37 BCE, Herod became king of the Jews.

He rebuilt and embellished the temple platform and equipped the city with palaces, a citadel, theater, hippodrome, an agora, and other buildings on the Hellenistic and Roman model. After his death in 4 BCE, Jerusalem became the city of the high priests under Roman procurators.

From 41 to 44 CE, it was ruled by Agrippa I, who extended the city northward, building the Third (North) Wall. In 70 CE, Jerusalem was destroyed by Titus, and then again by Emperor Hadrian, in 132 CE, who banned Jews from the city and renamed Jerusalem Aelia Capitolina.

Jerusalem became a Christian city in 326 CE, when the Emperor Constantine and his mother Helena built a number of churches. This era came to an end when Jerusalem was captured by the Persians in 614 CE.

It was recovered by the Byzantines in 627 CE, but in 638 CE it was conquered by the armies of Islam. Thereafter, the Umayyad Caliphs built the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

A further period of Christian rule began in 1099 CE with the conquest of the city by the Crusaders, who built many churches, palaces, and hospices. Islam returned to Jerusalem, however, when Saladin captured the city in 1187 CE, and it remained in Muslim hands under the Mamelukes (1291- 1517 CE) and the Ottomans (1519-1917 CE), who built the present town walls (1537 CE).

In the 19th century, the Christian powers of Europe, which had supported the Ottoman Sultan against the Egyptian ruler Ibrahim Pasha, gained increasing influence from 1840 CE onwards, and built churches, schools, hospitals, and orphanages. The Pope re-established the Latin Patriarchate, which had originally been founded in 1099 CE, but was dissolved in 1291 CE.

Jews had begun returning to live in Jerusalem in significant numbers since the 13th century. In 1267 CE, Rabbi Moshe Ben Nachman Ramban (Nachmanides) founded a synagogue. In 1488 CE, Jews from Egypt settled in Jerusalem, and they were followed by Sephardic Jews from Spain offered refuge from the Spanish Inquisition by the Ottoman Sultan.

In December 1917, British forces under General Allenby entered the city, and on July first 1920, it became the seat of the British High Commissioner in the mandated territory of Palestine.

The United Nations resolved, in 1947, that Palestine should be divided between the Palestinians and the Jews and that Jerusalem should be internationalized. After the end of the British Mandate in 1948, Israeli and Jordanian forces fought for control of the city, and it was partitioned under a cease-fire agreement in 1949.

In 1950, the Israelis made West Jerusalem capital of their state, and after the Six Day War of 1967 they annexed and occupied East Jerusalem including the old city.

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17 Top Things to Do in Jerusalem

By Alex Schultz · Last updated on May 4, 2024

One of the most fiercely contested places on Earth, Jerusalem is home to many of Christianity’s, Islam’s and Judaism’s most important holy sites; the wealth of historic, religious and cultural landmarks is astonishing. Now part of Israel, Jerusalem has been fought over for millennia. At one time or another, the Mamluks, Ottomans, Christians, and Muslims have all ruled, with each of them leaving their mark.

Despite its diminutive size, the Old City probably contains more incredible tourist attractions than many countries do. The Dome of the Rock, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Western Wall are just three of the astonishing sites you can expect to delight in.

Walking through its ancient streets is a mesmerizing experience and the pilgrims of all faiths clogging the passages only add to the intoxicating atmosphere. A special place like no other, Jerusalem offers an endless list of things to do and tourist attractions, such is the wealth of history on show.

17. Church of All Nations

Located on the Mount of Olives that looks out over Jerusalem, the Church of all Nations is an important historical site. It contains a bedrock upon which Jesus is said to have prayed prior to being arrested.

While the current church was consecrated in 1652, it actually lies on the foundations of two older churches, with the earliest dating to the 4th century AD.

The church is named for the many different countries that donated various mosaics and apses to it; each of their coat-of-arms can now be found amidst the designs and religious motifs on show.

16. Jaffa Gate

This delightful stone portal is set in Jerusalem’s imposing walls and is one of the main entrances to the Old City.

Its distinctive L shape helped defenders protect the gate and the sand-colored blocks certainly do look impenetrable.

Dating to 1538, Jaffa Gate opens out onto the Christian Quarter on one side and the Armenian Quarter on the other, and you’ll find a constant stream of pedestrians pouring beneath its ancient arch.

15. Jewish Quarter

Although part of the Jewish Quarter was bombed and destroyed during the 1948 Arab – Israeli War, much of it has been rebuilt, giving it a newer feel than many other parts of the city.

That’s not to say that there aren’t lots of historic and religious sites – the Western Wall and Hurva Synagogue are located here, among other important sights.

Wandering around the Jewish Quarter is one of the most interesting things to do in Jerusalem and visitors should definitely make sure to head to the atmospheric Cardo shopping street that was built back in Roman times.

14. Damascus Gate

Located in the northwest walls of the city, Damascus Gate is one of the main entrances to Jerusalem’s Old City. It certainly is impressive to behold with its wonderful crenulations and the two towers that flank it.

Built in 1537, the current gate has weathered numerous wars and invasions. Excavations indicate that a gate stood here as early as 130 CE.

Passing through it is an amazing experience as you follow in the footsteps of so many people who came before you, and walking along the ramparts offers a great view from above.

13. Mount of Olives

Lying just outside the Old City, the Mount of Olives looks out over Jerusalem. From its hillside, there are incredible views of Temple Mount and the glimmering Dome of the Rock.

As well as a scenic spot, it is also a historic and religious site; it is home to a large Jewish cemetery and numerous churches can also be seen here and there, such as the beautiful Russian Orthodox Church.

The oldest continually used cemetery in the world, the Mount of Olives is definitely worth checking out if you have time.

12. Tower of David

Known by some as the Jerusalem Citadel, the Tower of David offers up some of the best views of the Old City and is a fascinating place to visit. Some of the archaeological finds date back more than 2000 years.

Remarkably well preserved, the current citadel dates to Mamluk and Ottoman times and was built upon much older fortifications.

Located on site is the Tower of David Museum, offering an interesting look at over 4000 years of Jerusalem’s history through interactive exhibitions, holograms, and maps.

11. Via Dolorosa

Believed to have been the street along which Jesus walked during his crucifixion, the aptly named ‘Way of Sorrow’ is a historic street which runs through Jerusalem’s Old City.

Starting off from the Lion’s Gate, pilgrims and tourists alike can retrace Christ’s steps, ending up at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre where Jesus is believed to have been crucified.

Via Dolorosa is marked with nine stations depicting various parts of his journey; there are five more in the church itself. Every Friday, there is a procession along the route. Taking part in it will really make you feel like you’ve stepped back in time.

10. Dome of the Rock

Lying atop of Temple Mount, the Dome of the Rock sparkles in the sun and is recognized around the world. It is one of Jerusalem’s most famous landmarks.

Built between 688 and 691, the temple is home to a slab of stone from which Muslims believe the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven.

While only Muslims are allowed inside, the Dome’s outside is spectacular to behold. Bright blue mosaics coat the walls and the iconic gold plated dome sits atop, looking out over Jerusalem.

9. Western Wall Tunnels

Jerusalem’s long, tumultuous history has seen the city destroyed and rebuilt numerous times, which means that much of it is built on and out of the rubble and ruins of buildings that came before them.

As such, numerous tunnels snake their way beneath the Old City. A guided tour of the Western Wall tunnels offer visitors the chance to go back to the time of the second temple and explore a stretch of this fascinating underground world.

Running adjacent to the Western Wall, the tunnels are narrow and a bit claustrophobic but well worth checking out for the wealth of history on display.

8. Mahane Yehuda Market

This bustling market that has been around since Ottoman times is loads of fun to visit. The myriad colorful stalls are laden with everything from fruit and vegetables to pastries and fresh juice.

Offering an authentic look at life in the Holy City, Mahane Yehuda Market has numerous sections to it; some alleys are home to butchers while others host clothes and coffee sellers.

At night, the market transforms and many people come here for its great restaurants and bars.

7. City of David

Another attraction that is mired in controversy because it is now in an illegal Israeli settlement, the City of David is one of Jerusalem’s most important archaeological sites.

Located just outside of the Old City, it is here that King David first built the city of Jerusalem. Amidst the rubble and rocks, there are two ancient stone tunnels for you to walk along.

Adventurous travelers will love Hezekial’s Tunnel, which was once an aquifer. Water sometimes comes up to your knees as you wade along in the dark with a torch in hand.

6. The Garden Tomb

This marvelous rock-cut tomb dates back to the 8th-7th centuries BC and some Christians believe that it is where Jesus was buried and later rose from the dead.

Consequently, many pilgrims and tourists come to visit the peaceful gardens in which it is located, although it still remains a nice quiet spot away from the crowds that clog the Old City’s ancient streets.

Located next to the ominously named Skull Hill, there is much debate as to whether Jesus really was buried here, but is worth visiting in any case.

5. Temple Mount

Venerated throughout the centuries by all three of the Abrahamic religions, Temple Mount lies at the heart of the Old City and is one of the most fiercely contested pieces of land in the world.

Containing the Al Aqsa Mosque, it is the third most important site in Island and the holiest site in Judaism. It is here that the First and Second Temples were erected.

Wandering across the ancient limestone pavings of the huge cypress tree-fringed complex is a peaceful affair, despite the millennia of conflict that have plagued it. The highlight is seeing the Dome of the Rock with its iconic golden dome glistening in the sun.

4. Yad Vashem

A moving and emotional place, visiting Yad Vashem is a must when in Jerusalem. It is Israel’s official memorial to those who were brutally murdered during the Holocaust.

Lying on the slopes of Mount Herzl, the commemorative site contains the Holocaust Memorial Museum, which takes you through the horrific atrocities that the Nazis committed. Seeing all the photos of those who died in ‘the Hall of Names’ is something you’ll never forget.

While many of the audio, video, and items on display are shocking, just as many symbolize rebirth and ‘The Eternal Flame’ exhibit is a perfect example of this.

3. Church of the Holy Sepulchre

Believed to be the site where Jesus was crucified and later rose from the dead, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre contains two of Christendom’s most sacred sites. Its gloomy, atmospheric interior definitely warrants a visit when in Jerusalem.

Packed with pilgrims and tourists, the church is run by several Christian denominations, who reluctantly share responsibility amongst themselves. Consecrated in 335 AD, the church has been damaged, destroyed and rebuilt numerous times over the centuries

Entering the church after having wandered through the ancient stone courtyard is a memorable experience. Despite the crowds, it is a strangely peaceful place to visit. Seeing the Edicule shrine in which Jesus’s empty tomb lies will surely send shivers down your spine.

2. Israel Museum

Opened in 1965, the Israel Museum’s fantastic collection covers over 5000 years of history and its main focus is on art and archaeology.

Wandering through the archaeological galleries, you’ll find a wealth of artifacts discovered in the region, and items from the Islamic world, Near East, Italy, and Greece are all represented. The renowned Dead Sea Scrolls are just one of the highlights; gazing at the ancient biblical manuscripts is an awe-inspiring experience.

The Jewish Art and Life Wing of the museum is just as interesting to visit. Here, you can learn a lot about Jewish culture and traditions such as bridal and funerary practices.

1. Western Wall

The holiest site in Judaism is fascinating to visit and there is an electric atmosphere, as Orthodox Jews rock back and forth, praying at the Western Wall.

Supporting one side of Temple Mount, the area now acts as a de-facto synagogue. It is often known as the Wailing Wall, as Jews throughout the ages have come here to mourn the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE.

A must-see when in Jerusalem, visitors can stop by the segregated worship areas and experience the intoxicating ambiance themselves. You can even write a prayer and slip it into the cracks between the stones of the huge, white, rock wall.

Map of Things to Do in Jerusalem

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Things to Do in Jerusalem

The Top 25 Things to Do in Jerusalem

Chelsea Frank is a comedian, writer, and host based in Los Angeles, California. Her work has appeared in Uproxx, Let's Eat Cake, Thrillist, and other publications.

Jerusalem is the political capital of Israel , the epicenter of religious pilgrimage for Jews, Christians, and Muslims, a treat for history buffs, and a land that’s consistently fraught with tension.

It’s impossible not to feel a powerful stirring inside of you as you walk through the tiny streets of the Old City, or pray at a 2,000-year-old wall, or stand on soil that means so much to millions of people.

Whether you’re looking for spiritual growth, an impassioned political discourse, a tasty meal, or a fun party, here are the top 25 must-have experiences in Jerusalem. 

Pilgrimage to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher

The Church of the Holy Sepulcher is one of the holiest sights in the world for Christians, as it contains both the site of Jesus’ crucifixion and his empty tomb, where Christians believe he was buried and then resurrected. You’ll also find the Chapel of Mary Magdalene, the Greek Chapel of St. Longinus, and even the place believed to be where the True Cross was found. Note that wait times to get into the church and Edicule can be nuts, so plan accordingly. 

Leave a Prayer at the Western Wall

Located on the Temple Mount, the Western Wall is what remains of the ancient Jewish temple built over 2,000 years ago. The temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE when the Jews were exiled from Jerusalem, and today, the wall remnant is considered the holiest and most important religious site in the world for Jews. At this open air synagogue, you’ll find people praying, crying, and reading scripture and on Shabbat (the Jewish Sabbath),and you’ll see hundreds of Jews gathering to sing and dance. It’s also customary to write a note or prayer and leave it in crevices of the wall. Note: It’s open 24/7, and be sure to dress appropriately (shoulders and knees covered for women and heads covered for men).

Vendor Hop at the Mahane Yehuda Market

TripSavvy / Lauren Breedlove

The Mahane Yehuda Market (also known as the Shuk) is in the heart of Jerusalem. By day, you can elbow your way through various shops selling pastries, breads, teas, spices, meats, vegetables, and more. Stop into any number of market restaurants (they feel somewhat like feeding “stations”) to feast on delectable treats like shakshuka, burgers, juices, and pastas. By night, you’ll find this food market transformed into a full-fledged bar crawl. Bars, pubs, loud music, mini-clubs—it’s total chaos and incredibly electric. 

See the Dead Sea Scrolls at the Israel Museum

Ranked one of the world’s leading art and archaeology museums, this museum houses the most extensive collection of biblical archaeology in the world. You’ll find exhibitions, art galleries, and special events, as well as have the opportunity to see the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest biblical manuscripts in existence that represents almost the entire Hebrew Bible. Upwards of 2,000 years old, these texts were originally discovered by Bedouins in the caves of Qumran (what is now the West Bank) in 1947. They even include a guide to hidden treasure around Israel. 

Peruse the Art at Ticho House

After your tour of the Israel Museum, be sure to head to Ticho House, a serene oasis that’s known as a cultural hub of Jerusalem The ground floor of the house acts as an art gallery featuring the works of Anna Ticho, a beloved Israeli painter, as well as exhibiting other artists’ works. Upstairs is the delicious Anna Italian Cafe decorated with gorgeous ceiling paintings and a beautiful view. 

Tisch Family Zoological Gardens

Located in the neighborhood of Malha in Southwest Jerusalem, this impressive and expansive non-profit zoo attracts over 750,000 visitors every year to its scenic location. While they host many creatures from all over the world, the zoo does emphasize animals mentioned in the Bible (this is Jerusalem, after all). The zoo is also dedicated to conservation, partnering with many local initiatives to better preserve nature and wildlife in Israel. There’s often exhibits, events, and workshops to attend, so plan your trip accordingly.

Practice Your Haggling in the Old City

Although the shops of the Old City are pricier and more touristy than other shopping districts, wandering around, exploring, and souvenir shopping in the Old City is a hectic and amusing experience worth the slightly higher prices. As you make your way through the tiny, narrow streets, admire the many beautiful scarves, clothes, artifacts, trinkets, and jewelry, and practice the art of bargaining. Some great shops in particular are George and Dorin Sandrouni Armenian Ceramics, opposite the cathedral in the Christian Quarter and the Shorashim Biblical Gift Shop in the Jewish Quarter on Tiferet Israel street.

Eat Hummus at Abu Shukri

We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention at least one incredible hummus experience during your stay in Jerusalem. One of the best places to try hummus is Abu Shukri, a family-owned, cramped, and chaotic restaurant in the Muslim quarter of the Old City. There’s no menus here, but the standard plate includes a bowl of creamy hummus topped with either fava beans (fuul), chickpeas, or pine nuts with a side of pita and vegetables. Ask them to bring you some falafel to go with your hummus, which are deliciously crispy and spiced to perfection. Tip: they don’t take cards, so bring cash. 

Get Artsy at Bezalel Street Fair

Similar to the Nachalat Binyamin fair in Tel Aviv, you'll find over 150 stalls of authentic crafts, art, toys, clothing, jewelry, ceramics, live music, and more every Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the pedestrian area of Bezalel Street. The fair is colorful, vibrant, and diverse, reflective of the Jerusalem culture and mix of Israel as a whole. It’s free to attend and the perfect spot to find unique and original souvenirs. 

Take in Sweeping Views at Mount of Olives

For those who chase an impressive view, the Mount of Olives is for you. In the old days, it separated the city from the Judean desert, representing the eastern border of Ancient Jerusalem. Here, you’ll overlook the Old City of Jerusalem as well as a large Jewish cemetery that makes this site a place of pilgrimage for Jews. This cemetery is significant as it’s believed that when the Messiah comes, the Jews in this location will be the first to be resurrected, so you can imagine those are some pretty coveted slots. 

See Some of the Oldest Olive Trees in the World at Garden of Gethsemane

Located at the foot of Mount of Olives sits the Garden of Gethsemane, the sight Jesus prayed in when he was betrayed by Judas and was subsequently arrested the night before his crucifixion. With some as old as around 800 years, the eight ancient olive trees here are some of the oldest in the world and have spiritual significance as the descendants of the very olive trees that stood during this important Biblical moment. 

Visit the Tomb of the Virgin Mary

Luckily for Christian tourists, many of Christianity’s most sacred pilgrimage sites are conveniently clustered together. Also located at the foot of Mount of Olives is the tomb of the Virgin Mary, which rests in a church inside a cave fortress. The way to access it? Down a 12th-century carved out staircase, chipped from the rock. The cavern is dimly lit with candles that visitors can light to pray and worship the holy site. 

Visit King David’s Tomb

Located just past the Zion Gate in Mount Zion (west of the Mount of Olives) and just past the Room of the Last Supper lays the tomb of King David, erected by Crusaders 2,000 years after his death. Though the Old Testament states he was buried someplace else, this holy site is still special for Muslims, Christians, and Jews as he was a celebrated warrior king of the Old Testament responsible for composing many biblical psalms. Note: You’ll find the prayer hall separated for men and women, and there is a strict no cell phone policy. 

Get Your Pride on at Video

It’s all smiles and positive vibes at Video! A hidden gem, this friendly gay bar is the go-to spot for LGBTQ tourists and locals to turn up to the likes of Britney, Madonna, Rihanna, and Beyonce. This spot is great for groups, but don’t fret if you’re flying solo—you’re sure to meet interesting, warm, and welcoming people at this good-feels bar. Be sure to check their website for cool upcoming events and theme nights. 

Go Full Hipster at Cassette Bar

You’ll feel like you’re in an entirely different city as you enter through a door covered in cassette tapes and into a tiny, hipster-chic bar. With somewhat of a lower east side Manhattan feel, the crowd has a too-cool-for-school vibe, but the offbeat playlist and flowing drinks makes this a worthwhile alternative experience for your stay in the holy city. 

Party with Locals at Cactus 9

If you’re looking to party with the locals, Cactus 9 is a great electronic music bar with yummy drinks and cool vibes. It’s a nice change of pace from the slower, more historical and religious atmospheres of Jerusalem. On the weekends, this place turns into a full-fledged hot spot, so wear comfy shoes and get ready to get your groove on.

Take a Free Tour of the Knesset (Israel’s Parliament)

Jerusalem is not only the religious center of Israel, it’s also the political capital. And with a country that evokes such fierce political debate in the media, you might be interested to see where many of these tough conversations are held. Take a free guided tour on Sundays and Thursdays to learn about how policy is made and see some incredible art, tapestries, and sculptures by renowned artists such as Marc Chagall. Tours are available in English, Hebrew, Arabic, Amharic, French, Russian, Spanish, and German. 

Try Kurdish Food at Ishtabach

For foodies, this little Kosher Kurdish hot spot is an absolute must. Just outside the Shuk, this renowned restaurant is most known for Shamburak, a savory, crunchy pastry served with meats, potatoes, caramelized onions, peppers, and chimichurri. (The best one is the cheek meat Shamburak, in my humble yet totally right opinion). The meat pastry usually comes with three side salads, based on whatever’s the freshest ingredients of the week. 

Have Shabbat Dinner with Shabbat of a Lifetime

Shabbat is the Jewish Sabbath, or day of rest. From Friday night to Saturday night, you’ll find much of Jerusalem is shut down (public transportation stops running, shops are closed, and the streets feel pretty bare). Shabbat dinner is a very special time to come together, unplug from technology, and share a meal with loved ones. The organization Shabbat of a Lifetime allows tourists to partake in this ritual, pairing you with a Jewish family in Jerusalem who will treat you to a traditional five course Shabbat meal. 

Admire the Dome of the Rock

If you’ve ever seen a little gold ball in the background of Jerusalem photos, you were looking at one of the oldest and most revered examples of Islamic architecture. Located in the Old City on the Temple Mount, the Dome of the Rock is believed to be where Mohammed ascended to heaven, which makes it the third holiest site for Muslims. Non-Muslim visitors can admire the Dome of the Rock from the outside so long as they are dressed modestly (only Muslims are allowed inside the Dome), and no sacred Jewish objects may be brought in. 

Try Jerusalem Mixed Grill at Sima’s

You can’t leave Jerusalem without sampling their most infamous dish: me’orav Yerushalmi, or Jerusalem mixed grill. It’s comprised of lamb, chicken, and organ meats, and it’s to die for. You’ll find one of the best examples of this dish at Sima’s, a blue collar, down to earth restaurant that’s been around since 1969. A haven for hardcore carnivores, you’ll also find kebabs, meat dumplings, entrecôte, and more. 

Drink Beers at BeerBazaar Jerusalem

Located inside of the Shuk, you’ll find this hip, kosher, and super local craft beer haven with over 100 Israeli beers to choose from. Snack on their selection of seasonal salads, sandwiches, and cheap eats while you sip your way through their hearty and tasty beers. The ambiance is cool and relaxed, a nice retreat from the chaos of the market. Don’t miss Thursday nights (the Israeli Saturday night) where you can see this bazaar in full swing and even catch a live show put on by the staff. 

Check out the Music at Freddy Lemmon

Another gem of the Shuk is this artsy bar that’s all about the good vibes. Freddy Lemon hosts small concerts, poetry slams, and other musical performances once the fruit and vegetable vendors close shop for the day. You’ll love sitting around the outdoor patio, sipping a beer on tap, and soaking in the live music among your fellow music-loving crowd. 

Drink Hot Wine at Hashchena

If you’re looking for a slower pace and an intimate setting, check out Haschena Wine Bar (Hebrew for neighborhood) located inside the Shuk. Sit outside or in, people watch, and choose from an extensive list of beers, cocktails, and hot wines to match the warm atmosphere. Be sure to peep the live music shows on Friday afternoons before Shabbat. 

Pay Homage to Holocaust Victims at Yad Vashem

This 45-acre campus of indoor and outdoor museums, sculptures, gardens, exhibitions, and research centers was created to honor the victims of the Holocaust. An absolutely raw and intense experience, be sure to especially brace yourself for the children’s memorial, a hallowed out cavern lit only with memorial candles “creating the impression of millions of stars shining in the firmament” while the names of the deceased children are heard in the background. It is heartbreaking, yes, but it is a highly moving experience you’ll carry with you for years to come. 

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Make sure you are up-to-date on all routine vaccines before every trip. Some of these vaccines include

• Chickenpox (Varicella)
• Diphtheria-Tetanus-Pertussis
• Flu (influenza)
• Measles-Mumps-Rubella (MMR)

Immunization schedules

All eligible travelers should be up to date with their COVID-19 vaccines. Please see  Your COVID-19 Vaccination  for more information. 

COVID-19 vaccine

Hepatitis A

Recommended for unvaccinated travelers one year old or older going to Israel, including the West Bank and Gaza.

Infants 6 to 11 months old should also be vaccinated against Hepatitis A. The dose does not count toward the routine 2-dose series.

Travelers allergic to a vaccine component or who are younger than 6 months should receive a single dose of immune globulin, which provides effective protection for up to 2 months depending on dosage given.

Unvaccinated travelers who are over 40 years old, immunocompromised, or have chronic medical conditions planning to depart to a risk area in less than 2 weeks should get the initial dose of vaccine and at the same appointment receive immune globulin.

Hepatitis A - CDC Yellow Book

Dosing info - Hep A

Hepatitis B

Recommended for unvaccinated travelers younger than 60 years old traveling to Israel, including the West Bank and Gaza. Unvaccinated travelers 60 years and older may get vaccinated before traveling to Israel, including the West Bank and Gaza.

Hepatitis B - CDC Yellow Book

Dosing info - Hep B

Cases of measles are on the rise worldwide. Travelers are at risk of measles if they have not been fully vaccinated at least two weeks prior to departure, or have not had measles in the past, and travel internationally to areas where measles is spreading.

All international travelers should be fully vaccinated against measles with the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine, including an early dose for infants 6–11 months, according to  CDC’s measles vaccination recommendations for international travel .

Measles (Rubeola) - CDC Yellow Book

In Israel, including the West Bank and Gaza, poliovirus has been identified in the past year.

Travelers to Israel, including the West Bank and Gaza are at increased risk of exposure to poliovirus if: 1) they work in health care settings involving direct patient contact, 2) assist in refugee camps or other humanitarian aid settings, OR 3) have limited access to clean drinking water and sanitation .

Vaccine recommendations : Adults traveling to Israel, including the West Bank and Gaza who received a complete polio vaccination series as children, and are at increased risk of exposure to poliovirus, may receive a single lifetime booster dose of inactivated polio vaccine; travelers who are unvaccinated or not fully vaccinated should receive a complete polio vaccination series before travel. Children who are not fully vaccinated will be considered for an accelerated vaccination schedule .

Polio - CDC Yellow Book

Polio: For Travelers

Rabid dogs are commonly found in Israel, including the West Bank and Gaza. However, if you are bitten or scratched by a dog or other mammal while in Israel, including the West Bank and Gaza, rabies treatment is often available. 

Consider rabies vaccination before your trip if your activities mean you will be around dogs or wildlife.

Travelers more likely to encounter rabid animals include

• Campers, adventure travelers, or cave explorers (spelunkers)
• Veterinarians, animal handlers, field biologists, or laboratory workers handling animal specimens
• Visitors to rural areas

Since children are more likely to be bitten or scratched by a dog or other animals, consider rabies vaccination for children traveling to Israel, including the West Bank and Gaza. 

Rabies - CDC Yellow Book

If your trip includes the West Bank and Gaza, you might want to consider getting typhoid vaccine. You can get typhoid infection from contaminated food and water.

Typhoid - CDC Yellow Book

Dosing info - Typhoid

Avoid contaminated water

Leptospirosis

How most people get sick (most common modes of transmission)

• Touching urine or other body fluids from an animal infected with leptospirosis
• Swimming or wading in urine-contaminated fresh water, or contact with urine-contaminated mud
• Drinking water or eating food contaminated with animal urine
• Avoid contaminated water and soil

Clinical Guidance

Avoid bug bites.

Leishmaniasis

• Sand fly bite
• Avoid Bug Bites

Airborne & droplet

Avian/bird flu.

• Being around, touching, or working with infected poultry, such as visiting poultry farms or live-animal markets
• Avoid domestic and wild poultry
• Breathing in air or accidentally eating food contaminated with the urine, droppings, or saliva of infected rodents
• Bite from an infected rodent
• Less commonly, being around someone sick with hantavirus (only occurs with Andes virus)
• Avoid rodents and areas where they live
• Avoid sick people

Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS)

• Scientists do not fully understand how the MERS virus spreads
• May spread from to others when an infected person coughs or sneezes
• May spread to people from camels.

Middle East Respiratory virus syndrome (MERS)

Tuberculosis (TB)

• Breathe in TB bacteria that is in the air from an infected and contagious person coughing, speaking, or singing.

Learn actions you can take to stay healthy and safe on your trip. Vaccines cannot protect you from many diseases in Israel, including the West Bank and Gaza, so your behaviors are important.

Eat and drink safely

Food and water standards around the world vary based on the destination. Standards may also differ within a country and risk may change depending on activity type (e.g., hiking versus business trip). You can learn more about safe food and drink choices when traveling by accessing the resources below.

• Choose Safe Food and Drinks When Traveling
• Water Treatment Options When Hiking, Camping or Traveling
• Global Water, Sanitation and Hygiene | Healthy Water
• Avoid Contaminated Water During Travel

You can also visit the  Department of State Country Information Pages  for additional information about food and water safety.

Prevent bug bites

Although Israel, including the West Bank and Gaza is an industrialized country, bug bites here can still spread diseases. Just as you would in the United States, try to avoid bug bites while spending time outside or in wooded areas.

What can I do to prevent bug bites?

• Cover exposed skin by wearing long-sleeved shirts, long pants, and hats.
• Use an appropriate insect repellent (see below).
• Consider using permethrin-treated clothing and gear if spending a lot of time outside. Do not use permethrin directly on skin.

What type of insect repellent should I use?

• FOR PROTECTION AGAINST TICKS AND MOSQUITOES: Use a repellent that contains 20% or more DEET for protection that lasts up to several hours.
• Picaridin (also known as KBR 3023, Bayrepel, and icaridin)
• Oil of lemon eucalyptus (OLE) or para-menthane-diol (PMD)
• 2-undecanone
• Always use insect repellent as directed.

What should I do if I am bitten by bugs?

• Avoid scratching bug bites, and apply hydrocortisone cream or calamine lotion to reduce the itching.
• Check your entire body for ticks after outdoor activity. Be sure to remove ticks properly.

What can I do to avoid bed bugs?

Although bed bugs do not carry disease, they are an annoyance. See our information page about avoiding bug bites for some easy tips to avoid them. For more information on bed bugs, see Bed Bugs .

For more detailed information on avoiding bug bites, see Avoid Bug Bites .

Stay safe outdoors

If your travel plans in Israel, including the West Bank and Gaza include outdoor activities, take these steps to stay safe and healthy during your trip:

• Stay alert to changing weather conditions and adjust your plans if conditions become unsafe.
• Prepare for activities by wearing the right clothes and packing protective items, such as bug spray, sunscreen, and a basic first aid kit.
• Consider learning basic first aid and CPR before travel. Bring a travel health kit with items appropriate for your activities.
• If you are outside for many hours in the heat, eat salty snacks and drink water to stay hydrated and replace salt lost through sweating.
• Protect yourself from UV radiation : use sunscreen with an SPF of at least 15, wear protective clothing, and seek shade during the hottest time of day (10 a.m.–4 p.m.).
• Be especially careful during summer months and at high elevation. Because sunlight reflects off snow, sand, and water, sun exposure may be increased during activities like skiing, swimming, and sailing.
• Very cold temperatures can be dangerous. Dress in layers and cover heads, hands, and feet properly if you are visiting a cold location.

Stay safe around water

• Swim only in designated swimming areas. Obey lifeguards and warning flags on beaches.
• Do not dive into shallow water.
• Avoid swallowing water when swimming. Untreated water can carry germs that make you sick.
• Practice safe boating—follow all boating safety laws, do not drink alcohol if you are driving a boat, and always wear a life jacket.

Keep away from animals

Most animals avoid people, but they may attack if they feel threatened, are protecting their young or territory, or if they are injured or ill. Animal bites and scratches can lead to serious diseases such as rabies.

Follow these tips to protect yourself:

• Do not touch or feed any animals you do not know.
• Do not allow animals to lick open wounds, and do not get animal saliva in your eyes or mouth.
• Avoid rodents and their urine and feces.
• Traveling pets should be supervised closely and not allowed to come in contact with local animals.
• If you wake in a room with a bat, seek medical care immediately.  Bat bites may be hard to see.

All animals can pose a threat, but be extra careful around dogs, bats, monkeys, sea animals such as jellyfish, and snakes. If you are bitten or scratched by an animal, immediately:

• Wash the wound with soap and clean water.
• Go to a doctor right away.
• Tell your doctor about your injury when you get back to the United States.

Reduce your exposure to germs

Follow these tips to avoid getting sick or spreading illness to others while traveling:

• Wash your hands often, especially before eating.
• If soap and water aren’t available, clean hands with hand sanitizer (containing at least 60% alcohol).
• Don’t touch your eyes, nose, or mouth. If you need to touch your face, make sure your hands are clean.
• Cover your mouth and nose with a tissue or your sleeve (not your hands) when coughing or sneezing.
• Try to avoid contact with people who are sick.
• If you are sick, stay home or in your hotel room, unless you need medical care.

Avoid sharing body fluids

Diseases can be spread through body fluids, such as saliva, blood, vomit, and semen.

Protect yourself:

• Use latex condoms correctly.
• Do not inject drugs.
• Limit alcohol consumption. People take more risks when intoxicated.
• Do not share needles or any devices that can break the skin. That includes needles for tattoos, piercings, and acupuncture.
• If you receive medical or dental care, make sure the equipment is disinfected or sanitized.

Know how to get medical care while traveling

Plan for how you will get health care during your trip, should the need arise:

• Carry a list of local doctors and hospitals at your destination.
• Review your health insurance plan to determine what medical services it would cover during your trip. Consider purchasing travel health and medical evacuation insurance for things your regular insurance will not cover.
• Carry a card that identifies, in the local language, your blood type, chronic conditions or serious allergies, and the generic names of any medicines you take.
• Bring copies of your prescriptions for medicine and for eye glasses and contact lenses.
• Some prescription drugs may be illegal in other countries. Call Israel, including the West Bank and Gaza’s embassy to verify that all of your prescription(s) are legal to bring with you.
• Bring all the medicines (including over-the-counter medicines) you think you might need during your trip, including extra in case of travel delays. Ask your doctor to help you get prescriptions filled early if you need to.

Many foreign hospitals and clinics are accredited by the Joint Commission International. A list of accredited facilities is available at their website ( www.jointcommissioninternational.org ).

Select safe transportation

Motor vehicle crashes are the #1 killer of healthy US citizens in foreign countries.

Be smart when you are traveling on foot.

• Use sidewalks and marked crosswalks.
• Pay attention to the traffic around you, especially in crowded areas.
• Remember, people on foot do not always have the right of way in other countries.

Riding/Driving

Choose a safe vehicle.

• Choose official taxis or public transportation, such as trains and buses.
• Make sure there are seatbelts.
• Avoid overcrowded, overloaded, top-heavy buses and minivans.
• Avoid riding on motorcycles or motorbikes, especially motorbike taxis. (Many crashes are caused by inexperienced motorbike drivers.)
• Choose newer vehicles—they may have more safety features, such as airbags, and be more reliable.
• Choose larger vehicles, which may provide more protection in crashes.

Think about the driver.

• Do not drive after drinking alcohol or ride with someone who has been drinking.
• Consider hiring a licensed, trained driver familiar with the area.
• Arrange payment before departing.

Follow basic safety tips.

• Wear a seatbelt at all times.
• Sit in the back seat of cars and taxis.
• When on motorbikes or bicycles, always wear a helmet. (Bring a helmet from home, if needed.)
• Do not use a cell phone or text while driving (illegal in many countries).
• Travel during daylight hours only, especially in rural areas.
• If you choose to drive a vehicle in Israel, including the West Bank and Gaza, learn the local traffic laws and have the proper paperwork.
• Get any driving permits and insurance you may need. Get an International Driving Permit (IDP). Carry the IDP and a US-issued driver's license at all times.
• Check with your auto insurance policy's international coverage, and get more coverage if needed. Make sure you have liability insurance.
• Avoid using local, unscheduled aircraft.
• If possible, fly on larger planes (more than 30 seats); larger airplanes are more likely to have regular safety inspections.
• Try to schedule flights during daylight hours and in good weather.

Helpful Resources

Road Safety Overseas (Information from the US Department of State): Includes tips on driving in other countries, International Driving Permits, auto insurance, and other resources.

The Association for International Road Travel has country-specific Road Travel Reports available for most countries for a minimal fee.

Maintain personal security

Use the same common sense traveling overseas that you would at home, and always stay alert and aware of your surroundings. Note that the US Department of State urges US citizens to exercise caution when traveling to the West Bank and strongly urges US citizens to avoid all travel to the Gaza Strip. See http://travel.state.gov/content/passports/en/alertswarnings/israel-travel-warning.html for more information.

Before you leave

• Research your destination(s), including local laws, customs, and culture.
• Monitor travel warnings and alerts and read travel tips from the US Department of State.
• Enroll in the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP) .
• Leave a copy of your itinerary, contact information, credit cards, and passport with someone at home.
• Pack as light as possible, and leave at home any item you could not replace.

While at your destination(s)

• Carry contact information for the nearest US embassy or consulate .
• Carry a photocopy of your passport and entry stamp; leave the actual passport securely in your hotel.
• Follow all local laws and social customs.
• Do not wear expensive clothing or jewelry.
• Always keep hotel doors locked, and store valuables in secure areas.
• If possible, choose hotel rooms between the 2nd and 6th floors.

Healthy Travel Packing List

Use the Healthy Travel Packing List for Israel, including the West Bank and Gaza for a list of health-related items to consider packing for your trip. Talk to your doctor about which items are most important for you.

Why does CDC recommend packing these health-related items?

It’s best to be prepared to prevent and treat common illnesses and injuries. Some supplies and medicines may be difficult to find at your destination, may have different names, or may have different ingredients than what you normally use.

If you are not feeling well after your trip, you may need to see a doctor. If you need help finding a travel medicine specialist, see Find a Clinic . Be sure to tell your doctor about your travel, including where you went and what you did on your trip. Also tell your doctor if you were bitten or scratched by an animal while traveling.

For more information on what to do if you are sick after your trip, see Getting Sick after Travel .

Map Disclaimer - The boundaries and names shown and the designations used on maps do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. Approximate border lines for which there may not yet be full agreement are generally marked.

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Best Things to Do in Jerusalem (Local Travel Tips)

Updated on April 26th, 2024

Looking for how to visit Jerusalem for the first time? Check out this travel guide for our best non-religious things to do in Jerusalem, for any culture-savvy traveler.

This article may contain affiliate links. We earn a small commissions when you purchase via those links — and it's free for you. It's only us (Becca & Dan) working on this website, so we value your support! Read our privacy policy and learn more about us .

Posted in Israel

Table of contents

• Abraham Hostel Jerusalem
• Tmol Shilshom
• Aricha Sabich
• Marzipan Bakery and Pastry
• Dwiny Pita Bar
• Cafe Yehoshua
• Sushi Rehavia
• Jerusalem Steakhouse
• Pasta Basta
• The Coffee Mill
• Freddy Lemon
• Gatsby Cocktail Room
• Biratenu - Jerusalem Beer Center
• Rooftop” (rooftop bar in Jerusalem)
• Beer Bazaar
• Mahane Yehuda Market
• Ben Yehuda Street
• Temple Mount
• Dome of the Rock
• Wilson’s Arch
• Jewish Quarter (Rova Yehudi)
• Western Wall
• Mount Herzl (Har Herzl)
• Arab Quarter
• Armenian Quarter
• Hebrew Music Museum
• Jerusalem public bus
• Taxis in Jerusalem
• Jerusalem Central Bus Station
• Jerusalem light rail
• Tel Aviv-Jerusalem speed train
• Take a day trip tour to the Dead Sea

As per a Travel Advisory update posted by the US Department of State on October 14, 2023, Israel has been marked a Level 3 Country: “Reconsider travel” due to the ongoing armed conflict, civil unrest and terrorism from “Hamas, a U.S. government-designated foreign terrorist organization.” Please visit the travel.state.gov page for Israel to learn more and stay informed.

Jerusalem is a magical city for so many reasons. It’s historic, it’s full of culture, it’s surprising to most, and what we like about it from our most recent visit is that Jerusalem has lots of personalities.

At the mention of “Jerusalem,” you may think of the Western Wall, lots of religions in one spot and a city from your history book, but maybe that’s because you haven’t seen the murals of the Mahane Yehuda Shuk during its nightlife hours, the hidden speakeasies that only locals know and the best spots for hummus.

No trip to Israel is complete without a few days or even a week, spent in Jerusalem, after you see sights in Tel Aviv and Haifa, and nature at Masada and the Dead Sea.

If you came to our Jerusalem to learn about famous spots from the Bible, politics or history, that’s great, and you’re sure to have an excellent time. Conversely, if you plan to visit Jerusalem to see what’s under the dusty artifacts and stone walls, come with us, as we show you local tips and the best things to see for the fun-loving traveler.

Did you know that Jerusalem, and Israel as a country, is one of the best countries for gluten-free travel ? You’ll see why.

What to know before visiting Jerusalem (for non-religious trips)

Most people think of Jerusalem and think of a highly-religious city full of places of worship, dusty layers of history and maybe some conflict.

Okay, ready? Brush all of that aside and wipe your slate clean. Jerusalem is a vibrant city with a fascinating mix of cultures and people, and cool surprises around every bend.

For example, the city’s central market turns into the center of nightlife after dark, and it’s where you’ll find poetry slams, beer bars, late-night eats, colorful murals and music. Say what!

Is Jerusalem safe to visit?

Yes, totally. We didn’t experience any crime while traveling in Jerusalem. Israel presents low crime rates for tourists and locals are friendly.

The biggest threat you’d face is potentially getting ripped off in a taxi or in a market. As goes for traveling anywhere away from home, watch your bag, especially in markets and in the Jerusalem Old City (it can be crowded in the narrow alleys) and watch your pockets.

There are on and off periods of tension in Israel overall between various parties, but as a tourist, if you stick to popular attractions and the things in this guide/other blogs, you will likely not get into any type of trouble.

What’s a good packing list for traveling to Israel?

We recommend several packing lists for you to go by, and in addition, we’ll make a few recommendations below.

• Best travel accessories
• Which shoes to pack, for women
• Minimalist packing tips
• Best accessories for long flights

For Israel additionally, we recommend a few things…

• Bathing suit! For swimming in the Dead Sea.
• A travel lock , for using at a rental locker (maybe at the Dead Sea)
• A scarf or shawl, for women, to use when visiting religious sites where shoulders must be covered (synagogues, Dome of the Rock, mosques, churches, memorial sites)
• One pair of travel pants for men and travel pants for women , as shorts are also not allowed at major religious sites, memorials and some national monuments
• If you are Jewish and own your own kippah (skullcap), we also suggest bringing it so that you do not have to borrow or buy one when visiting the Western Wall and other sites of worship
• Women may also benefit from packing one skirt or maxi dress for the same reasons above

Do I need a visa to travel to Israel?

You probably don’t need a visa to travel to Israel.

Passport holders of 99 major countries do not require travel visas to enter Israel, so if you are reading this and you’re not from Indonesia, Malaysia or a list of Middle-Eastern countries, you do not need a confirmation of a visa.

Should I worry about things being closed on the Sabbath (Shabbat) in Jerusalem?

Shabbat, which is Hebrew for the Sabbath, or day of rest, takes place every Friday evening at sundown until Saturday also at sundown. Shabbat is a peaceful time for Jewish Israelis who observe this day of rest, and so many businesses will be closed.

You’ll notice that Tel Aviv overall observes less of the Shabbat tradition of closing stores, but in Jerusalem it’s a different story. Things like trains will not run, the average business will be closed for the day on Saturday and will close Friday afternoon and many people will attend religious services.

Don’t be scared! As a traveler in Israel on Shabbat, you’ll have heaps to do.

A local tip is that the “monit sherut” (small buss) from the Central Bus Station in Tel Aviv runs to Jerusalem, on a somewhat limited schedule. So, ask your hotel or hostel in Tel Aviv about it, and you can make your way to Jerusalem even while other forms of transit are on their day off.

Download Moovit, as it’s a really helpful travel app and it’ll really help you with transportation specifically in Israel.

General first-time travel tips for Jerusalem

Here are a few helpful things to know about Jerusalem, to prepare you for your visit:

“Do”s and “Don’t”s in Israel

• Try all the amazing food: falafel, shawarma (with toppings), shakshuka, sabich, Turkish coffee, arak, local craft beer
• Go exploring: in the Old City, around Nachlaot, in the Mahane Yehuda Market (Shuk)
• Take a tour, in order to learn more in-depth about where you are. You can book some tours or day outings with hostels like Abraham Hostel or with operators like Tourist Israel.
• Be respectful: of various religions, ethnicities, customs, cultures and languages. Israel has a very diverse array of people, and everyone has a story. Try not to judge, and instead, choose to learn.
• Do not go unprepared to holy sites like the Western Wall, famous synagogues or mosques, the Temple Mount (see below for our guide) or national monuments and cemeteries. Most will have a modest dress code.
• Do not get frustrated when someone does not speak any English. Israeli people speak a multitude of languages, from Russian to French to Arabic to Hebrew, and learning English has come as a second thought, for some.
• Do not expect everything to be open on Friday nights and Saturdays, and do be patient about it. It’s incredible to see a country that comes to ‘full stop’ for one day a week, so appreciate it!
• Do not leave Israel without learning a few helpful phrases like ‘todah rabah’ (thank you), ‘shalom’ (hi/peace) and, ‘ayfo ha sherutim?’ (where’s the bathroom?).

Old City tourist pricing

Avoid getting your falafel and hummus inside the old city (especially the Jewish Quarter). It’s overpriced and not as good as it’ll be in the more local areas (try the market).

Jerusalem signage and languages

Signs in Jerusalem are usually in three languages: Hebrew, English and Arabic. You’ll also find taxi drivers who speak Russian, shop-owners who speak French, restaurant servers who speak Amharic (from Ethiopia) and expats who speak Spanish. There’s a bit of everyone here.

Learn some Hebrew with our travel language-learning tips !

Taking a Jerusalem city tour can be helpful

Taking a tour around Jerusalem can be helpful, as it’s really easy to get lost — much more so than in the city of Tel Aviv. The streets wind around a lot because the city is so hilly. The bright side of this is that there are lots of viewpoints to see!

Try the Jerusalem public bus system

Jerusalem’s buses run very regularly during the week (aside from Friday evenings and Saturdays during the day) and are a great way to get from neighborhood to neighborhood. Rides are rarely long and they’re pretty affordable. Our tip is to always have change, in Shekels.

Where to stay in Jerusalem, for backpackers

Abraham hostel jerusalem.

Abraham Hostel Jerusalem is a great downtown hostel for travelers of all types, especially backpackers! Given that Israel is so (relatively) expensive for many travelers, with the exchange rate to the USD and other currencies, you may be looking into budget accommodation during your trip.

There’s an Abraham Hostel in Tel Aviv as well, and we equally enjoyed our stay there (it was awesome). Abraham Hostels really have the traveler experience down to a science.

Starting with the common area, there’s a bar, where you can grab happy hour and get to meet other travelers. The demographic here is pretty wide, from college students to travelers in groups in the 50-60 age range from Europe. Seriously, no one stands out here and everyone is welcome.

The hostel has a variety of different rooms, ranging from dorms to privates! The dorm rooms are great for those looking to try solo travel and are a nice way to be social.

In the morning, there’s a big spread of Israeli breakfast, included, so you definitely won’t go hungry and can start your day off with the delicious fresh foods that are part of the Israeli diet — vegetables, fruits and more. We love Israeli breakfasts for staying healthy during travel .

What we like most about Abraham Hostels both in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem is that they offer so many events, every day of the week. Literally every day, there is something going on, whether you’re looking for an open mic night, a performance from a local band, a hummus-making class or a city tour you can join. They also offer Abraham Tours to other parts of Israel, like Eilat, Haifa and Bethlehem.

Did you know that staying in a hostel is one of the best ways to save money during a trip? See why!

Where to eat in Jerusalem (local spots)

Tmol shilshom.

Tmol Shilshom is a great place for starting your Jerusalem journey, as it’s a popular place for young people and cultured travelers who want to eat fresh Mediterranean food in a beautiful old alley of a quiet neighborhood. It’s a bookstore-cafe in an old garden, where you can combine food with culture. Have some Israeli wine and try the shakshuka or salmon fillet. End with cheesecake.

Aricha Sabich

Hailed as some of the best sabich, and some of the best food, in all of Jerusalem, Aricha Sabich will not leave you disappointed. Not sure what sabich is? Add this to your vocabulary fast, as sabich is an Iraqi and now Israeli breakfast dish that you can eat any time of day. It consists of eggplant, hard-boiled eggs, tahini sauce and salads, all crammed into fresh pita bread.

Marzipan Bakery and Pastry

Marzipan Bakery is a popular spot for rugelach cookies (drool!), donuts, decorated cakes and chocolate pastries. You might go twice.

Dwiny Pita Bar

This little pita bar is only two minutes away from the Mahane Yehuda Market (the Shuk) and it’ll be great for anyone looking for some of the best vegetarian options, along with creative pita fillings that amount to some “gorgeous vegetarian food” and a hip crowd.

Cafe Yehoshua

Cafe Yehoshua, located at Azza St 17, is highly-rated for healthy breakfast options and a nice Mediterranean cuisine menu. Bonus: grilled cheese sandwiches.

Sushi Rehavia

With four locations in Jerusalem, this is a great option if you want some high-quality kosher sushi. It’s well-known throughout town, and while it’s more than what you’d pay to fill up your stomach than having a falafel pita, for example, it’s delicious.

Jerusalem Steakhouse

Not to be confused with an actual steakhouse (it’s not), nor the Brooklyn joint of exactly the same name (ha), this fast casual restaurant is located at 101 Agripas and is good for a ‘real authentic loud Israel experience.’ It’s not too expensive, and it is super crazy delicious for shawarma and falafel.

Cafe Rimon is a local chain with four locations in Jerusalem and is popular for “dairy” and fish. It’s vegetarian- and vegan-friendly, and also has an assortment of gluten-free options. If you go with a group, you can order family-style.

Pasta Basta

Located in Mahane Yehuda Market, AKA “The Shuk,” Pasta Basta is not only fun to say, but has delicious pasta and is relatively inexpensive, considering the cost of many other things in Israel. Travelers say it is worth the wait (there may be one), but a good deal and highly recommended.

If you’re down on Emek Refaim, the main thoroughfare of the “German Colony” neighborhood, Bagel Cafe is your stop for an “American-style bagel” and a coffee. Takeaway is fine here, if not expected and there’s also a catering menu in case you need food for … a ton of people. Kosher.

Located at David Remez St 4, Station 9 is one of Jerusalem’s best Asian fusion restaurants for when you want to get fancy and treat yourself. The eclectic menu mixes flavors from China, Vietnam and more, all under kosher supervision.

Where to grab coffee, Israel-style

Israelis love coffee, and if you’re like us, hunting down cafes wherever you go (and how to take photos of it), you’ll want to know where locals get their coffee in Jerusalem.

Aroma is a coffee shop and cafe now found in many places in Israel, in addition to places like NYC and LA. The first one opened up in Jerusalem in 2006, and now it’s synonymous with starting your morning.

In addition to having your coffee, you can get fresh and healthy items like sandwiches, beads, pastries, vegan breakfast, gluten-free staples like shakshuka, a complete Israeli breakfast and more. Needless to say, you’ll probably go to Aroma a whole bunch during your stay in Israel.

The Coffee Mill

The Coffee Mill is a hidden gem of a cafe, owned by two Americans who created its unique atmosphere. They have coffee from all over the world, and there’s breakfast, lunch and dinner as well.

Cafe Nadi, at Hillel St 39, is one of the most well-known spots for morning coffee and breakfast in Jerusalem. It’s cozy and charming, known for excellent fresh food and outdoor seating.

Coolest local trendy bars in Jerusalem

We know what you’re thinking: cool bars? In Jerusalem? Yes, it’s true. Jerusalem has its own bar and night scene, and it’s exactly where you wouldn’t expect it to be.

To set the scene, picture a big Israeli-style market, lined with vendors selling pomegranates, vegetables, spices, teas and nuts every day (except Shabbat), mixed in with eateries and other market stalls. Now picture the time dinner time rolls around, and the vendors start packing up and leaving.

And the market turns into Jerusalem’s best bar scene.

Now you see why everyone talks about the reinvented “shuk” scene going on at night in Jerusalem, most days of the week. It’s here that you can have craft beer, a cocktail, delicious food and see a Hebrew poetry slam, all while admiring the hand-painted wall murals of famous faces colored across closed stall grates. Don’t forget your camera!

Freddy Lemon

One of the coolest bars in the Mahane Yehuda Shuk, Freddy Lemon is the spot where you’ll see indie musicians take the stage. Happy hour is til 9:30 pm and there’s outdoor (patio) seating. It’s open til 5 am.

Yudale is a tapas bar with a cool and energetic atmosphere. It’s also a two-minute walk from the Shuk, with great drinks, so you can go in the beginning or at the end of your evening out in Jeru.

HaTaklit is a divey bar with some outdoor seating on a quiet uphill street. Happy hour lasts for five hours, staff is friendly and helpful and there’s a performance space. HaTaklit means “the record” (the music kind), and you’ll see why our next listing is its neighbor.

Video Pub, or simply, “Video,” is the official gay bar of Jerusalem. It’s quirky and casual and welcomes everyone. Video is open til 3 am.

Gatsby Cocktail Room

Gatsby Cocktail Room is where you may want to get a bit more dressed up, as opposed to shuffling in from your day in your regular walking shoes and hoodie or tank top. One of Jerusalem’s best speakeasies, it does not disappoint. The menu is grand, with photos and descriptions, all in art deco style and flavor. Note: it’s not cheap, but a special experience like this comes with a special price tag.

Located at Dorot Rishonim St 8, Birma is a laid-back piano bar where you can appreciate some jazz. There’s Middle-Eastern bar food (delicious) and a lovely array of drinks.

Biratenu - Jerusalem Beer Center

Visiting Biratenu is a unique thing to do when you visit Jerusalem. Based in Hillel St 6, you can see hundreds of Israeli craft beers here and speak with the owner, who is very passionate about his work. Beer-lovers, beware! You might want to stay a while here.

Rooftop” (rooftop bar in Jerusalem)

It’s rare to find a rooftop bar in Jerusalem, but if you visit Rooftop, at Shlomo ha-Melekh St 11, it’s a great way to appreciate the city a bit from above, especially when it is warm out.

Beer Bazaar

Beer Bazaar will be your craft beer spot in Israel if you want to “finally get something other than Goldstar or Maccabi beer,” according to our friend Allie. Located in the Mahane Yehuda Market, you’ll see heaps of beers lining the walls and you can speak with knowledgeable and expert beer store staff.

Historic and interesting places to see in Jerusalem

We’re not experts in Jerusalem’s history by any means, but we do appreciate all the unique things you can see that exist nowhere else in the world. For example, where can you see the mix of cultures that takes place in the Old City, in such close proximity?

Mahane Yehuda Market

This is one of our favorite Israeli markets. Debatably the most famous in Israel, you’ll see why, once you get semi-lost among the vendors and travelers from every corner of the Earth who come here to shop and see what’s up.

Once a historic neighborhood, Nachlaot has turned kind of hipster. Lose the map, as it’s not worth bringing one — Nachlaot’s white stone alleys will charm you and you’ll wind up walking in circles no matter what you do.

The neighborhood has rather short buildings, which adds to its charm. Among them, you’ll see galleries, flowers peeking out of gardens, courtyards and centuries-old synagogues with fading signs.

Cameras are welcome!

Ben Yehuda Street

Ben Yehuda Street is a major street and more or less a Jerusalem landmark when it comes to saying, Meet me at Ben Yehuda. This street is closed off for pedestrians, and it’s here that you’ll find stores that cater to tourists, but you may see street performers, groups of off-duty Israeli soldiers and travelers stopping at cafes. This is also where things happen on fun holidays like Purim and Simchat Torah.

Temple Mount

The Temple Mount is a hill in the Jerusalem Old City that is sacred to several religions. It is now part of the “Muslim part,” so it’s where you will find the Dome of the Rock and famous mosques.

Dome of the Rock

The Dome of the Rock is one of the most holy places in the Muslim religion and it’s a beautiful example of Islamic architecture. We went there to see the architecture. It truly is beautiful. The catch is that it is a tough place in terms of being a tourist — well, not for everyone, but there are a bunch of rules to go by in order to prepare for your visit.

See our complete Dome of the Rock visit guide .

One more thing: Non-Muslims can’t go into the Dome of the Rock itself. So, you have to walk around and quietly appreciate your surroundings without going into any of the buildings.

Wilson’s Arch

If you’re really into history and architecture, check out Wilson’s Arch, which was named for the explorer who ‘found’ (re-found) it in the 1800s. It’s near the Western Wall.

Jewish Quarter (Rova Yehudi)

The Jewish Quarter is one of the four ‘quarters’ (they’re not exactly all the same size) in Jerusalem’s Old City. Again, without touching too much on religion, this is the Jewish cultural section where you’ll find the Western Wall at its border, lots of shops, market stalls, religious (okay, we touched on religion) sites and even people who call this neighborhood home.

It’s totally safe, so there’s no need to worry about safety. If you love feeling like an explorer, you’ll enjoy the stone alleys, old stairwells, accessible rooftops (keep wandering!) and underground labyrinths.

Western Wall

This wall (it’s massive) is one of the most holy places in the Jewish religion and it is called “The Kotel” (Ha Kotel) in Hebrew. Note: to visit — well, to get close to it — women must cover their shoulders and be wearing a skirt or bottoms that fall below the knee, and men must wear the traditional skullcap called a ‘kippah.’

If you’d like to engage in going up close to it, note that most visitors take their visit very seriously, even by backing away from it without turning their back to the wall, and will stick a note of prayer or hope into the cracks of the massive white stones.

Note, again, that to get your note in, you’ll have to cram it in among the thousands (millions?) of notes that have been left there since the beginning of time (or so it seems). A lot of them fall to the ground. To be respectful, avoid touching any note that is not your own.

Yad Vashem is The World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem. It is an incredible and moving testament to the Jews who perished in the Holocaust and also the Gentiles who helped save them and risked their lives doing so.

It is customary to act very respectful here, as the topics are very heavy. The museum is incredibly well-done and it is worth a visit for everyone who goes there.

We recommend avoiding taking photos. It is also customary to not talk much while visiting in order to maintain respect and remembrance.

Mount Herzl (Har Herzl)

Rather than being an actual mountain, Mount Herzl (Har Herzl in Hebrew) is actually the Mount Herzl National Cemetery. It’s here that major Israeli figures are buried, like Yitzhak Rabin and Golda Meir.

The Herzl Museum, which is also on-site, has a movie about the life of Theodore Herzl, the founder of modern Zionims. Also here is the cemetery with the final resting places of fallen soldiers throughout Israel’s various wars.

Please maintain utmost respect when visiting.

If you want to find Mount Herzl, the address is, fittingly, “Mount Herzl, Jerusalem.”

Arab Quarter

The Arab, or Muslim Quarter, is one of the quadrants of Jerusalem’s Old City within the old city walls. The main point of entry is Damascus Gate, which is a landmark on any map.

The main market is the cotton market, and it is in the style of a shuk, where you can buy all the things you need (rather than souvenirs).

Armenian Quarter

The Armenian Quarter in Jerusalem’s Old City is the smallest ‘quarter’ (again, they’re not perfect quarters). Between one and two thousands Armenians live in this region.

You can enter through Zion Gate and Jaffa Gate, so look for those gates on your map. Things to do in the Armenian quarter include having coffee, visit Armenian ceramic and pottery shops and trying Armenian food at the Armenian restaurants. There are a few religious sites as well (remember, we’re not experts on religion during this article, so we’re not going to mention much more detail because we don’t feel qualified to do so!).

Hebrew Music Museum

Visitors say this Jerusalem museum is a real gem, and that’s because in addition to musical instruments, the museum helps depict the periods of time that shaped music in Israel and how music is intertwined with culture.

There are interactive exhibits all around, and it’s recommended to take a guided tour in order to not miss anything crucial. This is a great museum for music lovers, music fans, musicians or anyone who wants to learn something completely new while discovering Israel.

If you’re into unique and off-the-beaten-track museums, you’ll want to say you’ve been to the Jerusalem Tax Museum.

This museum exists to show people the importance of tax collection! We could use a few pointers about that every year!

Even more than exhibiting tax in Israel, the museum demonstrates how tax is collected all over the world. Worth a visit, if you’re a CPA, accounting or finance student, or if you want to learn a ton of new things!

Transit options in Jerusalem (how to get around Jerusalem)

Most of Jerusalem is walkable, as it’s not a big city, compared with other major cities in the world. While Jerusalem is not actually big, it’s very hilly and therefore, lots of streets wind around hills. There’s no real city grid, and lots of streets turn into others and are windy. There are a few transit options to help you out.

Jerusalem public bus

For getting around on a day to day, taking the public bus is very helpful. You’ll see people lining up to get on buses, especially at rush hour in the morning and later in the day. Within our week in Jerusalem, we got pretty familiar with the buses that stopped at our hostel and the other places we went. We rarely took taxis!

Taxis in Jerusalem

You can take taxis in Jerusalem, but note that the drivers sometimes don’t speak English (most will speak Hebrew, Russian or maybe Arabic a bit). Also, you will probably wind up paying a lot for a taxi as a non-Hebrew speaker. This can get frustrating. We advise taking a taxi if you can’t figure out the bus or light rail route to get to your destination.

Jerusalem Central Bus Station

As Israel is a compact country, the best way to get around is by bus, if you’re not renting a car. We got around between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and back again, via public bus. Buses to lots of major cities leave very often, and you’ll rarely have to wait.

Around the bus station, everyone is pretty helpful, especially if you’re going somewhere major (Tel Aviv, Haifa, Beersheva, Eilat).

In Jerusalem, the bus station is a pretty popular place, and people on the light rail or on the street will be hopefully pretty helpful in getting you there. The light rail (details below) has a stop at the bus station. Leave some time when taking the light rail in case there’s any sort of delay.

A good thing to know is that buses to Tel Aviv run every 15-20 minutes.

Be aware of Shabbat (Friday night into Saturday) service for all transportation options. Things tend to stop and get slower a few hours before Shabbat begins (it depends on the time of year). Ask your hotel or hostel staff for the most up-to-date details on when Shabbat starts and how it will affect transport options in Jerusalem.

Jerusalem light rail

Jerusalem has a fairly new system that’s reminiscent of a small above-ground metro, and it is called Harakevet Hakala. It mostly connects the main thoroughfares of the city (which is not huge) and can take you from the Central Bus Station to places like the square outside Abraham Hostel Jerusalem.

Tel Aviv-Jerusalem speed train

The “Tel Aviv–Jerusalem railway,” also referred to as the “high-speed railway to Jerusalem,” is Israel’s newest hi-tech transport option.

During our last trip to Israel, this speed train was not even finished yet, but everyone was very excited about its completion.

With this rail line now done, you can reach the Tel Aviv International Airport (Ben Gurion Airport) in around 25 minutes from Jerusalem city. That’s incredible!

Tickets are around 10 USD and you can pay for them at a machine with cash or credit. The trains are like European-style railway trains.

Taking the high-speed rail is a great new way to have a mass transit option in getting from the airport to Jerusalem and avoiding (sorry, taxi drivers) the high prices that taxis usually cost in getting anywhere from city to city.

Day trip ideas out of Jerusalem

Israel is a relatively compact country (many say it’s the size of the US state of New Jersey), so taking a day trip is never a huge schlep, so to speak.

Many tour operators like Tourist Israel can help you take all sorts of day trips to Masada, Ein Gedi, Caesarea and the Dead Sea. Check out how we took a Tourist Israel trip to the Dead Sea, as follows.

Take a day trip tour to the Dead Sea

Dan and I both took trips to the Dead Sea when we went on Birthright Israel trips in our late teens-early twenties (separately) and were excited to go back. Due to the heaviest rains in years during our most recent trip to Israel, we went to a different part of the Dead Sea than previous times.

This was interesting because it was not as we had remembered, and it was good for us to see another “Dead Sea region.” Our trip with Tourist Israel took an alternate route because the Dead Sea resorts near Ein Gedi, the most famous and most beautiful Dead Sea location, was closed due to mudslides the day we went.

Instead, we had an interesting time visiting Qasr el Yahud, or, the spot where Jesus was baptized. We probably would not have made our way here otherwise, so it was a kind of once-in-a-lifetime experience for us to see a famous Christian site in Israel, whereas we typically visit Jewish ones.

Leaving Jerusalem and going through the desert is a quintessential Israeli experience that everyone should have. Hopefully your tour will stop at a monument to Sea Level, as it all goes downhill from there… so to speak (ha).

At the Dead Sea itself, you have to prepare to get very salty. The water in the Dead Sea is like nothing you’ve ever floated in — it’s basically hard to sink!

Bathing in water in such a high concentration of salt will leave your skin smooth and can be pretty therapeutic. Be sure to rub the mineral-rich mud all over yourself, and of course, all over your friends.

One thing to remember is to be careful of if you have any open cuts (even a paper cut), because the high salt content of the Dead Sea water can magnify the stinging feeling.

Ready to explore more of Israel? Explore Tel Aviv and the Dead Sea with us!

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A Muslim woman walks by the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, a religious site revered by both Muslims and Jews.

What to Do in the Holy City of Jerusalem

The rich religious and spiritual history of Jerusalem adds an extra dimension to a visit to Israel, where ancient sites and thriving cultures continue to draw modern-day visitors.

The ancient city of Jerusalem resonates deeply with three monotheistic religions: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. The three religions intersect—and intertwine—in the maze of streets that run through Jerusalem’s Old City, ringed by a wall that dates back to the 16 th century. That’s positively modern-day compared with the city’s holiest sites.

The Temple Mount, a large stone plaza in Old City, is the site of Judaism’s First Temple, built by King Solomon and destroyed in 587 B.C. It is now the site of the Dome of the Rock, the iconic gold-domed Islamic mosque completed in A.D. 691. Christian sites include the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which broke ground in A.D. 236 on the site of Jesus’s burial and resurrection.

When to Go: Spring is a cool, dry time in most of Israel. The Jewish holy days of Rosh Hashanah (New Year) and Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) fall in either September or October and bring the country to a standstill. Many Christians visit at Easter, in either March or April.

Where to Stay: More than a century old, the American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem is full of history and is where foreign journalists, diplomats, and a few notable celebrities have stayed. It was originally a home for the Ottoman Pasha Rabbah Effendi al-Husseini and his harem before becoming a Christian commune, and no two rooms are the same.

Cultural Tip: The Temple Mount complex, Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the Western Wall all require that visitors be dressed modestly. Praying by non-Muslims at the Temple Mount is prohibited. When leaving the Western Wall, it is traditional to walk away backward so as not to show the wall your back. Access to many of the sites is subject to change due to holidays and political situations, so check before visiting.

What to Read Before You Go : My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel by Avi Shalit is a 2013 award-winning book by an Israeli journalist exploring his conflicting feelings about Israel.

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'He's had it': Biden's patience with Israel may be wearing thin as Rafah questions linger

WASHINGTON − President Joe Biden is at a crossroads on America's military support for Israel in its war against Hamas that could have profound and lasting effects on his presidency and the relationship with the Mideast country.

Biden's decision to pause a shipment of arms to Israel, along with a State Department report that concluded U.S. weapons were likely used to conduct operations in the Gaza Strip in ways that did not adequately protect civilians, marked a turning point for the Democratic president.

For the first time since the war began, Biden last week put conditions on U.S.-supplied weaponry: no more high payload bombs or artillery shells until the Israeli government abandons a plan to invade the densely populated city of Rafah.

"I think he's had it in terms of his patience, of being defied, especially given the extraordinary goodwill he extended for months," said Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., a leading progressive on Capitol Hill and a Biden campaign surrogate.

Progressive frustration with Biden over the war, which has lasted more than seven months, has been at a fever pitch. Protests have engulfed college campuses. Young voters and Democratic lawmakers have warned Biden he faces a collapse in support at the ballot box. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has said the war could be Biden's Vietnam.

Prep for the polls: See who is running for president and compare where they stand on key issues in our Voter Guide

U.S. military aid to Israel has been a significant source of the tension, and deep divisions have emerged in the Democratic Party over how Biden should proceed.

Although most congressional Democrats voted in April to beef up assistance to Israel, 88 members of his party raised "serious concerns" with Israel's conduct in Gaza in a letter to Biden earlier this month. They pressed his administration to consider withholding some arms transfers.

After the president did exactly that, a smaller group of Democrats sent a letter to the White House questioning the decision. The lawmakers told his national security adviser they were "deeply concerned" about the message Biden was sending to Hamas and other Iranian-backed proxy groups. They want the Biden administration to explain itself at a classified briefing.

Republicans have challenged Biden with a similar critique. House Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul said in an interview with USA TODAY on Monday, just after he concluded a meeting with Israel's ambassador to the U.S., that Biden's actions had "caused one of the biggest rifts" the United States has ever had with Israel.

"Not only does it greatly damage our long-standing relationship with Israel, but even beyond Israel, it has far-reaching consequences," said McCaul, R-Texas. "That's what I'm particularly concerned about, is the message it sends to our allies and friends that we can't be trusted − and to our enemies it only emboldens and empowers, for instance, Iran."

U.S. officials have said that the size of the population in Rafah, where more than 1 million people had been taking refuge, drove the decision to suspend and review certain types of offensive weapons while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu weighs a major ground invasion. Biden has said he stands by U.S. aid for Israel's defense.

Biden's advisers argue that the war is at a different stage than it was in the aftermath of Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people.

"We believe that they have put (an) enormous amount of pressure on Hamas, and that there are better ways to go after what is left of Hamas in Rafah than a major ground operation," White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters last week.

According to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, more than 35,000 Palestinians have died in Gaza since the beginning of the conflict. The militant group has not provided the details for more than 11,000 of the reported casualties, and the United States, which does not have personnel on the ground, has not been able to verify its numbers.

Biden seeks to regain leverage

For months, the Biden administration had said it would not intervene in Israel's military operations. It is up to Netanyahu to determine how to conduct the war against Hamas, top officials repeatedly said.

But with a pause on some offensive weapons as the U.S. waits to see how Netanyahu reacts, Biden effectively told the Israelis to accept his military advisers' advice on how to defeat Hamas or else they will lose access to bombs, artillery shells and other munitions.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said Biden's actions are a reminder that the United States always conditions foreign aid.

"He is reminding the prime minister of Israel that when he exacerbates a humanitarian catastrophe, that the United States will not be a passive passenger in whatever direction Benjamin Netanyahu wants to drive through Rafah," she told USA TODAY. "We have been clear (on) our position on both a two-state solution and the importance of access to humanitarian relief. Benjamin Netanyahu ignores the United States at his peril."

In response to the weapons pause, Netanyahu said in a speech last week that Israel would "stand alone" if it had to.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters Monday that U.S. officials continue to confer with their Israeli counterparts about alternatives.

"We are talking to Israel about how to connect their military operations to a clear, strategic endgame, about a wholistic integrated strategy to ensure the lasting defeat of Hamas and a better alternative future for Gaza and for the Palestinian people," he said.

Daniel Mouton, director for defense and political-military policy for the Middle East and North Africa at the National Security Council at the beginning of Biden's administration, said the president's recent moves amount to a change in tactics rather than a major shift in U.S. policy toward Israel.

"I think if the administration had wanted to signal a broad shift, it had the tools to have communicated that," said Mouton, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a nonpartisan think tank.

The administration has tried to buy time for Israel's government during a period that has been tougher for the country's security across the region, he said. "And the administration has also I think clearly tried to buy sort of diplomatic and political top cover for the Israeli government. But I think we're seeing the limits of what the White House is willing to do, which is why I think this is playing out publicly."

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in an appearance Sunday on "Meet the Press," demonstrated just how careful a line the administration is walking.

"President Biden brought together a coalition of countries that helped defend Israel. So, no one has done more than Joe Biden. At the same time, what we've seen over the last few months is a deep concern on our part about the possibility of a major military operation in Rafah, given the damage it would do to civilians," he said.

Blinken said the U.S. still has not seen a credible plan to get civilians out of harm's way or plans for what will happen when the war ends.

The State Department said in a report Friday that it has "serious" questions about the measures Israel takes to protect civilians. But without U.S. personnel on the ground, "it is difficult to assess or reach conclusive findings on individual incidents."

That assessment fell short for progressives who had praised Biden several days earlier for conditioning arms transfers.

Allison McManus, managing director for national security and international policy at the liberal Center for American Progress, said that for many on the left there's a "a sense of skepticism" about whether Biden intends to follow through on the weapons threat after the State Department declined to formally assign blame to Israel in its findings.

"We still don't have a firm commitment that sending weapons in that context is against our laws and policies, and we're not going to do it," she said.

U.S. warns Israel has no plan to eliminate Hamas as IDF battles regrouped militants in northern Gaza

TEL AVIV — The Israeli military intensified its attacks on northern Gaza on Monday, battling a regrouped Hamas in areas it said it had cleared and renewing questions over Israeli strategy in the war as the United States issued some of its harshest public criticism yet.

Israel has insisted that it must invade Rafah , a city in southern Gaza where more than 1 million people had sought refuge, in order to accomplish its core objective of "eliminating" Hamas' presence in the enclave after months of fighting further north.

But Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Sunday that even a full-scale ground assault on Rafah would fail to achieve that goal.

Israel is "on the trajectory, potentially, to inherit an insurgency with many armed Hamas left or, if it leaves, a vacuum filled by chaos, filled by anarchy and probably refilled by Hamas,” he said in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

"Even if it goes in and takes heavy action in Rafah, there will still be thousands of armed Hamas left," Blinken said, noting that "we’ve seen, in areas that Israel has cleared in the north, even in Khan Younis, Hamas coming back."

Already, he said, Israel's offensive has led to a "horrible loss of life of innocent civilians," with the death toll in the Gaza Strip soaring over the weekend past 35,000, according to local health officials. He also noted the Biden administration's recent report, which found that Israel's use of weapons provided by the United States likely violated international humanitarian law .

Blinken said that instead of focusing on an assault on Rafah, Israel should prioritize presenting a credible post-war plan for Gaza.

"We’ve been talking to them about a much better way of getting an enduring result, enduring security," said Blinken, who spoke with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Sunday in a call reiterating U.S. opposition to "a major military ground operation in Rafah," according to the State Department. Gallant's office said he had discussed issues including "the precise operation in the Rafah area against remaining Hamas battalions."

The call came amid mounting splits between the two close allies over Israel's handling of its deadly military offensive in Gaza.

Talks for a new cease-fire deal have seemingly broken down, and President Joe Biden threatened last week to halt the shipment of certain arms to Israel should it launch a full-scale assault on Rafah.

Nearly 360,000 people have fled the city since Israel ordered a partial evacuation a week ago and sent tanks in, according to the United Nations.

That led to the closing of two main border crossings into the Palestinian enclave, sparking outcry from doctors and aid groups, while officials warned Monday that the health system was on the verge of collapsing because of dwindling supplies of food and fuel.

"We are only a few hours away from the collapse of the health system in the Gaza Strip as a result of the failure to bring in the fuel needed to operate electricity generators in hospitals, ambulances and transport employees," the Gaza Health Ministry said.

The Israel Defense Forces said last week that the Kerem Shalom crossing — where four IDF soldiers had been killed in a Hamas attack — had reopened and announced Sunday the opening of a separate crossing in northern Gaza, the “Western Erez” crossing, in coordination with the U.S.

The Palestinian Crossings Authority has disputed claims that Kerem Shalom has been open in recent days, while a senior U.N. official told NBC News that while it was technically open, it has been extremely difficult for humanitarian organizations to reach and distribute aid entering through the crossing.

“The U.N. is only able to collect very limited types of aid under very challenging circumstances,” said Georgios Petropoulos, head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) mission in Gaza. The Rafah crossing, the main lifeline for aid into Gaza, has been closed since it was seized last Tuesday by Israeli forces. 

On Monday, the office of U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres confirmed the death of a staff member in a strike in Rafah as a U.N. vehicle was on its way to a hospital. Another staff member was injured.

Guterres called for a full investigation in a statement from his deputy spokesperson.

"With the conflict in Gaza continuing to take a heavy toll — not only on civilians, but also on humanitarian workers — the Secretary-General reiterates his urgent appeal for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire and for the release of all hostages," the statement said.

The IDF said earlier in the day that two of its soldiers were seriously injured in southern Gaza, as well as a civilian contractor working on behalf of Israel's Defense Ministry. According to the military statement, two other people who were on missions in the area were "lightly injured."

The military said later in a statement that the incident involving two members of the U.N. Department of Safety and Security is under review and that the IDF had not been made aware of the vehicle's route.

"An initial inquiry conducted indicates that the vehicle was hit in an area declared an active combat zone," the IDF said.

Meanwhile, northern Gaza has been isolated for months, with the head of the World Food Programme telling NBC News earlier this month that she believes there is a “full-blown famine” in the area.

Yet, despite the toll of Israel's military operation on civilians in Gaza, Hamas appeared far from beaten.

The IDF said Sunday that its forces had launched an operation around the Jabalia camp in northern Gaza after issuing calls for civilians to "temporarily evacuate" the area. The IDF said it was acting on intelligence regarding "attempts by Hamas to reassemble its terrorist infrastructure and operatives in the area."

The IDF said the assault was unfolding alongside military action in the area of Zeitoun in Gaza City as its troops also pushed deeper into Rafah.

Hamas' military wing, Al-Qassam Brigades, said in a statement on Telegram early Monday that militants were still "engaged in fierce clashes" east of the Jabalia camp, as well as in the south.

U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan suggested in a phone call with his Israeli counterpart, Tzachi Hanegbi, on Sunday that instead of invading Rafah, "alternative courses of action" could be necessary to ensure that Hamas is defeated "everywhere in Gaza," according to a readout of the call.

Israeli forces launched their assault following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, in which some 1,200 people were killed and around 250 others were taken hostage, according to Israeli officials, marking a major escalation in the decadeslong conflict. More than 130 people remain held captive in Gaza, with at least a quarter of the hostages believed to be dead.

Raf Sanchez reported from Tel Aviv and Chantal Da Silva from London.

Raf Sanchez is a foreign correspondent for NBC News.

Chantal Da Silva reports on world news for NBC News Digital and is based in London.

Middle East Crisis U.S. Criticizes Israel for Failure to Protect Civilians in Gaza Conflict

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• Smoke rising after a strike in Rafah, in southern Gaza. Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
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The U.S. criticizes Israel for failure to protect civilians in the Gaza conflict.

The Biden administration believes that Israel has most likely violated international standards in failing to protect civilians in Gaza but has not found specific instances that would justify the withholding of military aid, the State Department told Congress on Friday.

In the administration’s most detailed assessment of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, the State Department said in a written report that Israel “has the knowledge, experience and tools to implement best practices for mitigating civilian harm in its military operations.”

But it added that “the results on the ground, including high levels of civilian casualties, raise substantial questions” as to whether the Israel Defense Forces are making sufficient use of those tools.

Even so, the report — which seemed at odds with itself in places — said the United States had no hard proof of Israeli violations. It noted the difficulty of collecting reliable information from Gaza, Hamas’s tactic of operating in civilian areas and the fact that “Israel has not shared complete information to verify” whether U.S. weapons have been used in specific incidents alleged to have involved human rights law violations.

The report, mandated by President Biden, also makes a distinction between the general possibility that Israel has violated the law and any conclusions about specific incidents that would prove it. It deems that assurances Israel provided in March that it would use U.S. arms consistent with international law are “credible and reliable,” and thus allow the continued flow of U.S. military aid.

The conclusions are unrelated to Mr. Biden’s recent decision to delay the delivery to Israel of 3,500 bombs and his review of other weapons shipments. The president has said those actions were in response to Israel’s stated plans to invade the southern Gaza city of Rafah.

The report said its findings were hampered in part by the challenges of collecting reliable information from the war zone and the way Hamas operates in densely populated areas. It also stressed that Israel has begun pursuing possible accountability for suspected violations of the law, a key component in the U.S. assessment about whether to provide military aid to allies accused of human rights violations.

Israel has opened criminal investigations into the conduct of its military in Gaza, the report said, and the Israel Defense Forces “are examining hundreds of incidents” that may involve wartime misconduct.

The report also did not find that Israel had intentionally obstructed humanitarian aid into Gaza.

While it concluded that both “action and inaction by Israel” had slowed the flow of aid into Gaza, which is desperately short of necessities like food and medicine, it said that “we do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance” into the territory.

Such a finding would have triggered a U.S. law barring military aid to countries that block such assistance.

Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer now with International Crisis Group, said the report “bends over backwards” to avoid concluding that Israel violated any laws, a finding that would place major new pressure on Mr. Biden to restrict arms to the country.

Mr. Finucane, a critic of Israel’s military operations, said that the report was “more forthcoming” than he had expected, but that he still found it “watered down” and heavily “lawyered.”

The findings further angered a vocal minority of Democrats in Congress who have grown increasingly critical of Israel’s conduct in Gaza. They argue that Israel has indiscriminately killed civilians with American arms and intentionally hindered U.S.-supplied humanitarian aid.

Either would violate U.S. laws governing arms transfers to foreign militaries, as well as international humanitarian law, which is largely based on the Geneva Conventions.

The report did not define the meaning of its other criteria for Israel’s actions, “established best practices for mitigating civilian harm,” though it cited Defense Department guidelines on the subject released last year, which include some measures “not required by the law of war.”

“If this conduct complies with international standards, then God help us all,” Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, told reporters after the report’s release. “They don’t want to have to take any action to hold the Netanyahu government accountable for what’s happening,” he added, referring to Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Critics of Mr. Biden’s continuation of most military support to Israel had hoped that he would use the report as a justification for further restricting arms deliveries to the country. The United States provides Israel with $3.8 billion in annual military aid , and Congress last month approved an additional $14 billion in emergency funding.

Mr. Biden ordered the report with a national security memorandum known as NSM-20. It requires all recipients of U.S. military aid engaged in conflict to provide the United States with written assurances that they will comply with international law and not hinder the delivery of humanitarian aid provided by or supported by the U.S. government.

The report called on the secretary of state and the defense secretary to assess “any credible reports or allegations” that American weapons might have been used in violation of international law.

Since the president’s memorandum was issued, an independent task force formed in response issued a lengthy report citing dozens of examples of likely Israeli legal violations. That report found what it called Israel’s “systematic disregard for fundamental principles of international law,” including “attacks launched despite foreseeably disproportionate harm to civilians” in densely populated areas.

In a statement following the State Department report, the task force called the U.S. document “at best incomplete, and at worst intentionally misleading in defense of acts and behaviors that likely violate international humanitarian law and may amount to war crimes.”

“Once again, the Biden Administration has stared the facts in the face — and then pulled the curtains shut,” said the task force’s members, who include Josh Paul, a former State Department official who in October resigned in protest over U.S. military support for Israel.

The State Department report showed clear sympathy for Israel’s military challenge, repeating past statements by the Biden administration that Israel has a “right to defend itself” in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks. It also noted that military experts call Gaza “as difficult a battlespace as any military has faced in modern warfare.”

“Because Hamas uses civilian infrastructure for military purposes and civilians as human shields, it is often difficult to determine facts on the ground in an active war zone of this nature and the presence of legitimate military targets across Gaza,” it said.

Even so, it singled out numerous specific incidents where Israel’s military had killed civilians or aid workers, the latter of which it called a “specific area of concern.”

Those episodes include the killing of seven World Central Kitchen workers in April. The report noted that Israel has dismissed officers and reprimanded commanders involved in that attack, which Israel has called “a grave mistake,” and is considering prosecutions.

Other episodes it cited included airstrikes on Oct. 31 and Nov. 1 on the crowded Jabaliya refugee camp, which reportedly killed dozens of civilians, including children. It noted Israel’s claim that it had targeted a senior Hamas commander and underground Hamas facilities at the site, and that its munitions had “led to the collapse of tunnels and the buildings and infrastructure above them.”

And while the report did not find that Israel had intentionally hindered the delivery of humanitarian aid, it listed several examples of ways in which its government had “a negative effect” on aid distribution. They included “extensive bureaucratic delays” and what it called the active involvement of some senior Israeli officials in protests or attacks on aid convoys.

The report was delivered to Congress two days after the deadline set by Mr. Biden’s February memorandum, arriving late on a Friday afternoon — the time of choice for government officials hoping to minimize an announcement’s public impact. Earlier that day, a White House spokesman, John F. Kirby, denied that the delay had any “nefarious” motive.

— Michael Crowley Reporting from Washington

The U.N. General Assembly adopts a resolution in support of Palestinian statehood.

U.n. general assembly backs palestinian membership bid, the united nations general assembly approved the resolution by a vote of 143 to 9 with 25 nations abstaining. the assembly can only grant full membership with the approval of the security council..

“A ‘yes’ vote is a vote for Palestinian existence. It is not against any state, but it is against the attempts to deprive us of our state. That is why the Israeli government is so opposed to it. Because they oppose our independence and the two-state solution altogether.” “This is your mirror. So that you can see exactly what you are inflicting upon the U.N. charter with this destructive vote. This is — You are shredding the U.N. Charter with your own hands.” “The result of the vote is as follows: in favor 143, against nine, abstentions 25. Draft resolution A/ES10/L30/Rev1 is adopted.” [cheering]

The United Nations General Assembly on Friday overwhelmingly adopted a resolution declaring that Palestinians qualify for full-members status at the United Nations, a highly symbolic move that reflects growing global solidarity with Palestinians and is a rebuke to Israel and the United States.

The resolution was approved by a vote of 143 to 9 with 25 nations abstaining. The Assembly broke into a big applause after the vote.

But the resolution does not mean a Palestinian state will be recognized and admitted to the United Nations as a full member anytime soon. The Assembly can only grant full membership with the approval of the Security Council, and, if history is a guide, the United States would almost inevitably wield its veto power to kill such a measure, as it did in April.

Even though a majority in the General Assembly have long supported Palestinian statehood, the resolution was the first time the body had voted on the issue of full membership. The resolution declares that “the State of Palestine is qualified for membership in the United Nations” under its charter rules and recommends that the Security Council reconsider the matter with a favorable outcome.

The resolution was prepared by the United Arab Emirates, the current chair of the U.N. Arab Group, and sponsored by 70 countries. The United States voted no, along with Hungary, Argentina, Papua New Guinea, Micronesia and Nauru.

“The vast majority of countries in this hall are fully aware of the legitimacy of the Palestinian bid and the justness of their cause, which faces fierce attempts to suppress it and render it meaningless today,” said the U.A.E. ambassador, Mohamed Abushahab, as he introduced the resolution on behalf of the Arab Group.

Though largely symbolic, the resolution does provide Palestinians with new diplomatic privileges. Palestinians can now sit among member states in alphabetical order; they can speak at General Assembly meetings on any topic instead of being limited to Palestinian affairs; they can submit proposals and amendments; and they can participate at U.N. conferences and international meetings organized by the Assembly and other United Nations entities.

The 193-member General Assembly took up the issue of Palestinian membership after the United States in April vetoed a resolution before the Security Council that would have recognized full membership for a Palestinian state. While a majority of council members supported the move, the United States said recognition of Palestinian statehood should be achieved through negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.

Frustration with the United States has been brewing for months among many senior U.N. officials and diplomats, including from allies such as France, because Washington has repeatedly blocked cease-fire resolutions at the Security Council and has staunchly supported Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza, even as civilian suffering has mounted.

“The U.S. is resigned to having another bad day at the U.N.,” said Richard Gowan, an expert on the U.N. for the International Crisis Group, a conflict prevention organization. But he added that the resolution “gives the Palestinians a boost without creating a breakdown over whether they are or are not now U.N. members.”

Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the U.N., told the Assembly ahead of the vote that Palestinians’ right to full membership at the U.N. and statehood “are not up for negotiations, they are our inherent rights as Palestinians.” He added that a vote against Palestinian statehood was a vote against the two-state solution.

Israel’s ambassador to the U.N., Gilad Erdan, a sharp critic of the U.N., said voting for a Palestinian state would be inviting “a state of terror” in its midst and rewarding “terrorists” who killed Jewish civilians with privileges and called member states endorsing it “Jew haters.”

Robert A. Wood, a U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said that while the U.S. supported a two-state solution as the only means for sustainable peace, “it remains the U.S. view that unilateral measures at the U.N. and on the ground will not advance this goal.”

Mr. Wood said that if the Assembly referred the issue back to the Council, it would have the same outcome again with the U.S. blocking the move.

The Palestinians are currently recognized by the U.N. as a nonmember observer state, a status granted to them in 2012 by the General Assembly. They do not have the right to vote on General Assembly resolutions or nominate any candidates to U.N. agencies.

France, a close U.S. ally and one of the five permanent members of the Security Council, has supported the Palestinian bid for statehood breaking away from United States’ stance at the U.N. both at the Council and the Assembly vote. “The time has come for the United Nations to take action with a view to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, on the basis of the two-state solution,” said Nicolas de Rivière, France’s ambassador to the U.N., in his address on Friday.

The Assembly session, which was expected to flow over to Monday because of the long list of speakers, was not without moments of performative drama.

Mr. Erdan, Israel’s ambassador, held up the picture of Hamas’s military leader, Yahya Sinwar, considered the architect of the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, with the word “President,” and then a transparent shredder, inserting a piece of paper inside it, and said the member states were “shredding the U.N. charter.”

Mr. Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador, at the end of his speech raised his fist in the air, visibly chocking back tears, and said “Free Palestine.” The Assembly broke into applause.

— Farnaz Fassihi

The White House defends voting ‘no’ on a U.N. resolution supporting Palestinian statehood.

A White House spokesman on Friday defended the United States’ decision to oppose a U.N. resolution declaring support for Palestinian statehood , saying that such a measure should be negotiated in the Middle East.

The United States was among a handful of holdouts as the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly adopted a resolution declaring that Palestinians qualify for full membership at the United Nations. The vote was widely seen as a rebuke of Israel and the United States as global outrage mounts over the Israel-Hamas war.

John F. Kirby, a White House national security spokesman, said President Biden remained “fully and firmly committed” to a Palestinian state, but the U.N. resolution was not the way to establish it.

“We continue to believe in the power and promise of a two-state solution, and an independent state for the Palestinian people,” Mr. Kirby told reporters. “We also believe that the best way to do that is through direct negotiations with the parties and not through a vote of the U.N. of this kind.”

Friday’s vote comes as the ties between the United States and Israel, its closest ally in the Middle East, are tested over the war in Gaza. More than 34,000 people have died in Gaza, including both combatants and civilians, and the director of the World Food Program has said that parts of the Gaza Strip are experiencing a “full-blown famine.”

The United States is the biggest supplier of weapons to Israel, and Mr. Biden is hoping to use that leverage to get Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to forgo a long-threatened invasion of Rafah, the southern Gaza city where more than one million Palestinians have taken refuge.

Mr. Biden has halted a shipment of bombs to Israel and said he would withhold artillery as well if Israel moved forward in Rafah. But the Israelis maintain they need to go into Rafah to finish destroying Hamas, which killed 1,200 people in the Oct. 7 terrorist attack it led on Israel.

The U.N. resolution does not establish a Palestinian state, but it does recognize Palestine to qualify for full-member status at the United Nations. Its membership will need to be approved by the U.N. Security Council, which includes the United States.

The United States has repeatedly wielded its veto power on the council to block U.N. resolutions calling for a cease-fire in Gaza.

The U.N. General Assembly took up Friday’s resolution after the United States vetoed in April a resolution that came before the Security Council that would have recognized full membership for a Palestinian state, which is considered a “nonmember observer state.”

The resolution that passed on Friday would extend to Palestinians new privileges, such as sitting among member states in alphabetical order, speaking at meetings on any topic instead of being limited to Palestinian affairs, and submitting proposals and amendments.

The resolution was prepared by the United Arab Emirates, the current chair of the U.N. Arab Group, and sponsored by 70 countries. It declares that “the State of Palestine is qualified for membership in the United Nations” under its charter rules and recommends that the Security Council reconsider the matter with a favorable outcome.”

The resolution’s adoption prompted rousing applause.

Farnaz Fassihi contributed reporting.

— Erica L. Green Reporting from Washington

Here is what we know about where aid can enter Gaza.

Following Israel’s incursion into Rafah this week, the Israeli military briefly shut down the Kerem Shalom crossing and seized the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing, choking the flow of desperately needed food, fuel and medical supplies at a time when experts believe parts of Gaza are already experiencing a famine and several have died from malnutrition.

According to United Nations data, the number of aid trucks entering Gaza hit a peak last week since October: A total of 1,674 aid trucks entered Gaza through the Kerem Shalom and Rafah crossings, the main entry points of aid into the enclave. But since Sunday, no aid trucks have entered Gaza from either entry point, even after Israel said that it had reopened the Kerem Shalom crossing on Wednesday.

The entry of aid into Gaza has been heavily restricted by Israel since the war started, creating what aid experts say is a human-made hunger crisis. Humanitarians warn that the crisis will worsen without the fuel necessary for bakeries and hospitals to operate.

Here is a look at the major routes for aid into Gaza and their status.

Kerem Shalom

Israel shut down the Kerem Shalom crossing after a Hamas attack on Sunday killed four of its soldiers in the area.

On Wednesday, Israel said it had reopened the crossing, but the United Nations and others disputed that claim because no trucks were being allowed through. On Friday afternoon, Israel allowed at least 157,000 liters of fuel to enter , according to Scott Anderson, a senior official at UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinians. But no humanitarian aid, which includes food and medical supplies, has entered since Sunday, he said.

Egypt, which plays an important role in facilitating aid collection and delivery, has complicated matters by resisting sending trucks to Kerem Shalom, according to several Western and Israeli officials ; American and Israeli officials believe that Egypt is putting pressure on Israel to curb its invasion of Rafah.

The Kerem Shalom crossing has been a major artery for aid into Gaza since it opened in December and is where most aid trucks now enter. Before Israel’s incursion into Rafah, an average of 185 trucks entered Kerem Shalom daily last week, peaking at 270 trucks last Friday, according to United Nations data. Aid groups have said for months that at least 300 trucks are needed daily to prevent further malnutrition and worsening hunger.

The Rafah crossing remains closed.

The crossing has been an important gate for injured and sick people to leave the enclave to receive medical treatment abroad. The Gazan Health Ministry has said that dozens of people with illnesses such as breast cancer and lymphoma have been unable to leave Gaza since Sunday.

The Erez crossing at Gaza’s northern border is open, but limited aid is trickling through, according to data from COGAT, the Israeli agency that oversees aid delivery in Gaza, and an UNRWA official. It is the only border crossing in the north and was only opened last month after pressure from President Biden.

COGAT said on its website that 36 aid trucks and one fuel truck passed through the Erez crossing on Thursday. Mr. Anderson said UNRWA sent 67 trucks through the Erez crossing on Wednesday and that nothing has passed through since. A reason for the discrepancy between the numbers and days was not immediately clear.

Sending more aid to northern Gaza would be crucial to prevent further malnutrition-related deaths in the area . In March, health experts projected that northern Gaza would soon face a famine, and, on Saturday, Cindy McCain, the executive director of the World Food Program, said that parts of Gaza were already in one. As of mid-April, Gazan health officials said that at least 28 children younger than 12 had died from malnutrition in hospitals and perhaps dozens more outside medical centers.

Since Gaza has no international pier of its own — Israel has for years prevented the construction of one — the U.S. military said in March that it would build a temporary pier to get aid in by sea, part of what it said was a multipronged effort to deliver humanitarian assistance to the enclave.

The Pentagon said on Thursday that the floating pier and the causeway had been completed but that bad weather and sea conditions had prevented their installation. They remain at the Israeli port of Ashdod.

An American cargo ship, called the Sagamore, departed from Cyprus on Thursday, the Pentagon said, and ship tracking websites show the ship positioned at Ashdod. The Sagamore is carrying more than 170 metric tons of nutrition bars, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development, but cannot be unloaded and distributed in Gaza until the pier is installed. It is unclear when that might be, as the Pentagon said the installation would be dependent on security and weather conditions.

COGAT said on Thursday that 117 packages were airdropped in northern Gaza that day. Airdrop operations only began in March to try to prevent a greater humanitarian disaster as hunger grew in the Palestinian territory. COGAT said 99 airdrop operations by nine donating countries, including the United States and Jordan, had been completed since March.

But airdrops have been criticized by aid experts as perhaps the most inefficient way to deliver aid into Gaza, and in some cases, deadly. Airdropped aid packages in March fell on several Palestinians in Gaza City , killing five and wounding several others, according to Gazan health officials. In another case , a dozen Palestinians drowned while trying to retrieve packages that had been intentionally dropped over the water to prevent further deaths if its parachutes failed to deploy.

— Gaya Gupta

South Africa again asks the U.N.’s top court to act against Israel in Gaza

Days after an Israeli military incursion into Rafah , in southern Gaza, South Africa once again asked the United Nations’ top court to issue constraints on Israel, saying “the very survival” of Palestinians in Gaza was under threat.

In filings disclosed by the International Court of Justice in The Hague on Friday, South Africa asked the court to order Israel to immediately withdraw from Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city where more than a million Palestinians displaced by the war have sought shelter, and to “cease its military offensive” and allow “unimpeded access” to international officials, investigators and journalists.

South Africa’s latest move is part of a case the country filed in December in which it accused Israel of genocide. Since then, the court has ordered Israel to take action to prevent acts of genocide in Gaza and ordered the delivery of more humanitarian aid to Palestinians in the face of growing starvation in areas. But the court has not ordered Israel to stop its military campaign against Hamas.

Israel has strongly denied South Africa’s accusations and said that it had gone to great lengths to admit deliveries of food and fuel into Gaza and to lessen harm to civilians. It has also said that its war in Gaza was necessary to defend itself against the Oct. 7 attacks led by Hamas and other armed groups that killed more than 1,200 Israelis and led to the capture of about 250 others.

Friday’s request is the fourth time that South Africa has asked the U.N. court for temporary injunctions. The filings noted that conditions had deteriorated significantly for civilians sheltering in Gaza.

“Rafah is the last population center in Gaza that has not been substantially destroyed by Israel and as such the last refuge for Palestinians in Gaza,” South Africa stated.

The court has not indicated when it will respond to the South African request, but its rules require that it must give priority to petitions for emergency orders. The 15-judge court has no means of enforcing its orders.

The main case, dealing with the question of genocide, is not expected to start until next year.

— Marlise Simons Reporting from Paris

Cease-fire talks hit snag, in part, on how many hostages would be released in a first phase, officials say.

Talks involving Israeli and Hamas negotiators on a cease-fire and hostage release deal remain snagged over whether a truce would be permanent or temporary, and how many hostages would be freed in the first phase of an agreement, officials briefed on the matter said.

Israel and Hamas representatives left Egypt on Thursday after the latest round of indirect talks — they do not communicate with each other directly — without any deal in sight, the officials said. But U.S., Egyptian, and Qatari teams were still holding further discussions in Egypt.

Hamas is still demanding that Israel abide by a permanent cease-fire and completely withdraw from Gaza as part of any truce, said Mousa Abu Marzouk, a member of Hamas’s political leadership. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has said Israel cannot end the war as long as Hamas’s rule in Gaza remains intact. On Friday, Hamas declared that Israel’s rejection of a framework that Qatar and Egypt had proposed, and Hamas had approved, had “brought matters back to square one.”

Mr. Abu Marzouk added that another obstacle in the talks is how many living hostages held in Gaza would be released during the first phase of a multistage cease-fire. His account was confirmed by an Israeli official and another official briefed on the negotiation. Both spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic negotiations.

Palestinian armed groups still hold approximately 132 hostages in Gaza, the vast majority of them seized during the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, according to the Israeli authorities. But Israel says it has also determined that at least 36 of them are dead.

Israel had initially demanded that Hamas release 40 hostages in the first phase of a cease-fire, including old captives, ill people and women, both civilians and soldiers. Male Israeli soldiers, seen by Hamas as higher-value captives, would be released in the second phase of the truce.

A recent Israeli proposal made a concession, reducing the number of living hostages Israel was demanding to 33 during the first tranche, according to the officials familiar with the talks.

On Monday, Hamas told negotiators it did not have enough living hostages for the first phase of agreement and said the 33 turned over would include both living hostages and the bodies of those who had died in captivity, two U.S. officials said on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly.

But during this week’s meetings in Egypt — mediated in part by William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director — the Israeli negotiating team said that Hamas must release 33 living hostages during the first phase, said Mr. Abu Marzouk, the senior Hamas official, and one of the officials briefed on the talks. If the group could not muster that number, Israel demanded they release some captive Israeli male soldiers as well, said Mr. Abu Marzouk.

On Friday, Egypt’s Foreign Ministry said both Israel and Hamas needed to “show flexibility” in the talks so as to “reach an agreement for a truce that would put an end to the humanitarian tragedy.”

Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting.

— Adam Rasgon and Julian E. Barnes

People leaving Rafah describe yet another fearful flight from Israeli assaults.

Manal al-Wakeel and her extended family of 30 people thought they were going home.

Displaced from their home in Gaza City months ago, Ms. al-Wakeel and relatives began packing their bags on Monday and preparing to dismantle their tent in Rafah, at the southern edge of the Gaza Strip.

Hamas had announced that it had accepted a cease-fire proposal from Qatar and Egypt, leaving many Gazans thinking that a truce was imminent. Their joy was short-lived; it soon became clear that Hamas was not talking about the same proposal endorsed days earlier by Israel, which said the two sides remained far apart.

Instead, Israeli warplanes dropped leaflets in eastern Rafah telling people to flee and move to what Israel called a humanitarian zone to the north, as the Israeli military bombarded the area. Gazan health officials say that dozens have been killed since Israel’s incursion into parts of Rafah this week.

“We thought that day a cease-fire was possible,” said Ms. al-Wakeel, 48, who helped the aid group World Central Kitchen prepare hot meals.

She and her family had been sheltering near the Abu Yousef al-Najjar Hospital, in an area battered by Israeli airstrikes and ground combat. The director of the hospital, Dr. Marwan al-Hams, said on Monday that it had received the bodies of 26 people killed by Israeli fire, and treated 50 who were wounded. The hospital was evacuated the next day.

So rather than return home, on Tuesday night Ms. al-Wakeel, her husband, her 11 children and other relatives found a semi-truck that would take them and their belongings, including suitcases of clothes, pots and pans and tents, for 2,500 shekels — about $670 — in search of another place to stay.

They left Rafah around midnight and made their way north along with hundreds of tuk-tuks, trucks, cars and donkey-carts full of other displaced families and their possessions.

“It was a scary night, the truck was moving slowly because of the heavy load on it,” she said.

Once out of Rafah, they made frequent stops at schools and other buildings, desperately looking for any empty place for them to shelter. But every place was full.

Others couldn’t find a place, either, and Ms. al-Wakeel saw many people sleeping by the side of the road next to whatever belongings they had fled with.

At a U.N. school in Deir El-Balah, a young man suggested they stay in an empty concrete building — with no windows — that belonged to the Hamas-led government’s ministry of social development.

“It looked like a dangerous place,” she said, adding that they had been told that a woman and her daughter had previously been killed in one of the building’s rooms by an Israeli missile.

But they were too afraid to continue roaming around in the darkness, and decided to spend the night there and look for a safer place come morning.

“I feel so sad and disappointed for what happened to Rafah as it was stable for us there,” she said. “We have spent so much time having to arrange new places for ourselves again and we feel depressed and so exhausted from repeating the same suffering.”

Saeda al-Nemnem, 42, had given birth to twins less than a month before Israel dropped the leaflets over where they were sheltering in Rafah, ordering them to leave. Her family, also displaced from Gaza City, dispatched a relative to look for a truck that could ferry them north, despite the intense Israeli airstrikes at the time.

The relative, Mohammed al-Jojo, was killed by an Israeli strike on the tractor he was riding, she said.

He “was killed when he was getting us out of that area to a safer place,” she said. “I feel I caused his death.”

Despite the dangers in getting on the road, staying where they were in Rafah was no safer.

Along the terrifying journey to the city of Khan Younis, where she and her family of eight found shelter in a room attached to Al Aqsa University’s main building, they could hear what seemed like explosions from Israeli bombs, missiles and artillery, she said.

“My children’s heartbeats were so high that I could feel them,” she said. It was the heaviest bombardment she had ever heard, she said, “so close and so terrifying for me and my children.”

— Raja Abdulrahim and Bilal Shbair Reporting from Jerusalem and from Khan Younis, in the Gaza Strip

More than 100,000 have fled Rafah, the U.N. says, as Israeli bombardment intensifies.

With fears rising that Israel will move ahead with a long-planned full-scale invasion of Rafah, the United Nations said Friday that more than 100,000 people had fled since Israel ordered people to leave parts of the city and intensified a bombardment that Gazan health officials say has killed dozens of people.

As Israeli troops continued to exchange fire with Palestinian fighters near Rafah on Friday, according to both the Israeli military and Hamas, people were packing up their tents and leaving the southern Gazan city and its surrounding areas where more than a million Palestinians had sought shelter in trucks, cars and donkey carts.

Many of them have already been displaced multiple times by Israel’s war in Gaza over the past seven months.

“Around 110,000 people have now fled Rafah looking for safety,” the main United Nations agency that aids Palestinians, known as UNRWA, posted online on Friday. “But nowhere is safe in the #GazaStrip & living conditions are atrocious.” On Thursday, a U.N. official said that 79,000 people had left since Israel issued its evacuation order.

“The only hope is an immediate #Ceasefire ,” UNRWA said.

Israel seized control of the Gaza side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt in what it called a “limited operation,” and intense fighting has continued on the eastern edge of the city since. The Israeli military said on Friday that its aircraft had struck Hamas members and rocket-launching sites at several locations in the Rafah area over the past day, while Hamas said its forces had fired mortars on Israeli troops east of the city.

The Israeli security cabinet agreed on Thursday night to expand the operation in Rafah, two officials said, but it was not clear what that would mean in practical terms.

Fighting continues in other areas of Gaza, and on Friday, the Israeli military said four of its soldiers were killed and two were seriously injured by an explosive device near Gaza City, in the northern part of the territory. Israeli forces seized the north months ago but have been unable to control it completely, repeatedly battling militants there.

In an apparent sign of the militants’ staying power, Hamas took responsibility for a rocket attack, the first one since December that was launched from Gaza and triggered air-raid sirens in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba. Rockets were fired at Israel from both Rafah and central Gaza, according to the Israeli military. There were no reports of injuries or serious damage.

Israel has designated what it calls a safe zone for Gazans fleeing Rafah, including Al-Mawasi , a coastal section of Gaza it has advised people to go to for months. But the United Nations has said it is neither safe nor equipped to receive them.

On Friday, UNICEF’s senior emergency coordinator in the Gaza Strip, Hamish Young, said from Rafah that in his 30 years working on large-scale humanitarian emergencies “I’ve never been involved in a situation as devastating, complex or erratic as this.”

“Yesterday, I walked around Al-Mawasi,” Mr. Young said. “The roads to Mawasi are jammed — many hundreds of trucks, buses, cars and donkey carts loaded with people and possessions.”

“People I speak with tell me they are exhausted, terrified and know life in Al-Mawasi will, again, impossibly, be harder,” he said. “Families lack proper sanitation facilities, drinking water and shelter.”

— Raja Abdulrahim and Bilal Shbair

Actions by Israel and Egypt are restricting Gaza aid routes.

For a few weeks, after extraordinary international pressure and warnings of an imminent famine in the Gaza Strip, Israel announced new steps to increase humanitarian aid and more supplies entered the territory.

But the flow of aid, the vast majority of which goes through two border crossings in southern Gaza, has come to a near-total stop this week, first closed off by Israel and then further restricted, officials say, by Egypt.

Israel shut down the Kerem Shalom crossing after a Hamas rocket attack nearby killed four Israeli soldiers last Sunday. The next day, Israeli forces seized and closed the Gaza side of the other crossing, at Rafah on the Egyptian border, as part of what they have described as a limited military operation against Hamas, and raised the Israeli flag over the crossing.

Although Israel has reopened Kerem Shalom and some fuel has gone into Gaza from there, humanitarian aid like food and medicines has not been allowed through the crossing since last Sunday, according to Scott Anderson, a senior official at UNRWA, the main U.N. agency that aids Gaza.

One reason is that Egypt, where most of the aid for Gaza is collected and loaded, is resisting sending trucks toward Kerem Shalom, according to two U.S. officials and another Western official who are involved in the aid operation, as well as two Israeli officials. The American and Israeli officials believe that Egypt is trying to put pressure on Israel to pull back from the Rafah operation.

Another official familiar with the negotiations said U.S. officials — including William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, who was in Cairo this week for Gaza cease-fire talks — have been trying to persuade Egypt to dispatch the trucks. But Egypt has rebuffed the pressure, saying it will not allow aid to flow to Kerem Shalom while Israel has closed the Rafah crossing, and casting the situation as a matter of sovereignty , a United Nations official said.

All the officials spoke on condition that they not be named because of the sensitivity of the aid talks and the cease-fire negotiations. A spokesman for Egypt’s government declined to comment.

Egypt plays a vital role in the Gaza relief effort. Much of the international aid bound for Gaza is collected in the Egyptian city of El Arish, about 30 miles from the Gaza border, where it is loaded onto trucks and sent to the Israeli border for inspections before being allowed into Gaza.

Egypt has grown increasingly nervous about Israel’s Rafah operation, in part over deep-seated fears it will push Palestinian refugees onto Egyptian soil — an outcome Egypt views as a national security threat. Israel’s presence on the Egypt-Gaza border, a border Egypt is supposed to control, has also drawn heavy domestic criticism.

Egyptian concerns are not the only factor complicating the use of Kerem Shalom. The Western official said that Israeli military activity and fighting near Kerem Shalom have partly destroyed the roads, making it extremely difficult for aid trucks to navigate into Gaza.

With fighting continuing, the area is also considered unsafe for aid workers, according to one of the U.S. officials and the U.N. official, who said that a U.N. contractor near Kerem Shalom was shot at by Israeli forces on Wednesday.

An Israeli military spokesman, Maj. Nir Dinar, declined to comment on the incident, but blamed Hamas for preventing aid from entering. While Kerem Shalom was accepting aid deliveries, he said, it had been closed in previous days only after Hamas fired on the crossing three times this week, killing Israeli soldiers.

“Israel is doing everything to enable” aid to enter, Major Dinar said.

On Friday, the Israeli authorities permitted at least 157,000 liters of fuel to enter southern Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing, said Mr. Anderson, the UNRWA official. Gaza’s power grid stopped functioning early in the war, leaving hospitals, bakeries, shelters and other essential facilities dependent on generators for electricity, but this week they were in growing danger of running out of fuel.

While aid deliveries rose in April and the first days of May, before the Rafah operation, aid groups said Israel was not allowing nearly enough into Gaza to stave off famine or the collapse of the health care and sanitation systems. Now that tens of thousands more civilians are fleeing Rafah to areas with little infrastructure set up to care for them and Gazan hospitals are running low on fuel , the United Nations and aid groups say the situation has become far more dire .

Julian E. Barnes , Gaya Gupta and Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting.

— Vivian Yee and Ronen Bergman

Here’s why Rafah and Gaza’s southern border are strategically important in the war.

Tens of thousands of people have fled the city of Rafah, in southern Gaza, this week in response to an evacuation order from Israeli forces who took control of a border crossing there with Egypt and have bombarded the area as part of their campaign against Hamas.

Gaza’s eight-mile-long southern frontier with Egypt is critical to Palestinians. One reason is that it is the territory’s only land border that does not adjoin Israel. But that also makes it vital for Israeli security interests.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has repeatedly said that his government sees it as critical to seize control of a buffer strip along the southern edge of Gaza, from Israel’s border to the Mediterranean, known in Israel as the Philadelphi Corridor.

Here is a look at why Rafah has taken on outsize political significance in the war:

Why is Rafah important?

In essence, because of geography. Israel began its ground invasion of Gaza in the north in late October and, since then, has expanded its campaign southward, fighting a series of battles to dismantle the main battalions of the military wing of Hamas, the Qassam Brigades.

Military experts and Israeli officials say that the last remaining battalions are in Rafah, along with Hamas’s military leaders. In addition, Israeli officials say that most of the remaining hostages taken on Oct. 7, more than 100 people, are being held in tunnels under Rafah.

For months, Mr. Netanyahu has said his government wants to eradicate Hamas entirely, making Rafah the logical next destination in its military campaign. But Rafah, a city of around 170,000 before the war, has swollen to more than one million as Gazans driven from their homes in other parts of the enclave have taken shelter there.

Conditions there are catastrophic, with inadequate shelter, sanitation, medical care, food and fuel.

Rafah is also the base for international humanitarian work in Gaza, and it is the funnel through which most aid flows.

Hamas rocket fire from Rafah killed four Israeli soldiers on Sunday, after which Israel sent ground forces to seize the border crossing at Rafah and close it. It also closed the primary aid crossing into Israel, which has since been reopened, though the supplies passing through there are limited.

Why does the border matter to Hamas and Gaza?

At least 12 tunnels wide enough to carry trucks have been constructed under the buffer strip in recent decades, according to Ahron Bregman, a political scientist and expert in Middle East security issues at King’s College in London, who is a former Israeli military officer. The tunnels act as a conduit for commercial imports into Gaza, which are important for Gazans, given Israel’s partial blockade of the territory since 2007, and for the Egyptian and Palestinian business leaders who control the trade.

But the cross-border tunnels are also important for Hamas and have allowed it to smuggle weapons, money, building materials and personnel into Gaza over the years, Mr. Bregman said.

“This is the way they can get in and out without asking the Israelis,” Mr. Bregman said. “This is the only outlet for Hamas at the moment.” He said that unless the tunnels were blocked, Hamas could rebuild its military capacity after the war.

What is Egypt’s interest in the Rafah border?

During other regional conflicts, Egypt has opened its borders to refugees. But the government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi fears that, given the chance, large numbers of Palestinian civilians would rush across the border under military pressure from Israel.

Even if they initially only intended to stay for the duration of the war, the Egyptian government is concerned that their stay could become prolonged and that they could be a destabilizing political force in Egypt and a burden on its economy. The government also sees Hamas as an enemy and opposes giving it a foothold in Egypt. Hamas began as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist movement that was strongly linked to the government Mr. el-Sisi overthrew in 2013, and that his government has suppressed.

Egypt has warned Israel to avoid doing anything that could force Gazans across the border or threaten a landmark peace agreement signed by the two countries in 1979.

Egypt has stationed border guards along the Gaza border for decades, but it reinforced that presence after the Oct. 7 Hamas-led assault on Israel.

— Matthew Mpoke Bigg

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