"Jerusalem contains more different versions of Heaven than any outsider can imagine,” Israeli writer Amos Oz once told the late American author Saul Bellow. Despite, or perhaps because of this, its geopolitics have posed a sort of diplomatic hell for millennia. Holy to Islam and Christianity and central to Judaism, the so-called “City of Peace” has been “destroyed at least twice, besieged 23 times, attacked an additional 52 times, and captured and recaptured 44 times," according to Eric H. Cline’s tally in Jerusalem Besieged. Jewish Jerusalem was founded 3,000 years ago when King David took a hill town from the Jebusites. Solomon built his temple there atop Mount Moriah, on which the Bible says Abraham offered Isaac up to God. In 70 C.E., the Second Temple was sacked by the Romans, leaving only the platform known...

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