The City That Belongs to Everyone Is Closed to Everyone

On any other spring, the streets leading into Jerusalem's Old City would be impassable. Jewish families buying last-minute Passover provisions. Christian pilgrims streaming down the Mount of Olives in Palm Sunday procession. Muslim worshippers pressing toward Al-Aqsa in the final days of Ramadan, the air thick with the smell of food from pre-dawn stalls. Tens of thousands of people, from every continent, converging on a few hundred square meters of ancient stone.

This spring, the stone is empty.

Since March 6 — eight days into the Israel-US war against Iran — Israeli authorities have barred entry to the Old City for anyone who doesn't live or work there. The Western Wall is closed to worshippers. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is locked behind metal shutters. Al-Aqsa Mosque hasn't held regular Friday prayers in nearly a month. A fragment from an intercepted Iranian ballistic missile struck a parking lot 400 meters from both the Western Wall and the Al-Aqsa compound. The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, steps from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, took shrapnel on its rooftop earlier this month.

For the first time since Israel captured East Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War, all three Abrahamic holy sites have been simultaneously closed — and they have stayed closed through Ramadan, through Eid al-Fitr, through Palm Sunday, and now into Passover and Easter week.

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What is closed, and since when

The IDF Home Front Command order, which took effect on March 6, prohibits gatherings of more than 50 people outdoors and 100 people indoors anywhere in Israel, unless a suitable shelter is immediately accessible. The Old City, with its narrow medieval alleyways and buildings dating back centuries, has almost no compliant shelter infrastructure. The result is a blanket effective closure.

The Western Wall: Closed to worshippers since March 6. The plaza — which normally draws hundreds of thousands for Passover's annual priestly blessing — will host at most 50 people this year. Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch, whose jurisdiction covers Israel's Jewish holy sites, told AP this week: "The heart aches greatly, it bleeds, seeing the Western Wall as it looks now." The mass priestly blessing for Passover, one of the most visited events in the Jewish calendar, will be reduced to a quorum. Missile debris has already struck a road approaching the site.

Al-Aqsa Mosque: Closed since the war began. The timing is historically significant. Researchers cited by the Times of Israel say this is the first time since 1967 that Al-Aqsa has been closed during the last ten days of Ramadan and for Eid al-Fitr. On Eid morning — March 20 — hundreds of Muslim worshippers who had traveled to Jerusalem arrived before dawn to find the gates shut. Israeli police used tear gas and batons to disperse the crowd as they attempted to pray outside Herod's Gate. An imam eventually delivered a short sermon from a plastic stool on the street. "Pray, invoke Almighty God, and hope that your prayers will be answered," he told the worshippers. "O God, grant victory to the oppressed." The typical Eid gathering at the Temple Mount compound draws 100,000 people.

Church of the Holy Sepulchre: Built on what Christians revere as the site of the crucifixion, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, the church has been closed to ordinary visitors since March 6. This Palm Sunday — the opening of Holy Week — the Latin Patriarchate canceled its traditional procession, during which tens of thousands of pilgrims walk from the Mount of Olives waving palm fronds. Then, in a separate and more extraordinary development, Israeli police blocked the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem himself — Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa — from entering the church to celebrate Mass. The Catholic Church called it "the first time in centuries" its leadership had been prevented from marking Palm Sunday at the site. Italy summoned Israel's ambassador.

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The historical weight of what's happening

To understand what simultaneous closure means, it helps to understand how rarely it has happened before.

Between 1948 and 1967, when Jordan controlled East Jerusalem and the Old City, Jewish worshippers were entirely expelled from the Western Wall for 19 years. The 1949 Armistice Agreement promised free access to holy sites; in practice, concrete barriers made it impossible. Jewish prayer at the Western Wall — the most accessible remnant of the Temple Mount retaining walls — was categorically prohibited until Israeli forces captured the Old City in June 1967.

Since 1967, Israel has maintained control over the Old City and has — with occasional significant exceptions — allowed access to all three faiths. The Temple Mount's Islamic administration (the Waqf) retained religious control of Al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock compound. The Status Quo, a loose agreement governing Christian holy sites dating to Ottoman times, continued to govern the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The Western Wall became the central site of Jewish national and religious life.

The COVID-19 pandemic briefly closed holy sites in 2020, but that was a global public health emergency affecting every country equally. What is happening now is different: it is a wartime security closure driven by a regional conflict, with missiles physically striking the vicinity of the sites themselves. The threat is not hypothetical. Iranian ballistic missiles have been intercepted over Jerusalem. Debris has landed in the Old City.

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The three communities affected

For Jerusalem's Muslims: Al-Aqsa's closure during the final days of Ramadan was described by community members in terms of irreversible loss. "It's like there was no Ramadan for us," said Fayez Dakkak, a third-generation Muslim storeowner in the Old City whose family has catered to Christian pilgrims since 1942. Ramadan is the holiest month in Islam; its last ten days — the Ashara al-Akhira — are considered especially sacred, associated with the night of Laylat al-Qadr, when Muslims believe the Quran was first revealed. Al-Aqsa Mosque is Islam's third-holiest site. Its closure for Eid was, in the words of one worshipper interviewed outside Herod's Gate, "a sad and painful Ramadan."

For Jerusalem's Christians: Palm Sunday begins Holy Week — the most important week in the Christian calendar, culminating in Easter Sunday and the celebration of the resurrection. The Palm Sunday procession from the Mount of Olives down into the Old City is one of the oldest continuous Christian rituals practiced anywhere in the world. Its cancellation is not merely a logistical inconvenience; for pilgrims who save for years to make the journey, it represents an irreplaceable loss. The parish priest for Jerusalem's Catholics, Franciscan Father Rami Asakrieh, has been celebrating Mass with up to 50 parishioners in a monastery basement approved by the Israeli military as a bomb shelter. "We are celebrating resurrection," he told AP. "It will not come by having fear, but by having faith."

For Jerusalem's Jews: Passover — which begins at sundown on April 12 — commemorates the Exodus from Egypt and is one of the most widely observed holidays in Judaism. The Passover priestly blessing (Birkat Kohanim) at the Western Wall typically draws tens of thousands of worshippers in one of the largest single gatherings in the Jewish world. This year it will be 50 people. Israelis have also spent the fifth week of the war running to bomb shelters while trying to prepare for the holiday. "Cleaning for Passover, running for the shelter," was the headline the Times of Israel used for this section of its reporting — a phrase that captures the surreal domestic reality of wartime observance.

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The economic collapse beneath the spiritual one

Spring is Jerusalem's economic lifeblood. The convergence of Passover, Easter, and — in most years — Ramadan draws the largest annual flow of religious tourists to Israel. Before the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks, Israel received roughly 4.5 million tourists per year, generating around $7.5 billion in tourism revenue. That number collapsed to $2 billion in 2024, during the Gaza war. By 2025, it had partially recovered to $1.3 million visitors, according to Forbes, with per-visitor spending rising to $1,622 as fewer but more determined travelers came.

Spring 2026 has ended that recovery. International flights to Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport are severely curtailed. The State Department has issued a Level 4 "Do Not Travel" advisory for Israel. Every major tour operator has canceled Holy Land packages for March and April. The Old City stores — whose owners were already barely surviving — are shuttered by police order. Fayez Dakkak, the Muslim storeowner whose family has been in the Old City since 1942, said the situation is existential for the area's small merchants and restaurateurs.

A broader World Tourism Organization assessment cited by Hospitality Investor found that Israel and Iran face the sharpest tourism contractions of any countries in 2026 — a reversal from the cautious optimism that had begun to emerge after two years of COVID and Gaza war recovery.

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The security reality that makes this hard to resolve

Israeli authorities have not closed the holy sites capriciously. The threat is documented. Iranian missile fragments have landed in the Old City. A missile strike near the Western Wall approach road was confirmed. Shrapnel hit the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre's medieval architecture, with its narrow corridors and lack of modern emergency infrastructure, has been formally assessed by the Israeli military as inadequate for missile emergency shelter — the stated reason Jerusalem police gave for turning back Cardinal Pizzaballa this morning.

The Home Front Command's gathering limits — 50 people outdoors, 100 indoors — are based on shelter availability and response time requirements. The Old City simply cannot accommodate mass gatherings under those constraints. The Israeli government has not made a religious or political decision to exclude any faith community; it has made a security decision that happens to exclude everyone simultaneously.

But the effect is the same regardless of intent. For the first time in nearly 60 years, all three Abrahamic faiths are unable to mark their holiest seasons at their holiest sites. The city that is the shared spiritual capital of half the world's believers is, right now, empty.

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What comes next

The Home Front Command has not announced when restrictions will lift. That depends entirely on the trajectory of the Iran war — specifically whether Iranian missile fire against Israeli cities continues, and whether the Strait of Hormuz, closed since February 28, reopens. No ceasefire is currently in place. Iran has rejected Trump's 15-point peace plan. The war is in its fifth week with no clear end in sight.

Easter Sunday falls on April 5. Passover begins April 12. Both will almost certainly be observed under the same restrictions — or similar ones. Whether the priestly blessing draws 50 people or 50,000, whether Easter Mass is said in a basement shelter or in the great nave of the Holy Sepulchre, depends on whether missiles stop falling on Jerusalem.

They haven't stopped yet.

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