Bethlehem is a Palestinian city located in the central West Bank, about 10 kilometers (six miles) south of Jerusalem. The earliest mention of the city is in the Amarna correspondence c.1350-1330 BCE as “Bit-Lahmi”. Bethlehem was destroyed by the Emperor Hadrian during the second-century Bar Kokhba revolt; its rebuilding was promoted by the Empress Helena. Bethlehem was seized by the Arab Caliphate during the Arab conquest in 637, seized again by Egypt and then the Seljuks, and, in 1099, by Crusaders, who replaced its Greek Orthodox clergy with a Latin one. In the mid-13th century, invading Mamluks demolished the city’s walls, which were subsequently rebuilt in the early 16th century, after Bethlehem became part of the Ottoman Empire. Control of Bethlehem passed from the Ottoman Empire to the British Empire at the end of World War I. Pursuant to the proposed United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine of November 1947, Bethlehem was to be included in an international zone, controlled by Britain. The Arab states rejected the Partition Plan, triggering the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, during which Arab League states tried to prevent the creation of a Jewish state. Jordan forcibly seized Bethlehem and formally annexed it in 1950. It was captured by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. Since 1995, when Israel ceded it to the PLO, Bethlehem has been governed by the Palestinian National Authority.
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