This gate had to be punched through to give access to the Franciscan monastery left outside the walls by Süleyman’s architects. During the 1948 Arab– Israeli War, Israeli soldiers holding Mt Zion also tried to burst through here in a desperate attempt to relieve the besieged Jewish Quarter. First they tried to dynamite the wall at a spot 100m east of the gate (it still bears the scar), and when that failed they launched an all-out assault, which ended disastrously. A memorial plaque to the fallen is inset within the gate, while the bullet-eaten facade gives some indication of how ferocious the fighting must have been. Note the mezuzah (box containing extracts from the Torah) on the doorpost; it was fashioned from bullet casings collected after the fighting.
To the Jews, the gate is Sha’ar Tziyon (Zion Gate), while in Arabic it’s Bab Haret al-Yahud (Gate of the Jewish Quarter).
