I found parts of the city like the Dome of the Rock exquisitely beautiful but overall it was a city filled with hatred.

One day a nurse was knifed to death at the bottom of Elisha Street where I was living. Several times there were bombs on buses or in markets on Jaffa Road, which lay a couple of hundred yards in the other direction.

The violence ebbed and flowed, never as great as many other cities in the Middle East, but never entirely absent.

Three religions

There was always a contrast between Jerusalem as a small shabby city and its status as a great symbolic centre for three religions. It seemed to be dwarfed by its history.

The main friction was between Jews and Muslims, but also within communities as the ultra-orthodox Jews grew in number and secular Jews moved to cities on the coast.