1929 Palestine Riots

Date: August 16, 1929 • Location: West Jerusalem, Israel

This milestone marked the outbreak and beginning of this historic period, which spanned 1929.

A long-running dispute between Muslims and Jews over access to the Western Wall in Jerusalem escalated into a week-long period of violent riots throughout Palestine.

The Western Wall is an ancient retaining wall of the built-up hill known to Jews and Christians as the Temple Mount of Jerusalem. Its most famous section, known by the same name, often shortened by Jews to the Kotel or Kosel, is known in the West as the Wailing Wall, and in the Arab world and Islamic world as the Buraq Wall. In a Jewish religious context, the term Western Wall and its variations is used in the narrow sense, for the section used for Jewish prayer; in its broader sense it refers to the entire 488-metre-long (1,601 ft) retaining wall on the western side of the Temple Mount.