Status quo of Holy Land sites

The status quo of the Holy Land sites is an understanding between religious communities with respect to nine shared religious sites in Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Other Holy Places in Israel and Palestine were not deemed subject to the Status Quo because the authorities of one religion or of one community within a religion are in recognized or effective possession.

It resulted from a firman (decree) of Ottoman Sultan Osman III in the 18th century that preserved the division of ownership and responsibilities of various sites important to Christians, Muslims, and Jews to their then-current holders or owners, and represented agreements among the various religions that nothing could be changed from the way it was without upsetting the balance of order in maintaining the religious sites for visits by pilgrims. The actual provisions of the status quo were never formally established in a single document, but the 1929 summary prepared by Lionel George Archer Cust, a civil servant of the British Mandate, The Status Quo in the Holy Places, became the standard text on the subject.

When the Greeks launched a Palm Sunday takeover of various Holy Land sites in 1757 the Ottomans subsequently upheld this status quo.

This status quo for Jerusalem meant that certain statuses for the Holy Sites would be kept and were recognized as being permanent or at least the way things should be. The city was divided into four quarters. The Temple Mount became a Muslim holy place, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre as well as other various Christian sites were recognized as belonging to the Christian world. Despite the arguments over who would control what aspects of these sites, the status quo has remained largely intact from the 18th century to the present. Although claims that this status quo was being violated led to the 1929 Palestine riots, it has not been changed, and the quarters and areas remain roughly as they have been inside Suleiman's walls.

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