But they are not equal. The Jews created the city as their capital. Everyone else marched in and conquered it and did their damnedest to keep the Jews out. Christianity's attempt to conquer Jerusalem derived from its desire to supersede Judaism; the Muslim attempt to conquer it — as today — derived from the Islamic drive not just to supersede its predecessor faiths but to appropriate and Islamise Judaism itself. But throughout, the Jews always retained their connection with the city, their holy of holies that has always been the focus of their prayers. 

Today, there are repeated Arab attempts to erase the copious, growing archeological evidence of David's city and the ancient kingdom of Israel and Judea, which establishes the Jews' indisputable claim to Israel and to Jerusalem. What is clear, however, is that it is only since the Israelis liberated East Jerusalem from the Jordanian occupation in 1967 that, for the first and only time in the city's history, Jews, Christians and Muslims may freely worship at their shrines.

Sebag Montefiore, however, claims that this is only theoretically true. Non-Jews, he says, have their freedom to worship   restricted because of the security barrier and other bureaucratic harassments. But that's only because of the need to defend these places from yet more violence. For exactly the same reason, Jews are forbidden by Israeli law to pray on the Temple Mount. 

In a war between truth and lies, justice and injustice, even-handedness ceases to be admirable and risks becoming instead partisanship for wrong-doing. Towards the end of this otherwise fine book, Sebag Montefiore falls into this trap. 

It is a similar trap — the misguided belief that fairness means splitting the difference between good and evil — that has led the West increasingly to abandon Israel to the prospect of yet further conquest and destruction. And so, as always, the peace of Jerusalem tragically remains merely a prayer.