During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Jews living in the Jewish  Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem were besieged and forced to leave en masse. Colonel Abdullah al-Tal, local commander of the Jordanian Arab Legion, described the destruction of the Jewish Quarter in his memoirs, (The Palestine Catastrophe: the Memoirs of Abdullah al-Tal, Leader of the Battle for Jerusalem, Cairo, 1959):

"... The operations of calculated destruction were set in motion.... I knew that the Jewish Quarter was densely populated with Jews who caused their fighters a good deal of interference and difficulty.... I embarked, therefore, on the shelling of the Quarter with mortars, creating harassment and destruction.... Only four days after our entry into Jerusalem the Jewish Quarter had become their graveyard. Death and destruction reigned over it.... As the dawn of Friday, May 28, 1948, was about to break, the Jewish Quarter emerged convulsed in a black cloud - a cloud of death and agony."