Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Wednesday never to divide Jerusalem and to continue building in the city, as Israelis marked what they call "Jerusalem Day."
"We won't return to a divided city," Netanyahu said during a commemoration on Ammunition Hill, a Jerusalem site that saw heavy battles during that war with neighbouring Arab states, dpa reported.
"We won't go backwards to a city that is wounded and split, because on the day that Jerusalem was liberated, on the day the city was united, the wound was healed, the scar vanished," he pledged.
"There are problems, there are challenges, but we won't go back to those days," said Netanyahu, of the nationalist Likud party.
He spoke at length about his childhood memories of a divided Jerusalem, when he said Jordanian snipers were stationed on the walls and along the no man's land that cut off Jordanian-controlled East Jerusalem from Israeli-controlled West Jerusalem.