The Making of a Capital

This article analyzes the significance of Jerusalem in Jewish-Israeli consciousness through the city’s representations on banknotes, based on the proceedings of the Bank of Israel’s Banknotes and Coinage Planning Committee since its inception in 1955. The Banknotes Committee, as an institutional body that represents the ruling hegemony, has worked to bolster the emblematic status of Jerusalem as the Jewish-Israeli capital in the past as well as the present. When Israel ruled only the west part of the city from 1948 to 1967, banknotes carried images of that part of Jerusalem only. After the 1967 Six-Day War, however, the representations changed dramatically, mainly depicting sites situated in occupied East Jerusalem. Since 1967, the banknotes have presented the city as Israel’s ‘eternal capital’, never to be divided again.