 Did you know that Jerusalem once had an international airport? Why was it closed? And what are the chances that you could take a flight direct from New York or other international destinations straight to this historical city that serves today as Israel's capital? Today's video covers the former Jerusalem airport at Atarot, what led to its downfall, and what are the chances that low-flying airplanes will once again grace the skies over Jerusalem. Opened in 1924 and assigned the ICAO identifier of LLJR Lima Lima Juliet Romeo, Jerusalem's international airport like Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv actually traces its origin back to pre-state Israel in mandatory Palestine. The former airport was located in Atarot, which is an industrial neighborhood in northern Jerusalem that today, as it was then, is just a stone's throw for Ramallah and the Calandia checkpoint. The airport was also known as Calandia Airport and Atarot Airport. You can still clearly see its former runway on Google Maps. Although the former site of the airport is now fenced off, some intrepid urban explorers have gotten access to show what it looks like inside the disused terminal building and control tower. As you can see, it's a sort of eerie reminder of a bygone day. You can still find former aerodrome charts for the airfield online. The airport had a single runway runway 1230, which was 1,965 meters in length. That works out to be just short of 6,500 feet. If the airport were operational today, a runway of this length would be enough for most narrow-body aircraft landing and departing on short to medium-haul international flights, say to and from Europe, as well as domestic flights within Israel. However, it would not be long enough for wide-body aircraft departing on long-haul flights, say to the US. According to former aerodrome charts, the runway was equipped with an ILS system to facilitate low visibility arrivals and its air traffic control frequency operated on 118.8 and 122.85 MHz. During its period of operating under mandatory Palestine and before Israel's conquest to the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 1967, Cyprus Airways, Royal Jordanian, and Middle Eastern Airlines all operated flights to and from the airport. Middle East Airlines, by the way, is Lebanon's flag carrier. So for a 17-year period, you could fly direct between Jerusalem and Beirut. In 1967, the airfield came under Israeli control, like the rest of Jerusalem beyond the Green Line. During this period, Arkea and Al-Al operated daily commercial flights from the airport until civilian traffic was shut down entirely in October of 2000. The stated reason for the closure was security issues. The airport was closed during the Intifada, and its location literally right next to Ramallah, with departing and arriving aircraft having to fly only a few hundred feet over built up Palestinian areas, was precarious to say the very least. Atarot Airport's location over the Green Line, however, proved to be a significant disadvantage. Although Israeli authorities pushed hard for the airport to be better utilized and connected, most international carriers bought the idea of setting up routes that would land in what most of the international community considered, and still does, to be illegally occupied territory. The former site of Atarot Airport is wedged immediately between the outermost suburbs of Jerusalem, Atarot itself, and Kuffar Akhab, which is in turn connected to Ramallah. Although Kuffar Akhab is technically part of the Jerusalem municipality, at least in part, it's located on the Ramallah side of Israel's security fence. In November 2021, the Jerusalem Local Planning and Building Committee approved a plan to build 11,000 new homes on the site of the former airport, covering a site of some 310 acres, although it noted that the former terminal building at the airfield would be preserved. The housing was to be earmarked for ultra-Orthodox Jews. However, because the site is located over the Green Line, as I mentioned, the plan quickly drew the ire of the Americans, and Israel soon notified the Biden administration that the plan was unfreeze. Recently, the Palestinian Authority suggested that the PA should seize the former airport site and call it Al-Quds Airport. While this might have proven popular on the Palestinian street, the rhetoric failed to take into consideration the logistical difficulty that doing this might entail, given that the site of the airport since 1967 has been under Israeli control. To this day, the site of the former airport remains one of the very few undeveloped open spaces in the Jerusalem Municipal Area. It's thus an obvious site to be developed for housing in some way or another. Under Israel's ruling right-wing government, it seems likely that the site will once again come under pressure to be turned into housing, although the US will likely remain steadfast in its opposition to such a move. With Al-Quds Airport a probable non-runner, a question worth pausing on is whether the airport could once again return to Israeli control and civil aviation operation. Personally, this possibility seems extremely unlikely. Smaller Israeli airports such as Stadov and Tel Aviv have closed down in recent years, and Israel is investing instead in the future of Ben-Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv and Ramon Airport near Elat, which provides it with air redundancy. Furthermore, a fast 30-minute train now connects Jerusalem with Ben-Gurion Airport, meaning that the fact that the airport isn't physically located in Jerusalem is no longer the major inconvenience for residents of the capital that it once was. Given that airports tend to attract lots of noise and traffic to urban areas, it could even be argued that this is an advantage. Finally, we have the short runway, which would require expansion to serve cross-continental air traffic, and we have the awkward location of the former airport wedged right between Ramallah and Jerusalem. Not only does this prevent the possibility of significant runway expansion, there is housing to both the East and the West of the former runway, but from a security standpoint, this remains almost the stuff of nightmares. Do you have facts or historical photos of Atarot Airport that I neglected to include? Feel free to leave them in the comments, and like and subscribe for more videos.