The 40th year celebrations of the reunification of Jerusalem are a national event for the State of Israel, Jewish people, and communities and peoples everywhere who identify with Jerusalem. Throughout the entire year, Israelis and the entire Jewish people are celebrating the fact that the city is no longer divided and as the capital of Israel and of the Jewish people, it no longer sits solitary, with a wall deep within it. It is a city open to a variety of influences, striving to encorporate different faiths and ideologies, diverse tastes and habits. Jerusalem within the walls, the old neighborhoods outside the walls, and the new neighborhoods built during the last generation all comprise one city, unique and unified.+From the time of King David, who established Jerusalem as the royal city, to the present, Jerusalem has always blended idealization and yearing with the daily reality of building and development. Forty years ago, a historic turning point occured when the divied city was reunified in the turmoil of the war. In the forty years that has transpired since then, Jerusalem has known pain and suffering, yet despite all its difficulties, it has become one city. The capital of the Jewish world metamorphosed from a city under threat by its enemies to a city that is secure and proud. lt is a city that fulfills its destiny as the capital of the State of Israel and the city at the heart of the Jewish people, while carefully preserving the places holy to all religions.+In marking 40 years since the unification of Jerusalem, the State of Israel commemorates this historic event, and the period that has passad since June1967, with a variety of events in the country and throughout the world. A broad range of participants and of events will characterize these celebrations, as they characterize the essence of the city itself — a variegated city, open to many ideologies, accommodating all ethnicities, and having a unique character of its own. A single thread runs through the city, unifying the old and the new, tradition with modernity, from the archeological excavatians of the City of David to the excavations underway for the new light rail system: a single, central city whose day-to-day reality is bound up with its historic memory.+'Seek the peace of Jersualem, they that love thee shall prosper', wrote King David the Psalmist. And we, his descendents and heirs in Jerusalem, wish, in his words: 'Peace be within your walls and prosperity is your palaces.'