​The Armenian presence in Jerusalem, dating back to the 4th century after the nation's conversion to Christianity, established one of the city's oldest continuous diaspora communities. From the establishment of the Armenian Patriarchate in the 7th century to the influx of 1915 Genocide survivors, the community has maintained a distinct, self-contained cultural and spiritual identity within the Old City's Armenian Quarter.

​

The deliberate eradication of the Armenian community in the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1917, which claimed almost 1.2 million lives, is known as the Armenian Genocide. The Ottoman Empire's sharp fall and the rise of the nationalist "Young Turks" administration, which aimed to homogenize Anatolia, were catalysts for genocide. The Ottoman Empire sided with Germany when World War I broke out in 1914. The government wrongly accused the Christian Armenian minority of being a wartime traitor after suffering a significant military setback against Russia. The genocide began on April 24, 1915, when hundreds of Armenian leaders and intellectuals were apprehended in Constantinople and killed. Millions of Armenians were methodically deprived of their belongings under the Tehcir Law and made to march brutally through the Syrian desert in the direction of detention camps without access to food or water. Planned massacres, sickness, and malnutrition claimed the lives of about 1.5 million Armenians. The survivors scattered globally, creating the modern Armenian diaspora.​

​

A Jewish network known as NILI witnessed Ottoman brutality in Palestine under Ottoman rule. Aaron Aaronsohn warned the British military in a well-known document titled "Pro Armenia" that the Ottoman policy against the Armenians could serve as a model for the eventual annihilation of the Jewish population. The Armenian Genocide profoundly shaped Jewish history and the response to the Holocaust decades later. The term "genocide" was first used in the 1940s by Polish-Jewish jurist Raphael Lemkin. He made it clear that he came up with the idea while researching the unfolding Nazi Holocaust and the mechanical murder of the Armenians in 1915. The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, a 1933 novel by Austrian-Jewish author Franz Werfel, chronicled Armenian resistance to the murders. Copies of this book were read in Jewish ghettos throughout Europe during World War II, encouraging Jews to rebel against the Nazis. On June 28, 2026, the Israeli government unanimously and formally recognized the Armenian genocide.​ The Joint Holocaust and Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan, which unifies both countries in remembering their past tragedies, is a potent emblem of their modern identities. 

​

The Old City of Jerusalem is home to a historic Armenian Quarter that occupies one-sixth of its area. Approximately 2,200 Armenians reside there, centered around the Patriarchate and St James Cathedral. Significant and long-established communities are also located in Jaffa (Tel Aviv), Haifa, and Ramla. More recent waves of Armenian immigration from the former Soviet Union are distributed throughout the country's urban centers.