Hebron: An ancient city with a very modern conflict

Government refuses to allow Jews of Hebron to build or buy houses, to expand their confined space or develop closed areas – to have a thriving Jewish community.

By SETH J. FRANTZMAN
A map of the Israeli and Palestinian sections of Hebron (photo credit: B'TSELEM)
A map of the Israeli and Palestinian sections of Hebron
(photo credit: B'TSELEM)
Around 200,000 Palestinians live in a large sprawling area; about 500 Jews live in tiny protected neighborhoods. A Jewish town (Kiryat Arba) of 8,000 residents sits on the eastern shoulder of Hebron, and provides the only way for Hebron’s Jewish community to drive to Jerusalem and the country’s center and back. This lone artery is dotted with checkpoints and soldiers as it weaves its way through a kilometer of several Arab neighborhoods, and empties traffic out into a small parking lot below the Cave of the Patriarchs that is called by Muslims the Ibrahimi Mosque or the Sanctuary of Abraham.
This iconic site, a large rectangular building with minarets on top, is a microcosm of the conflict – a large Herodian-era structure, with the signature giant stones one finds at the Western Wall, with a mosque constructed atop it. The mosque and Jewish site commemorate Abraham, and the resting place of the Jewish forebears, Sarah, Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob and Leah.
Although a Jewish community was maintained in Hebron since the destruction of the Second Temple, Jews in the city were persecuted by Crusaders. After the 14th century, the Muslim rulers forbade Jews from going beyond seven steps up the staircase of the large building. Jews were driven from the city in the early 20th century; only in 1967 were Jews again able to set foot in the city and in the holy site.
The mosque and the Cave of the Patriarchs are today shared by Jews and Muslims, with Muslims praying in one portion and Jews in the other.
Heading west from the site along the deserted Shuhada Street, which, for security reasons, has been closed to Palestinian traffic since the 1990s, one comes to the warren-like Jewish neighborhood of Avraham Avinu. IDF soldiers patrol it and men watch above it. Past more deserted streets one comes to the Beit Romano complex and the Beit Hadassah museum, a pretty stone building with stone stars of David in the front. Southeast of that complex, on a hill that overlooks Hebron, is Tel Rumeida, where some additional Jewish families live, along with an IDF base and a Jewish cemetery.
For Palestinians, this administrative setup, where 160,000 Arabs live in a Palestinian Authority controlled area called H1 and 40,000 Arabs live in another area the IDF controls called H2 (which is closer to the Jewish neighborhoods), is an injustice of epic proportions, symbolic of all the problems of Israeli rule. For the Jewish residents it is also an epic injustice: The government refuses to allow them to build or buy houses, to expand their confined space or develop closed areas – to have a thriving Jewish community.