A Glimpse at Hebron

I'm moving from Hebron to At-Tuwani on Thursday. Tuwani is a small village in the south Hebron hills where CPT has a team. I've been meaning to share a little bit about the history of Hebron... Here is a bit before I leave Hebron. I was lazy- so a lot of this information was typed up by another CPTer a while back. It is in italics.

Hebron is an amazing city full of history. I love walking the streets and paths with my teammate John. He knows the buildings and the history well and he loves this place. He always says things like, “Just think, it’s likely that Abraham and Sarah walked this same path.” Or, “Rebekah probably drew her water from this spring.”

We can see Machpelah (Genesis 23), or the “tomb of the patriarchs (the mosque/synagogue where Sarah, Abraham, Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob, and Leah are reportedly buried) from our roof and we walk past the tomb each day. (it’s odd that it is called the “tomb of the patriarchs” since the tomb was originally for Sarah, the matriarch…)

Hebron is one of the oldest continuously occupied cities in the world… Herod the Great built a wall around the Cave of Machpelah, the tomb of the Patriarchs, portions of which are still visible. A church was built on top of Herod's structure during the Byzantine period. The building was later converted to a Mosque during the Arab conquest in 638, re-converted by the Crusaders into a church in 1100, and reconverted into a mosque under the Mamluk Turks in 1260.

In the 1500's, Jews fleeing from the Inquisitions in Europe founded the Jewish Quarter in Hebron. (Incidentally, Muslims fleeing from Spain for the same reason also settled in Hebron around this time. One can see the Spanish influence lingering in certain place names, such as Al Andalus mall and Cordoba school.) In the early twentieth century, the Jewish community swelled when hundreds of Hasidim from Poland came to study there.

From all reports, it appears that the Jewish and Arab communities lived in peace...

The 1929 massacre in the Jewish quarter continues to live as a recent memory in the minds of both Jews and Arabs in Hebron. At least 67 men, women and children were hacked to death by an Arab mob. Almost 400 residents of the Jewish quarter, however, were saved by their Arab neighbors. (Presently a group of Jewish families who lived in Hebron pre-1929 are speaking out against the illegal Israeli settlements and military abuses that take place against Palestinians in Hebron.)

CPT talked to an old man in Hebron who was 13 at the time of the Hebron massacre. He had served as a "shabbos goy" to a family living in the community (i.e. he came into the house to turn the lights on and off on during the Sabbath.) On the morning of the massacre, he watched British soldiers among the Arab mob open the gates and tell the mob to "get the Jews."

Hebronites claim that the mob was entirely composed of people from outside Hebron.

In 1931, 31 Jewish families returned to Hebron and re-established the community. In 1936 the British evacuated them, saying they feared another massacre.

In April of 1968, Rabbi Moshe Levinger and a band of armed settlers, posing as Swiss tourists, took over the only hotel in Hebron and stated that they did not intend to leave. To appease them, the army gave them an abandoned military camp on the outskirts of Hebron. This site became the first settlement here, the settlement of Kiryat Arba (which is now a very large Israeli settlement right outside of Hebron).

Now there are 4 other settlements actually inside the city of Hebron. These numbers are not exact- but there are around 140,000 Palestinians in the city of Hebron and around 500 Israeli settlers inside the city of Hebron, in the 4 settlements (Avraham Avinu, Beit Romano, Beit Hadassah, and Tel Rumeida), as well as a couple thousand Israeli soldiers.

We walk by Avraham Avinu settlement each day as we leave the Old City of Hebron. The Israeli settlers throw their trash out their windows and into the souq, the Palestinian market. Here is a picture of the nets on which Palestinians in the Old City rely to keep the settlers’ garbage out of the stores and streets. One can see everything from furniture to beer bottles to dirty Kleenex overhead as one heads to school, work, or worship. Very lovely….

In February 1994, the settler Dr. Baruch Goldstein entered the Ibrahimi mosque and massacred 29 Muslim men and boys as they prayed on the last Friday in Ramadan. The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) shot more in the demonstrations that followed. A large monument to Baruch Goldstein, "the martyr," lies near the entrance of Kiryat Arba in Meir Kahane park. (Goldstein was beaten to death with a fire extinguisher by two men in the mosque. The Israeli Defense Force shot them.) Some Jewish Israelis come there to pray.

(Here a Palestinian man prays inside the mosque by the tomb of Abraham.)

In response, the army put all Palestinians in Hebron under curfew for two months, but allowed the settlers to roam the streets freely. By the time our Christian Peacemaker Team arrived here in 1995, Palestinians expressed as much bitterness about the collective punishment as they did about the massacre. Curfew means that all Palestinians had to be inside their homes by a certain hour and sometimes for days at a time. Curfews prevented people from working, going to school, seeing family, worshipping together, and even buying food.

(A child walks to school through a checkpoint as a CPT delegate watches.)

Today the 4 settlements remain inside the city and the settlement of Kiryat Arba remains outside of Hebron. The main road by the Old City of Hebron that passes by the tomb is called Shuhada St. This street used to be lined with Palestinian shops and homes. Many Palestinians still live in the homes but they cannot get out of their front doors because they have been welded shut. Only Israeli settlers are allowed on the main road. Palestinians must take longer, inconvenient routes. The Palestinian shops on Shuhada St are almost all closed. The front doors to Palestinian homes on Shuhada St are vandalized by settlers. Our next door neighbor has had her window broken twice in the last 2 weeks. Israeli settlers walking down Shuhada St at night throw stones at her windows. if they fail to actually break a window, the settlers succeed in keeping our neighbor awake. It is harder and harder for Palestinians in the Old City (where the CPT apartment is) to get our of the Old City. It is like a giant prison. There are turnstiles and barbed wire and checkpoints at the openings. Some paths have been blocked off by the military.
Hebron has problems similar to many inner city situations combined with the issues of a place under occupation.