HEBRON, West Bank – With its dueling street names, barbed wire barricades and the tomb of a shared patriarch split between two religions, the city of Abraham takes the feud between Israelis and Palestinians to its outer limits.
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(Photo: AP Images / Nasser Shiyoukhi)Palestinian women walk past Jewish settlers as they tour a Palestinian area in the Old City of the West Bank city of Hebron, Saturday, Nov. 22, 2008. Thousands of Jewish settlers converged on the divided West Bank city as part of a pilgrimage commemorating the death of the Matriarch Sarah, whom the Bible says was buried in Hebron.
Even a humble olive harvest is a cue for violence in Hebron, where 600 of Israel's most radical citizens have carved out an enclave bristling with guns and watchtowers in the midst of 170,000 Palestinians.
Yet for all the city's complexities, the essence of Hebron's anguish is simple: one forefather, one city and two peoples — one feeling invaded, the other convinced it has come back to its biblical birthright, right down to the deed of sale recounted in the Book of Genesis, when Abraham purchased a burial plot for 400 silver shekels.
Jews and Arabs both claim descent from the biblical patriarch, but their relationship in Hebron is anything but brotherly.
Fearful of a peace deal that would lead to their evacuation, the settlers are growing increasingly violent, throwing rocks, assaulting farmers and even taking on Israeli soldiers — all to show their government how difficult any withdrawal from the West Bank will be.
"This is the heart of the people of Israel," said 39-year-old Hebron settler Amikam Lederer, standing in a courtyard outside the Abraham Our Father synagogue, a short walk from the tomb. "Normal people do not give their heart to someone else."
According to Islamic, Jewish and Christian belief, Hebron, in the southern West Bank hills, is where not only Abraham — Ibrahim to Muslims — is buried, but also the patriarchs Isaac and Jacob and the matriarchs Sarah, Rebecca and Leah.
But two massacres define the city as much as religion. In 1929 rampaging Arabs killed 67 Jews, and in 1994 a Jewish extremist named Baruch Goldstein shot dead 29 Palestinians praying at the mosque surrounding Abraham's grave.
All this history, dating as far back as 3,800 years, weighs heavily on the latest initiative by Mideast peacemakers — the deployment in Hebron of some 600 Palestinian troops, mostly trained in Jordan under U.S. guidance. They are here to bolster Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and keep the Islamic militants of Hamas in check.
While the move has enjoyed some success, with dozens of wanted gunmen arrested, it is also fraught with peril. Though the new forces are supposed to avoid the fifth of the city that remains under Israeli military control, any clash with settlers or soldiers could undermine their mission of helping create the conditions needed for peace.
Hebron embodies the Israeli nationalist vision born after the 1967 Mideast War of reclaiming the Promised Land and filling it with Jewish settlers.
In that war, Israel captured Hebron along with the West Bank, and Jews immediately began pressing for the right to move back into the city from which their forerunners had been expelled in 1929.
Initially, they were housed in a new suburb, Kiryat Arba, outside the Arab-populated city, but after Palestinians gunned down six settlers on their way home from prayers at the tomb in 1980, the government retaliated by allowing settlers to move in near the tomb, living in buildings that had belonged to Jews until the 1929 bloodbath.
The frictions have been constant. To get to the tomb from Kiryat Arba, worshippers ride a bulletproof bus on what Jews call King David Street, and which Palestinians call Martyrs Street. Wire mesh and metal bars protect Palestinian homes from settlers hurling stones and bottles from above. Continue >>
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Prophet Abraham would be sad to see his children from Ishmael and Isac spilling blood of each other.
Palestinians are predominantly Arab Muslims claiming Hebron for them while occupying IDF seeks its occupational authority over it only to protect Jews.
The best solution is to end the occupation by IDf and allow all to share the tomb of Abraham for their respective consolation. Such an idea could keep Abraham at peace and so the rest of us.
Abu Mazen's Palestinian security force together with the Christian Peacemaker Team needs to collaborate more and maintain peace in Hebron along with the IDF soldiers stationed there.
Especially on the 2 synagogues at Jacob Hall and Abraham Hall in the Cave of the Patriarch.
I agree that the IDF does not seek peace as their primary objective but guaranteeing safety for the Jews and pilgrims there, but new talks and measure can be achieved through open communication.