Hebron/Al-Khalil Old Town

If you spend some time to explore Hebron, you will find a city where its resident do their best to live a life of normalcy despite Israeli military control and restriction on freedom of movement and economic activities.

We visited the city of Hebron by public bus from Jerusalem - you can find the buses that go to the West Bank at a bus station near the Damascus Gate. The bus dropped us off in the commercial centre of Hebron, near and within walking distance of the old city. Although we did get lost initially, with the help of residents and shopkeepers, we eventually found the spot where we were to meet our local guide. Our guide was Hisham Sharabati, a Palestinian political analyst and human rights worker. As I only had passing knowledge of the historical and political context of the region, I greatly appreciated the expertise of our wonderful host. 

The old city of Hebron was both quiet and bustling. Quiet in that good portions of the neighbourhood was closed due to military orders, but bustling in that the residents were trying to rejuvenate the portions of the city that they still had control over (the photo attached to this review is of a shopkeeper in the old city).  

We also visited the Tomb of the Patriarchs or more specifically the Ibrahimi Mosque portion of the Tomb. The Tomb/Mosque looks more imposing from the outside. The inside of the Mosque is more austere than one …

"What's your religion?" I stood at the entry to the Muslim side of the Cave of the Patriachs/Ibrahimi Mosque and an IDF soldier was asking. I answered: "None, I am an atheist." He was befuddled and repeated the question: "Sorry, but what is your religion?" Again, I truthfully answered "None." At this point, he concluded that asking me for my religion wasn't going anywhere. "Okay, what's the religion of your parents?" Honest answer would have been "None" again. Understanding that he needed an answer, I asserted that they were Christians, culturally. This made him happy, and he allowed me to enter to the site.

The main site of Hebron is the Cave of the Patriarchs/Ibrahimi Mosque which is 2.000 years old and a structure dating back to Herodot, i.e. pre-Roman. The belief is that Abraham and his kin are buried here. Muslims in addition believe that Mohammed stopped here, before ascending to the Heavens in Jerusalem.

The structure has undergone several changes from a Jewish temple to a Byzantine church to a mosque and back to a church. In modern times, the site is primarily a mosque with a Jewish place of prayer attached to the side. Both faiths have a view of the tombs and the underlying cave. As "Christian", you are allowed to explore both the Islamic mosque as well as the attached Jewish synagogue.

While the structure is impressive, as an atheist I find it hard to ignore how much violence is …

Cave of the Patriarchs 

Dating back two thousand years ago, the two-metre thick stone wall which forms the exterior of the Cave is the only fully intact Herodian structure and one of the oldest buildings that still serves its original function. The Byzantine built a roof and turned it into a church; after changing hands from the Muslims to the Crusaders then back to the Muslims, Saladin remodelled the enclosure into a mosque in 1188. The caves, holding the tombs of the patriarchs and their wives, are closed off since the 1490s, forcing pilgrims to project their imaginations onto the respective cenotaphs instead.

For 700 years Jews were forbidden to enter — the closest they could get was up to the seventh step of an outer staircase. Jews began to migrate back to Hebron following the Six-Day War and at long last regained access to the Cave of the Patriarchs, although it continues to be managed by an Islamic charitable trust. Sharing a holy site proved to be anything but smooth, resulting in four attacks targeting Jews from 1968 to 1980, and after a period of calm, a massacre of 29 Palestinians at the hand of a radicalized Brooklyn-born Jew called Baruch Goldstein in 1994. Curfew was imposed on Hebron for two months, disproportionately affecting the Palestinians. Goldstein’s grave has inexplicably become a pilgrimage site for Jewish extremists.

As prevention of further bloodshed the Cave has since been split into two, creating a bizarre scenario where …

We rented a taxi for the day to visit Hebron from Bethlehem. This proofed to be a good choice, as we were driven close to the mosque/tomb, with instructions on how to reach it.

The place itself is one of the strangest visit I ever had. It is divided, but if you are neither Jew nor Muslim, you can enter both sides, passing the respective checkpoint. I suggest visiting both sides, as each one has a special advantage. The Jewish side is not really interesting inside, but the façade is very photogenic from that side. The Muslim side is just a boring stonewall from outside but the mosque is very nice from the inside.

The old town is around the mosque/tomb. It’s not bad, but a bit in lack of maintenance (like most of Palestine). It did not seem that the town has any tourist infrastructure. We felt like adventurers, discovering a lost city. However, there was no situation we felt unsafe. The whole experience beats the actual site itself by miles.

No doubt Assif can update us more accurately than I can regarding the complex realities of Israeli/Palestinian control across various parts of the City of Hebron. We visited the Israeli controlled area for a few hours, both to see the Tombs of the Patriarchs but also to try to get a feel for the situation. In that short visit I am unlikely to have fully understood matters but will do my best to describe what I can only describe as “a very strange visit”.

In common with some other entries on the Palestinian T List, that for Hebron represents possibly a statement of hope but more realistically, one of political posturing made in the face of a rather different reality in which the Palestinian Authority is not in control of the site and indeed seems less and less likely ever to be so as time passes - even if it is de jure within “Palestine”.

At the heart of it all lies the “Tombs of the Patriarchs” or, to Muslims, the Ibrahimi Mosque. This consists primarily of a massive (originally open?) “enclosure” with 2 metre thick walls built by Herod the Great. Under it, in a cave, lie the supposed tombs of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Leah. These are manifested above in the form of cenotaphs. The original structure has undergone several developments over the 2000 years – the creation of a basilica by the Byzantines, then a mosque, then building of another Christian basilica by …