The ongoing conflict between Palestinians and Jewish settlers in the West Bank city of Hebron is part of the wider Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Hebron has a Palestinian majority, consisting of an estimated 208,750 citizens (2015) and a small Jewish minority, variously numbered between 500 and 800. The H1 sector of Hebron, home to around 170,000 Palestinians, is governed by the Palestinian Authority. H2, which was inhabited by around 30,000 Palestinians, is under Israeli military control with an entire brigade in place to protect some 800 Jewish residents living in the old Jewish quarter. As of 2015, Israel has declared that a number of special areas of Old City of Hebron constitute a closed military zone. Palestinians shops have been forced to close; despite protests Palestinian women are reportedly frisked by men, and residents, who are subjected every day to repeated body searches, must register to obtain special permits to navigate through the 18 military checkpoints Israel has set up in the city center.
History
The Hebrew Bible describes Hebron as the home of patriarchs Abraham and Jacob and as all the patriarchs final resting place. It is also considered King David's first capital city.
In the mid-19th century, Hebron was small town with a population of around 10,000, the majority of whom were Muslims. From December 1917, Hebron came under the rule of the Mandatory Palestine, a move sanctioned by the League of Nations.
In 1929 when the Hebron massacre took place, Sephardic Jews and Ashkenazi Jews had been living in Hebron for about 800 and 100 years respectively. In the massacre, 67 Jews were killed by Arab rioters, and many incidents of rape, mutilation, and torture were reported. In 1931, 160 Jews returned to the town, but after further Arab unrest, the British Government decided to move all Jews out of Hebron "to prevent another massacre".
At the beginning of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Egypt occupied Hebron. By late 1948, part of the Egyptian forces had been isolated around Hebron and Bethlehem, John Bagot Glubb sent 350 Arab Legionnaires and established a Jordanian presence in Hebron. With the signing of the Armistice agreements the city fell exclusively under Jordanian control. In 1950, the city was unilaterally incorporated into Jordan.
Israeli rule and Jewish re-settlement
Following the June 1967 Six-Day War, Hebron came under Israeli control. The vacillations in the Israeli cabinet after the war, over annexation and the political realism in wanting to maintain the majority Jewish demographic of Israel left the Israeli leadership in a quandary in ways to deal with the newly occupied territories. Israel's position was that parts of the West Bank be traded for peace with Jordan. Under the Allon Plan, Israel was to annex 45% of the West Bank and Jordan the remainder.
In an interview with the BBC on July 12, 1967, Former Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion declared that:
in the cause of peace, Israel should take nothing in the conquered territories, with the exception of Hebron, which 'is more Jewish even than Jerusalem'. According to Randolph Churchill, he [Ben-Gurion] argued that "Jerusalem became Jewish three thousand years ago under King David. But Hebron became Jewish four thousand years ago under Abraham and included a number of settlements that were destroyed two days before Israel was established."
In 1968, a group of Jewish settlers led by Rabbi Moshe Levinger, with the tacit support of Levi Eshkol and Yigal Allon, rented out the main hotel in Hebron and refused to leave. This was short lived and through a government compromise the Jewish presence was moved east to a nearby abandoned army camp. The new settlement of Kiryat Arba was established. According to the American Jewish historian Ian Lustick:
'The government was caught by surprise. Internally divided, depending for its survival on the votes of the National Religious Party, and reluctant to forcibly evacuate the settlers from a city whose Jewish population had been massacred thirty-nine years earlier, the Labor government backed away from its original prohibition against civilian settlement in the area and permitted this group to remain within a military compound. After more than a year and a half of agitation and a bloody Arab attack on the Hebron settlers, the government agreed to allow Levinger's group to establish a town on the outskirts of the city.'