Is Hebron a Model for Coexistence?
Driving into Hebron, Israel is an experience like few others that life has to offer. Roads leading to the ancient city are twisted, narrow, and dangerous, like the politics which surround this place.
The city contains the ancient burial place of the patriarchs of Judaism, Abraham and his wife Sarah, as well as a number of others who followed him. Abraham is celebrated not only as the first Israelite who was called upon G-d to move from his family to a new land and to worship the one deity; who was not made of stone but the work of man’s hands.
The patriarchs are also revered by Christianity and Islam.
Muslim, Jew, and Christian alike live in this city, sell their wares, pray, and build their homes in anticipation of raising children in the community. The Bible records that Abraham was offered the cave where his wife was to be buried for free by the local residents. History records that Abraham would not take the land for free because he did not want anyone ever saying in the future that his people were not entitled to the burial place or the land where they lived. How prescient was Father Abraham.
The centuries passed and other Israelites were buried at the same location.
1,500 years after the original purchase, a structure was built over the cave of Machpela, the sacred cave where the patriarchs and matriarchs of the bible were buried. The building is almost a model of the once magnificent temple in Jerusalem, destroyed first by the Babylonians and later by the Romans.
History records that the building was erected by Herod, King of Judea. Herod was a lunatic, probably suffered from a sexually transmitted disease, and was known for his vast building projects. He was the hated Roman Governor of Israel and was directly implicated in the death of Jesus.
The Roman style building, which was intended to cover the cave and the burial place of the patriarchs and matriarchs, was modeled after the temple in Jerusalem. On one corner of the structure the Muslims later built a minaret. On the other corner is an Israeli flag.
In the Byzantine era, approximately the 6th Century of the Common era, the building was divided. The eastern part was sectioned off and used as a church in the 7th to 8th Century of the Modern era. Rooms were built to enclose the location of Abraham and Sarah, Jacob and Leah.
The Muslims conquered the area and converted the church into a mosque, but the synagogue continued to function.
The Crusaders were the next conquerors. They allowed visitors to enter the tombs.
An ancient Jewish tradition contends that the cave is the gateway to heaven, a route that connects heaven and earth. It is where souls and prayers ascend to heaven. Others say that it is the entrance to the Garden of Eden.
In a later period, 1267 of the Common era, Jews and Christians were forbidden to enter the complex and were allowed to ascend only to the 7th step outside the building. Jews prayed at that location for 700 years until 1948 when Israel gained its independence. Under Jordanian occupation, which continued after 1948 to 1967, Jews were completely banned from entering all of Hebron.
After Israel was attacked by 6 Arab nations in 1967, Hebron was liberated by the Israeli Defense Forces. Thereafter, the shrine was open to worshippers of all faiths for the first time since Antiquity.
What makes Hebron unique is that while the Palestinian Authority created by the Oslo Accords, placed Hebron under the authority and control of the newly created PA, it continued to maintain its Jewish character. Hebron is and always has been a Jewish city, mentioned not only in the bible, but occupied by Jews whenever they were allowed to remain in the area by Christian and Muslim conquerors. The Jewish people are the guardian of Hebron, notwithstanding efforts to deny the reality of history.
There are those who claim that Hebron is a dangerous place. It is true that Jews have been attacked in Hebron by hostile fundamentalist Arabs but, for the most part, the area is safe, well-traveled, and counts as its occupants, members of the three great Abrahamic faiths. Jew, Muslim, and Christian, manage to get along most of the time with a lot less violence than is seen in the average American city. The statistics of murder, robbery, and rape common in the United States are unheard of anywhere in Israel, regardless of who lives in what territory.
Strangely, there are those in the United States who criticize and condemn Israel for living on its own ancient land while utilizing laws in the United States to remake neighborhoods to the liking of the ruling political elite. The Spanish, French, Irish and British discriminate against citizens in their provinces and colonies while preaching to the Jewish population of Israel that they should accept yet another terrorist state in the Middle East, to be called Palestine. Even the Ottoman Turkish maps which existed during the long occupation of the Middle East by the Muslim Turks recognize Judea and Samaria as Jewish Palestine. When people in Europe and the United States chant Palestine from the river to the sea, they are actually talking about the homeland promised to the Jewish people after World War I and ensconced in a treaty signed by member of the League of Nations and the United States. The United States was not a member of the League of Nations but, nevertheless, signed on to the Treaty of San Mateo guaranteeing a Jewish homeland in the area of Israel, named Palestine by the Romans.
In reality, Palestine from the river to the sea means kicking the Muslims out of the Jewish national homeland from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean, and from Lebanon in the North to Egypt and Saudi Arabia in the south. It would mean sending the Arabs to Jordan, which in fact was created as the Arab Muslim Palestinian homeland. There was to be a Jewish Palestine and an Arab Palestine. The Palestine from the river to the sea was designated as the Jewish homeland because it has been owned, possessed, and occupied by the Jews for 3,500 years.
Hebron may be a place of coexistence, but the enemies of the Jewish people seem bound and determined to impose their vision of apartheid politics on a region which they know nothing about.