My Hebron

Everyone has a special place, and mine is Hebron. It is where I have spent the last approximately 50 years of my life, which represents a big chunk of my 78 years.

Hebron is, first of all, the Cave of the Patriarchs. This monument was built about the same time as the Second Temple in Jerusalem. It is considered the second-holiest place in Judaism, second only to the Temple Mount.

Most people do not realize that Hebron was also the first capital of Israel under King David. His Hebron was centered around a site called “Tel Ramada” where David ruled for seven years. This site is also the burial place of David’s father, Jessie.

Ever since the city was returned to Jewish rule in 1967, the Arab and Jewish communities have lived in a pragmatic world. In the beginning, the cooperation between the two communities was based on mutual self-interest. Virtually tens of thousands of tourists began flooding the city, particularly the Cave of the Patriarchs. I remember seeing as many as 50 tour busses parked in the streets outside of the Cave area on any given day, the tourists, from Israel and all over the world, making a visit to the shrine and continuing on shopping trips throughout the city of Hebron snatching up the famed ceramics, glass, and gold jewelry that the Arab shop keepers had to offer.

This period lasted for years with only isolated instances of violence. The Jewish community was concentrated in Kiriat Arba. It would shop and pray in Hebron at the many Jewish sites without being in significant danger from the Arab majority.

The local Arab police forces carried pistols, wore Israeli Police uniforms, were responsible for, and paid by the Israeli national police. The IDF kept a very minimal presence in the city, depending instead on a Platoon of Border police consisting of Druze, Bedouin, and Religious Jews from Kiriat Arba to handle security and terror incidents. I was honored to serve on that team.

I would walk down every Sabbath with the famed artist Baruch Nachshon to pray at the Cave of the Patriarch. Baruch showed me the site of the “Seventh Step”.

The Mamelukes also built the northwestern staircase and the six cenotaphs (for Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob, Leah, Abraham, and Sarah, respectively), distributed evenly throughout the enclosure. The Mamelukes forbade Jews from entering the site, allowing them only as close as the fifth step on a staircase at the southeast. Still, after some time, this was increased to the seventh step.

After the Six-Day War in 1967, in which Israel gained control of Hebron, the first Jew who entered the Cave of Machpelah for about 700 years, was the Chief Rabbi of the Israel Defense Forces, Major general Rabbi Shlomo Goren who wrote: “About 700 years ago, the Muslim Mamelukes conquered Hebron, declared the structure a mosque and forbade entry to Jews, who were not allowed past the seventh step on a staircase outside the building.”

This infamous seventh step and the entire staircase had been destroyed with the liberation of the Jewish city of David in 1967. Both Jew and Arab prayed in the same structure without any separations except the requirement by the Israeli Military Government that in the Mosque itself, Jews could not pray in the quorum of ten or more during Muslim prayer.

For part of the prayer, Baruch and I would leave the Jewish Minyan praying next to the Mosque and finish a part of our prayers in the Mosque itself.

The Arabs took no offense at our praying at the same time as they did. They would even leave an aisle open to us by moving their prayer rugs, so we wouldn’t have to request that we remove our shoes, as was customary in Mosques. This was a sign of the great respect they held for Baruch Nachshon.

As the PLO and HAMAS stepped up their campaign against Israel, both the Jews and Arabs of Hebron began to sense that things would no longer continue in this fashion.

With every Israeli retaliation against PLO terror attacks, the situation became more and more tense. When the Kiriat Arba Jews forcibly moved into property that had been held by the ancient Jewish community of Hebron, the PLO began the systematic attack and killing of Jews in Hebron. Dr. Goldstein was the only trained doctor available at that time, and many of his neighbors, both adults and little children, died in his arms.

These killings eventually drove Dr. Goldstein to take the law into his own hands and commit the retaliatory killings in the Cave of the Patriarchs. After the massacre, the Cave of the Patriarch was divided into two parts: one for Jews and another for Muslims. The second stage of this separation was the division of Hebron into two areas, one under IDF control and the other under PLO and HAMAS control.

In effect, by dividing the city, the Honorable Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of the Jewish State of Israel, gave complete control of over 80 percent of the city to the PA/Hamas and formed yet another Jewish/Arab Ghetto in what is referred to as H2. This Jewish Ghetto also cut Arabs off from their friends and relatives in the PLO-controlled sector. They are now forced to leave the Ghetto via IDF and PA checkpoints.

This new situation has cost more Jewish and Arab lives than ever before. It is a far cry from the earlier days that I remember so fondly.