My Hebron: the Early years

My Hebron

By David Ramati

I suppose everyone has a special place, and mine is Hebron.  It is where I have spent the last approximately 40 years of my life, which represents a big chuck of my 67 years.

Hebron is, first of all, the Cave of the Patriarchs.  This monument was built about the same time that the second temple was constructed in Jerusalem.  It is considered the second most holy place in Judaism second only to the temple mount.

The Cave of the Patriarchs:  Note:  The large stones were placed during the time the Second Temple was built.  To the left are the remains of the crusader fortress, and the upper light colored addition was done by the Mamluk invaders who turned the crusader cathedral (located inside) into a Mosque.  To the far right is the site of the infamous seventh step.  Any Jew who attempted to go farther than that step could be executed.

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 Rumedia” where David ruled for seven years.  This site is also the burial place of David’s father, Jessie.

The author in the Tomb of Jessie with a Sefer Torah.  Daily learning and the saying of psalms take place at this sacred site.    

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 to flood the city, and 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 Kiryat Arba, and 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 to, 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 have been a part of that team in which I proudly served.

I would walk down every Sabbath with the famed artist Baruch Nachshon, to pray at the Cave of the Patriarch.  The infamous 7^th step had been destroyed with the liberation of this Jewish city of David in 1967 and both Jew and Arab prayed in the same structure without any separations except the requirement by the Israeli Military Government that in the Mosque are itself the 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 and even would leave an aisle open to us by moving their prayer rugs so as not to 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 continued in this fashion.  With each Israel retaliation against PLO terror attacks the situation became more and more tense.  When the Kiryat Arba Jews forcibly moved into property that had been held by the ancient Jewish community of Hebron which had thrived until the 1929 Hebron massacre and a forced eviction of the survivors by the British mandate essentially put an end to the community, the Arabs of Hebron took action and together with outside elements of the PLO began the systematic attack and killing of Jews in Hebron.

This eventually led up the Goldstein retaliatory killings in the Cave of the Patriarchs, the division of the Cave into two parts as we see today, and ultimately the division of Hebron into two separate areas, one under control of the IDF and the other under control of the PLO and HAMAS.

In effect, Bibi gave full control to 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 where Jews and Arabs still live together, but where Arabs are forced to leave the Jewish Ghetto of Hebron via IDF and PA checkpoints.

This new situation has only cost more Jewish and Arab lives, a far cry from the earlier days that I remember so fondly.