Hebron Governorate

Qalqas or Qilqis (Arabic: قلقس) is a Palestinian village located four kilometers south of Hebron and adjacent to Beit Hagai. The village is in the Hebron Governorate Southern West Bank. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the village had a population of 1,709 in 2017. The primary health care facilities for the village are designated by the Ministry of Health as level 1.

Beit Hagai (Hebrew: בֵּית חַגַּי, Arabic: بيت حجاي), also Hagai, is an Israeli settlement organized as a community settlement located in the southern Hebron hills in the West Bank. The settlement population was 460 in 2004, according to a classified government document published by the Haaretz newspaper, and lies within the municipal jurisdiction of the Har Hevron Regional Council. The religious Jewish community's name, Haggai, is an acronym of the given names Hanan Krauthammer, Gershon Klein, and Yaakov Zimmerman, three Nir Yeshiva (Kiryat Arba) students murdered in the 1980 Hebron terrorist attack. The community rabbi for Beit Hagai is Rabbi Moshe Eliezer Rabinovich (HaLevy). In 2021 it had a population of 701. The international community considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal under international law, but the Israeli government disputes this.

The tomb of Jesse and Ruth (Hebrew: קבר ישי ורות, romanized: Kever Yishai v'Rut) is an ancient tomb with a small Jewish synagogue, located within the ruin of Deir Al Arba'een in the Tel Rumeida section of Hebron, in the State of Palestine. In the Jewish tradition, the tomb of Jesse and Ruth and considered to be sacred sites. The place is in area H2 of Hebron, under Israeli control. The small synagogue is located in the room adjacent to the tomb and it receives visitors throughout the year, especially on the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, in which the Book of Ruth is read.

Abdel Fattah al-Sharif, a Palestinian who had stabbed an Israeli soldier, was fatally shot on March 24, 2016, in the Tel Rumeida neighborhood of Hebron, by Elor Azaria, an Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldier. Azaria shot Abdel Fattah al-Sharif in the head as the latter lay wounded on the ground. Azaria was arrested and the Israeli Military Police opened an investigation against him for the charge of murder, but later reduced the charge to manslaughter. The soldier's act sparked widespread public debate in Israel, that became a continuation of an already widespread debate over how one should implement the rules of engagement orders in the wake of the wave of Palestinian political violence. Azaria was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment, twelve months' probation, plus a demotion in rank. He was released from prison after serving nine months.

Tel Rumeida (Arabic: تل رميدة; Hebrew: תל רומיידה), also known as Jabla al-Rahama and referred to by Israeli settlers as Tel Hebron is an archaeological, agricultural and residential area in the West Bank city of Hebron. Within it, lies a tell whose remains go back to the Chalcolithic period, and is thought to constitute the Canaanite, Israelite and Edomite settlements of Hebron mentioned in the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple period literature.While most of the site's area is used as an agricultural land, it is also the location of a Palestinian neighbourhood and an Israeli settlement. The international community considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal under international law, but the Israeli government disputes this.

The murder of Shalhevet Pass was a shooting attack carried out in Hebron, West Bank, on 26 March 2001, in which a Palestinian sniper killed 10-month-old Israeli infant Shalhevet Pass. The event shocked the Israeli public, partly because an investigation ruled that the sniper had deliberately aimed for the baby. According to Deborah Sontag of the New York Times, the murder became a "potent Israeli symbol as an innocent victim of the raging violence."

The Abraham Avinu Synagogue (Hebrew: בית הכנסת על שם אברהם אבינו) is a synagogue in the Jewish Quarter of Hebron. Built by Hakham Malkiel Ashkenazi in 1540, its domed structure represented the physical center of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Hebron. The synagogue became the spiritual hub of the Jewish community there and a major center for the study of Kabbalah. It was restored in 1738 and enlarged in 1864; the synagogue stood empty since the 1929 Hebron massacre, was destroyed after 1948, was rebuilt in 1977 and has been open ever since.

The old Jewish cemetery in Hebron, is located to the west of the Tomb of Machpela on a hill and has been used as a Jewish cemetery for hundreds of years, as attested to by Ishtori Haparchi, who noted a Jewish cemetery in the area in 1322. Other sources indicate the cemetery being mentioned in a letter dated to 1290. Among the prominent rabbinical sages and community figures buried in the cemetery include Rabbi Eliyahu de Vidas known as the Reshit Hokhma, Rabbi Abraham Azulai, Rabbi Solomon Adeni, Rabbi Elijah Mizrachi, Rabbi Chaim Hezekiah Medini known as the Sdei Chemed, Rabbi Judah Bibas, Rabbi Haim Rahamim Yosef Franco, Rabbi Hillel Moshe Gelbstein, Rabbi Shimon Menashe Chaikin, and Menucha Rochel Slonim. Menachem Mendel of Kamenitz, the first hotelier in the Land of Israel, references his visit to the grave of Eliyahu de Vidas in his 1839 book Sefer Korot Ha-Itim. He states, "here I write of the graves of the righteous to which I paid my respects." After describing the Cave of Machpela and the tombs of such Biblical figures as Ruth and Jesse, Othniel Ben Knaz and Abner Ben Ner, he reports, "I also went to a grave said to be that of the Righteous Rav, author of "Reshit Hokhma."During the Jordanian period (1948–1967), the cemetery was intentionally destroyed and the site was cultivated by Arab residents for growing produce. Around 4,000 tombstones were removed and used for construction purposes.In the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel convened an inter-ministerial investigating committee to determine the scope of the desecration to Jewish holy sites under Jordanian rule. A local resident declared that before he ploughed the cemetery, a Muslim priest gave him permission "to clean away the graves of the Jews." A former member of the Hebron city council testified that a prominent Palestinian Arab councilor told him that the Jewish cemetery had been destroyed by direct order of the Jordanian government.After Jews returned to Hebron, they requested that the old Jewish cemetery be reopened. As it was located in a hilly residential area opposite Hebron's main market, initially the Israeli government prohibited the cemetery from being used. The cemetery was re-opened for civilian use once again in 1975 when Avraham Yedidya, the sixth month old child of an Hasidic artist Baruch Nachshon and his wife Sarah died of cot death. Initially the Israeli government refused permission to avoid angering local Palestinians, The bereaved mother walked past the roadblock and commiserating soldiers let her pass. Following the burial, the community made efforts to clean up the cemetery. Prof. Ben Zion Tavger, a Russian-Jewish physicist and refusenik who moved to Hebron initiated the refurbishing efforts in the mid 1970s. In time, refurbished tombstones were installed bearing the names of original community members. Since then the site has both attracted visitors from around Israel as well as being targeted by vandalism. The cemetery also contains four mass graves with the remains of 59 victims of the 1929 Hebron massacre. A corner of the cemetery contains the remains of several Torah scrolls and Jewish prayer books which were torn up and set alight on the eve of Yom Kippur on October 3, 1976, at the Cave of the Patriarchs by rioters. Every year hundreds of members of the Chabad Lubavitch hasidic movement attend the anniversary of the passing of Menucha Rochel Slonim, a granddaughter of the founder of Chabad, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi and a matriarch of the Hebron Jewish community. After a visit to the cemetery, a festive meal and gathering is held attracting top rabbis from around the country.A small synagogue and learning center was established in a historic building atop the cemetery called the Menucha Rochel kollel.It was the tradition of the Hebron community not to engrave names on tombstones. Due to the expulsion of the community and subsequent vandalism of the cemetery, the exact identification of many plots were lost. In 2016 a map was discovered that identifies the location of the graves.

The Old City of Hebron (Arabic: البلدة القديمة الخليل Hebrew: עיר העתיקה של חברון) is the historic city centre of Hebron in the West Bank, Palestine. The Hebron of antiquity is thought by archaeologists to have originally started elsewhere, at Tel Rumeida, which is approximately 200 meters (660 ft) west of today's Old City, and thought to have originally been a Canaanite city. Today's Old City was settled in Greek or Roman times (circa 3rd to 1st centuries BCE). It became the center of the overall Hebron site during the Abbasid Caliphate (which began circa 750 CE). It was recognized as the third World Heritage Site in the State of Palestine in 2017.The Old City is built around the Cave of the Patriarchs, the traditional burial site of the biblical Patriarchs and Matriarchs, and venerated by Jews, Christians, and Muslims. The Old City is a sensitive location in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in Hebron.

The Cave of the Patriarchs or Tomb of the Patriarchs, known to Jews by its Biblical name Cave of Machpelah (Biblical Hebrew: מְעָרַת הַמַּכְפֵּלָה, romanized: , lit. 'Cave of the Double') and to Muslims as the Sanctuary of Abraham (Arabic: الحرم الإبراهيمي, romanized: ), is a series of caves situated 30 kilometres (19 mi) south of Jerusalem in the heart of the Old City of Hebron in the West Bank. According to the Abrahamic religions, the cave and adjoining field were purchased by Abraham as a burial plot, although most historians believe the Abraham-Isaac-Jacob narrative to be primarily mythological. The site is considered a holy place in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Over the cave stands a large rectangular enclosure dating from the Herodian era. During Byzantine rule of the region, a Christian basilica was built on the site; the structure was converted into the Ibrahimi Mosque following the Muslim conquest of the Levant. By the 12th century, the mosque and its surrounding regions had fallen under Crusader-state control, but were retaken in 1188 by the Ayyubid sultan Saladin, who again converted the structure into a mosque. In 1119 CE, a monk found bones inside the cave, believing them to be the bones of the patriarchs. During the Six-Day War of 1967, the entire Jordanian-occupied West Bank was seized and occupied by the State of Israel, after which the mosque was divided, with half of it repurposed as a synagogue. In 1968, special Jewish services were authorized outside the usual permitted hours on the Jewish New Year and Day of Atonement, leading to a hand-grenade attack on 9 October which injured 47 Israelis; and a second bombing on 4 November, which wounded 6 people. In 1972, the Israeli government increased the Jewish prayer area. New changes to the "status quo" were made by Israeli authorities in 1975, which again led to protests by Muslims. In 1976, a scuffle took place between Jewish and Muslim worshippers, during which a Quran was torn. Muslim and Arab figures went to Hebron the next day to protest what was called a "profanation of the Quran". The Tomb was closed and a curfew was imposed on the whole city. A few days later, about two hundred Arab youths entered the Tomb and destroyed Torah scrolls and prayer books. In May 1980, an attack on Jewish worshippers returning from prayers at the tomb left 6 dead and 17 wounded. In 1994, the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre occurred at the Ibrahimi Mosque, in which an armed Israeli settler entered the complex during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan and opened fire on Palestinian Muslims who had gathered to pray at the site, killing 29 people, including children, and wounding over 125.

The Cave of the Patriarchs massacre, also known as the Ibrahimi Mosque massacre or the Hebron massacre, was a shooting massacre carried out by Baruch Goldstein, an American-Israeli physician and extremist of the far-right ultra-Zionist Kach movement. On 25 February 1994, during the Jewish holiday of Purim, which had overlapped in that year with the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, Goldstein opened fire with an assault rifle on a large gathering of Palestinian Muslims praying in the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron. He killed 29 people, several as young as 12 years, and wounded 125. Goldstein was overpowered and beaten to death by survivors. The atrocity strained the Israeli-Palestinian Oslo Accords peace process, immediately setting off mass protests by Palestinians throughout the West Bank. During the ensuing clashes, a further 20 to 26 Palestinians were killed while 120 were injured in confrontations with the Israeli military, and 9 Israeli Jews were also killed.Goldstein was widely denounced in Israel and by communities in the Jewish diaspora, with many attributing his act to insanity. Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin condemned the attack, describing Goldstein as a "degenerate murderer" and "a shame on Zionism and an embarrassment to Judaism". Some Jewish settlers in Hebron lauded him as a hero, viewing his attack as a pre-emptive strike and his subsequent death as an act of martyrdom. Following statements in support of Goldstein's actions, the Jewish ultranationalist Kach party was banned and designated a terrorist organization by the Israeli government.

Al-Jawali Mosque or Amir Sanjar al-Jawli Mosque (Arabic: مسجد الجوالي) is a mosque in Hebron, Palestine, located in the southwestern corner of the Old City and part of the Ibrahimi Mosque (Cave of the Patriarchs) sanctuary.Al-Jawali Mosque was annexed to the Ibrahimi Mosque sanctuary and is an integral part of its layout, bordering the northeastern wall of that structure's enclosure. The remaining sides of the al-Jawali Mosque are hewn from stone and the mosque is not visible from the outside. The al-Jawali and Ibrahimi mosques are attached to each other by a passageway running parallel to the latter mosque's prayer hall.The mosque consists of three arcades with intersecting vaults supported by large stone columns. Each of the arched passageways is covered by a dome. A stone dome with corners decorated by muqarnas design and mosaic windows is situated atop the middle of the prayer hall. The qibla wall's mihrab in the southeastern part of al-Jawali Mosque is carved into the rock of the mosque's walls and tiled with marble slabs decorated with tinted engravings. The mihrab also has a semi-dome which is also decorated with marble.