page_title: Hebron
section_title: British Mandate
hierarchical_section_title: Hebron / History / British Mandate
caption_attribution_description: English: British loyalty meeting in Hebron, 3 July 1940
context_page_description: Hebron is a Palestinian city in the southern West Bank, 30 km south of Jerusalem. Nestled in the Judaean Mountains, it lies 930 meters above sea level. The largest city in the West Bank, and the second largest in the Palestinian territories after Gaza, it has a population of 215,452 Palestinians, and between 500 and 850 Jewish settlers concentrated on the outskirts of the Old City of Hebron. Jews, Christians, and Muslims all venerate Hebron for its association with Abraham: it includes the Cave of the Patriarchs, which according to tradition is the burial site of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs. Judaism ranks Hebron the second-holiest city after Jerusalem, while some Muslims regard it as one of the four holy cities.
  The city is often described as a "microcosm" of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. The Hebron Protocol of 1997 divided the city into two sectors: H1, controlled by the Palestinian Authority, and H2, roughly 20% of the city, administered by Israel.
context_section_description: The British occupied Hebron on 8 December 1917; governance transited to a mandate in 1920. Most of Hebron was owned by old Islamic charitable endowments (waqfs), with about 60% of all the land in and around Hebron belonging to the Tamīm al-Dārī waqf. In 1922, its population stood at 17,000. During the 1920s, Abd al-Ḥayy al-Khaṭīb was appointed Mufti of Hebron. Before his appointment, he had been a staunch opponent of Haj Amin, supported the Muslim National Associations and had good contacts with the Zionists. Later, al-Khaṭīb became one of the few loyal followers of Haj Amin in Hebron. During the late Ottoman period, a new ruling elite had emerged in Palestine. They later formed the core of the growing Arab nationalist movement in the early 20th century. During the Mandate period, delegates from Hebron constituted only 1 per cent of the political leadership. The Palestinian Arab decision to boycott the 1923 elections for a Legislative Council was made at the fifth Palestinian Congress, after it was reported by Murshid Shahin (an Arab pro-Zionist activist) that there was intense resistance in Hebron to the elections. Almost no house in Hebron remained undamaged when an earthquake struck Palestine on July 11, 1927.
  The Cave of the Patriarchs continued to remain officially closed to non-Muslims, and reports that entry to the site had been relaxed in 1928 were denied by the Supreme Muslim Council.
  At this time following attempts by the Lithuanian government to draft yeshiva students into the army, the Lithuanian Hebron Yeshiva (Knesses Yisroel) relocated to Hebron, after consultations between Rabbi Nosson Tzvi Finkel, Yechezkel Sarna and Moshe Mordechai Epstein. and by 1929 had attracted some 265 students from Europe and the United States. The majority of the Jewish population lived on the outskirts of Hebron along the roads to Be'ersheba and Jerusalem, renting homes owned by Arabs, a number of which were built for the express purpose of housing Jewish tenants, with a few dozen within the city around the synagogues. During the 1929 Hebron massacre, Arab rioters slaughtered some 64 to 67 Jewish men, women and children and wounded 60, and Jewish homes and synagogues were ransacked; 435 Jews survived by virtue of the shelter and assistance offered them by their Arab neighbours, who hid them. Some Hebron Arabs, including Ahmad Rashid al-Hirbawi, president of Hebron chamber of commerce, supported the return of Jews after the massacre. Two years later, 35 families moved back into the ruins of the Jewish quarter, but on the eve of the Palestinian Arab revolt (April 23, 1936) the British Government decided to move the Jewish community out of Hebron as a precautionary measure to secure its safety. The sole exception was the 8th generation Hebronite Ya'akov ben Shalom Ezra, who processed dairy products in the city, blended in well with its social landscape and resided there under the protection of friends. In November 1947, in anticipation of the UN partition vote, the Ezra family closed its shop and left the city. Yossi Ezra has since tried to regain his family's property through the Israeli courts.
caption: British loyalty meeting in Hebron, July 1940
exif: {}