In 1994, the Israeli military responded to a massacre by a Jewish settler by restricting the movement of Hebron’s Palestinian residents. Two decades later, the restrictions are more severe and some of Israel’s most extreme settlements continue to grow in the heart of the West Bank’s largest city.

Photos by: Anne Paq, Ryan Rodrick Beiler, Yotam Ronen, and Oren Ziv/Activestills.org

Twenty years ago, on February 25, 1994, American-born doctor and Israeli settler Baruch Goldstein walked into Hebron’s al-Ibrahimi Mosque and opened fire with his military issued rifle, killing 29 Palestinian worshippers and injuring 125. Goldstein himself was eventually overcome and beaten to death.

In protests that followed the massacre, another 25 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces. Five Israelis died in the violence.

Rather than removing volatile settlements embedded in the heart one of the largest Palestinian cities, the Israeli military’s response was a policy of separation between settlers and Palestinians on Hebron’s streets. The result is a network of heavily guarded enclaves whose presence punishes Palestinian neighbors with a matrix of checkpoints and restricted areas.

Hebron’s Shuhada Street has seen the most notorious of these restrictions. Once a busy commercial center, many shop doors have now been welded shut by military order, giving the area the appearance of a ghost town.

In some sections of the street, Palestinians are barred from driving while Israeli cars enter freely. In others, Palestinians are completely banned from entering. Some Palestinian families must enter their homes by alleys, ladders and back doors because their front doors on Shuhada Street are off limits.

On one stretch of street near the Ibrahimi Mosque/Tomb of the Patriarchs, a low concrete barrier once segregated Palestinian foot traffic from Israeli cars and pedestrians. Highly visible to international tourists visiting the holy site, the barrier has since been removed, while the military installed another barrier for the same purpose — this one topped with a wire mesh fence — on an adjacent street less visible to visitors.

Due to the intensity of its occupation regime, Hebron remains the focus of annual protests to open Shuhada Street, and is a frequent flashpoint for clashes between the Israeli military, Palestinians and settlers in general.

However, for centuries, a small Arabic-speaking Jewish community had lived at peace with its neighbors in Hebron, with whom they shared many cultural ties. It was not until the influx of European Jews arrived at the turn of the 20th century that tensions rose, especially following the Balfour Declaration. These tensions boiled over in August 1929, as violence spread from Jerusalem following a Jewish nationalist march on the Western Wall. Though hundreds of Hebron’s Jews were protected by their Muslim neighbors, 67 were killed in riots fueled by false rumors that Muslims were being massacred in Jerusalem.

Though Hebron’s contemporary settlers purport to be reclaiming areas that were Jewish prior to the 1929 violence, most of them are once again foreigners (including many Americans) with little connection to the original owners. Their ideological agenda sharply contrasts with the generally good relations enjoyed by Jews who lived in Palestine before the Zionist movement. These settlers continue to expand their presence in Hebron by taking over more Palestinian homes and properties, often through fraudulent means accompanied by violent harassment. Though ownership of several such properties in Hebron is currently under deliberation by Israeli courts, all settlements in occupied Palestinian territory are illegal under international law.

In the midst of this climate of violence and harassment, the military frequently ignores or actively protects settlers who attack Palestinians or vandalize their property. As Hebron settler spokesman David Wilder told a documentary filmmaker, “Blessed God says, ‘Make war for this land, conquer this land.’ So this is what I do.”

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