by Shimon Samuels and Alex Uberti

Paris, 16 July 2025 (closing of the 47th WHC)

World Heritage Site

In 2017, the Palestinian Authority was given “Hebron/Al-Khalil old town” by UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee (WHC).

The WHC recognizes, in particular, “the architecture of the Mamluk period between 1250 and 1517. The centre of interest of the town was the site of Al-Ibrahimi Mosque /the Tomb of the Patriarchs, whose buildings are in a compound built in the 1st century C.E. to protect the tombs of the patriarch Abraham/Ibrahim and his family.”

What the WHC fails to mention is that the complex was originally built by the King of Judea, Herod the Great, and sits over the “Machpelah Caves”, where the proper tombs are situated. The latter are about 4000 years old, and according to biblical tradition, the burial site of Abraham with his wife Sarah, Isaac with his wife Rebecca, and Jacob with his wife Lea. The caves indeed represent the second holiest site for Judaism, after the Wailing Wall and the Temple Mount, in Jerusalem.

Since the Hebron site became a place of pilgrimage and worship also for Christianity (from about 320 C.E.) and Islam (from about 640 C.E.), it is considered holy by all three monotheistic religions, and has thus become object of contention in the centuries-long conflict between Christian kingdoms and the Arab Muslim empires, with the Jews stuck in the uncomfortable middle, being tolerated one day, and being persecuted the next.

Whoever, among the two religious superpowers, managed to take over the Holy Land, would limit access to the antagonist religions. Furthermore, under Arab, Mamluk and then Ottoman rule, Hebron’s Tomb of the Patriarchs was generally off-limits even for the persistent local Jewish community. The Mamluks forbade Jews from entering the site, or alternatively allowed them only as close as the fifth step – then increased to the seventh step – down the access shaft. This humiliating restriction for Jews was also adopted under the British Mandate, as a measure of appeasement towards the Muslim religious authority (Waqf).

The Hebron Massacres

In 1929, Hebron witnessed the most egregious event, that marked a turning point in Arab-Jewish relations. In late August, an Arab mob launched a premeditated and coordinated attack on the Jewish quarter of Hebron, killing 67 residents and leaving over 50 wounded. The survivors and the Police witnessed rape, torture and maiming. Homes, businesses, synagogues and a hospital were looted and destroyed. The local Police were overwhelmed, and in some cases complicit. In the following days, the 435 surviving Jews were evacuated by the British Mandate authorities. The dead Jews were desecrated and thrown into a mass grave.

News of the massacre made headlines worldwide. It was reportedly the first time that Arab pan-Islamic nationalists used a fake pretext as an effective tool of propaganda and incitement to violence. Their spurious claim was that “the Jews had moved to seize Al Aqsa (the Temple Mount in Jerusalem)”. The Zionist movement – i.e. the emancipation of Jews, their self-determination and the return of the Jewish Diaspora to their homeland, from which they had been exiled for over two millennia – was characterized as “a threat to Islam”.

To put these events into context, already by 1923, an ongoing series of low-level anti-Jewish incidents had taken place. By 1928, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Amin al-Husseini, ideologically close to the newly founded Muslim Brotherhood – and who would later become an admirer and collaborator of Nazi Germany – pronounced fiery antisemitic sermons, rife with conspiracy theories and false accusations, fuelling Jew-hatred. He also had bricks and excrements occasionally thrown from the top of the Wailing Wall onto Jewish worshippers.

Throughout the 1930s, though Jews could again travel to Hebron, often under police protection, tensions still ran high. The whole Mandate had entered a season of terror attacks, until the War of Independence. Though Israel had won the 1948 war, Jordan occupied and annexed the West Bank, and no Jews were allowed to visit the Tomb. In the 1960s, Jordan even destroyed several historical buildings surrounding it.

After the Six-Day War, in 1967, Israel gained control over the ancient holy site, but the caves were sealed off. Negotiations with the Waqf resulted in adding a small synagogue on the premises, with access permitted on the holy days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. This sparked Arab terrorist attacks on worshippers over the years. The deadliest attack was in 1980, when a Palestinian ambush squad murdered six Jewish youth exiting the Tomb of the Patriarchs compound (a Canadian, two Americans and three Israelis), and leaving 20 injured. All four terrorists involved belonged to Fatah, some had trained in the Soviet Union, Syria and Lebanon.

One terrorist in particular, Tayseer Abu Sneineh, after being arrested and condemned to life imprisonment in Israel, was liberated in a prisoner exchange some years later. In 1993, in what appeared to be compensation for his terror attack (in the spirit of the “pay-to-slay” policy), he was appointed member of the Waqf in Hebron, administering the al-Ibrahimi Mosque, and then became Mayor of the city in 2017.

In a daring operation in 1981, local Jews managed to remove the stone giving access to the Machpelah caves. Nevertheless, through the Oslo Accords (1993) and the Wye River Accords (1996), the Palestinian Authority and the local Waqf were to decide and limit access to the site, while the State of Israel accepted to preserve the status quo, especially after a 1994 massacre on the premises committed by a Jewish extremist.

Participating at the 41st WHC meeting in Cracow (July 2017), Dr Shimon Samuels, then Director for International Relations of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, was handed a note informing him that, at a few metres distance, was sitting the newly elected Mayor of Hebron, that same Tayseer Abu Sneineh who had perpetrated the 1980 Hebron massacre. Samuels was shocked and addressed the WHC denouncing the presence of a murderer in the hall. The Committee archived his protest and voted to give “Hebron/Al-Khalil old town” to the Palestinian Authority.

Where is the Fairness?

Today, a varied Jewish community lives in and around Hebron, and there is no shortage of willing visitors, but Jewish access to parts of the Machpelah Caves is still restricted to only ten days per year.

The Tomb of the Patriarchs remains foundational for Judaism, as much as the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Nevertheless, the international community, through UNESCO and the WHC, has assigned this highly sensitive and fragile site to a compromised Palestinian Authority – that lacks electoral legitimacy since 2006, is torn from within by terrorist factions, riddled by corruption and mismanagement, ambiguous in its dealings with its neighbours, hardly able to fulfil day-to-day responsibilities...

That holy Jewish sites remain off-limits for Jews, is an exclusive anomaly, a remnant of the colonial past of the Islamic Caliphate, the Crusader kingdoms, the Ottoman Empire and the British Mandate... By comparison, access to Saint Peter’s Basilica or to Mecca are not denied to Christians nor Muslims respectively. Moreover, access to the latter is allowed exclusively to Muslims.

Though the Jewish holy landmarks that pre-date other monotheistic religions are usually treated with respect by all, it is ironic if not harrowing that only the Jewish State and the Jewish People are denied the possibility of accessing and taking care of sites that belong to their own heritage.

While worshippers of any religion can touch the Wailing Wall, why can Jews not pray freely over the Patriarchs’ Tomb, or over the grounds of Solomon’s Temple? Is this a battle to be left to extremists, or is it rather a question of shared humanity and justice to be discussed among the grandsons of Abraham?

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Shimon Samuels is former Director for International Relations of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre
Alex Uberti is an independent researcher and Project Manager for CSW-Europe

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For further information, contact csw-europe@gmail.com