38 years after returning to the West Bank City, Hebron’s Jewish community has acquired the official status of an independent settlement.
Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman upgrade the municipal status of the Hebron’s Jewish community, giving them separate powers from Palestinian Municipality that governs the West Bank city.
Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman announced the change in the status of the 1,000 Jews in Hebron during briefing he held with reporters in Tel Aviv.
A 1997 agreement split the city, of what is now over 220,000 Palestinians, leaving 80 percent of it under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority and 20% under Israel. But the Hebron Municipality is expected to provide the Jewish community with basic services. That community has limited ability to government its own life.
The upgrade severs them from the Hebron municipality and allows them to independently seek services from the Civil Administration, which oversees civilian life in Area C of the West Bank. Deputy Defense Minister Eli Dahan (Bayit Yehudi) said that “For years, Hebron’s Jewish residents lived without a municipal authority to take care of all the services required for normative civilian life.”
The upgrade was necessary given that this year the Palestinians in Hebron elected as their Mayor Shaikh Tayseer Abu Sneina, who had been convicted and served time for his role in killing six Israelis in a terror attack.
“After the election of a murderer for mayor of Hebron, the idea that they will receive these services from the municipality has become even more absurd,” Dahan said.
“This is another important step in normalizing the lives of the Jews in Hebron in particular and in all of Judea and Samaria in general,” said Dahan, whose office had worked on the upgrade.
The move upgrades the status of Hebron’s Jewish community and comes during a visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres.
In July the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization registered Hebron’s old town and the Tomb of the Patriarchs to the State of Palestine on its World Heritage List.
The inscription focuses on preserving the Muslim character of the 3,000 year old city with ties to three monotheistic faiths; Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Most of Hebron’s Jewish community of close to 1,000 people, live in the city’s old town.
The status upgrade also comes as the Defense Ministry is in the midst of fierce negotiations to sway 15 Jewish families in Hebron to peacefully evacuate Beit HaMachpela, a three story apartment building they illegally moved into in July. The families have worked for the last five years to register their property claim and have provided documentation to show that they purchased it from the Abu Rajab family.
The Rajab family disputes the claim and has filed a petition before the High Court of Justice, asking the court to intervene and force the removal of the Jewish families.