Hebron

Hebron is a city in the southern West Bank, Palestine, and the capital of the Hebron Governorate, which is the largest in the West Bank. It is located 30 kilometers (19 mi) south of Jerusalem. The population inside in the city limits is 201,063, while the adjacent metropolitan area within the governorate is home to over 700,000 people. Hebron spans across an area of 74.1 square kilometers (28.6 sq mi). It is the third largest city in the country after Gaza and East Jerusalem. Hebron is often considered one of the Four Holy Cities in Judaism. It is also venerated in Christianity and Islam. It is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the Levant. According to the Bible, Abraham settled in Hebron and bought the Cave of the Patriarchs as a burial place for his wife Sarah. Biblical tradition holds that the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, along with their wives Sarah, Rebecca, and Leah, were buried in the cave. The city is also recognized in the Bible as the place where David was anointed king of Israel. Following the Babylonian captivity, the Edomites settled in Hebron. During the first century BCE, Herod the Great built the wall that still surrounds the Cave of the Patriarchs, which later became a church, and then a mosque. With the exception of a brief Crusader control, successive Muslim dynasties ruled Hebron from the 7th century CE until the Ottoman Empire's dissolution following World War I, when the city became part of British Mandatory Palestine. The 1929 Hebron massacre of nearly 70 Jews and the Arab uprising of 1936–39 led the British government to evacuate the Jewish community from Hebron. The 1948 Arab–Israeli War saw the entire West Bank, including Hebron, occupied and annexed by Jordan, and since the 1967 Six-Day War,...