Hebron, occupied West Financial institution – Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque is not more than 50 metres from Aref Jaber’s house, within the neighbourhood that bears his surname, reflecting his household’s lengthy historical past within the Palestinian metropolis.
The 51-year-old has taken benefit of that proximity since his childhood, often praying on the mosque, probably the most necessary Islamic websites, and a Palestinian nationwide image.
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However the Ibrahimi Mosque of Jaber’s childhood isn’t the one in every of right this moment. A 1994 bloodbath of Muslim worshippers by the Israeli settler Baruch Goldstein killed 29 Palestinians. As a substitute of getting justice, Palestinians confronted extra restrictions within the aftermath of the assault.
Israeli settlers started establishing an unlawful presence in Hebron, a part of the occupied West Financial institution, in 1968, the yr after Israel seized management of the Palestinian territory. The settlers have been working to develop their presence ever since, with elevated assist from the Israeli authorities.
After 1994, Israel started taking steps to, in impact, management the Ibrahimi Mosque – recognized to Jews because the Cave of the Patriarchs – by closing off giant areas in Hebron’s Previous Metropolis and the southern space surrounding the mosque, then dividing it between Muslims and some hundred Jewish settlers, granting the latter the appropriate to hope there.
This was adopted by the signing of the Hebron Settlement with the Palestinian Authority in 1997, which stipulated the division of town into two elements: H1, beneath Palestinian management, comprising 80 p.c of the realm, and H2, beneath Israeli management, comprising 20 p.c, however together with the Ibrahimi Mosque and the Previous Metropolis.
Following this sequence of occasions, settlement exercise intensified within the coronary heart of Hebron. Settlers established unlawful outposts inside the Previous Metropolis and started regularly increasing and seizing new properties beneath the safety of the Israeli military.
In the meantime, Palestinians have been subjected to closures, restrictions and repressive measures geared toward forcing them to depart the Previous Metropolis, thus facilitating Israeli management over the mosque.
Neighbours of the Ibrahimi Mosque
Jaber had hoped that his kids would pray on the mosque each day and turn out to be acquainted with it, however Israeli measures prevented this.
He defined that since 1994, the southern gate of the mosque, which residents of his neighbourhood used for entry, has been closed. They’ve as an alternative been compelled to take various routes, turning a journey of fifty metres into one which now spans virtually three kilometres.
Issues have gotten worse for the reason that starting of Israel’s genocidal warfare on Gaza in October 2023, when Israel additionally ramped up its assaults within the West Financial institution.
Israel tightened its grip on the mosque and its environment, closing extra of the choice routes.
“The problem of reaching the mosque is compounded by the procedures on the iron and digital gates put in at its entrances and in its neighborhood,” Jaber mentioned. “We’re subjected to searches, detention, and harassment with none justification, and infrequently younger males, boys, and even ladies are arrested.”
The Israeli authorities says that the restrictions are needed for safety causes – to guard Israeli settlers whose presence within the West Financial institution’s most populous metropolis is prohibited beneath worldwide regulation.
Jaber defined how the Israeli military closes obstacles and gates across the mosque and the neighbourhoods that encompass it for prolonged durations beneath safety pretexts. Palestinian residents should not allowed to depart their properties, even to buy, whereas settlers are permitted to maneuver freely all through the Previous Metropolis.
Israeli authorities additionally used the justification of the present battle with Iran to shut entry to the Ibrahimi Mosque for Palestinians for six days from February 28, permitting it to reopen for a restricted variety of worshippers on March 6.
Elevated management
However these measures aren’t solely geared toward limiting Palestinians within the neighborhood of the mosque, but additionally appear to be an try to determine full Israeli safety management over it, with measures just like these Israel employs on the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem.
In Al-Aqsa, the third holiest web site in Islam, renewable expulsion orders are used to forestall the entry of worshippers deemed troublesome. Searches are additionally often carried out on the gates of Al-Aqsa, in addition to detentions, confiscation of id playing cards and restrictions on entry to sure elements of the mosque compound.
Israel now often conducts comparable actions on the Ibrahimi Mosque.
The Israeli military issued orders to take away Moataz Abu Sneineh, the director of the Ibrahimi Mosque, and different workers from the mosque for 15 days in January. The Palestinian Authority mentioned that the orders have been a part of “an try to cut back their position within the administration and supervision of the Ibrahimi Mosque’s spiritual and administrative affairs”.
Israeli officers have additionally tried to push by means of development work within the mosque with out the approval of Palestinian officers.
On February 9, the Israeli cupboard permitted the switch of licensing, constructing and municipal administration powers in Hebron from the municipality to the Israeli Civil Administration, along with establishing a separate settlement municipality inside the metropolis.
The change, a part of an internationally condemned Israeli push to extend management over the West Financial institution and make Israeli settlement simpler, is seen as illegitimate and harmful to the present established order, threatening freedom of worship and public order, in keeping with an announcement issued by the Hebron Municipality in response to the choice.
Abu Sneineh informed Al Jazeera that Israel has remodeled the mosque into one thing resembling a “navy barracks” because of the stringent measures it imposes, which “purpose to cut back the variety of worshippers there”.
In accordance with Abu Sneineh, the Israeli authorities interfered within the authority of the Ministry of Spiritual Endowments, and the decision to prayer was prevented from being carried out dozens of instances a month. Worshippers have been subjected to humiliating therapy on the mosque entrance, together with beatings, verbal abuse and expulsion. Abu Sneineh mentioned the measures have been a part of a scientific Israeli coverage geared toward remodeling the mosque right into a Jewish synagogue.
“Israel is attempting to impose a brand new actuality by controlling the mosque and obstructing worshippers’ entry to it, whether or not throughout Ramadan or at different instances. After October 2023, the measures grew to become much more stringent to erase the Islamic id of the place, as if it have been racing towards time to grab management of it,” he added.
On February 28, coinciding with the beginning of Israeli-American strikes on Iran, the Israeli military expelled worshippers and employees from the mosque and knowledgeable them of its closure till additional discover, simply because it had finished at Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem on the identical day beneath the declared state of emergency measures.
The director of the Youth Towards Settlements group and a resident of the Previous Metropolis, Issa Amro, believes that the state of affairs on the Ibrahimi Mosque is extra harmful than at Al-Aqsa Mosque as a result of it has suffered from temporal and spatial division since 1994.
The “arbitrary” obstacles, the closure of surrounding markets and foremost roads resulting in it, and just lately the closure of checkpoints within the southern space of town – which incorporates the Previous Metropolis and the Ibrahimi Mosque – stop roughly 50,000 residents from accessing it, together with the switch of supervisory authority of elements of the mosque to the Spiritual Council within the unlawful Kiryat Arba settlement, are extraordinarily harmful steps that threaten the Palestinian id of the location, Amro mentioned.
“The Jewish space [of the mosque] has been expanded, and just lately, residents across the mosque have been dwelling a tough life as a consequence of soldier violence, settler terrorism, the fixed closure of obstacles, and restrictions on leaving their properties. They reside as prisoners in their very own properties in concern of settlers and troopers, and disturbed by the fixed gatherings held by settlers within the mosque,” he added.
In accordance with the Utilized Analysis Institute – Jerusalem (ARIJ) – a Palestinian analysis institute – roughly 40,000 Palestinians reside within the H2 space, alongside about 800 Israeli settlers residing in 14 small unlawful settlement outposts. These outposts are beneath heavy safety from 1000’s of Israeli troopers deployed across the perimeter of the realm and within the streets of the Previous Metropolis, stopping Palestinians from main regular lives.
The outposts are managed by the Hebron Settlements Council, which is linked to the mum or dad settlement, Kiryat Arba, positioned east of town.
A analysis examine printed by the institute in November 2025 revealed a big improve within the compelled displacement of Palestinians from the H2 space over the previous twenty years.
The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem mentioned in a 2019 report that about 35,000 Palestinians lived in Hebron’s H2 space when the Hebron Settlement was signed in 1997. As we speak, solely round 7,000 stay. Roughly 1,000 of them reside in a very restricted zone across the Tel Rumeida neighbourhood and Shuhada Avenue – previously Hebron’s foremost purchasing road, which is now closed to Palestinians, because of the presence of a number of unlawful Israeli settlements.
Palestinian households within the Previous Metropolis and the neighborhood of the Ibrahimi Mosque are subjected to numerous types of strain, together with demolition orders beneath the pretext of unlicensed development, frequent arrests, settler assaults on residents and college students travelling to and from college, financial restrictions, store closures, and motion restrictions, notably concerning entry to locations of worship and hospitals.
In accordance with the United Nations Workplace for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the realm accommodates 97 varied navy checkpoints and obstacles.
These are sometimes closed for hours and even days at a time with out prior discover, paralysing motion inside the Previous Metropolis and the residential areas adjoining to the mosque.
In the direction of full annexation
Observers see these measures in Hebron as a prelude to establishing a fait accompli within the West Financial institution as a complete, which has been subjected for greater than two years to accelerated insurance policies geared toward controlling the biggest doable space of land and increasing settlements.
Settlement affairs researcher Mahmoud al-Saifi informed Al Jazeera that Israel has sought over the previous two years to solidify the annexation of the West Financial institution, notably Space C, which constitutes greater than 61 p.c of the overall space of the West Financial institution.
Israeli authorities have permitted 54 new official settlements and 86 smaller outposts in 2025 alone, in keeping with knowledge from Peace Now, which screens settlement exercise.
Planning was permitted or superior for some 51,370 settlement models within the West Financial institution from late 2022 to the top of 2025, a determine additionally introduced by Israeli authorities businesses primarily based on knowledge from the Greater Planning Council.
As well as, 222 kilometres of secondary and bypass roads have been constructed within the two years previous January 2025, geared toward connecting outposts to foremost settlements.
On account of these insurance policies, the Palestinian presence has dwindled in lots of areas, notably the Jordan Valley, the place their quantity has decreased to not more than 65,000.
“Israel is implementing a coverage of encirclement and strangulation of small villages within the West Financial institution by confiscating land and stopping Palestinian development, in distinction to the frenzied settlement wave that Smotrich referred to as a ‘settlement revolution,’ and the accompanying bitter actuality for Palestinians,” al-Saifi mentioned.
There at the moment are 1000’s of armed settlers unfold all through the West Financial institution, al-Saifi famous. Skilfully educated and infrequently referred to as settlement guards, they’re primarily a rear guard pressure for the Israeli military, used to assault and intimidate Palestinians and seize their land.
“All Bedouin communities are positioned in Space C, and 47 of them have been forcibly displaced since October 2023, that means greater than 4,000 Palestinians have been displaced in simply two and a half years,” al-Saifi mentioned. “That is a part of ethnic cleaning and de facto annexation on the bottom.”
