lo Squaderno (Jun 2015)
Hebron. Purity and the Impure in the Exclusionary City
Abstract
For the past 48 years the city of Hebron – a name that means‘Al Khalil’,‘the Saint’, in Arabic and‘Unite’or‘Friend’in Hebrew – has been at the core of an uncommon urban strategy of resettlement. After Jerusalem, Hebron is considered the holiest city for the three monotheis- tic religions; both the Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions refer to Hebron as the location of biblical events. During the British Mandate, in 1928, the city’s synagogue was destroyed and its Jewish habitants expelled in retaliation for the killing of two Arabs in Jerusalem. In the af- termath of the 1967 war, when Israel took control of the West Bank, Orthodox Jewish people undertook a struggle to resettle Hebron and take control of the suq and Harat al-Masharqa quarters adjacent to the Ibrahimi Mosque and the Cave of Machpelah.
