Hebron – Hours after the targeting of the Etzion and Karmei Tzur settlements north of the city of Hebron in the southern West Bank on Friday evening, the Tarqumiya checkpoint operation came on Sunday morning, directing attention once again to the largest Palestinian governorate in the south, and breaking months of calm.
Below, we shed light, through questions and answers, on the reality of the Hebron region, its role in the Palestinian uprisings and uprisings, and we learn about the most prominent attacks carried out by its resistance fighters.
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What reality did the “Hebron Agreement” between the PLO and Israel impose on the city?
Hebron is the last city in the southern West Bank, with an area estimated at about a thousand square kilometers, and a population of about 840 thousand people. The occupation’s checkpoints and settlements have turned it into scattered islands.
After the signing of the so-called Hebron Agreement in 1997, between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, the city was divided into two parts:
- “H1” or “H1” is under Palestinian control, and represents 80% of its area.
- The second section, “H2” or “H2”, is under Israeli control and is located in the historical heart of the city, which dates back to the Mamluk and Ottoman eras, and includes the Ibrahimi Mosque and other neighborhoods.
Today, there are five settlement outposts in the heart of the city, and the occupation divides it with 120 military checkpoints and physical obstacles.
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How was Hebron affected after the occupation escalated its measures in conjunction with the war on Gaza since October 7, 2023?
Hundreds of families, numbering more than 700 people, lived under a complete curfew for several months. Their needs were received with the help of international organizations. Then the restrictions were gradually eased, but the situation returns to the same with every field escalation.
As for the rest of the governorate, the occupation has cut off its connections with earthen and iron barriers and cement blocks, and the city and hundreds of thousands of residents from the surrounding towns have only one link with the rest of the governorates, which is the northern entrance to Hebron, which is under the control of the occupation soldiers.
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How are the Hebron operations different from the other governorates? Is there coordination between the Friday and Sunday operations?
Professor of Palestinian Studies at Al-Quds Open University, Asaad Al-Awiwi, responds that the operations in general are “a result of the crimes committed by the occupation in all of Palestine, and an expression of the state of tension experienced by the youth as a result of these practices,” ruling out any coordination between the operations on Friday and Sunday.
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Is Khalil waiting for more operations?
According to the Palestinian academic, as long as there is an Israeli escalation against the Palestinian people in Gaza, the West Bank and their camps, we certainly expect organized reactions as in the factions’ operations, or spontaneous ones as in the Tarqumiya checkpoint operation that came from a well-trained young man who used to work in the Palestinian President’s guard. No one can predict the time, form and place of Hebron’s responses and those who carried them out.
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What is different about Hebron operations from other governorates?
Al-Awiwi answers: If we follow the qualitative operations, we find that their perpetrators are people who work silently, they are not show-offs or like to appear, they are not known or included on wanted lists, some of them are young, but in the end they carry out distinguished qualitative operations, and this is likely to continue, specifically among the youth.
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Where is Khalil from what is happening in Gaza?
A quick review of the months following October 7th, the occupation forces launched a wide-scale arrest campaign in the governorate, which affected hundreds of people, most of whom were transferred to administrative detention. The city experienced something like a shock, but the resistance to the occupation did not stop, even if its forms varied. The following are the most prominent operations carried out since that date, according to Tel Aviv Tribune Net’s monitoring:
- November 13, 2023: Two young men from Hebron, Muhammad and Saqr al-Shantir, carried out a shooting attack on a settlers’ car near the Kiryat Arba settlement in the city, killing one soldier and wounding another.
- November 16, 2023: The tunnel operation took place south of Jerusalem, carried out by Abdul Qader Al-Qawasmeh, Hassan Qafisha, and Nasrallah Al-Qawasmeh, during which they killed a soldier and wounded 7 others before they were martyred.
- March 31, 2024: Moamen Fayez al-Masalma, from the town of Dura, south of the city, carried out a stabbing attack that injured 3 Israelis in the Gan Yavne area, east of Ashdod.
- August 30, 2024: The two young men, Muhammad Ihsan Yaqin Marqa and Zahdi Nidal Abu Afifa, carried out two bombing operations targeting the settlements of Etzion and Karmei Tzur, north of the city.
- September 1, 2024: Three Israeli police officers were killed near the Tarqumiya checkpoint west of the city, carried out by the resigned presidential security officer, Muhannad Muhammad Mahmoud al-Aswad, from the town of Idhna.
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What about Hebron’s participation in resisting the occupation historically?
According to documentation from the Palestine Information Center (MIC), the city of Hebron has provided 122 martyrs since the beginning of 2018, in addition to 2,677 wounded.
The data also indicates 253 shootings, 104 bombings, 29 car-ramming attacks, and 55 stabbing attacks, which resulted in the killing of 9 Israelis and the injury of 217.
Israeli siege on Hebron after Gush Etzion and Karmi Tzur operations#News pic.twitter.com/X3ZQqzmjmE
— Tel Aviv Tribune Palestine (@AJA_Palestine) August 31, 2024
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What are the most prominent operations in the last two decades?
Since the Intifada of the Stones in 1987, the role of Hebron has become prominent, and many major operations have been recorded in its record, which cannot be counted, including prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment and deportations. In response to those operations, Israel responded with assassinations and the killing of dozens, and we mention some of them below:
- October 29, 2022: After a turbulent year of confrontations in the West Bank, a shooting attack in the Kiryat Arba settlement left one settler dead and five others wounded.
- November 2015: Three settlers were killed and others were injured in a shooting attack near the Gush Etzion Junction.
- June 12, 2014: Three Israeli settlers disappeared from the Etzion area. It turned out that they had been kidnapped and killed, and the occupation revealed their bodies at the end of the 30th of the same month.
- March 27, 2008: Ofer Military Court sentenced Shakib al-Awiwi and Musa Wazwaz to eight life sentences, Muhammad al-Julani to five life sentences, and Luay Shaher al-Awiwi to three life sentences, on charges of forming a military cell in Hebron and killing and wounding dozens of soldiers and settlers during operations, most of which were carried out in 2005.
- August 31, 2004: A double bombing targeting two passenger buses in the city of Beersheba, carried out by two Palestinians from Hebron, killed 17 Israelis and injured about 100.
- August 19, 2003: 20 Israelis were killed and 150 others were injured in a bombing carried out by the martyr Raed Misk from Hebron in Jerusalem.
- December 27, 2002: Six settlers were killed and nine others were injured in a raid on the Otniel settlement south of the city.
- November 15, 2002: 12 Israelis were killed and 15 soldiers and settlers were injured in an ambush in the Wadi al-Nasara neighborhood of the city.
- April 2002: 4 settlers were killed and 7 were injured in a raid on the Adora settlement, northwest of Hebron.
