Hebron Arabic: الخليل al-Ḫalīl; Hebrew: חֶבְרוֹן Ḥevron, Ḥeḇrôn, or Ḥebron is an ancient city in the southern West Bank. It is mentioned in the Bible as the home of Abraham, and the burial place of him and several generations of his family. In King David's time, Hebron was briefly the capital of the Israelite state, before the capital moved to Jerusalem. Today, Hebron is holy to both Muslims and Jews due to its association with Abraham.
The Jewish population of Hebron was evacuated after a killing of nearly 70 of them in 1929. Then, after the 1967 war, a few Jewish settlers went to visit Hebron for Passover, then decided to renew life in what used to be the Jewish quarter of Hebron until 1929. Today, about 500 Jews live in part of the old city of Hebron under continual IDF protection, and with a ratio of four Israeli soldiers for each Israeli settler in Hebron. The remaining 166,000 residents of the surrounding city are Palestinians. The Cave of Machpelah or the Ibrahimi Mosque, Abraham's burial place and the main holy site in the city, is on the border between the Palestinian and Jewish sectors.
