Nadene Goldfoot
Hebron was called Kiriath Arba in the Bible. Some Jewish traditions regarding Adam place him in Hebron after his expulsion from Eden. Another has Cain kill Abel there. A third has Adam and Eve buried in the cave of Machpelah.
Hebron is an ancient city of Judah and is 18 miles South of Jerusalem. Before Abraham's time, it was under control of the Hittites, an ancient people inhabiting Asia Minor. They were also overrun by the Assyrians. Some lived in Canaan at an early period. Esau took wives from among them. The Hittites were one of the 7 peoples from whom the Israelites conquered Canaan. Later, David had Hittite warriors, and Solomon, Hittite wives. It looks like some of us Jews could have a few segments of Hittite DNA.
The story of Abraham's purchase of the Cave of the Patriarchs ((Hebrew: Meʿarat ha-Makhpelah) from Ephron the Hittite (Genesis 23). constitutes a seminal element in what was to become the Jewish connection to the land in that it signified the first "real estate" of Israel long before the conquest under Joshua. Sarah was buried here. Often people of today visit the grave of a dearly departed. Abraham may have, too.
The building covers the Cave of Machpelah, the place the Bible refers to as the burial ground for the Hebrew patriarchs and their wives (Genesis 23:19; 25:9; 49:30; 50:13). In the first century BC, Herod the Great constructed a massive wall around the cave—a beautiful edifice with construction techniques similar to those of the Temple Mount. As with Jerusalem’s Western Wall Tunnel, the massive size of the foundation stones surrounding Machpelah inspires awe to all who see them. With Herod’s signature relief framing the edges, each stone sits slightly offset from the one beneath it, providing the optical illusion of both loftiness and grandeur. Inside the wall, the pavement also dates to Herod’s day.
This became a family sepulchre. According to tradition, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, with their wives Sarah, Rebekah, and Leah, were buried in the cave. They are our Patriarchs, our origins, the most important People in our religion and family tree.
In settling here, Abraham is described as making his first covenant, an alliance with two local Amorite clans who became his ba’alei brit or masters of the covenant. It’s ironic that the only part of the land Abraham actually owned—though God promised him all of it—was this burial plot in Hebron. In fact, Abraham lived for sixty-two years in the Promised Land before owning any of it. Abraham haggled for the purchase and ultimately paid 400 silver shekels for the cave.
Our Jewish story begins with the death of Sarah at age 127. This happened in Hebron, in what Genesis calls Canaan and today is called the Palestinian Territories. The key fact in the story is that Abraham and Sarah were not from around there. They were from Mesopotamia, from a city called Ur in what is today Iraq; they had traveled about a thousand miles before coming to Canaan. Because we think of Abraham as the first Jew, we may assume that he was always at home in Israel, but this was not the case. Israel did not exist except in the imagination of God. Abraham and Sarah were immigrants without land and without a country. Abraham says, “I am a stranger and a foreigner living among you.” He was a wealthy man with cattle and servants, but still he was an outsider and he could say , “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.”
Joshua assigned Hebron to Caleb, and it became a Levitical city and a city of refuge. Caleb was one of the leaders of the tribe of Judah on the Exodus and a member of the Kenizzite family. They were an ancient nation in the Promised land as told in Gen.15:19, possibly a Central Syrian people mentioned in Egyptian and Hittite inscriptions. He and Joshua were the only spies out of the 12 dispatched by Moses to reconnoiter the land of Canaan who brought back a favorable report. As a reward, they were the sole survivors of the Exodus from Egypt to enter Canaan.
Promised an inheritance at Hebron, Caleb captured the place and expelled its inhabitants, the Anakim. The Anakim were people who according to biblical tradition, lived in Canaan before its conquest by the Israelites. They inhabited the mountainous area of Judah and also the Southern coastal zone, but were exterminated in the time of Joshua.
The Anakim have not yet been identified; they were tall in stature. (Num. 13: 32-33) and the word "Anakim" in Hebrew has come to denote giants. A region of the Negev and a leading family of Judah were long known by his name.
David reigned there for 7 1/2 years before transferring his capital to Jerusalem. Hebron was together with Jerusalem, Tiberias and Safed, one of Palestinian Jewry's 4 sacred towns. 
A Jewish community continued in Hebron in the Byzantine Period and under Arab rule. The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinople. From 1517 to 1917, what is today Israel, along with much of the Middle East, was ruled by the Ottoman Empire.
The modern city is situated somewhat to the East of the historical location.
Jews lived there throughout recent centuries and in 1890, numbered 1,500 with yeshivot and religious schools. For economic reasons, their number subsequently declined, although the great Lithuanian yeshivah of Slobodka was transferred there in 1925.
How did this very Jewish city which includes all our Patriarchs burial site become such a Palestinian Arab city? Several reasons come into play.
Today a mosque stands on the reputed burial site. When the Rashidun Caliphate Of the Ottoman Empire established its rule over Hebron in 638, the Muslims converted the Byzantine church at the site of Abraham's tomb into a mosque. The site is considered to be the second-holiest place in Judaism after the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem. Both Jews and Muslims revere Abraham. Being Abraham's tomb is in Hebron, that is a draw to both populations.
In modern times, Hebron was administered as part of the British mandate of Palestine (1920–48); after the first of the Arab-Israeli wars in 1948–49, it was in the territory annexed by Jordan (1950). Following the Six-Day War of June 1967, it was part of the
The Hebron Massacre had happened in the year 1929. The Hebron massacre refers to the killing of 67 or 69 Jews on 24 August 1929 in Hebron, then part of Mandatory Palestine, by Arabs incited to violence by rumors that Jews were planning to seize control of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. (It's always rumors that start violence.) It was Haj Amin al- Husseini, the Sherif of Jerusalem, called the Grand Mufti who was the instigator of this massacre. The event also left scores seriously wounded or maimed. Jewish homes were pillaged and synagogues were ransacked. Some of the 435 Jews who survived were hidden by local Arab families, although the extent of this phenomenon is debated. Hitler declined to grant al-Husayni’s request for a public statement--or a secret but formal treaty--in which Germany would: 1) pledge not to occupy Arab land, 2) recognize Arab striving for independence, and 3) support the “removal” of the proposed Jewish homeland in Palestine. The Führer confirmed that the “struggle against a Jewish homeland in Palestine” would be part of the struggle against the Jews. Hitler stated that: he would “continue the struggle until the complete destruction of Jewish-Communist European empire”; and when the German army was in proximity to the Arab world,
Hebron is the largest city in the West Bank, and the 2nd largest in the Palestinian territories after Gaza; it has a population of over 215,000 Palestinians (2016), and seven hundred Jewish settlers concentrated on the outskirts of the Old City of Hebron. The Hebron Governorate is the largest Palestinian governorate, with an estimated population of around 782,227 as of 2021. It includes the Cave of the Patriarchs, which Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions all designate as the burial site of three key patriarchal/matriarchal couples. Judaism ranks Hebron the 2nd holiest city after Jerusalem.
The Hebron Protocol of 1997 divided the city into two sectors: H1, controlled by the Palestinian Authority, and H2, roughly 20% of the city, including 35,000 Palestinians, under Israeli military administration. All security arrangements and travel permits for local residents are coordinated between the Palestinian Authority and Israel via the military administration of the West Bank, officially named Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT). The Jewish settlers have their own governing municipal body, the Committee of the Jewish Community of Hebron.
Ramallah is the administrative capital for the Palestinians where government institutions and foreign representative offices are located. Jerusalem's final status awaits future, but it looks like Israel will never give part of it over as aa capital to the Palestinians though many live in East Jerusalem. Ramallah is a Palestinian city, earlier a Christian city, in the central West Bank located 10 km (6 miles) north of Jerusalem at an average elevation of 880 meters (2,890 ft) above sea level, adjacent to al-Bireh. It currently serves as the de facto administrative capital of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA). While historically an Arab Christian town, Muslims constituted a majority of Ramallah's 27,902 residents by 2007, with Christians making up a significant minority.
Resource:
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_of_the_Patriarchs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebron
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_Hebron_massacre
https://www.blockislandtimes.com/affiliate-post/buying-cave-sarahs-grave/47235
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/film/hajj-amin-al-husayni-meets-hitler
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