History of Hebron

contacts with the Zionists. Later, al-Khaṭīb became one of the few loyal followers of Haj Amin in Hebron. During the late Ottoman period, a new ruling elite had emerged in Palestine. They later formed the core of the growing Arab nationalist movement in the early twentieth century. During the Mandate period, delegates from Hebron constituted only 1% of the political leadership. The Palestinian Arab decision to boycott the 1923 elections for a Legislative Council was made at the fifth Palestinian Congress, after it was reported by Murshid Shahin (an Arab pro-zionist activist) that there was intense resistance in Hebron to the elections.

The Cave of the Patriarchs continued to remain officially closed to non-Muslims, and reports that entry to the site had been relaxed in 1928 were denied by the Supreme Muslim Council.

At this time following attempts by the Lithuanian government to draft yeshiva students into the army, the Lithuanian Knesses Yisroel relocated to Hebron, after consultations between Rabbi Nosson Tzvi Finkel, Yechezkel Sarna and Moshe Mordechai Epstein. and by 1929 had attracted some 265 students from Europe and the United States. The majority of the Jewish population lived on the outskirts of Hebron along the roads to Be'ersheba and Jerusalem, renting homes owned by Arabs, a number of which were built for the express purpose of housing Jewish tenants, with a few dozen within the city around the synagogues. During the 1929 Hebron massacre, Arab rioters slaughtered some 64 to 67 Jewish men, women and children and wounded 60, and Jewish homes and synagogues were ransacked; 435 Jews survived by virtue of the shelter and assistance offered them by their Arab neighbours, who hid them. Two years later, 35 families moved back into the ruins of the Jewish quarter, but on the eve of the Palestinian Arab national revolt (April 23, 1936) the British Government decided to move the