Modern Conflict in the Divided City: A History of Violence and Power in Hebron, the Israeli-Occupied West Bank

Authors

Daniel H. Waqar, University of Nevada, Las VegasFollow

Document Type

Thesis

Publication Date

2016

Abstract

Despite the vast scholarship on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, few historians have specifically studied the twentieth-century history of peace and conflict efforts in Hebron, the largest city by population in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The overall image that emerges from the literature is one that generally overlooks Hebron’s unique violence, settlement, and power dynamics in favor of studying other centers of conflict, such as Jerusalem. This study aims to fill this gap by analyzing the how the intersecting themes of economics, power and legitimacy, and extremism explain the current violent status quo in Hebron. It will utilize a source base comprised of documents from the United Nations Information System on the Question of Palestine database, Israeli human rights documents, peace accords from the 1990s and 2000s, and specifically, weekly reports on violence in Hebron from the UN Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Moreover, this study will examine how religious violence and extremism among both Jews and Muslims, continued Israeli settlement, and historic flash points affect the town’s social and political dynamics and attempts to reach peace agreements. In order to understand Hebron’s broader impact on the conflict, this study will develop a specific definition and modern application for the characteristic known as “Hebronization,” which is a term that has recently appeared in the literature about how trends in cities pivotal to the conflict, such as Jerusalem, have started to echo some of the unique settlement, religious, and extremist characteristics once seen only in Hebron. This study adds to contemporary understandings of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by discussing the hugely disproportionate imbalances of violence, power, and extremism in Hebron, which explain the tensions in Hebron will affect a future final status agreement or “two-state solution” to the conflict.

Keywords

Israeli-Palestinian conflict; Israel; Palestine; violence; power; extremism; Hebron; settlements; Kiryat Arba; massacres

Disciplines

Diplomatic History | International Relations | Islamic World and Near East History | Political History

Repository Citation

Waqar, D. H. (2016). Modern Conflict in the Divided City: A History of Violence and Power in Hebron, the Israeli-Occupied West Bank.
Available at: https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/award/27