An 18-year-old Palestinian man was arrested in Hebron Monday morning while attempting to stab Israeli soldiers stationed at a border police stand. The man was apprehended as he was running towards the soldiers wielding a knife.
Western politicians and the mainstream media have challenged Israel’s decision to keep control of the city, which is located in Judea — known to most of the world as the West Bank – and is primarily home to Palestinians. The Israeli presence in Hebron, they say, only provokes anger and violence and demonstrates that Israel is not willing to make the necessary sacrifices for peace.
But Israeli settlers have struggled to remain in the city despite the derision of the entire world. The reason is simple — to the Jewish people, Hebron is of enormous significance and the connection to it is rooted in the very essence of our history and faith. Hebron is home to the Cave of the Patriarchs – burial place of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Leah – the second holiest place for the Jewish people after the Temple Mount. To ask Jews to forego their rights to Hebron is tantamount to asking Muslims to relinquish their rights to Mecca.
Peace will remain forever out of reach if the Palestinians continue to deny Jews’ connection to the Holy Land, demanding that we give up our holy sites while the western world insists that we comply with such outrageous demands. The world must wake up to a fact that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu summed up eloquently in his landmark speech to the U.S. Congress in May: “In Judea and Samaria, the Jewish people are not foreign occupiers … This is the land of our forefathers, the Land of Israel, to which Abraham brought the idea of one God, where David set out to confront Goliath, and where Isaiah saw a vision of eternal peace.”
Last year, the Netanyahu government officially declared the Cave of the Patriarchs one of Israel’s national heritage sites. Predictably, Netanyahu’s announcement was met with protest from the Palestinians as well as international diplomats and media outlets. How is it that the world expects Israel, alone among the nations of the world, to relinquish its holiest sites without complaint or challenge?
Author: Amichai Farkas | August 9, 2011
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