Temporary International Presence in the City of Hebron

The TIPH is an international civilian observer mission. The TIPH assists the parties in the normalisation of the situation in the city and reports on their efforts and the breaches of the agreements on Hebron and international law. TIPH reports to the Palestinian and Israeli authorities and to the six member countries.

 
 

About Hebron

Hebron is a holy city for Jews, Muslims and Christians. It is also known as the city of the Patriarchs. Abraham, the forefather of the monotheistic religions, is believed to have lived in Hebron around 1800 BC. He presumably bought the cave on which the Ibrahimi Mosque/Cave of Machpela is built today, and where Abraham, his wife Sarah, their son Isaac and grandson Jacob are said to be buried. Throughout history, there have been periods with a Jewish minority living side by side with a Muslim majority in Hebron.

Modern history

After the First World War, Hebron came formally under the British mandate. Throughout the 1920s, in the context of the rising Zionism on the one hand and the development of an Arab national consciousness on the other, tensions between the Arab and Jewish inhabitants of the British mandate area increased. The two ideologies had competing political and territorial claims to the same area and clashed in Hebron in the massacre of 1929.


Founding the State of Israel

On 14 May 1948, the British Forces left and David Ben Gurion declared the foundation of the State of Israel. After the Arab-Israeli War of 1948, Hebron came under Jordanian rule which lasted until the Six-Day War in 1967. On the second day of the war, Hebron was taken over by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) without a single shot being fired. Soon after the first Israeli settlements was established.


Hebron and the Oslo Accords

On 13 September 1993, Chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), Yasser Arafat and the Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed the Declaration of Principles (DoP), or the Oslo Accords. The accords provided for mutual recognition between Israel and the PLO, the creation of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) and the withdrawal of the IDF from certain Palestinian cities. In 1994, during the Oslo peace process, the Jewish settler Baruch Goldstein opened fire on praying Muslims in the Ibrahimi Mosque/Cave of Machpela, killing 29 and injuring many more.

The Oslo process continued and in February 1997, an agreement on the partial redeployment of the IDF in Hebron was signed and the city was divided in two areas: Area H1, controlled by the PNA, and area H2, which continued to be under Israeli military control.

Violence escalated in the city after the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000, with daily clashes and attacks from both the Palestinian and the Israeli sides. In April 2002, the IDF took full control of the entire city. Permanent watchtowers were erected in the H1-area in 2003.