Monday May 19, 2008 - Off to Bethleham and Hebron

I was reading yesterday and came across this Scripture, Genesis 22:17-18“So Ephron's field in Machpelah near Mamre--both the field and the cave in it, and all the trees within the borders of the field--was deeded to Abraham as his property in the presence of all the Hittites who had come to the gate of the city.” And I realized that this cave was in Hebron which is not too far from Jerusalem. And as I read on in the Bible I saw that not only was this Cave the burial place for Abraham and Sarah, but also for Isaac, Rebekkah, Jacob and Leah (not Rachel, she is buried in Bethleham) and so I had to go visit the Cave of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs, otherwise known as the Cave of Machpelah.
I took an Arab shuttle to Bethleham kind of haphazardly not knowing how I was going to get around, but then I realized that Bethleham and Hebron are in the West Bank, occupied by Palestinians. From this picture, you can see that Israel is enclosing these areas with huge border walls, not only here but all along the West Bank, Gaza, and eventually parts of the Golan. What a task! So the security was very tight and I didn't realize it would be like entering into another country, but it was. I eventually got through all of the security checks and stumbled down to a myriad of taxi drivers, beckoning my call and although I just wanted to walk around I realized there was no place to walk to, so I bargained with this guy,

Khalid, mainly because he was very persistent, and ultimately I realized I would be needing a taxi driver and a guide today, I had no idea where I was going. So Khalid was great! His english was very good, which is always helpful

We drove out of Bethleham and decided to go about 25 miles to Hebron first. This is a view of that area, which I had just read about yesterday, the land of Canaan, the promised land to Abraham. The place that God led Abram to from around Turkey, or the Ur of Chaldees, to here.




We arrived to the Old City area and Khalid was a maniac through these narrow alley ways.









So we parked and walked around the market area. I realized right away that there were no tourists in this area and that many of the shops were closed. Khalid had told me that the area is very depressed and it's very difficult living standards. I could see why. Hebron has always been a tense area. In 1994 a Jewish guy named Baruch Goldstein took a sub machine gun into the enclosure and killed 29 Palestinian Muslims who had been at prayer, as well as injuring 125 others, before being bludgeoned to death by survivors. The resulting riots left an additional 26 Palestinians and 9 Israelis dead, and the incident provoked national and international condemnation of Goldstein's actions.