1940s Survey of Palestine map of the city

The present Old City was first settled in either the Greek or at the latest by Roman times.[1][2] It was settled in the valley downhill from Tel Rumeida, considered to be the center of biblical Hebron.[3] It was not until the start of the Abbasid Caliphate that the current city became the center of Hebron, building up around the focal point of the Cave of the Patriarchs.[4]

The urban structure of the Old City of Hebron dates to the Mamluk period, and has remained mostly unchanged.[5] A majority of the buildings are Ottoman-era from the eighteenth century along with some half dozen Mamluk structures.[6] It is composed of a number of cell-like quarters with narrowly packed fortified houses functioning as a boundary to each area, with gates at the end of the main streets.[7] It has an approximate area of 20.6 hectares (51 acres; 0.206 km2), housing thousands of residents.

It became the third World Heritage Site in the State of Palestine in 2017,[8] and was inscribed on the official List of World Heritage in Danger as "Palestine, Hebron/Al-Khalil Old Town".[9]

 

2019 map by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, showing the humanitarian impact of Israeli settlements in Hebron city. The Old City is mostly in the "Restricted Area"

The 1997 Hebron Agreement, part of the Oslo Accords, placed the Old City in area "H2", maintaining the Israeli military control which it has been under since 1967.[10] According to Btselem report , the Palestinian population in the Old City greatly declined since the early 1980s because of the impact of Israeli security measures, including extended curfews, strict restrictions on movement and the closure of Palestinian commercial activities near settler areas, and also due to settler harassment.[11][12][13][14] The IDF responded to the report by saying that "The IDF is well aware that curfews are seen as drastic measures, not to be used except for situations where they are essential for protecting the lives of civilians and soldiers ...Hebron is the only Palestinian city in which Israeli and Palestinian residents live side by side. Due to this, and the large number of terrorist attacks against the Israeli residents and the IDF soldiers protecting them, the city poses a complex security challenge."[11] The efforts of the internationally funded Hebron Rehabilitation Committee resulted in the return of more than 6,000 Palestinians by 2015.[15] In 2019, the Temporary International Presence in Hebron was expelled from the city.[16] It issued a confidential report which found that Israel routinely violates international law in Hebron and that it is in "severe and regular breach" of the rights to non-discrimination laid out in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights over the lack of freedom to movement for the Palestinian residents of Hebron.[17]

The rehabilitation of the Old City won the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 1998.[18]