On November 6, 2026, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, WAFA, condemned another alleged Israeli effort to “Judaize” the Tomb of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs in Hebron. The Palestinian Ministry of Awqaf and Religious Affairs declared the site an “exclusively Islamic endowment” and called for international intervention to protect its Islamic character.
The tomb is the burial place of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, and Jacob and Leah. The Palestinian Authority is accusing Jews of Judaizing the burial place of their own patriarchs and matriarchs.
The declaration came on the eve of Shabbat Chayei Sarah, when Jews around the world read Genesis 23, describing Abraham’s purchase of the Cave of Machpelah from Ephron the Hittite to bury Sarah. Abraham was subsequently buried there, followed by the other patriarchs and matriarchs. The site has been central to Jewish religious history for thousands of years, long before the emergence of Islam in the seventh century.
Muslims later culturally appropriated the site and instituted a regime of Islamic supremacy. Under centuries of Muslim rule, Jewish access to the tomb was restricted, eventually limiting Jews to praying outside the compound at the seventh step. In August 1929, Arab rioters massacred 67 Jews in Hebron, devastating the city’s ancient Jewish community. The killings and subsequent British evacuation nearly eliminated Jewish life in Hebron. Some survivors returned in 1931, only to be evacuated again in 1936. Jewish worship inside the Cave of Machpelah resumed following Israel’s capture of Hebron in 1967.
The contemporary campaign for exclusive Islamic control has been advanced by senior Palestinian officials. In August 2021, Mahmoud al-Habash, the Palestinian Authority’s Supreme Sharia Judge and religious adviser to President Mahmoud Abbas, declared “Israel and the Jews have no right – not historically and not religiously – to any centimeter of this purely Islamic mosque.“
In July 2026, al-Habash again declared that the site was a purely Islamic mosque and that non-Muslims had no rights there.
The Palestinian Ministry of Awqaf reinforced this position throughout 2026. It condemned Israeli construction work in the courtyard as an attempt to transform the compound into a synagogue, declared every courtyard and hall part of an exclusively Islamic endowment, and repeatedly characterized Jewish worship and religious administration as Judaization.
The Palestinian Authority’s campaign represents the continued Islamic appropriation of Jewish holy sites, denying Jewish religious rights while presenting Jewish prayer as an incursion. Through its religious ministry and official media, the PA promotes the Islamization of the Cave of Machpelah and the erasure of its Jewish identity, describing Jewish worship at the graves of Judaism’s founding families as an act of aggression.
The Palestinian Authority is so self-unaware that it has appealed to the “international and human rights institutions” to condemn Israel for violating Muslim rights at the Cave of the Jewish Matriarchs and Patriarchs. The world should use the opportunity to condemn this antisemitic denial of Jewish history and religious rights, rather than accept the outrageous claims of Palestinian officials.
