Machpelah

Originally a small village near Mamre, about 3km from Hebron, where Abraham had first bought a plot of field with a cave on it from Ephron son of Zohar to bury his wife, Sarah (Gen 23:9-19). Eventually it became a family tomb and Abraham (Gen 25:9), Isaac and his wife Rebekah, Leah (Gen 49:31), and Jacob (Gen 50:13) were buried there as well.

Herod the Great built a grand enclosure around the tombs in the form in which we see it today. It had long been a site of Muslim and Christian pilgrimage. As with so many places in modern Israel with even an iota of historical and/or religious significance attached to them, it is today a contested site between Muslims and Israelites (especially the Israelite settlers in the area). That contest came to a murderous focus on Friday, 25 February 1994, when Baruch Goldstein, an American-born doctor living in the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba on the outskirt of Hebron, entered the main chamber of the tomb complex known as the Issac Hall, dressed in military fatique, and with an assault rifled spread the hundreds of Muslim worshippers gathered for their Friday worship. With three reloads, he had killed 29 persons and wounded many more before he was overpowered and bludgeoned to death. There was so much blood, witnesses said, they slipped as they tried to get out.