By Elham Shamali

Israel continues to take successive Judaization steps against Islamic holy sites in Palestine, including land confiscation and blatant settlement expansion that distorts the identity of the city of Hebron and its historic Old City—home to one of its most prominent landmarks, the Ibrahimi Mosque. Since 1968, this sacred site has been subjected to a fierce settlement and Judaization campaign, characterized by Israel’s takeover of key areas in the Old City and the surrounding plaza of the mosque. This effort is part of a broader policy to Judaize the mosque from within and isolate it from the outside—detaching it from its Palestinian surroundings and identity, and encircling it with an ever-expanding ring of settlements at the expense of the city’s land. This also involves the silent displacement of its residents through unjust Israeli laws, including demolishing structures adjacent to the mosque to ease settler access, closing the mosque’s eastern gate, destroying surrounding historical buildings, and shutting down markets in the Old City—damaging Hebron’s economy in the process.

The mosque is subjected to repeated desecrations and incursions. Settlers roam freely through every corner of the Ibrahimi Mosque under the protection and supervision of the Israeli army. Palestinian worshippers face blatant violations of their right to freely practice their religion. Entry to the mosque is only permitted through a military checkpoint equipped with electronic screening gates. In some instances, even the doors of the mosque, including the muezzin’s room, have been padlocked, and the call to prayer has been banned more than 600 times in a single year—under the flimsy pretext that the sound of the adhan disturbs the settlers.

Amid Israel’s ongoing brutal war of extermination and starvation against the Palestinian people—and with the Arab and Islamic world preoccupied with marginal issues—the occupation escalated its assault on the Ibrahimi Mosque. On July 16, 2025, Israel transferred administrative control of the mosque from the Palestinian municipality of Hebron to the Jewish religious council of the Kiryat Arba settlement, with the approval of Israeli Defense Minister Yisrael Katz. This transfer includes both administrative and religious authority, signaling a serious effort to radically alter the mosque’s status quo. This imposed transformation, cloaked in religious settler ideology, seeks to turn the mosque into a Jewish temple to appease the Israeli far-right and to impose comprehensive Judaization upon this site of deep religious and historical significance. The new plan includes:
    1.    Registering the mosque in the Israeli land registry (Tabu) under the name of the “Jewish people.”
    2.    Allowing Jews to perform religious rituals at the site throughout the year.
    3.    Constructing new roofs inside the mosque and covering the open-air courtyard between the tombs of Prophet Ibrahim (Abraham) and Yaqub (Jacob).
    4.    Establishing public facilities for settlers and allowing celebrations to be held within the mosque’s courtyards.

Israeli efforts to enforce forced Jewish sovereignty over Islamic sanctities have not ceased. This latest measure is a preemptive step to create a new reality in the city, completing its de facto division. Today, settlers control 63% of the mosque’s area, while only 37% remains under Muslim administration, according to the Hebron Protocol and recommendations of the Shamgar Commission following the 1994 Ibrahimi Mosque massacre. Even that limited Muslim area is now under threat from tourism-driven Judaization projects, such as banning worshippers from accessing the mosque’s courtyards, installing an electric elevator for settler use, placing surveillance cameras inside the mosque, and expanding the settlers’ spatial control—thus distorting the visual identity of the Ibrahimi Mosque and turning it into a fabricated biblical Jewish shrine based on a falsified historical narrative.

What Israel is doing to this house of worship constitutes a growing assault on both historical and religious heritage, in flagrant violation of international law. The Ibrahimi Mosque is an Islamic site that belongs solely to Palestinians. In 2017, it was recognized by UNESCO as a Palestinian World Heritage Site. Yet there has been no serious action from UNESCO, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, or the Arab League in response to this decision, which amounts to a religious war waged by Israel against a sacred Islamic legacy that belongs not only to Palestinians but to the entire Muslim world.