Dozens of Palestinian youths clashed with Israeli forces for a fourth day on Thursday at various locations in this volatile city over the inclusion of a hotly contested religious shrine here, the Cave of the Patriarchs, in a list of places earmarked for renovation as Jewish heritage sites.
But calls by both sides to turn Thursday into a day of mass protest were only partly realized. The Palestinian demonstrators consisted mostly of knots of boys who burned tires and hurled rocks at the Israel soldiers, who responded with tear gas and stun grenades. There were no reports of serious injuries on either side.
A prayer rally organized by Jewish leaders in Hebron, meanwhile, was attended by only a few dozen worshipers, mostly young seminary students who were bused in. A planned march through the city was canceled. Jewish community leaders blamed the rain for the poor turnout.
The deep tensions that rack Hebron, an overwhelmingly Palestinian city with a biblical past, were nevertheless on display. The strong historical Jewish attachment to the city competes with any hope for an independent Palestinian state comprising the West Bank and Gaza. Several hundred Jewish settlers live here among about 160,000 Palestinians, so the conflict is played out in close quarters, almost house by house.
The Cave of the Patriarchs is revered by Jews, Muslims and Christians as the ancient burial place of Abraham, his wife Sarah and other major biblical patriarchs and matriarchs. Abraham, or Ibrahim, is recognized as a prophet in Islam.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, announced Sunday that the tomb would be included in the list of national heritage sites for preservation, enraging Muslims. The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, was quoted as saying its inclusion could ignite a “religious war.”
For Palestinians, the protests on Thursday also commemorated the anniversary of the 1994 massacre in the shrine, where Baruch Goldstein, an American-born Israeli physician, fatally shot 29 Muslims who were praying in the Ibrahimi Mosque on the site.
For the Jewish activists, Thursday was a day of fasting. They gathered in a former market area in the Israeli-controlled section of the divided city, a short distance from the shrine. A sign at the site indicated that the market was built on Jewish-owned land “stolen by Arabs following the murder of 67 Hebron Jews in 1929.”
Mr. Netanyahu, who added the Hebron shrine and another West Bank holy site, Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem, to the list under pressure from the Israeli right, has tried to reassure his critics that he does not mean to deny any side its rights.
On Wednesday, his office stated that “Israel is committed to freedom of religion for worshipers of all faiths at all holy places,” including the Cave of the Patriarchs, where Israel is “constantly acting to ensure proper conditions for prayer, for both Jews and Muslims.”
Mr. Netanyahu and Israel’s president, Shimon Peres, have described the dispute as an artificial attempt to sow discord.
A State Department spokesman said the United States had “asked both parties to refrain from provocative and unilateral actions” that undermined American efforts to restart peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians.
In Hebron, where emotions are raw, some strident expressions of ownership could be heard on each side.
Zahran Abu Qubeita, the mayor of Yatta, a nearby Palestinian town, came on Thursday to pray at the Ibrahimi Mosque. “It is an Islamic site, not a Jewish one,” he said.
David Wilder, a spokesman for the Jewish community in Hebron, said the Cave of the Patriarchs “should be open to everyone.”
But a less compromising Jewish activist from the far right, Itamar Ben Gvir, said that Islam came much later than Judaism, and that Muslims had no claim to the shrine. “You have to understand,” he said, “the cave was always ours.”
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