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Israel has seized planning and construction powers covering the Ibrahimi Mosque, on the site of a Jewish and Muslim shrine in the occupied West Bank, from Palestinian authorities, scrapping parts of an agreement in place since the 1990s, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Tuesday.
In a speech announcing the move, Smotrich said he had “abolished” the parts of the 1997 Hebron Agreement that gave the Palestinian municipal council of Hebron control of planning, zoning and construction in the H2 zone of the West Bank city.
Observers have described the move as “dangerous”. “Hebron for years has been the tensest city in the West Bank,” Chris Doyle, director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, told Al Jazeera. “Any moves to change the existing arrangements in Hebron in favour of intensifying the Israeli occupation are extremely dangerous.”
We break down why this is so significant.
What is the Ibrahimi Mosque?
All three Abrahamic faiths believe this is where Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and their wives are buried inside the Old City of Hebron.
Jews and Christians call it the Tomb – or Cave – of the Patriarchs.
Muslims, like Christians, also revere Abraham. They built the Ibrahimi mosque, also known as the Sanctuary of Abraham, there in the 14th century, expanding on the first-century BC outer walls built by the Roman King Herod.
Hebron and the Ibrahimi Mosque have at times been a flashpoint for violence. In 1994, an American-Israeli Jewish settler killed 29 Muslims praying at the shrine and wounded 125 others.
Ibrahimi Mosque, also known as the Cave of the Patriarchs, stands in the old city of Hebron, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, on June 17, 2026 [Ammar Awad/Reuters]What has Israel announced?
Smotrich, a far-right minister, said he had approved the transfer of planning and construction powers for the religious site and nearby Jewish settlers to Israeli authorities late on Monday.
In a speech marking the establishment of a new Israeli settlement near Hebron in the southern West Bank, Smotrich said the “historic step” would deepen “Israeli sovereignty” in the West Bank, which Palestinians see as the heart of a future independent state.
Smotrich’s decision to take over powers for planning and construction of the 20 percent of the city controlled by Israel comes after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet approved steps earlier this year to make it easier for settlers to buy land in the West Bank and give Israeli authorities more enforcement powers in the territory.
Smotrich, who has stated that he wants to eliminate any idea of Palestinian statehood in the West Bank, has backed the rapid expansion of Israeli settlements in the territory in recent years, which has been accompanied by a rise in settler attacks on Palestinians.
Israeli settlers have killed 13 Palestinians in the West Bank so far this year, according to United Nations data, alongside others killed by the Israeli military.
(Al Jazeera)Who controlled the Ibrahimi Mosque before now?
The Ibrahimi Mosque falls under the 1997 Hebron Agreement, signed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, which split the city into two zones. H1 is under Palestinian control and covers about 80 percent of Hebron, while H2 is under Israeli control, covering the remaining 20 percent which includes the Jewish Tomb of the Patriarchs, the adjoining Muslim Ibrahimi Mosque and the Old City.
However, the agreement stipulated that the Palestinian Authority (PA) would oversee planning and construction for the entire city, including the Ibrahimi Mosque.
Hebron’s Old City is recognised as a Palestinian World Heritage site by UN cultural agency UNESCO. Hundreds of Jewish settlers live among tens of thousands of Palestinians in the 20 percent of the ancient city that is under Israeli security control.
Israeli settlers began to establish a growing presence in Hebron in 1968. After 1994, Israel gradually moved to assert control over the Ibrahimi Mosque site by sealing off large parts of Hebron’s Old City and the southern area around the site, then partitioning the mosque between Muslim worshippers and a few hundred Jewish settlers, and granting the settlers prayer rights there.
“When it comes to the Ibrahimi Mosque, it was already de facto under the control of the Israelis in more ways than another. Access to it is heavily restricted and regulated, there’s periodic closures, and I don’t see how this will change that, really,” Fathi Nimer, Palestine Policy Fellow at the Palestinian think tank Al-Shabaka, told Al Jazeera.
“They can do whatever they want. Now, they just have one less provision, about how it’s, how to regulate, you know, construction around it and such, which I don’t believe they even cared about in the first place.”
(Al Jazeera)What does this mean for the Hebron Agreement?
In an apparent bid to stave off international criticism of Smotrich’s announcement about Hebron, observers say, Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that the 1997 Hebron Agreement had not been cancelled in its entirety.
While the transfer of planning and construction powers was made on Monday night by Israel’s Higher Planning Council, Israel’s Foreign Ministry announced in a tweet that “contrary to the finance minister’s statements, the Hebron Agreement was not canceled”.
It said the security cabinet had decided several months ago to take control of planning and construction with relation to Jewish settler areas and Jewish holy sites, including the city’s shrine, which is holy to Muslims, Jews and Christians.
“What I understand is that [Smotrich] is trying to cancel the part of the accord that has to do with the coordination with the Hebrew municipality regarding construction permits or modifications to places of worship or settlement expansion and such now,” Nimer said.
What is the significance of this?
Under the Hebron Agreement arrangements, the Palestinian municipality technically had room to object and refuse to cooperate with settler plans or try to obstruct them, Nimer said.
“This is part of the wider assault on any kind of official negotiation and coordination and deal with Palestinians that resulted from the Oslo Accords.”
The Oslo Accords were the first direct Palestinian-Israeli peace agreements, signed in 1993 and 1995. They were supposed to pave way for Palestinian self-determination. The accords led to the creation of the supposedly temporary PA, and the division of territory in the West Bank into Areas A, B and C, denoting how much control the PA has in each.
Nimer said Smotrich’s latest move creates new circumstances in which there is “no recourse” for the Hebron municipality to go to an Israeli court complain about a violation of the Hebron Agreement.
“They turned it into like the rest of Area C of the West Bank where Israelis unilaterally decide what to build, what to expand.”
Nimer added Israeli ministers have decided that they want to “undo as much of Oslo as possible, even though the vast majority of it was not really adhered to, but they don’t want even the pretence of there being some kind of paper or document that Israel signed on to that could potentially be taken to a court, not that the courts sided automatically with Palestinians or even most of the time”.
“We’ll have to see how this translates onto the ground because this could just be the small little tip of the spear that Smotrich uses to revoke and undo the whole of the accord,” Nimer said.
(Al Jazeera)How have the authorities in Palestine reacted?
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s office called the seizure of powers an “infringement upon the political and legal status of Hebron” and a violation of international law.
The Palestinian mayor of Hebron, Yousef Al-Jabari, called Smotrich’s announcement a “racist decision aimed at stripping the Hebron municipality of its powers”.
Israel is due to hold parliamentary elections by the end of October, ahead of which Smotrich has found himself in the polls. A settler on Palestinian-owned land in the occupied West Bank himself, he has long pushed for the annexation of the West Bank by Israel, and his party draws much of its support from ideologically motivated settlers who view the West Bank as their heartland and refer to it as “Judea and Samaria”, the biblical name for the region to the west of the Jordan River.
How have others reacted?
UN bodies and most countries consider Israel’s settlements in the West Bank to be illegal as they violate the Fourth Geneva Convention about the treatment of people in occupied land. Many observers consider Israel’s expansion of illegal settlements to be the primary obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peace and Palestinian statehood. Currently, more than 700,000 Israeli settlers live on Palestinian land in the West Bank.
Israel rejects this view, claiming the territory is disputed and that a Jewish presence has existed there for thousands of years.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organisation in the United States, released a statement on Monday condemning the Israeli government’s seizure of the mosque.
“The apartheid Israeli government’s seizure of authority over the Ibrahimi Mosque is yet another attempt to consolidate its illegal occupation of Palestinian land, undermine Palestinian self-governance, and alter the historic status of one of Islam’s holiest sites,” CAIR said in the statement.
Chris Doyle, director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, described the move as “dangerous”.
“Any moves to change the existing arrangements in Hebron in favour of intensifying the Israeli occupation are extremely dangerous. Hebron for years has been the tensest city in the West Bank.
“What should be happening is that the settlements should be withdrawn from the centre of the city and the partition of Hebron is ended and it all comes under Palestinian control, with arrangements for holy sites.”
Which other significant sites has Israel wanted to take over?
Other Palestinian or Islamic holy sites have seen similar creeping changes in control, access or legal status.
For example, at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the Old City of Jerusalem – Islam’s third holiest site – Israeli authorities use renewable expulsion orders to bar worshippers they deem “problematic”. They also regularly carry out searches at the gates, detain people, confiscate ID cards and impose restrictions on entry to parts of the mosque compound there. Recurrent closures to the mosque or restrictions of Muslim worshippers are framed as “security measures”.
Settler organisations, often with state backing or legal support, also work to gain control of properties around and within the Old City, including buildings near holy sites.
