The Evolution of the Hebronite Regionalism 1929–48

Abstract

Abstract The article discusses the integration of the Mount Hebron area into a distinct social and political region during the time of British Mandate in Palestine and the emergence of a regional “Hebronite” identity encompassing both the city of Hebron and the villages of the area. The study demonstrates that, while in many areas of the country such regional integration, or regionalization, developed through the gradual growth of economic, administrative, and political networks in the nineteenth century, the regionalization of Mount Hebron took place much later. It was not an outcome of the same dynamics as in other regions, but mainly a reaction born of chronic insecurity, as well as the social and even environmental hardships experienced in the region. In the 1940s, the determination to overcome these challenges was translated into the construction of a stable regional system that had significant intra-Palestinian and even geopolitical consequences. The study also shows that, while the Hebronite identity was a sub-national one, it had strong symbiotic, sometimes ambivalent, relations with the Palestinian and Arab national identities. Moreover, it was in no way a primordial but clearly a modern phenomenon.