Hebron governor Kamel Hamid condemned on Sunday a visit by the racist Israeli foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, to the Ibrahimi Mosque earlier in the day, calling it part of a “growing call for desecration of holy places and the creation of chaos.” He also accused Lieberman – the second Israeli leader to visit the flashpoint Palestinian city this week – of “sabotaging the stability that the Palestinian National Authority has created in the city.”

Lieberman in Hebron, Sunday March 15, 2015. (Photo: Yisrael Beitenu)

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman visited the Ibrahimi Mosque and adjacent synagogue, known as the Cave of the Patriarchs in English or Abraham’s Tomb in Hebrew, as part of his outreach to the extremist Jewish settlers who form an important constituency for his party, Yisrael Beitenu (“Israel is Our Home”), and comes during the final days of Israel’s election campaign. The visit also came only a week after Lieberman said that “disloyal Palestinians should have their heads chopped off,” comments made during an election rally in the coastal city of Herzliya that raised ire among Palestinians but was widely unremarked upon in the Hebrew-language press.

During Sunday’s visit to Hebron, Lieberman was quoted by the Israeli press as saying that the West Bank city, in which a few hundred Jewish settlers have forcibly taken over a number of areas in the overwhelmingly Palestinian center, is a Jewish city and will remain such. (Hebron has a total population of approximately 170,000 Palestinian Arabs and 500 Jews; see below.) He also took the opportunity during his visit to the mosque, which is holy to both Jews and Muslims, to strike out at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Lieberman told the audience of settlers during his visit that the Israeli leader had signed the 1997 Hebron protocol that ended Israeli soldiers’ direct occupation of the newer parts of central Hebron, known as area H1, today having a population of approximately 140,000 Palestinians. However, the agreement left them in control of area H2, where approximately 30,000 Palestinians and 500 Israeli settlers live.

Last Saturday, Channel 2 hosted a debate between the heads of all the major parties (included Netanyahu and Herzog). During the debate, Yisrael Beiteinu leader Avigdor Lieberman directed again some pretty harsh language against the head of the Joint List, Ayman Odeh. Lieberman claimed that Odeh and his friends in the Joint List represent “terrorist organizations” and said “they should be put on trial for incitement and sedition.” When Odeh remarked that Arabs represent 20 percent of Israel’s citizens, Lieberman responded, “for now.”