The City of Abraham: History, Myth and Memory: A Journey through Hebron

A journey to the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and an account of the shared roots of the three great monotheistic religions of the Middle East

One of the world's most divided cities, Hebron is the only place in the West Bank where Palestinians and Israelis live side by side. This book's journey begins with a hill called Tel Rumeida, the site of ancient Hebron, where the patriarch Abraham—father of the Jews and the Arabs—was supposed to have lived when he arrived in the Promised Land.

Through a mixture of travel writing, reportage, and interviews, Edward Platt tells the history of the hill and the city in which it stands, and explores the mythic roots of the struggle to control the land. He meets the Palestinian residents of Tel Rumeida, and the messianic settlers who have made their homes in a block of flats that stands on stilts on an excavated corner of the site. He meets the archeologists who have attempted to reconstruct the history of the hill. He meets the soldiers who serve in Hebron, and the intermediaries who try to keep the peace in the divided city.

This book explores the ways in which Hebron's past continues to inform its tumultuous present, and illuminates the lives of the people at the heart of the most intractable conflict in the world.