HEBRON, West Bank — When Arabs in Hebron rioted in 1929, killing dozens of Jews, 1-year-old Shlomo Slonim lost five members of his family, including his mother and father.
Slonim's head was split open by attackers and he too was left for dead, but he survived. Now 72, Slonim returned Sunday to Hebron's hilltop Jewish cemetery, where his family is buried, for the emotional funeral of a 10-month-old Jewish girl killed by a Palestinian gunman in this city riven by Arab-Jewish hatreds.
"We have many things we didn't have in 1929," said Slonim. "We now have a state of Israel, and we have a strong army. But there are still Jews being killed in Hebron."
After Jerusalem, Hebron is the most fiercely contested city between the Jews and Muslims, with its enclave of fewer than 500 Jewish settlers — among the most ideological in the West Bank — living amid the city's 130,000 Palestinians. Both sides lay claim to the ancient, fortresslike Tomb of the Patriarchs, where Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, revered by Muslims and Jews, are said to be buried.
Last week's slaying of tiny Shalhevet Pass has only reinforced the settlers' sense of encirclement — and their determination to stay in Hebron. Some 3,000 supporters turned out for Pass' funeral.
But if Hebron's Jews feel besieged, the Palestinians feel imprisoned. Some 30,000 Palestinians living in the center of Hebron under the control of the Israeli army have effectively been under house arrest for most of the six-month Palestinian uprising.
A round-the-clock curfew imposed on those Palestinians that was lifted last month was immediately reimposed after the Pass shooting.
The curfew prevents men from working, children from going to school, and keeps the shops shuttered. Every second or third day, the curfew is lifted for a few hours, giving families just enough time to shop for food and other essentials.
Palestinian Afefeh Sharabati, 34, lives in an old stone home that's been in the family for decades. It abuts the Jewish settlement where Shalhevet lived.
For years, the settlers have thrown stones, eggs, paint, rotten fruit and dirty diapers over the back wall and into the Sharabati family courtyard.
The Sharabatis completely enclosed their courtyard with a chicken-wire fence to keep the larger projectiles from raining down on them, but that hasn't stopped the daily onslaught.
A day after Shalhevet was killed, settlers cut through the wire fence at night, climbed into the courtyard and set the Sharabati's couch on fire.
"The settlers do this because they think they can drive us out. But they won't. This is our home," she said. Because Israel controls the area, her only recourse is to call the Israeli police, who rarely turn up and never act against the Jewish settlers, she said.
Late Sunday, three Palestinian shops were destroyed in a gas balloon explosion apparently caused by settlers, Israeli police said. Several more balloons were found in nearby shops, said police spokesman Rafi Yaffe.
In Hebron, 25 miles south of Jerusalem, both Israelis and Palestinians draw on past suffering to fuel their current grievances.
Jews are quick to recall the 1929 Arab riots. Palestinians raise the 1994 massacre by Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish doctor who shot dead 29 Muslims praying inside the mosque at the Tomb of the Patriarchs.
That massacre led to calls within Israel — where many people oppose the Hebron settlement and the high price of defending it — that the settlers to be evacuated from Hebron. And the settlers have also had an occasionally rocky relationship with the Israeli soldiers defending them.
Sunday's funeral added one more chapter of bitterness.
The streets were empty of Palestinians, who were locked inside their homes, invisible except for curious children who tentatively peeked out their windows.
At the Tomb of the Patriarchs, where the funeral service began, Rabbi Dov Lior climbed onto a makeshift stage and demanded the Israeli government "avenge (Shalhevet's) blood ... which has been shed by dark villains."
"The solution is to send several thousand more Jews to Hebron," said Slonim, who now lives near Tel Aviv. Removing a baseball cap to reveal a bald head and his old wound, a long scar running front to back, he said, "We can't give up and give in to terrorism. Terrorism is still happening."
As the funeral cortege traveled a winding street to the cemetery, Jewish kids began throwing stones at Palestinian homes along the route, breaking several windows before Israeli soldiers restrained them.
After the funeral, Palestinians on a hill overlooking Hebron cut loose with gunfire, drawing return fire from Israeli troops on rooftop encampments. No one was hurt. Both sides notched up another grievance.