in 2001 the Defence Minister approved the building of the first housing units. Avraham Avinu The Abraham Avinu Synagogue was the physical and spiritual center of its neighborhood and regarded as one of the most beautiful synagogues in Palestine. It was the centre of Jewish worship in Hebron until it was burnt down during the 1929 riots. In 1948 under Jordanian rule, the remaining ruins were razed. The Avraham Avinu quarter was established next to the Vegetable and Wholesale Markets on Al-Shuhada Street in the south of the Old City. The vegetable market was closed by the Israeli military and some of the neighbouring houses were occupied by settlers and soldiers. Settlers started to take over the closed Palestinian stores, despite explicit orders of the Israeli Supreme Court that the settlers should vacate these stores and the Palestinians should be allowed to return. Further settlement activities In 2012, Israel Defense Forces called for the immediate removal of a new settlement, because it was seen as a provocation. The IDF has enforced settler demands against the flying of Palestinian flags on a Hebronite rooftop contiguous to settlements, though no rule forbids the practice. In August 2016, Israel announced its intention to allow settlement building in the military compound of Plugat Hamitkanim in Hebron, which had been expropriated for military purposes in the 1990s. In late 2019, the Israeli Defense Minister Naftali Bennett instructed the military administration to inform the Palestinian municipality of the government's intention to reconstruct infrastructure in the old Hebron fruit and vegetable market in order to establish a Jewish neighbourhood there, which would allow for doubling the city's settler population. The area's original residents, who have protected tenancy rights there, were compelled to evacuate the zone after the Cave of the Patriarch's massacre. The original site was under Jewish ownership prior to 1948. The plan proposes that the empty shops remain Palestinian while the units built over them house Jewish Israelis. Demographics In 1820, it was reported that there were about 1,000 Jews in Hebron. In 1838, Hebron had an estimated 1,500 taxable Muslim households, in addition to 41 Jewish tax-payers. Taxpayers consisted here of male heads of households who owned even a very small shop or piece of land. 200 Jews and one Christian household were under 'European protections'. The total population was estimated at 10,000. In 1842, it was estimated that about 400 Arab and 120