Electricity, water and safety systems are now controlled by Kiryat Arba’s municipality rather than the Muslim Waqf.By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel NewsIsrael took a new step last week toward sovereignty over a key Jewish holy site in Hebron, MK Zvi Sukkot announced Saturday night.“History has been made in the Cave of the Patriarchs: Technical control has returned to the hands of the nation of Israel,” the chairman of the Subcommittee on Judea and Samaria wrote on Facebook.The neighboring Kiryat Arba municipal council now oversees the electricity, water and safety systems of Judaism’s second-most holy site instead of the Moslem Waqf, he said.Sukkot called the move “a sovereign step of the highest order,” saying that for decades, “a body that is not the State of Israel held the ability to paralyze the site sacred to Jews.”Installing the new systems, which also included upgrading the on-premises fire-fighting equipment and installing security cameras to a network that cannot be disconnected from the outside, took months of work.Sukkot thanked all those involved, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, the Civil Administration, the site’s Jewish administration and the Kiryat Arba council.Eyal Gelman, head of Hebron’s Jewish community, thanked Sukkot and others who made “the significant push to correct the reality at the Cave of the Patriarchs,” calling dependence on the Muslim Waqf “a mark of shame for the sons of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob who are buried here.”Israel had taken administrative control of the holy site in July to enable major renovations that the Waqf had prevented for decades.Nine days ago, Sukkot proposed a Knesset bill to apply full Israeli sovereignty over the Cave of the Patriarchs by transferring it to Kiryat Arba’s jurisdiction.The compound was divided into two sections after a Jewish man, Baruch Goldstein, killed 29 Arabs at the site in 1994.The largest hall, dedicated to Isaac and Rebecca, has since been reserved for Muslim prayer except for 10 designated days a year.The rest of the year, Jews are confined to small rooms containing the other matriarchs and patriarchs, and a makeshift prayer area between them.In its introductory portion, the bill says its purpose is “to remove the restrictions imposed on Jews since the days of foreign occupation and to restore the site’s historical and national status as an open, accessible and free center of prayer for the Jewish people.”This bill has garnered 26 coalition signatures to date.The post Israel takes step toward sovereignty at Cave of the Patriarchs appeared first on World Israel News.