ASSOCIATED PRESS
Hebron, West Bank - 5 June 2017
1. Wide of Tayser Abu Sneineh, Hebron mayor (red tie) walking in the Old City of Hebron
2. Mid of Anu Sneineh shaking hand with Hebronites
3. Mid of Snenieh greeting barber, Mohammed Jabir
4. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Mohammed Jabir, barber:
"We hope he solves the issues in the city, hopefully he will do everything we want; the shortage of water, the electricity, the infrastructure, they have been working for years on the sewage and they have not finished it yet."
5. Abu Sneineh walking in Hebron
6. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Tayser Abu Sneineh, Hebron mayor:
"Those settlers are living in isolated ghettos, they are the ones who are imposing isolation on themselves, not us. They closed the area and they are living under the protection of the soldiers, and I think that this force doesn't create a right, they think they have the right, but they don't. This is occupation, this the force of occupation, the force of injustice, that's why they always feel like strangers and in need of protection while our people feel that they are the owners of the land, holding on to their rights. That's why those settlers will go away with the occupation."
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Hebron, West Bank - 8 June 2017
7. Close of armed Israeli soldier
8. Wide of Israeli checkpoint in Hebron
9. Various of Noam Arnon, Jewish community representative, in museum commemorating six people killed in attack committed by Abu Sneineh on May 2, 1980
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Noam Arnon, Jewish community representative in Hebron:
"This shameful, murderous action has achieved the opposite. They wanted to uproot the Jews from Hebron, to exile the Jews from Hebron, to frighten us and they achieved exactly the opposite. The result was a government decision to renew the Jewish community in Hebron, to build houses for Jews. And this action, Mr. Mayor, achieved the opposite of what you did. You wanted to kill the Jews to throw them out. You, Mr. Mayor, you've achieved the resettlement and the rebuilding of the Jewish community of Hebron."
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Hebron, West Bank - 5 June 2017
11. Wide of Abu Sneineh with aide
12. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Tayser Abu Sneineh, Hebron mayor:
"The operation was directed against the Israeli army and against the armed settlers who tamper with the security of the homeland and the citizens and kill people, such as Rabea Shalaldeh and Naser Al-Anani. Also it was against their daily practices of attacking homes of people living in this city and walking in its markets and its alleys."
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Hebron, West Bank - 8 June 2017
13. Noam Arnon by plaque in memory of six victims killed in the 1980 attack
14. SOUNDBITE (English) Noam Arnon, Jewish community representative in Hebron:
"He is proud for what he did. He looks himself as a hero? For killing innocent people? In many states in (United States of) America he would have been executed, many years ago. He would not be alive today. And this shameful process of turning the PLO, a terrorist organisation, into the Palestinian Authority is a result of the policies of the government of Israel. So, they (Israeli government) somehow thought they lived in an illusion of changing the nature of people. They did not change. Now they are the official elected persons of the Palestinian Authority. So what did you think about when you recognised the PLO? What did you think about?"
15. Wide of boy passing through crack in security wall dividing Jewish area from Arab parts of Hebron
16. SOUNDBITE (English) Mordechai (declined to give last name citing safety concerns), resident of nearby Jewish settlement of Qiryat Arba:
"Yes. The people here voted and that's who they promote and it just goes to show once again that the situation here is rough and if we pull out of here it will just get worse and this is where we belong. Jews have lived here for thousands of years, this is the city of Abraham, this is the first Jewish city and this is where we're going to stay."
17. Pan right from Jewish family to security wall
Walking through the streets of Hebron as the newly elected mayor, Tayser Abu Sneineh says he is now committed to pursuing a peace agreement with Israel.
But the most contentious figure in the West Bank's most volatile city is showing no remorse for his role in an infamous 1980 attack.
Today he sports a short grey beard and a tie, but as a 26-year-old maths teacher he carried a gun and took part in an attack in Hebron on Israeli settlers returning home from Friday prayers. Six people were killed and 16 wounded in that attack on May 2, 1980.
Abu Sneineh was convicted as one of the gunmen and sentenced to life in prison. But he was released three years later in a prisoner swap between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation and deported to Algeria. He returned to the West Bank, along with other exiled PLO figures, after the Oslo interim peace agreement was signed in 1993.
Abu Sneineh says the attack was justified.
For Palestinians, he is a popular figure.
Local barber Mohammed Jabir is delighted to see him approach, and kisses him.
"We hope he solves the issues in the city, hopefully he will do everything we want," he says.
Now 63, Abu Sneineh says he has put his life as a militant behind him and is focused on the tough reality of governing in a divided city. But his attitude towards the settlers has not changed in principle.
"Those settlers are living in isolated ghettos, they are the ones who are imposing isolation on themselves, not us. They closed the area and they are living under the protection of the soldiers, and I think that this force doesn't create a right, they think they have the right, but they don't," he says.
Hebron is the West Bank's most populous city and a frequent flashpoint for violence between Israelis and Palestinians. Several hundred nationalist Israeli settlers live in fortified compounds in the midst of the city's 170,000 Palestinian inhabitants. Hebron has been the epicentre of many of the Palestinian attacks targeting Israeli civilians and security forces in the past year and a half.
Noam Arnon, a spokesman for the Jewish community of Hebron, called Abu Sneineh "a despicable and cowardly murderer" who killed civilians in their white Sabbath shirts. Arnon also believes that it was entirely counterproductive.
"This shameful, murderous action has achieved the opposite. They wanted to uproot the Jews from Hebron, to exile the Jews from Hebron, to frighten us and they achieved exactly the opposite," he says.
"You, Mr. Mayor, you've achieved the resettlement and the rebuilding of the Jewish community of Hebron."
Abu Sneineh shrugs off criticism, saying that many Israeli officials served in the military and were involved in the deaths of numerous Palestinians in decades of fighting.
"The operation was directed against the Israeli army and against the armed settlers who tamper with the security of the homeland and the citizens and kill people," he maintains.
Arnon conversely maintains that he killed innocent people, and if he were in the US he would likely be "executed".
Abu Sneineh lives in Hebron's Old City, an area under tight Israeli military control.
These days, Abu Sneineh says his priority is to improve municipal services for Palestinian residents, including water, electricity and roads. Most of these services are controlled by Israeli authorities.
The new mayor's first challenge in office involved a burst sewage pipe in the Old City. He said it took a week of negotiating with Israeli authorities to obtain a permit for municipal workers to enter the area and fix the pipe.
The Palestinians hope to one day establish an independent state in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip - areas captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war. That dream is far off after two decades of failed peace talks, and with the rival Hamas militant group controlling Gaza.
Mortdechai, resident of nearby Jewish settlement of Qiryat Arba, is passing by a dividing wall and says he has no intention of leaving.
"Jews have lived here for thousands of years, this is the city of Abraham, this is the first Jewish city and this is where we're going to stay," he says.
