Nahalat Shimon (. lit. Simeon's Estate) was a Jewish religious neighborhood of about 40 Jewish families in East Jerusalem in the area currently known as Sheikh Jarrah. It was founded in 1891 by Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jewish Kollels, to house poor Yemenite and Sephardi Jews. The cornerstone of the neighborhood was laid in 1890, near the Tomb of Simeon the Just.Mathilde A. Tagger, Yitzchak Kerem. Guidebook for Sephardic and Oriental genealogical sources in Israel. p. 44Sephardi entrepreneurs in Jerusalem: the Valero family 1800-1948 By Joseph B. Glass, Ruth Kark. p.254
History
Nahalat Shimon was located at the tip of the Kidron Valley, west of the tomb of Simeon the Just. The namesake Jewish settler organization contends that the land was purchased in 1890 and the first homes were built soon after, housing 20 impoverished families, and that by 1947 there were 100 Jewish homes in the neighborhood. In March 1948, due to mounting Arab violence during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the British ordered the residents to evacuate within two hours. According to one of the evacuees, Justice Emeritus Michael Ben-Yair, all these Jewish evacuees from Sheikh Jarrah were given Palestinian homes in West Jerusalem in compensation.Daphna Golan-Agnon, Teaching Palestine on an Israeli University Campus: Unsettling Denial, Anthem Press 2020 p. 57: "We were given two apartments and a store in Sheikh Bader in exchange for our assets in Sheikh Jarrah. We were not the only ones who were given alternative housing that had belonged to Arabs who had fled. All residents of the Sheeikh Jarrah/Shimon Hatzadik neighbourhood were given alternative housing in property abandoned by Arabs who fled to East Jerusalem (...) One could say with relative certainty that the number of properties abandoned in west Jerusalem was much higher than the number abandoned in east Jerusalem. They were also, in all likelihood, worth more then, and they certainly are today."Nir Hasson, "Former Attorney General Discovers Settler Group Took Over His Family’s Sheikh Jarrah Home", Haaretz, 15 June 2021 Meanwhile, the Palestinians who were given housing in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood by Jordanian authorities in exchange for in a relinquishing their refugee documents and accompanying rights have no right under Israeli law to repossess their pre-1948 homes in Haifa, Sarafand and Jaffa.Daphna Golan-Agnon, Teaching Palestine on an Israeli University Campus:Unsettling Denial, Anthern Press 2020 p.57. The settler organization Nahalat Shimon, registered in Delaware, has pursued the case in Israeli courts for decades, demanding eviction of the Palestinian residents so that Jewish settlers can be housed there.
References
See also Expansion of Jerusalem in the 19th century