From Daniel Pipes Blog: some background to the construction of 20 apartments and an underground garage in the eastern Jerusalem neighborhood of Shimon Hatzadik, which caused the State Department to promptly summon Israel's ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren on July 17 and instruct him to halt the building project:
Zionists founded the Shimon Hatzadik neighborhood in 1891 by purchasing the land from Arabs, then, due to Arab riots and Jordanian conquest, abandoned the area.
Amin al-Husseini, Jerusalem's pro-Nazi mufti, put up a building in the 1930s that later served as the Shepherd Hotel (not to be confused with the renowned Shepheard's Hotel in Cairo). After 1967, the Israelis designated the land "absentee property."
Irving Moskowitz, an American businessman, bought the land in 1985 and rented the building to the border police until 2002. His company, C and M Properties, won final permission two weeks ago to renovate the hotel and build apartments on the land...
...From May 27, when the Obama administration began its attack on Israeli "settlements," it has displayed an unexpected naiveté...
...It then displayed rank incompetence by picking a fight on an issue where an Israeli consensus exists – not over a remote "outpost" but a Jerusalem quarter boasting a Zionist pedigree back to 1891.
...also, from THE JERUSALEM POST, May. 22, 2008, by Leah Abramowitz:
...In 1891 two Jewish neighborhoods were established on the property - Nahalat Shimon and Shimon Hatzadik. They were abandoned during the riots of the 1920s and destroyed during the War of Independence. Today the area is home to a handful of Jewish families, interspersed among dozens of Arab families.
Across from the Tomb of Shimon Hatzadik is a cave where the Ramban is allegedly buried. A few meters to the north is another cave, where 23 former heads of the Sanhedrin are buried....
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