ABSTRACT

Almost all of the Yemenite families of Kiryat Eliahu came to Israel in the 1949–50 exodus from Yemen. The majority had come from the cities of San’a, Dhamar, and Amran and their hinterlands. Although some years later a group of families came from a more homogeneous and less developed Yemenite community, the vast majority of Kiryat Eliahu’s Yemenite families came there as soon as housing became available, in 1950 or 1951. From an early period several political parties and movements bid for the loyalties of the Yemenite community. The Histadrut and the Labor Party, with its youth movements and its Council of Workers, and its control of the local council, was in a position to offer some inducements. Despite the hardships of those years—and to some extent because of them—it is the consensus that the Yemenite community of Kiryat Eliahu had a good start in the new country.