Commencement of the Saving Lifta project-campaign in Jerusalem




Between 19th - 26th October 2008, FAST engaged in various appointments with figureheads and organizations in the Palestine/Israel region to initiate the next phase of Saving Lifta project-campaign.

The discussions held included a meeting with figureheads of the Lifta Committee (Hassan A.Shalbak, Ali Hamoudeh, Rabie H. Rabie, Abed Abu-Liel, Husni Salah) and their representative Yacoub Odeh in Ramallah; a meeting with Eitan Bronstein, Director of Zochrot (Remembering) in Tel Aviv; as well as various meetings in Jerusalem - including a trip to Lifta - with 2nd & 3rd generation Lifta activists (Anan Odeh - Human Rights Lawyer, Sihan Rashid, Lena Meari - Anthropologist, Thair Odeh, and Zacharia Odeh - Executive Director of the Civic Coalition for Jerusalem.)

FAST addressed to the Lifta Committee a history of the work undertaken so far in the project-campaign. We discussed the conference that we held on Lifta in Amsterdam 2006, and the international campaigning, such as the proposal of a project to UNESCO World Heritage as well as the application on the World Monument Fund's list for 100 most endangered places. And concluded with our appraisal on Lifta's significance and how she inspired FAST to set about an initiative for regional activism.

FAST agendas not only serve to expose violations in architecture and planning, our aim is to create architectural responses that empower marginalised, segregated and displaced groups, communities and people. To show what has the potential to be possible, whilst considering the human component as the most fundamental criteria.
In Lifta's case, to set about a campaign against the Approved Redevelopment Plan(s) that erase all memory of Lifta, FAST are leading a project to advocate the recognition of Lifta through the creation of alternative plans and an alternative master-plan.

Lifta should be reserved as a special place of conscience, for truth and justice, regarding issues at the very heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She is a place that bears testimony to the memory of the national catastrophe of the Palestinian people - al Nakba. And a place that can serve as a potential testing-ground for General Assembly Resolution 194; Israel’s obligations under international human rights and humanitarian law to allow and facilitate the return of the Palestinian refugees to their homes. If Lifta was attentively planned, in re-instatement of her recognition and her possibilities as a place, she could play a significant role in the event of a concilatory process and changes needed for peace.

The Saving Lifta project-campaign aim is towards a common vision, for a 'space of reconciliation', using alternative plans and a master-plan that can be articulated and lobbied using both Palestinian & Israeli civil society. The objective is to create regional movement, action and a voice that can monoeuvre the campaign to effect and reposition the Jerusalem Municipality Authority's tops-down prospects on Lifta; anticipating that the project-campaign will be lobbied through the Israeli judicial administration and not under-estimating the possibilty of lobbying as far as the Knesset Parliament.

The next step will see FAST setting out a detailed brief proposing the agendas of the project. The brief will be issued at the beginning of February 2009 to potential participants of the project. Between now and January, working with our partners Yacoub Odeh - a Lifta refugee and Eitan Bronstein - Zochrot, with support from our team of regional Lifta activists, we will reach out to regional organizations, education/research faculties and potential sponsors that can play a key role in this project through their participation (such as building conservationists, legal advocates in environment & planning, civil building and peace activists, and local architecture schools.)

In a period of a week in March 2009 a series of meetings will be arranged to be held in Jerusalem and the region. FAST will present the project agendas and invite potential regional participants to discuss the proposition in context to creative opportunities and their own agendas. We hope (in that week) to resolve forming a two year plan (2009 and throughout 2010) involving a dynamic coalition of participants and supporters, reaching across the divides between Israeli and Palestinian, and making Saving Lifta an eventful yet decisive example of an effort that transcends expectations of the possible.


Anil Korotane, FAST

An announcement to the people from Lifta -







Dear Liftawa,

We call upon you for your help and support.

Lifta, your ancestral village still stands defiantly. However, there is now a masterplan that has been approved that will change Lifta into exclusive private accommodation and a commercial centre with a different name - Mei Neptoach and with a different identity. All association to your cultural heritage and history with Lifta will be erazed.

FAST (an architecture, planning and humanrights organization) are leading a project that will try to protect Lifta by offering an alternative masterplan solution.

We feel that to be able to save Lifta we will need to preserve and proclaim the truth about Lifta with all people in Israel/Palestine. And to do that we need your help. We need your help because you - the Liftawa - and your 'truth' can actually be used to bring real justice and healing to this region.

Lifta is unique because she still stands after having witnessed a catastrophe; the 1948 Palestinian Nakba. Unlike the 500+ towns and villages that dissappeared during this catastrophe, Lifta was not fully razed to the ground and nearly all of her valley was never resettled . She still remains nearly the same as she did just after the Nakba.

Lifta has untold stories to tell. And the buildings and structures that still remain standing in her landscape also has the potential to reflect the very rich cultural heritage of the Liftawa community. However, we believe that Lifta can also be more - she can be a symbol for peace.

Your bonds holding your memories with Lifta are very important and significant today. You bear witness and testimony to a catastrophe that affected the whole region. But at the same time, your bonds holding your memories of Lifta also tells a story of a time when muslims, jews and christians were once living harmoniously together in the same Liftawa community.

Lifta should be deemed invaluable and worthy of preserving her identity, culture and history for the sake of peace in the region. FAST are campaigning to uphold this belief. To do this we need to ask you the Liftawa to help us by allowing us to know about your life in Lifta, the history of Lifta from your truth, and your understanding of Lifta's community culture.

FAST want to meet you Liftawa and with your permission film record and document your memories and stories about Lifta. FAST will use what you have told us to reconstruct the memory of Lifta. And FAST will use your truths as the vital information needed to generate and produce the alternative masterplan whose objective is to show the importance to protecting Lifta for the region.

Please contact me (Anil Korotane - FAST) at anil@savinglifta.org if you wish to participate in this cause, or concerning discussions about the intentions of the organizations and any of the above.

Peace be with you.

Anil Korotane, FAST.

The Reconstruction of Memory and Architecture as Activism.





The Reconstruction of Memory.


Over the last year, FAST has analysed the value of Lifta through studies of her memory to determine what extent Lifta's particular situation could be considered as an invaluable component of conservation practice in regard to the present cultural and civil context. To briefly reiterate -

Lifta is preserved as a place not only with tangible significance to the bonds of her descendants, but also a shared value amongst a people who can relate to an open space that conceals signs of their tragedy. To be able to express this mourning from a place which symbolizes and recreates a backdrop to the moments of a tragic event allows confronting and exploring issues of trauma to become a real experience.

Lifta is a tangible embodiment and representation of the larger context of events in the region during 1947/48. This conflict that defines this particular moment in history has essentially unfolded into the current existential values of today. The current issues of dissonance between the Israeli Jew and Palestinians seen unfolding in the present context have their origins traced at a place whereby the source of the conflict becomes tangible. As an origin, she can be a vital place for contemplating and understanding historical continuity.

Lifta's cultural heritage is a story of a society consisting of different ethnicities existing harmoniously under the same cultural pretext; embracing a strong sense of an ethnically and religiously diverse community of Muslims, Jews and Christians. Lifta's traceable history prior the Palestinian Nakba and the creation of the modern State can begin to allow us to look beyond the symbol of the ‘other’. She sustained ethical values which can be deemed as necessary within in the current regional context of society.

There is historical evidence that gives reason to believe that the Nakba event encompassed a discord for all ethnic groups associated to it. And there is a significant opportunity for suggesting alternative outlooks and views that can influence the working of a new narrative, a new history, and a new space. Exploration of memory can become paramount in creating and enabling mechanisms to defuse the attitudes that translate into a language of adversity and dissonance of the differing existential beliefs.

Lifta has a credible history that is invaluable to the present situation and context of identities in the region. FAST's objective is to advocate the preservation of Lifta, so that she can be clearly recognized as a place, whilst introducing a monument into the environment that's equivocal workings is aimed at addressing the conflict. So rather than asking who officially gets the right to choose or imply history and heritage, the needs should be to preserve and develop instruments that actively seek to contest truths.

Conducting further research into Lifta's memory and juxtaposing truths can possibly allow further contestable narratives and introduce new possibilities for the reconstruction of heritage. A heritage that can allow an acceptance of truths that can bring together both sides of the conflict to share the same grief and hope and re-evaluate relationships for the sake of the regional community. And a desire towards a monument that can convey new meaning and understanding as well as offer alternative capacity building can prove invaluable.



Architecture as Activism.


FAST is placed in a cross point of culture, architecture and human rights practices. It brings different disciplines together. It explores new ground and builds a new know-how resulting in a practice of 'activist architecture'. FAST aims to promote the preservation and alternative planning of a place that has the potential capacity to provide a supporting role for the changes needed for peace and democratisation of a region.

FAST has initiated a strategy that aims to address the significance of saving Lifta's memory as well as Lifta's unique status and what she is potentially and 'truthfully' capable of representing for the region. FAST will lead a task to develop the alternative planning of Lifta through architectural and conservation design.

FAST will explore, collect and document Lifta's memory, history and cultural heritage to create a Preservation File - through a 2 year task coordinated with intermediary to the association representing her diasporas world-wide; the Lifta Association. FAST will emphasize the value between the relationship of memory and the tangible cultural heritage so the landscape can convey historical truths capable of empowering opportunities for civil building. FAST will use the information within the Preservation File to master-plan the design of a Memorial.

Memory cannot change the past, but it can give us thought to change the future. If Lifta was attentively planned in reference to preserving her memory, she can envisage a unique platform for communication that has potential to harbour a significant role in the possibilities of a conciliatory process. Lifta can offer the region an apparatus to use as a foundation for the purposes of truth and reconciliation and the transformation of conflict resolution by restoring respect for others and enhancing dignity.

Through the practice of activist architecture, FAST will engage and affiliate with the services of professionals, organizations and institutions necessary for utilizing practices to realize goals. To promote and enhance the case for the protection of Lifta, advocating with civil rights organizations within the Israeli region will be necessary. FAST will affiliate with individuals, organizations and institutions required to utilize the regional activism to promote the idea of 'truth and reconciliation' as an opportunity for the necessity for heritage diversity and alternative planning.


There will be 4 areas of plan of action that will utilize the SAVING LIFTA Activism:

1. The Reconstruction of Memory.

To gain and achieve the emphasis of the strategy for regional activism, the campaign process for SAVING LIFTA has to sustain qualitative documentations of histories that will promote the emphasis of the 4 principles and values.

(i.) Recognize that Lifta has an existing cultivated bond, and that this bond (warrants legitimate recognition) evokes an identity and a relationship to identities.

(ii.) Recognize that this place is inextricably tied and linked to the creation of the modern Nation State of Israel, and therefore is testimony to the phenomenom/event of the creation of the Modern State as well as placing historical perspective and context to her present identity.

(iii.) Recognize that this place contains a unique example of a tangible cultural heritage that evokes a legacy of a place which had a healthy civil equality and no ethnocentric division or segregation.

(iv.) Recognize that Lifta, a place which has an inextricable relationship to the identity of a people and also of a Nation, should have her cultural heritage reappraised so that she can sustain an 'attainable value' for the evaluation of healthy civil progress for the future of this region.

The qualitative documentations will be collected within a Preservation File. FAST will work alongside and together with the organization representing the Lifta diaspora - the Lifta Association to obtain the necessary information needed sustain a Preservation File. FAST will produce qualitative mappings, documentary accounts from of oral histories from the surviving 1st generation Lifta diaspora, and any other documentation obtained as part of the Lifta diaspora that can be used as evidence to support the principles and values.

2. A Memorial and Conservation MasterPlan.

FAST will devise a conservation plan whilst proposing an architectural design masterplan of Lifta as a memorial for the Israel/Palestine region. FAST will architecturally masterplan Lifta's landscape as a memorial based on alternative planning for heritage and the necessity of heritage diversity for long-term regional sustainability. The emphasis of the memorial design will be based on the set of principles and values under a 'Truth and Reconciliation' proposal scheme. The conservation planning will be devised with advocate consultation to specialists in Arab/Palestinian Architecture.

3. Advocacy.

FAST will rally support against the Approved Mei Neptoach Redevelopment Plan by advocating - exposing, through the media (websites, magazines, blogs, public events) the case against unjust exclusive planning with a case supporting alternative heritage planning for long-term sustainability for the region. FAST will affiliate with local partners in Israel to achieve the necessary goals needed to bring the plight of Lifta into the Israeli and Palestinian public consciousness. FAST will also bring the plight of Lifta into a regional debate between professionals, governmental institutions, universities and knowledge institution, civic society and peace organizations for the development of new know-how, for the necessity of heritage diversity for long-term sustainable planning.

4. Civil Action.

FAST will work with a local partner to transform its plans into legal documents and use local and international multidisciplinary network to lobby it locally and internationally. FAST will represent a case against the Approved Redevelopment Plan through the representation of a case based on the set of principles and values. FAST will affiliate with Civil Rights organizations in Israel and will present the case to the Judicial Courts in the Jerusalem region accompanied with the solution for alternative heritage planning.

posted by Anil Korotane, FAST.