Fire burns outside J'lem in abandoned Arab village of Lifta
By MELANIE LIDMAN
07/04/2011 20:35
Firefighters struggled for hours to control a fire in the abandoned Arab village of Lifta, located at the entrance to Jerusalem. Heavy smoke in the area disrupted traffic on the highways leading toward Jerusalem.
Firefighters were aided by a helicopter, which relayed information about the fire's movement. A total of 30 dunams (7.5 acres) were burned. Firefighters evacuated four homes in the area, as well as a number of youths squatting in the abandoned houses. An investigation was opened into the cause of the blaze.
Monday, July 04, 2011
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Some good news...
Today, on the 11th May 2001, I got the news that Judge in the Israeli courts did not approve the Israeli Land Administration's (ILA) attempt to begin the bidding process to sell of the lands of Lifta. The Judge requested that there should be a survey for the village taking into conseration the opinion of the Israel Archaeological Department. The Judge asked the ILA to halt any further process or the decision would be taken against them; and then gave the ILA two weeks to respond to the suggestion.
In the short while, the possibility of a survey will slow down the pace of activities pursued by the ILA. It may encourage further investigation into the conservation planning for Lifta however it may still not over-ride the regional planning of this place; possibily a mediated alternative outlook instead.
Nevertheless, this will give my organisation - Belonging, the necessary time needed to develop their proposal for a long-term plan for Lifta in consideration to be alternatively planned as a place of conscience. And with regional and international advocacy allow us to sustain the campaign to make such an attempt.
Today was a good day for Lifta, lets hope we can say the same tomorrow...
To find out more about Belonging's vision for a long-term plan for Lifta please copy & paste the link below or read the Saving Lifta article below the last post:
http://www.thisweekinpalestine.com/details.php?id=3407&ed=194&edid=194
Anil Korotane, director of Belonging
Today, on the 11th May 2001, I got the news that Judge in the Israeli courts did not approve the Israeli Land Administration's (ILA) attempt to begin the bidding process to sell of the lands of Lifta. The Judge requested that there should be a survey for the village taking into conseration the opinion of the Israel Archaeological Department. The Judge asked the ILA to halt any further process or the decision would be taken against them; and then gave the ILA two weeks to respond to the suggestion.
In the short while, the possibility of a survey will slow down the pace of activities pursued by the ILA. It may encourage further investigation into the conservation planning for Lifta however it may still not over-ride the regional planning of this place; possibily a mediated alternative outlook instead.
Nevertheless, this will give my organisation - Belonging, the necessary time needed to develop their proposal for a long-term plan for Lifta in consideration to be alternatively planned as a place of conscience. And with regional and international advocacy allow us to sustain the campaign to make such an attempt.
Today was a good day for Lifta, lets hope we can say the same tomorrow...
To find out more about Belonging's vision for a long-term plan for Lifta please copy & paste the link below or read the Saving Lifta article below the last post:
http://www.thisweekinpalestine.com/details.php?id=3407&ed=194&edid=194
Anil Korotane, director of Belonging
Tuesday, May 03, 2011
Film Extract - The Lifta Controversy
This film extract by award-winning film-maker and friend Menachem Daum gives an oversight into the current controversy concerning Lifta whilst depicting Menachem's very own personal journey and investgation through his connection to Lifta. Menachem's uncle was possibly one of the members of the Stern gang militia who drove out the inhabitants of Lifta during the 1947/48 Nakba catastrophe. Menachem seeks to inquire into his initial simplistic views of what happened during the period that led to the creation of Israel, and through his family connection to Lifta, encounter what value this place holds to all still touched by her presence.
This film extract by award-winning film-maker and friend Menachem Daum gives an oversight into the current controversy concerning Lifta whilst depicting Menachem's very own personal journey and investgation through his connection to Lifta. Menachem's uncle was possibly one of the members of the Stern gang militia who drove out the inhabitants of Lifta during the 1947/48 Nakba catastrophe. Menachem seeks to inquire into his initial simplistic views of what happened during the period that led to the creation of Israel, and through his family connection to Lifta, encounter what value this place holds to all still touched by her presence.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Saving Lifta
By Anil Korotane
(This article on 'Saving Lifta' originally features in the May 2011 edition of the magazine 'This Week in Palestine'. 'Al Quds, A Living History' is this month's theme. The article will highlight the strategy currently pursued by Belonging's (an architecture, planning and humanrights organisation) attempt to devise a long-term strategy for Lifta and how it may be possible.)
Lifta, a Palestinian village inside Israeli territory, sits within a valley adjacent to and below the Jaffa Road on the northwest perimeter of Jerusalem. The village suffered the same fate as many Palestinian villages that were ethnically cleansed in 1947-48 during the Palestinian catastrophe, Al Nakba. Remarkably, a large proportion of the architectural antiquities that characterise the village still remain standing today. Lifta has evaded total erasure because her surrounding landscape, set within a valley, is virtually cut off and sunk beneath the surrounding civilisation. She has stood obscurely now for over 60 years and so far, no conquest has physically re-contextualised the place. Her unique circumstance, created out of these consequences, has led her to become a space of captivation, necessity, and privilege.
Now, however, the valley has been given an incarnation under the approved plan to transform the village into a commercial edifice allocated under the guise of “Mei Naftoah”-also known as Plan 6036. The redevelopment plan has been approved on and above Lifta, and will disregard any association of the memory of the village. It will appropriate her cultural heritage through architecture and planning that will re-invent the identity of the valley landscape. The Mei Naftoah approved plan will consist of a commercial centre with shops, hotels, bus stations and the development of 212 luxury apartments.
In January 2011, the Israeli Land Administration (ILA) announced a tender for Plan 6036, allowing private contractors to begin to bid and triggering the process to sell off Lifta’s plots of lands. This announcement provoked immediate reaction amongst former Palestinian descendants of Lifta (many of whom now reside in East Jerusalem), as well as Israeli and Palestinian conservationists and NGOs. This reaction led to a petition and resulted in a temporary court injunction issued on 7 March 2011, ordering the ILA to freeze the tender. Now a struggle commences forming solidarity amongst regional professionals and organisations. Opponents to Plan 6036 have appealed for Lifta’s recognition with UNESCO, the Worlds Monument Fund, and other agencies. Along with media campaigns and protests held more or less every fortnight by second and third-generation descendants of the village.
This is all promising in the short term, however there is a need for a long-term strategy that will clearly define the significance and necessity of this place. I have been involved on a research project-campaign concerning saving Lifta since 2006. And from this research, I shall highlight a long-term strategy. To begin with, what does it mean to save this place, and what significance does she bare for the region?
By saving Lifta, I posit that we are trying to protect a place that still exists in the form of a bond. “Memory” with respect to Lifta is the essence of the place; she is bare, without people telling their stories and affirming their union to the place. Recognition of the existence of this bond also means recognising cultivation, a history and a tangible reality.
A place with a history prior to 1948 and located within a territory of the governing power of Israel, Lifta sits inside a surrounding context identifiable by another historical narrative. For the two identities to sustain a shared value, an identifiable relationship, there has to be a reason. Situating Al Nakba into a revised historical narrative of the surrounding context is likely to create controversy and can easily be perceived as an historical problem. So how does it become possible to resolve this crisis of values?
For Israel, Lifta is a place needing enquiry for the purposes of practising self-reflection and self-reappraisal. Lifta allows the nation-state to have a space to contest, understand, and respond to the origins of the Israel/Palestine conflict. Taking aside the significance of memory relating to a catastrophe and an historical origin perpetuating “otherness,” the memory of Lifta also embarks upon a history of a different societal pattern and practice of space. Before the events of 1948, the village had a tribal community with a population consisting of around 3,000 people. Lifta was a place that embraced a strong sense of an ethnically and religiously diverse community of Muslims, Jews, and Christians. There was no inequality amongst this diversity, so there was never any conceivable idea of segregation.
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 that can be deemed as necessary within in the current regional context of society. Recognition of this truth and quality can influence the possibility of allowing this heritage, traditionally perceived as belonging to the “other” existential narrative, to become admissible in the region. Lifta still is a traceable genealogy that gives insight into the origins of the conflict, and these issues are fundamental to the process of understanding, tangibly engaging and reconciling conflict. Emphasis of civil equality also enhances the opportunity of contesting other issues represented by this place to become more tolerable.
Upon reflection, the uprooting of the village was a tragedy for the Palestinian community of the village, however, the community encompassed multi-ethnic groups. Al Nakba in Lifta was a catastrophe for the Palestinian Muslims, Christians, and Jews. There is historical evidence that gives reason to believe that this event encompassed a discord for all ethnic groups associated to it. They provide 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.
Taking on the question of justice concerning Lifta requires vision for long-term interventions. We can discuss the safeguarding and preservation of Lifta, or the United Nations Resolution 194 and its poignant regard to the Palestinian “right of return.” Yet there seems to be no significant answers of how to connect the past with the present. I believe an attempt should be made to construct a proposal for Lifta to be realized as a “Site of Conscience.” The role of the International Coalition for Sites of Conscience is to “interpret history through historic sites; engage in programs that stimulate dialogue on pressing social issues; promote humanitarian and democratic values as a primary function; and share opportunities for public involvement in issues raised at the site.”
My organisation, Belonging, is an architecture, planning, and human rights organisation that will carry out this investigation. We acknowledge that actively challenging discursive discussions on the environment is a necessary stepping-stone for creating the imaginings of utilities that stride towards supporting the changes needed for peace. The purpose will be to demonstrate why the heritage of Lifta is potentially invaluable and necessary for future peace in the region and the potential of Lifta’s space as a place for conciliatory dialogue.
Through a process of dissecting and illuminating the chasms of Lifta’s historical landscape, we will engage in and assert why this place has the potential to harbour such a proposal. A potential gateway to space-seeking to confront and reconcile narratives of histories, otherness, and conflict, whilst demonstrating possibilities of a place that promotes healing, pluralism, and inclusiveness.
Engaging in the memory of Al Nakba, in this instance from a place that has remained virtually desolate and un-appropriated since her uprooting in 1948, provides the backdrop for a real space within the Israel/Palestine region that has the capacity to make accessible an open dialogue, encountering a sense of shared values through the issues of “displacement,” “victimhood,” and “tragedy.” These are themes that resonate not only throughout the Palestinian narrative since 1948, but are also historically preserved and ever-present within the narrative of the Israeli “other” (for instance the Holocaust and the displacement of Arab Jews in the North African and Middle East region). Sharing and building upon multiple common themes and reaching beyond rivalry.
Lifta is a place that can challenge and defuse narratives that translate into a language of opposition or even hostility by presenting and addressing common themes shared in the tragic histories by both peoples. The narratives of displacement, shared together at Lifta, can create this place into a necessary common ground for the purposes of healing and conciliation, as well as drawing upon the potential of this place for the purposes of invaluable capacity-building for the regional civil society.
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.
Saving Lifta is only likely to be achievable if she asserts values that are inclusive in her objective of becoming recognized as a place. And a desire towards a monument that can convey new meaning and understanding as well as offer alternative capacity building can prove invaluable. A vision for an attainable value through the reconstruction of heritage; aiming to bridge worlds together by creating mechanisms out of a bond between memory and place.
Anil Korotane is an activist architect and director of Belonging: info@architecturehumanrights.org. Follow up-to-date news on the Saving Lifta project-campaign here: www.saving-memory.blogspot.com and the Facebook group: Saving Lifta.
By Anil Korotane
(This article on 'Saving Lifta' originally features in the May 2011 edition of the magazine 'This Week in Palestine'. 'Al Quds, A Living History' is this month's theme. The article will highlight the strategy currently pursued by Belonging's (an architecture, planning and humanrights organisation) attempt to devise a long-term strategy for Lifta and how it may be possible.)
Lifta, a Palestinian village inside Israeli territory, sits within a valley adjacent to and below the Jaffa Road on the northwest perimeter of Jerusalem. The village suffered the same fate as many Palestinian villages that were ethnically cleansed in 1947-48 during the Palestinian catastrophe, Al Nakba. Remarkably, a large proportion of the architectural antiquities that characterise the village still remain standing today. Lifta has evaded total erasure because her surrounding landscape, set within a valley, is virtually cut off and sunk beneath the surrounding civilisation. She has stood obscurely now for over 60 years and so far, no conquest has physically re-contextualised the place. Her unique circumstance, created out of these consequences, has led her to become a space of captivation, necessity, and privilege.
Now, however, the valley has been given an incarnation under the approved plan to transform the village into a commercial edifice allocated under the guise of “Mei Naftoah”-also known as Plan 6036. The redevelopment plan has been approved on and above Lifta, and will disregard any association of the memory of the village. It will appropriate her cultural heritage through architecture and planning that will re-invent the identity of the valley landscape. The Mei Naftoah approved plan will consist of a commercial centre with shops, hotels, bus stations and the development of 212 luxury apartments.
In January 2011, the Israeli Land Administration (ILA) announced a tender for Plan 6036, allowing private contractors to begin to bid and triggering the process to sell off Lifta’s plots of lands. This announcement provoked immediate reaction amongst former Palestinian descendants of Lifta (many of whom now reside in East Jerusalem), as well as Israeli and Palestinian conservationists and NGOs. This reaction led to a petition and resulted in a temporary court injunction issued on 7 March 2011, ordering the ILA to freeze the tender. Now a struggle commences forming solidarity amongst regional professionals and organisations. Opponents to Plan 6036 have appealed for Lifta’s recognition with UNESCO, the Worlds Monument Fund, and other agencies. Along with media campaigns and protests held more or less every fortnight by second and third-generation descendants of the village.
This is all promising in the short term, however there is a need for a long-term strategy that will clearly define the significance and necessity of this place. I have been involved on a research project-campaign concerning saving Lifta since 2006. And from this research, I shall highlight a long-term strategy. To begin with, what does it mean to save this place, and what significance does she bare for the region?
By saving Lifta, I posit that we are trying to protect a place that still exists in the form of a bond. “Memory” with respect to Lifta is the essence of the place; she is bare, without people telling their stories and affirming their union to the place. Recognition of the existence of this bond also means recognising cultivation, a history and a tangible reality.
A place with a history prior to 1948 and located within a territory of the governing power of Israel, Lifta sits inside a surrounding context identifiable by another historical narrative. For the two identities to sustain a shared value, an identifiable relationship, there has to be a reason. Situating Al Nakba into a revised historical narrative of the surrounding context is likely to create controversy and can easily be perceived as an historical problem. So how does it become possible to resolve this crisis of values?
For Israel, Lifta is a place needing enquiry for the purposes of practising self-reflection and self-reappraisal. Lifta allows the nation-state to have a space to contest, understand, and respond to the origins of the Israel/Palestine conflict. Taking aside the significance of memory relating to a catastrophe and an historical origin perpetuating “otherness,” the memory of Lifta also embarks upon a history of a different societal pattern and practice of space. Before the events of 1948, the village had a tribal community with a population consisting of around 3,000 people. Lifta was a place that embraced a strong sense of an ethnically and religiously diverse community of Muslims, Jews, and Christians. There was no inequality amongst this diversity, so there was never any conceivable idea of segregation.
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 that can be deemed as necessary within in the current regional context of society. Recognition of this truth and quality can influence the possibility of allowing this heritage, traditionally perceived as belonging to the “other” existential narrative, to become admissible in the region. Lifta still is a traceable genealogy that gives insight into the origins of the conflict, and these issues are fundamental to the process of understanding, tangibly engaging and reconciling conflict. Emphasis of civil equality also enhances the opportunity of contesting other issues represented by this place to become more tolerable.
Upon reflection, the uprooting of the village was a tragedy for the Palestinian community of the village, however, the community encompassed multi-ethnic groups. Al Nakba in Lifta was a catastrophe for the Palestinian Muslims, Christians, and Jews. There is historical evidence that gives reason to believe that this event encompassed a discord for all ethnic groups associated to it. They provide 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.
Taking on the question of justice concerning Lifta requires vision for long-term interventions. We can discuss the safeguarding and preservation of Lifta, or the United Nations Resolution 194 and its poignant regard to the Palestinian “right of return.” Yet there seems to be no significant answers of how to connect the past with the present. I believe an attempt should be made to construct a proposal for Lifta to be realized as a “Site of Conscience.” The role of the International Coalition for Sites of Conscience is to “interpret history through historic sites; engage in programs that stimulate dialogue on pressing social issues; promote humanitarian and democratic values as a primary function; and share opportunities for public involvement in issues raised at the site.”
My organisation, Belonging, is an architecture, planning, and human rights organisation that will carry out this investigation. We acknowledge that actively challenging discursive discussions on the environment is a necessary stepping-stone for creating the imaginings of utilities that stride towards supporting the changes needed for peace. The purpose will be to demonstrate why the heritage of Lifta is potentially invaluable and necessary for future peace in the region and the potential of Lifta’s space as a place for conciliatory dialogue.
Through a process of dissecting and illuminating the chasms of Lifta’s historical landscape, we will engage in and assert why this place has the potential to harbour such a proposal. A potential gateway to space-seeking to confront and reconcile narratives of histories, otherness, and conflict, whilst demonstrating possibilities of a place that promotes healing, pluralism, and inclusiveness.
Engaging in the memory of Al Nakba, in this instance from a place that has remained virtually desolate and un-appropriated since her uprooting in 1948, provides the backdrop for a real space within the Israel/Palestine region that has the capacity to make accessible an open dialogue, encountering a sense of shared values through the issues of “displacement,” “victimhood,” and “tragedy.” These are themes that resonate not only throughout the Palestinian narrative since 1948, but are also historically preserved and ever-present within the narrative of the Israeli “other” (for instance the Holocaust and the displacement of Arab Jews in the North African and Middle East region). Sharing and building upon multiple common themes and reaching beyond rivalry.
Lifta is a place that can challenge and defuse narratives that translate into a language of opposition or even hostility by presenting and addressing common themes shared in the tragic histories by both peoples. The narratives of displacement, shared together at Lifta, can create this place into a necessary common ground for the purposes of healing and conciliation, as well as drawing upon the potential of this place for the purposes of invaluable capacity-building for the regional civil society.
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.
Saving Lifta is only likely to be achievable if she asserts values that are inclusive in her objective of becoming recognized as a place. And a desire towards a monument that can convey new meaning and understanding as well as offer alternative capacity building can prove invaluable. A vision for an attainable value through the reconstruction of heritage; aiming to bridge worlds together by creating mechanisms out of a bond between memory and place.
Anil Korotane is an activist architect and director of Belonging: info@architecturehumanrights.org. Follow up-to-date news on the Saving Lifta project-campaign here: www.saving-memory.blogspot.com and the Facebook group: Saving Lifta.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Blowback: Israel's bogus narrative on Palestinian refugees
Los Angeles Times - Ghada Karmi April 12, 2011
Ghada Karmi, author of "In Search of Fatima: A Palestinian Story," responds to The Times' April 7 article on Lifta, the last intact pre-1948 Palestinian village. If you would like to write a full-length response to a recent Times article, editorial or Op-Ed, here are our FAQs and submission policy.
What a timely article, “Israel and Palestinians have conflicting visions for village's future.” April is a good month for recalling the abandoned homes, towns and destroyed villages of what was once Palestine. It was the month in which my own family was forced to leave our home in Jerusalem. Contrary to the official Israeli version, still largely believed, that the Palestinian exodus of 750,000 people -- without which there would be no Israel today -- happened in the fog of war, people like me are living proof that many of us had been forced out of our homeland months earlier.
The Israeli version claims that during the 1948-49 Arab-Israeli war, the Palestinians fled, as happens in wars everywhere, or were panicked into leaving by their leaders. For more than 60 years, this has served to absolve Israel of its culpability for that tragedy.
In fact, between January and May 1948, thousands of us were already leaving because of the violence and the deliberate tactics of the Jewish leadership intent on creating an empty space in which to erect a state. As a child, I remember seeing a poor Bedouin man walking down our street shot dead by Jewish snipers from an empty house opposite ours.
The people of Lifta (the village that The Times features), which is just three miles from my old neighborhood in west Jerusalem, were already fleeing in December 1947. The Jewish paramilitary organization Haganah and the Stern Gang, a Jewish dissident group, attacked the villagers with guns and hand grenades. By February 1948, most houses on the edge of the village had been demolished; the inhabitants fled in terror.
The same fate was intended for Katamon, where we lived. Increasing attacks on our street and its vicinity had the same desired effect as in Lifta. After January 1948, when the Semiramis Hotel on a street near ours was bombed by the Haganah, killing 26 people (a nightmare of horror that I dimly remember), the attacks against our neighborhood escalated. Families started leaving, fearful for their children and believing it would be a temporary evacuation. By the time we left, hardly any of our friends remained. The increasing danger around us forced my parents to leave. We took nothing with us, convinced it would not be long before we returned.
Terrible as this was when I look back, at least our street and our house still stand today. They were taken over by Jewish settlers and underwent various changes, but they largely remain. Yet I do not know which is worse: the hundreds of Palestinian villages Israel wiped out after 1948 and whose previous inhabitants can only hope to find through faded memories; the dozen villages left such as Lifta, still standing but ruined and depopulated; or, as in my case, my house being in the possession of strangers (New York Times correspondent Ethan Bronner lives in an upper story added on later), who do not recognize my history or my right to my family home.
On setting up its state in 1948, Israel set about demolishing every vestige of Palestinian life and history in the land. The physical destruction of the villages, the replacing of Palestinian names with Hebrew ones and the wholesale takeover of Palestinian culture, whether in food -- "Israeli falafel" -- or in the traditional Arab dabke dance, renamed the Israeli "hora," were all aimed at making the world forget there had ever been anyone other than Jews in the Holy Land.
Through the work of Israeli filmmaker Benny Brunner, I have discovered another refinement of this cultural theft: the takeover of private Palestinian book collections, including ours. After 1948, Israeli officials took what books they found from abandoned Palestinian homes. Tens of thousands were looted in this way. Some of them remain in the Israeli National Library today, designated abandoned property. Brunner is currently making a film of this, "The Great Book Robbery."
Palestinians have never accepted our enforced oblivion. We are fighting to tell our history, win a future of political freedom and secure the return of refugees forced from their homes and never allowed to return. For these reasons, the battle to preserve Lifta must be won -- its remains a physical memorial of injustice and survival.
Los Angeles Times - Ghada Karmi April 12, 2011
Ghada Karmi, author of "In Search of Fatima: A Palestinian Story," responds to The Times' April 7 article on Lifta, the last intact pre-1948 Palestinian village. If you would like to write a full-length response to a recent Times article, editorial or Op-Ed, here are our FAQs and submission policy.
What a timely article, “Israel and Palestinians have conflicting visions for village's future.” April is a good month for recalling the abandoned homes, towns and destroyed villages of what was once Palestine. It was the month in which my own family was forced to leave our home in Jerusalem. Contrary to the official Israeli version, still largely believed, that the Palestinian exodus of 750,000 people -- without which there would be no Israel today -- happened in the fog of war, people like me are living proof that many of us had been forced out of our homeland months earlier.
The Israeli version claims that during the 1948-49 Arab-Israeli war, the Palestinians fled, as happens in wars everywhere, or were panicked into leaving by their leaders. For more than 60 years, this has served to absolve Israel of its culpability for that tragedy.
In fact, between January and May 1948, thousands of us were already leaving because of the violence and the deliberate tactics of the Jewish leadership intent on creating an empty space in which to erect a state. As a child, I remember seeing a poor Bedouin man walking down our street shot dead by Jewish snipers from an empty house opposite ours.
The people of Lifta (the village that The Times features), which is just three miles from my old neighborhood in west Jerusalem, were already fleeing in December 1947. The Jewish paramilitary organization Haganah and the Stern Gang, a Jewish dissident group, attacked the villagers with guns and hand grenades. By February 1948, most houses on the edge of the village had been demolished; the inhabitants fled in terror.
The same fate was intended for Katamon, where we lived. Increasing attacks on our street and its vicinity had the same desired effect as in Lifta. After January 1948, when the Semiramis Hotel on a street near ours was bombed by the Haganah, killing 26 people (a nightmare of horror that I dimly remember), the attacks against our neighborhood escalated. Families started leaving, fearful for their children and believing it would be a temporary evacuation. By the time we left, hardly any of our friends remained. The increasing danger around us forced my parents to leave. We took nothing with us, convinced it would not be long before we returned.
Terrible as this was when I look back, at least our street and our house still stand today. They were taken over by Jewish settlers and underwent various changes, but they largely remain. Yet I do not know which is worse: the hundreds of Palestinian villages Israel wiped out after 1948 and whose previous inhabitants can only hope to find through faded memories; the dozen villages left such as Lifta, still standing but ruined and depopulated; or, as in my case, my house being in the possession of strangers (New York Times correspondent Ethan Bronner lives in an upper story added on later), who do not recognize my history or my right to my family home.
On setting up its state in 1948, Israel set about demolishing every vestige of Palestinian life and history in the land. The physical destruction of the villages, the replacing of Palestinian names with Hebrew ones and the wholesale takeover of Palestinian culture, whether in food -- "Israeli falafel" -- or in the traditional Arab dabke dance, renamed the Israeli "hora," were all aimed at making the world forget there had ever been anyone other than Jews in the Holy Land.
Through the work of Israeli filmmaker Benny Brunner, I have discovered another refinement of this cultural theft: the takeover of private Palestinian book collections, including ours. After 1948, Israeli officials took what books they found from abandoned Palestinian homes. Tens of thousands were looted in this way. Some of them remain in the Israeli National Library today, designated abandoned property. Brunner is currently making a film of this, "The Great Book Robbery."
Palestinians have never accepted our enforced oblivion. We are fighting to tell our history, win a future of political freedom and secure the return of refugees forced from their homes and never allowed to return. For these reasons, the battle to preserve Lifta must be won -- its remains a physical memorial of injustice and survival.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Palestinian Refugees Act to Save Jerusalem’s Lifta Village from Destruction
Tuesday, 29 March 2011 16:35 Shadi Rohana, Alternative Information Center (AIC)
“This is not just a construction plan- they want to erase our memory,” architect and Lifta refugee Nasser Abu-Lel told local and international media today [29 March] in East Jerusalem regarding the Israel Land Administration’s plan to build a luxurious residential and commercial zone on the remains of his village in West Jerusalem.
“The Israeli plan targets what remains of the houses we were forced to leave in the Nakba of 1948; the stones and walls that echo the daily life of our own parents, before the Zionist gangs forced them to leave.”
The proposed decade-long project, which the Israeli Land Administration now wishes to implement (plan number 6036), was issued following Jerusalem Municipal approval of the construction of 268 housing units, one hotel and a number of community institutions on the site of the Palestinian village of Lifta. Following the court petition to save Lifta that was submitted by various organizations Lifta refugees on 6 March, the Israeli court issued a temporary injunction on selling lots on the site.
The press conference this morning to protest the plan was organized by the Sons of Lifta Society, an organization that gathers refugees from Lifta and their descendents in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Speakers at the conference included the Mufti of Jerusalem Muhammad Hussein, Fatah’s Jerusalem Affairs Liaison Hatim abd al-Qader, representatives from the Sons of Lifta Society and refugees from the village, as well as Attorney Sami Arshid, who represented Lifta refugees and other organizations at court.
Arshid told reporters that his petition to the court was the culmination of work done on the ground by various Palestinian and Israeli organizations, architects, planners and other individuals since approval of the plan by the Jerusalem Municipality. “Our goal was modest and simple,” Arshid said, “we claimed in court that these lands and house have owners and they are still alive, whether in East Jerusalem and the West Bank or in exile, and that if Israeli law prevents them from fulfilling their property rights at this moment, this should not mean that the law is to consider their property rights as gone forever.”
Regarding the decision to go to an Israeli court to prevent the demolition of Lifta, Arshid said: “the decision was not easy. The Israeli law regards Lifta’s lands and buildings as ‘absentee property,’ something Palestinian refugees everywhere cannot accept. However, we managed to overcome this challenge by basing our demands on historic property rights.”
Yacoub Odeh from the Land Research Center and himself a refugee from Lifta, spoke about the measures already taken to save his village. According to Odeh, Lifta refugees in Palestine and exile are already contacting international bodies, including UNESCO, the EU and UNRWA, calling on them to protect Lifta’s land and houses. “It is our right to return to our land, rebuild our village and plant trees for the next generations, not those who wish to come here from abroad to build villas and hotels on our land. We will continue to hold on to our right as people of Lifta and as Palestinians; we are an integral part of the Palestinian people and Lifta is an integral part of Palestine.”
Tuesday, 29 March 2011 16:35 Shadi Rohana, Alternative Information Center (AIC)
“This is not just a construction plan- they want to erase our memory,” architect and Lifta refugee Nasser Abu-Lel told local and international media today [29 March] in East Jerusalem regarding the Israel Land Administration’s plan to build a luxurious residential and commercial zone on the remains of his village in West Jerusalem.
“The Israeli plan targets what remains of the houses we were forced to leave in the Nakba of 1948; the stones and walls that echo the daily life of our own parents, before the Zionist gangs forced them to leave.”
The proposed decade-long project, which the Israeli Land Administration now wishes to implement (plan number 6036), was issued following Jerusalem Municipal approval of the construction of 268 housing units, one hotel and a number of community institutions on the site of the Palestinian village of Lifta. Following the court petition to save Lifta that was submitted by various organizations Lifta refugees on 6 March, the Israeli court issued a temporary injunction on selling lots on the site.
The press conference this morning to protest the plan was organized by the Sons of Lifta Society, an organization that gathers refugees from Lifta and their descendents in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Speakers at the conference included the Mufti of Jerusalem Muhammad Hussein, Fatah’s Jerusalem Affairs Liaison Hatim abd al-Qader, representatives from the Sons of Lifta Society and refugees from the village, as well as Attorney Sami Arshid, who represented Lifta refugees and other organizations at court.
Arshid told reporters that his petition to the court was the culmination of work done on the ground by various Palestinian and Israeli organizations, architects, planners and other individuals since approval of the plan by the Jerusalem Municipality. “Our goal was modest and simple,” Arshid said, “we claimed in court that these lands and house have owners and they are still alive, whether in East Jerusalem and the West Bank or in exile, and that if Israeli law prevents them from fulfilling their property rights at this moment, this should not mean that the law is to consider their property rights as gone forever.”
Regarding the decision to go to an Israeli court to prevent the demolition of Lifta, Arshid said: “the decision was not easy. The Israeli law regards Lifta’s lands and buildings as ‘absentee property,’ something Palestinian refugees everywhere cannot accept. However, we managed to overcome this challenge by basing our demands on historic property rights.”
Yacoub Odeh from the Land Research Center and himself a refugee from Lifta, spoke about the measures already taken to save his village. According to Odeh, Lifta refugees in Palestine and exile are already contacting international bodies, including UNESCO, the EU and UNRWA, calling on them to protect Lifta’s land and houses. “It is our right to return to our land, rebuild our village and plant trees for the next generations, not those who wish to come here from abroad to build villas and hotels on our land. We will continue to hold on to our right as people of Lifta and as Palestinians; we are an integral part of the Palestinian people and Lifta is an integral part of Palestine.”
Sunday, March 27, 2011
The Lifta society is organizing a press conference on Tuesday 29th about the current situation on Lifta. As well as a march to Lifta on the 1st of April.
Press Conference:
Date: Tuesday 29/03/2011
Location: Ambassador Hotel - Sheikh Jarrah
24 March 2011
A court case is pending concerning the future of Lifta, a Palestinian village which is located both in West and East Jerusalem. Lifta has been targeted by the Israeli Land Authority for the development of a Jewish luxury residential/commercial neighbourhood. The plan will lead to the destruction of the place. The court ruling will decide whether the refugees of Lifta, who were forced to the leave the village in 1948, can keep their property, heritage, culture and memory. The people of Lifta have obtained a freeze on the processing the call for tender, through a petition, to the central court.
On the 6th March, Attorney Sami Arshid submitted a petition on behalf of Lifta Society and Jerusalem activists and Urban planners to object to the unlawful sale of the property of the Lifta refugees to the private sector. On Monday the 7th, Israeli Judge Yigal Marzel issued a temporary injunction ordering the Israeli Land Administration to freeze publication of the results of the tender to sell off plots of land. If these plots do get sold off new construction begins it will be impossible to preserve the history, heritage and culture of the people which will be lost forever under a wave of new construction.
A whole village is running the risk of losing its property and the people of Lifta need as much support as possible in order to save the village and raise the profile of their case and prevent the loss of their village forever.
Lifta Society
Cell phone no: 0522 872840
Press Conference:
Date: Tuesday 29/03/2011
Location: Ambassador Hotel - Sheikh Jarrah
24 March 2011
A court case is pending concerning the future of Lifta, a Palestinian village which is located both in West and East Jerusalem. Lifta has been targeted by the Israeli Land Authority for the development of a Jewish luxury residential/commercial neighbourhood. The plan will lead to the destruction of the place. The court ruling will decide whether the refugees of Lifta, who were forced to the leave the village in 1948, can keep their property, heritage, culture and memory. The people of Lifta have obtained a freeze on the processing the call for tender, through a petition, to the central court.
On the 6th March, Attorney Sami Arshid submitted a petition on behalf of Lifta Society and Jerusalem activists and Urban planners to object to the unlawful sale of the property of the Lifta refugees to the private sector. On Monday the 7th, Israeli Judge Yigal Marzel issued a temporary injunction ordering the Israeli Land Administration to freeze publication of the results of the tender to sell off plots of land. If these plots do get sold off new construction begins it will be impossible to preserve the history, heritage and culture of the people which will be lost forever under a wave of new construction.
A whole village is running the risk of losing its property and the people of Lifta need as much support as possible in order to save the village and raise the profile of their case and prevent the loss of their village forever.
Lifta Society
Cell phone no: 0522 872840
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Erasing Palestine from Lifta
Sophie O’Brien reports on the judaization of Lifta, the last remaining Palestinian village inside the Green Line - Palestine Monitor,19 March 2011
The Israel Land Administration (ILA) has put a plan in place which would see land in the village of Lifta, a former Palestinian village situated on the north-west edge of Jerusalem sold to private developers. A plan which would see Palestinian history completely stripped from the village.
The ILA plan calls for amongst other things, the building of 212 housing units exclusively for Jews, a luxury hotel, a shopping mall and a museum. In objection to these building plans, a large petition has been signed by various activists, NGO’s and descendents of Lifta and submitted by Attorney Sami Arshid. As a result of this petition a temporary injunction was issued by Judge Yigal Marzel on the 7th of March ordering the ILA to freeze publication of results for tender which would see plots of land sold off to these private developers.
Over 500 Arab villages were depopulated or demolished during the 1948 war by the ruthless colonial Zionist forces. Lifta is an exception in this respect as it is ‘The only village which remains as it was before 1948,’ Daphna Golan asserts, a Professor of Law at the Hebrew University and organiser of the petition to save Lifta. Whilst on the surface the plan is sold as a rejuvenation project bringing life to an otherwise ‘abandoned’ village, Golan is adamant that it is primarily a political venture. ‘It is a building plan geared towards erasing the past,’ she asserts. In other words, serving to continue the process of judaization of the land, a policy which aims to eradicate Palestinian history, memory and presence.
Most of the original buildings and houses still remain somewhat intact in Lifta, a village which dates back to biblical times. For Yacoub Odeh, a former Lifta resident, a human rights activist and a central figure in the Save Lifta campaign, this is bitter sweet. He speaks of his memories of living in Lifta with great fondness. It is tainted however with the reality that he no longer has any right to live in the village from which he was forcefully removed by the pre-state Zionist terrorist gangs working under the auspices of the Zionist movement. ‘I remember the bakery where I went with my mother to eat bread with olive oil and zatar, it was delicious…I will never forgive those who stole our history and our memory,’ he says.
Lifta was one of the first villages occupied before the 1948 war and the creation of the Israeli state. Its proximity to Jerusalem meant that it was of great strategic importance to the Zionist movement; Yacoub explain, ‘Whoever controlled Lifta controlled Jerusalem.’ In refutation of Zionist claims that depict the pre-state Zionist movement as a heroic, pioneering enterprise, Yacoub describes how the Muslim and Christian inhabitants of Lifta were evicted from their homes through the use of brutal, racist tactics. ‘They bombed the homes of twenty people…but the Jews were allowed to stay.’ The terrorising of the Muslim and Christian inhabitants of the village ‘achieved the Zionist goal of ethnic cleansing,’ Yacoub continued. After 1967, Jewish immigrants were moved into the houses of those who had been forcefully removed. It is the descendents of these families who remain the sole inhabitants of Lifta today.
The ILA plan to redevelop the village of Lifta is symbolic for the reason that it nullifies the possibility of the Palestinian refugees who once lived there of ever returning to their homes. For Yacoub, this is the greatest injustice. The Israeli Law of return grants Jews from around the world the possibility to ‘return’ to their ‘homeland’ and gain citizenship. The original inhabitants of Lifta are, however, not awarded with this option, ‘I was evicted from my house 63 years ago and I don’t have the right to return,’ Yacoub said.
Successive Israeli governments have to date managed to maintain an unstable status quo whereby all the so-called ‘final status’ issues have been left up in the air. Yacoub asserts that the right of return is prerequisite for peace, ‘Without the right of return, there will be more killing and more blood.’
Further evidence that the ILA plans are aimed at seizing the identity and completing the Judaization process of the last remaining Palestinian village can be seen in the details. There are plans to build a museum which Yacoub asserts will showcase a purely Jewish recollection of the history of Lifta, ‘Surely it will not mention the Palestinian people; they see with one eye only.’
Furthermore, the cemetery where many former Palestinian residents of Lifta have been buried has been designated as public land in the plan, thus creating the possibility that it may in the future be removed for the purposes of further building.
The village of Lifta is significant for the reason that it reminds us of a time when Muslims, Christians and Jews lived harmoniously on the land. In this sense, Golan asserts that ‘It should be used as a place where Jews and Arabs can meet to acknowledge their shared history.’ If the ILA plans are approved, it will therefore be removing a powerful symbol of reconciliation. More ominously, the ILA plans which are portrayed as being devoid of any political significance are in fact a painful reminder that the colonial Zionist enterprise is still thriving.
Sophie O’Brien reports on the judaization of Lifta, the last remaining Palestinian village inside the Green Line - Palestine Monitor,19 March 2011
The Israel Land Administration (ILA) has put a plan in place which would see land in the village of Lifta, a former Palestinian village situated on the north-west edge of Jerusalem sold to private developers. A plan which would see Palestinian history completely stripped from the village.
The ILA plan calls for amongst other things, the building of 212 housing units exclusively for Jews, a luxury hotel, a shopping mall and a museum. In objection to these building plans, a large petition has been signed by various activists, NGO’s and descendents of Lifta and submitted by Attorney Sami Arshid. As a result of this petition a temporary injunction was issued by Judge Yigal Marzel on the 7th of March ordering the ILA to freeze publication of results for tender which would see plots of land sold off to these private developers.
Over 500 Arab villages were depopulated or demolished during the 1948 war by the ruthless colonial Zionist forces. Lifta is an exception in this respect as it is ‘The only village which remains as it was before 1948,’ Daphna Golan asserts, a Professor of Law at the Hebrew University and organiser of the petition to save Lifta. Whilst on the surface the plan is sold as a rejuvenation project bringing life to an otherwise ‘abandoned’ village, Golan is adamant that it is primarily a political venture. ‘It is a building plan geared towards erasing the past,’ she asserts. In other words, serving to continue the process of judaization of the land, a policy which aims to eradicate Palestinian history, memory and presence.
Most of the original buildings and houses still remain somewhat intact in Lifta, a village which dates back to biblical times. For Yacoub Odeh, a former Lifta resident, a human rights activist and a central figure in the Save Lifta campaign, this is bitter sweet. He speaks of his memories of living in Lifta with great fondness. It is tainted however with the reality that he no longer has any right to live in the village from which he was forcefully removed by the pre-state Zionist terrorist gangs working under the auspices of the Zionist movement. ‘I remember the bakery where I went with my mother to eat bread with olive oil and zatar, it was delicious…I will never forgive those who stole our history and our memory,’ he says.
Lifta was one of the first villages occupied before the 1948 war and the creation of the Israeli state. Its proximity to Jerusalem meant that it was of great strategic importance to the Zionist movement; Yacoub explain, ‘Whoever controlled Lifta controlled Jerusalem.’ In refutation of Zionist claims that depict the pre-state Zionist movement as a heroic, pioneering enterprise, Yacoub describes how the Muslim and Christian inhabitants of Lifta were evicted from their homes through the use of brutal, racist tactics. ‘They bombed the homes of twenty people…but the Jews were allowed to stay.’ The terrorising of the Muslim and Christian inhabitants of the village ‘achieved the Zionist goal of ethnic cleansing,’ Yacoub continued. After 1967, Jewish immigrants were moved into the houses of those who had been forcefully removed. It is the descendents of these families who remain the sole inhabitants of Lifta today.
The ILA plan to redevelop the village of Lifta is symbolic for the reason that it nullifies the possibility of the Palestinian refugees who once lived there of ever returning to their homes. For Yacoub, this is the greatest injustice. The Israeli Law of return grants Jews from around the world the possibility to ‘return’ to their ‘homeland’ and gain citizenship. The original inhabitants of Lifta are, however, not awarded with this option, ‘I was evicted from my house 63 years ago and I don’t have the right to return,’ Yacoub said.
Successive Israeli governments have to date managed to maintain an unstable status quo whereby all the so-called ‘final status’ issues have been left up in the air. Yacoub asserts that the right of return is prerequisite for peace, ‘Without the right of return, there will be more killing and more blood.’
Further evidence that the ILA plans are aimed at seizing the identity and completing the Judaization process of the last remaining Palestinian village can be seen in the details. There are plans to build a museum which Yacoub asserts will showcase a purely Jewish recollection of the history of Lifta, ‘Surely it will not mention the Palestinian people; they see with one eye only.’
Furthermore, the cemetery where many former Palestinian residents of Lifta have been buried has been designated as public land in the plan, thus creating the possibility that it may in the future be removed for the purposes of further building.
The village of Lifta is significant for the reason that it reminds us of a time when Muslims, Christians and Jews lived harmoniously on the land. In this sense, Golan asserts that ‘It should be used as a place where Jews and Arabs can meet to acknowledge their shared history.’ If the ILA plans are approved, it will therefore be removing a powerful symbol of reconciliation. More ominously, the ILA plans which are portrayed as being devoid of any political significance are in fact a painful reminder that the colonial Zionist enterprise is still thriving.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Desendants of Lifta visit their ancentral home in protest to the impending crisis facing this place
On Friday 18th March, a large group of descendants of Lifta, consisting of three generations - young and old, made their way to their ancentral home. A visit, that cannot have been easy to make for many of them who now reside in east Jerusalem and beyond, was a stand of defiance by the descendants against the decision by the Israeli Land Administation to sell of the remaining lands of Lifta to private developers and proceed with the new development plan 6036. A development plan that will ultimately erase the connection between these people and the landscape that is still a visible and formidable sign of their connection to these lands. The occasion of the protest, as shown through these pictures, can only have been monumental for these people as well as a moving occasion - to be able to recount the memories of one's house or of the village way of life, showing respect to the ancestors by clearing the cemetry of wild-overgrown weeds and bushes; experiences that will remain treasured and eternally remembered. Nevertheless a stand of defiance that will continue on throughout this current on-going situation.
On Friday 18th March, a large group of descendants of Lifta, consisting of three generations - young and old, made their way to their ancentral home. A visit, that cannot have been easy to make for many of them who now reside in east Jerusalem and beyond, was a stand of defiance by the descendants against the decision by the Israeli Land Administation to sell of the remaining lands of Lifta to private developers and proceed with the new development plan 6036. A development plan that will ultimately erase the connection between these people and the landscape that is still a visible and formidable sign of their connection to these lands. The occasion of the protest, as shown through these pictures, can only have been monumental for these people as well as a moving occasion - to be able to recount the memories of one's house or of the village way of life, showing respect to the ancestors by clearing the cemetry of wild-overgrown weeds and bushes; experiences that will remain treasured and eternally remembered. Nevertheless a stand of defiance that will continue on throughout this current on-going situation.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Plans for Lifta luxury housing project temporarily halted
By Melanie Lidman - Jeusalem Post 03/09/2011
Activists want to finish historical surveys before developers buy land.
A planned luxury housing complex in the historic Arab village of Lifta at the entrance to Jerusalem was temporarily halted on Monday after the Jerusalem District Court ordered the Israel Lands Authority ordered to freeze the published tenders.
A coalition of architects, activists, and former Lifta residents petitioned the courts to halt the project until archeological surveys are finished.
The project, which was approved by the Jerusalem Municipality and the Interior Ministry’s planning committees, calls for 212 luxury apartment villas, a hotel, and a network of roads and infrastructure to support the new neighborhood.
In January, the ILA published a tender for the project, which allows private contractors to bid.
The scenic area is famous for the old stone buildings that are visible from the western entrance to Jerusalem, which were built into the steep hillside by Arab residents in the 19th century.
The petition, filed by former Lifta residents, Rabbis for Human Rights, and Jafra, a Palestinian heritage organization, calls for the courts to freeze the bidding process and the transfer of the public assets into private hands. The court granted a temporary freeze until the project goes to trial to determine if the ILA can go ahead with the bidding process.
“The problem is that the contractors are supposed to be responsible for documentation, and preservation is something that’s very far away from their interests,” said architect Shmuel Groag, a professor of architecture at Bezalel who focuses on building preservation.
Groag was part of a group of architects that had started creating a plan for the Lifta area, which has been under consideration for development for the past 20 years.
Groag added that the process of documenting the village for historical and planning purposes was never completed, though the Israel Antiquities Authority offered to document the area. The state was reluctant to pay, said Groag, and mandated that the contractor that won the bid be required to do the documentation.
“If one of the contractors destroys something inside, no one will know, because no one knows what’s inside of them,” said Groag.
“To try and take shortcuts in the planning processes in a place that’s so sensitive and emotional will no doubt damage the preservation of Lifta,” he added.
The Society for the Protection of Nature and the Society for Preservation of Israeli Heritage Sites, however, said they had no opposition to the project, a popular hiking destination for Jerusalem residents.
“What’s happening now is the houses are getting destroyed by the passage of time,” said Isaac Schweky, the head of the Society for the Preservation of Israeli Heritage Sites.
“[The petitioners] asked us to join but I told them I’m not going to join them. If we don’t build there, won’t be anything left,” he said.
Schweky pointed out that since the area became a haven for drug dealers and prostitutes, the houses have deteriorated faster than ever. Some of the stones have been stolen, causing the buildings to crumble.
The only way to save Lifta, he believes, is to develop it.
But the petitioners claim that in addition to the environmental and historical problems the development project could create, there are political problems as well. Lifta was abandoned by its Arab residents in 1948, and is one of the only such Arab villages that was not destroyed or inhabited by Jews after the War of Independence.
“It’s an issue of how do we see our future. Do we see our future erasing the Arab side, or a future of reconciliation?” asked Daphna Golan, a lecturer at Hebrew University in human rights, who organized the various groups to file the petition.
“We should discuss these issues as opposed to erasing them. It’s part of our history, it’s part of our present. Rather than build housing for rich people, let’s keep it for future discussion for compensation.
We have to keep the past alive in order to have a dialogue.”
Attorney Sami Ershied, who filed the petition on behalf of the coalition of activists and residents, said he was “optimistic” that the courts would honor their request to halt the plan.
By Melanie Lidman - Jeusalem Post 03/09/2011
Activists want to finish historical surveys before developers buy land.
A planned luxury housing complex in the historic Arab village of Lifta at the entrance to Jerusalem was temporarily halted on Monday after the Jerusalem District Court ordered the Israel Lands Authority ordered to freeze the published tenders.
A coalition of architects, activists, and former Lifta residents petitioned the courts to halt the project until archeological surveys are finished.
The project, which was approved by the Jerusalem Municipality and the Interior Ministry’s planning committees, calls for 212 luxury apartment villas, a hotel, and a network of roads and infrastructure to support the new neighborhood.
In January, the ILA published a tender for the project, which allows private contractors to bid.
The scenic area is famous for the old stone buildings that are visible from the western entrance to Jerusalem, which were built into the steep hillside by Arab residents in the 19th century.
The petition, filed by former Lifta residents, Rabbis for Human Rights, and Jafra, a Palestinian heritage organization, calls for the courts to freeze the bidding process and the transfer of the public assets into private hands. The court granted a temporary freeze until the project goes to trial to determine if the ILA can go ahead with the bidding process.
“The problem is that the contractors are supposed to be responsible for documentation, and preservation is something that’s very far away from their interests,” said architect Shmuel Groag, a professor of architecture at Bezalel who focuses on building preservation.
Groag was part of a group of architects that had started creating a plan for the Lifta area, which has been under consideration for development for the past 20 years.
Groag added that the process of documenting the village for historical and planning purposes was never completed, though the Israel Antiquities Authority offered to document the area. The state was reluctant to pay, said Groag, and mandated that the contractor that won the bid be required to do the documentation.
“If one of the contractors destroys something inside, no one will know, because no one knows what’s inside of them,” said Groag.
“To try and take shortcuts in the planning processes in a place that’s so sensitive and emotional will no doubt damage the preservation of Lifta,” he added.
The Society for the Protection of Nature and the Society for Preservation of Israeli Heritage Sites, however, said they had no opposition to the project, a popular hiking destination for Jerusalem residents.
“What’s happening now is the houses are getting destroyed by the passage of time,” said Isaac Schweky, the head of the Society for the Preservation of Israeli Heritage Sites.
“[The petitioners] asked us to join but I told them I’m not going to join them. If we don’t build there, won’t be anything left,” he said.
Schweky pointed out that since the area became a haven for drug dealers and prostitutes, the houses have deteriorated faster than ever. Some of the stones have been stolen, causing the buildings to crumble.
The only way to save Lifta, he believes, is to develop it.
But the petitioners claim that in addition to the environmental and historical problems the development project could create, there are political problems as well. Lifta was abandoned by its Arab residents in 1948, and is one of the only such Arab villages that was not destroyed or inhabited by Jews after the War of Independence.
“It’s an issue of how do we see our future. Do we see our future erasing the Arab side, or a future of reconciliation?” asked Daphna Golan, a lecturer at Hebrew University in human rights, who organized the various groups to file the petition.
“We should discuss these issues as opposed to erasing them. It’s part of our history, it’s part of our present. Rather than build housing for rich people, let’s keep it for future discussion for compensation.
We have to keep the past alive in order to have a dialogue.”
Attorney Sami Ershied, who filed the petition on behalf of the coalition of activists and residents, said he was “optimistic” that the courts would honor their request to halt the plan.
Wednesday, March 09, 2011
Saturday, 12 March 2011, beginning at 10:00, in the Lifta parking lot in the city entrance, Ramot Road.
For detailed directions:
Rimmon Lavi 0548020576
Daphna Golan 0548820698
...
We will meet in order to clean and preserve the village for future generations.
The village of Lifta is the last surviving Arab village of its kind, the rest having been destroyed after 1948. It is the only village that can be preserved as a witness to traditional forms of architecture and argiculture that have otherwise almost completely disappeared.
Like hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who left their homes during the war of 1948, and who have never been allowed to return to their villages, the original inhabitants of Lifta have never been allowed to return to their village. Many of them live today in East Jerusalem, but are not included, like most of us – inhabitants of Jerusalem, experts in preservation, and others – in the process of planning intended for the village.
Stop the destruction of Lifta! Stop the construction of yet another memory-effacing site of luxury and leisure!
Come with broom and trash bag, and join the cleaning and preservation of Lifta, together with the original inhabitants – today refugees – of Lifta.
For more information about the event, contact Daphna Golan 0548820698
For support, action, and donations – Ilan Shtayer, 0545-69-20-89, ilan@makinghistory.co.il
نحافظ على لفتا
يوم السبت 12 مارس آذار 2011, في تمام الساعة العاشرة صباحاً
نلتقي لكي ننظف القرية ونحفظها للأجيال القادمة
قرية لفتا هي آخر شاهد على القرى العربية التي هدمت ما بعد ال 1948 , وهي القرية الوحيدة التي يمكن الحفاظ على ما تبقى منها كشاهد على أسلوب البناء والزراعة التقليدية التي تكاد تكون امّحت
على غرار آلاف الفلسطينيين الذين تركوا منازلهم خلال حرب ال- 1948 ولم يسمح لهم بالعودة إليها, هكذا سكان لفتا, لم بسمح لهم بالعودة إلى قريتهم, ويسكن العديد منهم اليوم في القدس الشرقية دون أن يكون لهم رأي أو قول في عملية إعادة التخطيط لبلدتهم, شأنهم في ذلك شأن العديد من سكان القدس وخبراء الترميم وغيرهم.
أوقفوا عملية البناء – لفتا لن تكون "هوليلاند" الثانية
تعالوا مع مكانسكم وأكياس النفايات وانضموا الينا لتنظيف القرية وترميمها والحفاظ عليها, جنباً إلى جنب مع أهل لفتا ولاجئيها
للدعم أو النشاطات أو التبرعات – أيلان شطاير, 0545-69-20-89 , ialan@makinghistory.co.il
للمزيد من المعلومات:
عطاء دائرة أراضي إسرائيل ים/405/2010 بموجب תב"ע 6036 للفتا
رَ تقارير مهنية: נספח ארכיאולוגי - רשות העתיקות -סקר אורבאני ראשוני של מינהל השימור ברשות.
من الصحافة: רגע לפני שהשקדיות ייעלמו (دفنا جولان, هآرتس)
שומרים על ליפתא
ביום שבת 12 מארס 2011 מהשעה 10.00
נפגש כדי לנקות ולשמר את הכפר למען הדורות הבאים
הכפר ליפתא הוא העדות האחרונה לכפרים הערבים שנהרסו אחרי 1948, והוא הכפר היחיד שניתן לשמר כעדות לבנייה וחקלאות מסורתית שכמעט נעלמה.
כמו מאות אלפי פלסטינים שעזבו את בתיהם במהלך המלחמה ב 1948 ומעולם לא הורשו לחזור, גם תושבי ליפתא מעולם לא הורשו לחזור לכפרם - ורבים מהם חיים היום בירושלים המזרחית אך לא שותפים כמו רובנו תושבי ירושלים, מומחי שימור ואחרים בתהליך התכנון המחודש של הכפר.
עצרו את הבנייה -ליפתא לא תהייה הולילנד שנייה.
בואו עם מטאטא ועם שקית לאשפה והצטרפו לפעילות לניקיון ושימור הכפר ליפתא יחד עם ילידי ופליטי ליפתא
לתמיכה, לפעולה ולתרומות – אילן שטייר, 0545-69-20-89, ilan@makinghistory.co.il
למידע נוסף:
מכרז מינהל מקרקעי ישראל ים/405/2010 על פי תב"ע 6036 לליפתא.
דוחות מקצועיים עיינו: נספח ארכיאולוגי - רשות העתיקות -סקר אורבאני ראשוני של מינהל השימור ברשות.
מן העיתונות: רגע לפני שהשקדיות ייעלמו (דפנה גולן, הארץ)
לפרטים והרשמה
דפנה 0548820698
רימון לביא 0548020576
For detailed directions:
Rimmon Lavi 0548020576
Daphna Golan 0548820698
...
We will meet in order to clean and preserve the village for future generations.
The village of Lifta is the last surviving Arab village of its kind, the rest having been destroyed after 1948. It is the only village that can be preserved as a witness to traditional forms of architecture and argiculture that have otherwise almost completely disappeared.
Like hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who left their homes during the war of 1948, and who have never been allowed to return to their villages, the original inhabitants of Lifta have never been allowed to return to their village. Many of them live today in East Jerusalem, but are not included, like most of us – inhabitants of Jerusalem, experts in preservation, and others – in the process of planning intended for the village.
Stop the destruction of Lifta! Stop the construction of yet another memory-effacing site of luxury and leisure!
Come with broom and trash bag, and join the cleaning and preservation of Lifta, together with the original inhabitants – today refugees – of Lifta.
For more information about the event, contact Daphna Golan 0548820698
For support, action, and donations – Ilan Shtayer, 0545-69-20-89, ilan@makinghistory.co.il
نحافظ على لفتا
يوم السبت 12 مارس آذار 2011, في تمام الساعة العاشرة صباحاً
نلتقي لكي ننظف القرية ونحفظها للأجيال القادمة
قرية لفتا هي آخر شاهد على القرى العربية التي هدمت ما بعد ال 1948 , وهي القرية الوحيدة التي يمكن الحفاظ على ما تبقى منها كشاهد على أسلوب البناء والزراعة التقليدية التي تكاد تكون امّحت
على غرار آلاف الفلسطينيين الذين تركوا منازلهم خلال حرب ال- 1948 ولم يسمح لهم بالعودة إليها, هكذا سكان لفتا, لم بسمح لهم بالعودة إلى قريتهم, ويسكن العديد منهم اليوم في القدس الشرقية دون أن يكون لهم رأي أو قول في عملية إعادة التخطيط لبلدتهم, شأنهم في ذلك شأن العديد من سكان القدس وخبراء الترميم وغيرهم.
أوقفوا عملية البناء – لفتا لن تكون "هوليلاند" الثانية
تعالوا مع مكانسكم وأكياس النفايات وانضموا الينا لتنظيف القرية وترميمها والحفاظ عليها, جنباً إلى جنب مع أهل لفتا ولاجئيها
للدعم أو النشاطات أو التبرعات – أيلان شطاير, 0545-69-20-89 , ialan@makinghistory.co.il
للمزيد من المعلومات:
عطاء دائرة أراضي إسرائيل ים/405/2010 بموجب תב"ע 6036 للفتا
رَ تقارير مهنية: נספח ארכיאולוגי - רשות העתיקות -סקר אורבאני ראשוני של מינהל השימור ברשות.
من الصحافة: רגע לפני שהשקדיות ייעלמו (دفنا جولان, هآرتس)
שומרים על ליפתא
ביום שבת 12 מארס 2011 מהשעה 10.00
נפגש כדי לנקות ולשמר את הכפר למען הדורות הבאים
הכפר ליפתא הוא העדות האחרונה לכפרים הערבים שנהרסו אחרי 1948, והוא הכפר היחיד שניתן לשמר כעדות לבנייה וחקלאות מסורתית שכמעט נעלמה.
כמו מאות אלפי פלסטינים שעזבו את בתיהם במהלך המלחמה ב 1948 ומעולם לא הורשו לחזור, גם תושבי ליפתא מעולם לא הורשו לחזור לכפרם - ורבים מהם חיים היום בירושלים המזרחית אך לא שותפים כמו רובנו תושבי ירושלים, מומחי שימור ואחרים בתהליך התכנון המחודש של הכפר.
עצרו את הבנייה -ליפתא לא תהייה הולילנד שנייה.
בואו עם מטאטא ועם שקית לאשפה והצטרפו לפעילות לניקיון ושימור הכפר ליפתא יחד עם ילידי ופליטי ליפתא
לתמיכה, לפעולה ולתרומות – אילן שטייר, 0545-69-20-89, ilan@makinghistory.co.il
למידע נוסף:
מכרז מינהל מקרקעי ישראל ים/405/2010 על פי תב"ע 6036 לליפתא.
דוחות מקצועיים עיינו: נספח ארכיאולוגי - רשות העתיקות -סקר אורבאני ראשוני של מינהל השימור ברשות.
מן העיתונות: רגע לפני שהשקדיות ייעלמו (דפנה גולן, הארץ)
לפרטים והרשמה
דפנה 0548820698
רימון לביא 0548020576
Tuesday, March 08, 2011
7 March 2011
Press Release
Temporary Injunction Issued against Tender for Building Plots in Lifta Village Coalition to Save Lifta
Administrative Petition: 8661-03-11
Following a petition submitted yesterday (6 March), Judge Yigal Marzel issued a temporary injunction today ordering the Israel Land Administration to freeze publication of the results of a tender to lease plots for building in the village of Lifta. The petition was submitted by Attorney Sami Arshid on behalf of Jerusalem activists, including descendents of Lifta, the Bnei Lifta Association, Rabbis for Human Rights and the Jafra Association.
In their petition against the Israel Land Administration, the petitioners requested court intervention to prevent the transfer of assets and property in Lifta to private hands for the establishment of an exclusive real estate project and to halt destruction of the village, which represents a final testimony to the Arab villages and culture of scenery that were widespread in Israel throughout history until the early 20th century.
According to the petitioners, “in the given situation and according to which the village of Lifta is an abandoned village and its original inhabitants live as refugees at a distance of only a few hundred metres from their village, it would have been befitting to abstain from all construction in the area and certainly to prevent building that would result in destruction of the village and the complete dispossession of the rights of the original inhabitants of the place”. The petitioners further write that the “marketing of plots for building in the village of Lifta and furthermore the construction of new buildings on the village lands and in place of the existing village could thwart the ability to preserve the existing village and foil any possibility of reconstructing the historic structure of the village, and everything that is derived from this.”
The petitioners requested that the court order an annulment of the tender to sell plots in Lifta and order the Israel Land Administration to desist from any action that would damage the physical and cultural heritage of the place, until an inclusive planning process is completed that includes the area of Lifta, and which will include planning for preservation of the site in accordance with professional standards and with public participation.
A professional opinion of five senior architects and preservation and planning professionals in Israel was attached to the petition, concerning serious preservation defects in the tender. In the opinion it was determined that the ILA tender does not meet the preservation criteria accepted in Israel and throughout the world, and that full data does not exist that would permit the marketing of the plots and issuance of building permits. Authors of the opinion determine that the tender process must be frozen until completion of the detailed documentation of Lifta, preparation of a building and development plan and conclusion of a development agreement between the ILA and the Jerusalem Municipality.
For additional details:
Petitioners:
Dapha Golan: 054 8820698;
Yaacoub Odeh (from Lifta): 052 287 2840
Attorney Sami Arshid: 02 6231244
Professional opinion: Architect Shmuel Groag: 050 5922428
Press Release
Temporary Injunction Issued against Tender for Building Plots in Lifta Village Coalition to Save Lifta
Administrative Petition: 8661-03-11
Following a petition submitted yesterday (6 March), Judge Yigal Marzel issued a temporary injunction today ordering the Israel Land Administration to freeze publication of the results of a tender to lease plots for building in the village of Lifta. The petition was submitted by Attorney Sami Arshid on behalf of Jerusalem activists, including descendents of Lifta, the Bnei Lifta Association, Rabbis for Human Rights and the Jafra Association.
In their petition against the Israel Land Administration, the petitioners requested court intervention to prevent the transfer of assets and property in Lifta to private hands for the establishment of an exclusive real estate project and to halt destruction of the village, which represents a final testimony to the Arab villages and culture of scenery that were widespread in Israel throughout history until the early 20th century.
According to the petitioners, “in the given situation and according to which the village of Lifta is an abandoned village and its original inhabitants live as refugees at a distance of only a few hundred metres from their village, it would have been befitting to abstain from all construction in the area and certainly to prevent building that would result in destruction of the village and the complete dispossession of the rights of the original inhabitants of the place”. The petitioners further write that the “marketing of plots for building in the village of Lifta and furthermore the construction of new buildings on the village lands and in place of the existing village could thwart the ability to preserve the existing village and foil any possibility of reconstructing the historic structure of the village, and everything that is derived from this.”
The petitioners requested that the court order an annulment of the tender to sell plots in Lifta and order the Israel Land Administration to desist from any action that would damage the physical and cultural heritage of the place, until an inclusive planning process is completed that includes the area of Lifta, and which will include planning for preservation of the site in accordance with professional standards and with public participation.
A professional opinion of five senior architects and preservation and planning professionals in Israel was attached to the petition, concerning serious preservation defects in the tender. In the opinion it was determined that the ILA tender does not meet the preservation criteria accepted in Israel and throughout the world, and that full data does not exist that would permit the marketing of the plots and issuance of building permits. Authors of the opinion determine that the tender process must be frozen until completion of the detailed documentation of Lifta, preparation of a building and development plan and conclusion of a development agreement between the ILA and the Jerusalem Municipality.
For additional details:
Petitioners:
Dapha Golan: 054 8820698;
Yaacoub Odeh (from Lifta): 052 287 2840
Attorney Sami Arshid: 02 6231244
Professional opinion: Architect Shmuel Groag: 050 5922428
Monday, February 28, 2011
Before the almond trees disappear
We do not have to continue to obliterate the past of the Arabs who lived in this land. It would be better to acknowledge the pain of their loss and offer them peaceful coexistence.
By Daphna Golan, 27/02/11 - Haaretz.
In the abandoned village of Lifta, at the entrance to Jerusalem, the almond trees are blossoming, perhaps for the last time. The 50 or so abandoned stone homes, between the green terraces and the fruit trees, are about to be replaced by houses for wealthy foreigners that will be closed up for most of the year.
The Israel Lands Administration has begun marketing Lifta to private developers, without having first prepared a comprehensive preservation plan in accordance with the urban planning program approved for the site and without accounting for the reservations that were accepted by the Jerusalem District Planning and Building Committee.
The marketing campaign violates the Israel Antiquities Authority request to postpone construction until the completion of a comprehensive survey of the village's buildings, "in order to document this disappearing construction culture and pass it down to future generations." It also runs counter to the municipality's adoption last June of a policy designed to curb the flight of young people from the capital by providing affordable housing. The plans for the new development call for homes of from 190 to 300 square meters and development costs alone - not including the building plot - of NIS 500,000 to NIS 1 million.
Lifta is a small link in Jerusalem's shrinking green necklace, its extraordinarily beautiful terrace agriculture a reminder of an extinct cultural landscape. Its land is being divided up and marketed even though no caretaker has yet been assigned to see to the preservation of its springs and green spaces. Jerusalem's treasures are being privatized and given to well-connected developers, who become rich at the expense of the public and future generations.
The village could have symbolized the hope of reconciliation. Many former residents who fled and were driven out in 1948 live in East Jerusalem. The State of Israel obliterated over 400 Arab communities to built Jews-only kibbutzim, moshavim and cities. We do not have to continue to obliterate the past of the Arabs who lived in this land. It would be better to acknowledge the pain of their loss and offer them peaceful coexistence. Lifta allows us to ask the refugees how they see the future of their village. Lifta once had thousands of dunams, on which the Knesset, the Supreme Court, the Kiryat government complex, the central bus station and Hebrew University's Givat Ram campus were built. Now, with only 55 houses, a cemetery, a spring and a few dozen almond trees left, maybe it is time to ask what kind of neighborly relations we are building between Jews and Arabs. What is Israel offering to Yaqub and Sumaya and Zakariya, born and raised in Lifta? What are we, the Israelis who were raised on the denial of the Arab existence on this land, offering our own children?
Five minutes by foot from the Chorda Bridge, dozens of almond trees and hundreds of wildflowers bloom for perhaps the last time. Lifta, which did not become an exclusive artists village like Ein Karem or Ein Hod, stands in its unique desolation, with homes whose roofs were blasted off by the army.
Perhaps it is precisely at the feet of this giant Tower of Babel, that sparkles day and night, that the anemones will continue to blossom as they did last week. A small village, where Jews and Arabs will sit together in the cafe. One place where Israelis can acknowledge the misfortune of the Palestinian people, apologize and explore paths to future coexistence. Until peace is achieved we could ask the people of Lifta, many of whom are civil engineers, architects and contractors, to preserve the village and carry out minimal reinforcement of its homes while drawing up a blueprint for the future.
So long as there is no dialogue between Jews and Arabs in Jerusalem over the city's future, every new building plan is the destruction of hope. From the local zoning committee's recommendation on new construction in Sheikh Jarrah-Umm Haroun earlier this month to the Lifta plan, the trend of building on Palestinian land must stop. Jerusalemites protected Gazelle Valley; perhaps we can also preserve Lifta, in its present, green and beautiful state, for future generations?
We do not have to continue to obliterate the past of the Arabs who lived in this land. It would be better to acknowledge the pain of their loss and offer them peaceful coexistence.
By Daphna Golan, 27/02/11 - Haaretz.
In the abandoned village of Lifta, at the entrance to Jerusalem, the almond trees are blossoming, perhaps for the last time. The 50 or so abandoned stone homes, between the green terraces and the fruit trees, are about to be replaced by houses for wealthy foreigners that will be closed up for most of the year.
The Israel Lands Administration has begun marketing Lifta to private developers, without having first prepared a comprehensive preservation plan in accordance with the urban planning program approved for the site and without accounting for the reservations that were accepted by the Jerusalem District Planning and Building Committee.
The marketing campaign violates the Israel Antiquities Authority request to postpone construction until the completion of a comprehensive survey of the village's buildings, "in order to document this disappearing construction culture and pass it down to future generations." It also runs counter to the municipality's adoption last June of a policy designed to curb the flight of young people from the capital by providing affordable housing. The plans for the new development call for homes of from 190 to 300 square meters and development costs alone - not including the building plot - of NIS 500,000 to NIS 1 million.
Lifta is a small link in Jerusalem's shrinking green necklace, its extraordinarily beautiful terrace agriculture a reminder of an extinct cultural landscape. Its land is being divided up and marketed even though no caretaker has yet been assigned to see to the preservation of its springs and green spaces. Jerusalem's treasures are being privatized and given to well-connected developers, who become rich at the expense of the public and future generations.
The village could have symbolized the hope of reconciliation. Many former residents who fled and were driven out in 1948 live in East Jerusalem. The State of Israel obliterated over 400 Arab communities to built Jews-only kibbutzim, moshavim and cities. We do not have to continue to obliterate the past of the Arabs who lived in this land. It would be better to acknowledge the pain of their loss and offer them peaceful coexistence. Lifta allows us to ask the refugees how they see the future of their village. Lifta once had thousands of dunams, on which the Knesset, the Supreme Court, the Kiryat government complex, the central bus station and Hebrew University's Givat Ram campus were built. Now, with only 55 houses, a cemetery, a spring and a few dozen almond trees left, maybe it is time to ask what kind of neighborly relations we are building between Jews and Arabs. What is Israel offering to Yaqub and Sumaya and Zakariya, born and raised in Lifta? What are we, the Israelis who were raised on the denial of the Arab existence on this land, offering our own children?
Five minutes by foot from the Chorda Bridge, dozens of almond trees and hundreds of wildflowers bloom for perhaps the last time. Lifta, which did not become an exclusive artists village like Ein Karem or Ein Hod, stands in its unique desolation, with homes whose roofs were blasted off by the army.
Perhaps it is precisely at the feet of this giant Tower of Babel, that sparkles day and night, that the anemones will continue to blossom as they did last week. A small village, where Jews and Arabs will sit together in the cafe. One place where Israelis can acknowledge the misfortune of the Palestinian people, apologize and explore paths to future coexistence. Until peace is achieved we could ask the people of Lifta, many of whom are civil engineers, architects and contractors, to preserve the village and carry out minimal reinforcement of its homes while drawing up a blueprint for the future.
So long as there is no dialogue between Jews and Arabs in Jerusalem over the city's future, every new building plan is the destruction of hope. From the local zoning committee's recommendation on new construction in Sheikh Jarrah-Umm Haroun earlier this month to the Lifta plan, the trend of building on Palestinian land must stop. Jerusalemites protected Gazelle Valley; perhaps we can also preserve Lifta, in its present, green and beautiful state, for future generations?
Monday, February 21, 2011
Reclaiming Lifta
The fate of a desolate Arab village hangs in the balance.
By SETH J. FRANTZMAN - 17/02/11 The Jerusalem Post
For six years a proposal has been lying dormant in the planning department at Kikar Safra.
Plan 6036 was approved in 2005 to develop the land in Lifta, a deserted Arab village on the outskirts of Jerusalem. The planning maps and documents are kept in a large gray cardboard box.
There are a dozen of them printed on laminated poster-size sheets, detailing all aspects of the 212 luxury homes that the architects envision being built at the site. The plans incorporate the vestiges of the village, which include 55 historic buildings, preserving their facades and incorporating them into the new homes that will all be perched on the hillside overlooking the spring and stream below. The famous spring will be left intact.
Lifta is an exceptional environment, an entire ruined Arab village being reclaimed, slowly, by nature. For years Lifta was an oddity, clinging precariously to the hillsides near Route 1 that leads to Jerusalem. It became a hiking spot, a mikve for haredi youth and a hangout for drug users who sometimes squatted in the abandoned buildings.
The latest plans for Lifta were drawn up by architects Shlomo Aronson, Kobi Kartes and Shmuel Groag. Aronson was born in Haifa in 1936 and studied at the University of California, Berkeley and Harvard. An influential landscape architect, he has designed projects such as the new American Consulate and portions of Beit Guvrin archeological park, and he is the author of Making Peace with Land: Designing Israel’s Landscape.
Itzik Schweky, director of the Jerusalem district of the Council for the Preservation of Historic Sites, contends that the plan is a good one. “The plan now is better than what was… Without active preservation, the rocks will continue to be stolen, the building slowly degraded and ruined by visitors.”
But not everyone is so upbeat. Eitan Bronstein, spokesman for Zochrot, an organization dedicated to preserving the memory of Arab villages in Israel, is up in arms. “It looks like they mean business this time.
Soon they will destroy Lifta… The destruction plan – it shouldn’t be called a preservation or development plan – will not only ruin the landscape but also the memory of the place.”
Bronstein believes that the plan is not an innocent isolated case but part of a larger drama. “This is a message to the world that Israel has no interest in reconciliation… It is destroying relations with the Palestinians.”
He argues that the village should be redesigned along the lines of what has been called a “symbol of a shared future.” This would include cooperation with the descendants of the Palestinian families who once lived there, building a museum about them and transforming the site into a place with boutique hotels and where “Jewish and Arab high school and university students visit as part of their civics courses, studying the Palestinian narrative in local history.”
Bronstein adds, “We suggest [for now] not to touch it. We think it could be rebuilt for the refugees.”
Yacoub Odeh, a Palestinian human rights activist involved in the struggle for land and housing, recalls growing up in Lifta. “I remember exactly my classroom in the school. You entered from the west, and there was a big olive garden and rocks, and we used to play on them all the way home.”
Odeh was born in 1940 in Lifta, in the house closest to the spring. In 1947, after several villagers were killed in the initial stages of the war, he fled with the rest of the villagers. He worked in Kuwait for several years, and in east Jerusalem he was a teacher before 1967. “There were more than 3,000 of us in 1948; now we are more than 35,000 and we have charitable organizations in Jerusalem and Amman. Just in Jerusalem there are at least 5,000 of us living here with blue ID [Israeli] cards.”
Odeh is determined in his efforts to preserve the memory of his village and return to it. He visits as often as he can, sometimes two or three times a month. He is insistent on pointing out the injustice and ironies of the situation.
“The village that was not destroyed in the time of war should not be destroyed in a time of peace… To build on it means to destroy it. No one has the authority to sell its land nor to demolish, not to build on it. Leave it for the time being until the goal of return is realized.”
But what if the people from Lifta got together and bought the plots currently being sold under the plan, like Basher al-Masri wanted to do at Nof Zion? Odeh says that he would not consider purchasing his own house back.
Avi Margolin, a licensed tour guide, has frequented the site for seven years and is passionate about Lifta.
Sporting an Australian bush hat, he surveys Lifta from the pedestrian walkway that crosses Route 1. “It is a nice place to go, except that it attracts a very haredi crowd, unlike the other springs in the Jerusalem area. In terms of its natural beauty, it is hard to beat.
If they develop it as an Ein Kerem type place, the character of the spring will change. It won’t be a relaxing place to go, to bathe and barbecue.”
He says, “The city should focus its energy on keeping the place clean and enforcing the law there to make it a more family-friendly environment. They should develop the trails around it and encourage people to go there. The last thing they need to do is put luxury houses there. It is better to develop it like a nature reserve like at Ein Yael [near the Jerusalem Zoo].”
Architecture researcher Michal Moshe did her MA thesis, entitled “Pattern of the Arab Village in the Judean Hills: Lifta Case Study,” at the Hebrew University in 2000. Her main concern with the project is the depth of the preservation. “There is no way to preserve something without understanding how it was used. Architects look at the details; but if they don’t investigate the how, it won’t be authentic but only an artificial preservation.”
For instance, “There are some buildings there that are ruined but were constructed in the 18th century.
They should try to reconstruct and use the older stones of these buildings so the preservation also shows the village in its stages,” not merely the most well-preserved newer homes.
Lifta is a story that reminds one of Mark Twain’s witticism: “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” A March 2000 report by the pro- Palestinian Applied Research Institute-Jerusalem claimed, “Israel destroys Lifta artifacts to build a resort for wealthy Jewish immigrants.” The latest plan is not the first one to develop Lifta. The question is whether it will be the last.
The fate of a desolate Arab village hangs in the balance.
By SETH J. FRANTZMAN - 17/02/11 The Jerusalem Post
For six years a proposal has been lying dormant in the planning department at Kikar Safra.
Plan 6036 was approved in 2005 to develop the land in Lifta, a deserted Arab village on the outskirts of Jerusalem. The planning maps and documents are kept in a large gray cardboard box.
There are a dozen of them printed on laminated poster-size sheets, detailing all aspects of the 212 luxury homes that the architects envision being built at the site. The plans incorporate the vestiges of the village, which include 55 historic buildings, preserving their facades and incorporating them into the new homes that will all be perched on the hillside overlooking the spring and stream below. The famous spring will be left intact.
Lifta is an exceptional environment, an entire ruined Arab village being reclaimed, slowly, by nature. For years Lifta was an oddity, clinging precariously to the hillsides near Route 1 that leads to Jerusalem. It became a hiking spot, a mikve for haredi youth and a hangout for drug users who sometimes squatted in the abandoned buildings.
The latest plans for Lifta were drawn up by architects Shlomo Aronson, Kobi Kartes and Shmuel Groag. Aronson was born in Haifa in 1936 and studied at the University of California, Berkeley and Harvard. An influential landscape architect, he has designed projects such as the new American Consulate and portions of Beit Guvrin archeological park, and he is the author of Making Peace with Land: Designing Israel’s Landscape.
Itzik Schweky, director of the Jerusalem district of the Council for the Preservation of Historic Sites, contends that the plan is a good one. “The plan now is better than what was… Without active preservation, the rocks will continue to be stolen, the building slowly degraded and ruined by visitors.”
But not everyone is so upbeat. Eitan Bronstein, spokesman for Zochrot, an organization dedicated to preserving the memory of Arab villages in Israel, is up in arms. “It looks like they mean business this time.
Soon they will destroy Lifta… The destruction plan – it shouldn’t be called a preservation or development plan – will not only ruin the landscape but also the memory of the place.”
Bronstein believes that the plan is not an innocent isolated case but part of a larger drama. “This is a message to the world that Israel has no interest in reconciliation… It is destroying relations with the Palestinians.”
He argues that the village should be redesigned along the lines of what has been called a “symbol of a shared future.” This would include cooperation with the descendants of the Palestinian families who once lived there, building a museum about them and transforming the site into a place with boutique hotels and where “Jewish and Arab high school and university students visit as part of their civics courses, studying the Palestinian narrative in local history.”
Bronstein adds, “We suggest [for now] not to touch it. We think it could be rebuilt for the refugees.”
Yacoub Odeh, a Palestinian human rights activist involved in the struggle for land and housing, recalls growing up in Lifta. “I remember exactly my classroom in the school. You entered from the west, and there was a big olive garden and rocks, and we used to play on them all the way home.”
Odeh was born in 1940 in Lifta, in the house closest to the spring. In 1947, after several villagers were killed in the initial stages of the war, he fled with the rest of the villagers. He worked in Kuwait for several years, and in east Jerusalem he was a teacher before 1967. “There were more than 3,000 of us in 1948; now we are more than 35,000 and we have charitable organizations in Jerusalem and Amman. Just in Jerusalem there are at least 5,000 of us living here with blue ID [Israeli] cards.”
Odeh is determined in his efforts to preserve the memory of his village and return to it. He visits as often as he can, sometimes two or three times a month. He is insistent on pointing out the injustice and ironies of the situation.
“The village that was not destroyed in the time of war should not be destroyed in a time of peace… To build on it means to destroy it. No one has the authority to sell its land nor to demolish, not to build on it. Leave it for the time being until the goal of return is realized.”
But what if the people from Lifta got together and bought the plots currently being sold under the plan, like Basher al-Masri wanted to do at Nof Zion? Odeh says that he would not consider purchasing his own house back.
Avi Margolin, a licensed tour guide, has frequented the site for seven years and is passionate about Lifta.
Sporting an Australian bush hat, he surveys Lifta from the pedestrian walkway that crosses Route 1. “It is a nice place to go, except that it attracts a very haredi crowd, unlike the other springs in the Jerusalem area. In terms of its natural beauty, it is hard to beat.
If they develop it as an Ein Kerem type place, the character of the spring will change. It won’t be a relaxing place to go, to bathe and barbecue.”
He says, “The city should focus its energy on keeping the place clean and enforcing the law there to make it a more family-friendly environment. They should develop the trails around it and encourage people to go there. The last thing they need to do is put luxury houses there. It is better to develop it like a nature reserve like at Ein Yael [near the Jerusalem Zoo].”
Architecture researcher Michal Moshe did her MA thesis, entitled “Pattern of the Arab Village in the Judean Hills: Lifta Case Study,” at the Hebrew University in 2000. Her main concern with the project is the depth of the preservation. “There is no way to preserve something without understanding how it was used. Architects look at the details; but if they don’t investigate the how, it won’t be authentic but only an artificial preservation.”
For instance, “There are some buildings there that are ruined but were constructed in the 18th century.
They should try to reconstruct and use the older stones of these buildings so the preservation also shows the village in its stages,” not merely the most well-preserved newer homes.
Lifta is a story that reminds one of Mark Twain’s witticism: “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” A March 2000 report by the pro- Palestinian Applied Research Institute-Jerusalem claimed, “Israel destroys Lifta artifacts to build a resort for wealthy Jewish immigrants.” The latest plan is not the first one to develop Lifta. The question is whether it will be the last.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Zochrot will have a tour of Lifta. Please attend if your are in the region.
The tour was postponed in one week exactly (all the other details stays the same), due to the weather. We apologize for any inconvenient that was caused. Please register to receive notification in case the tour will have to be postpone again: send your name and cellphone number to Efrat: efrat.even-tzur@mail.huji.ac.il
Transportation from Paris Square (Terra Sancta), next to the Kings Hotel in Jerusalem at 8:30 AM, is available for those registering by Wednesday, February 16.
When: 18/02/2011 09:00-12:00
Where: Start at the Upper entrance of Lifta
The village of Lifta, at the entrance to Jerusalem, was attacked a number of times during the Nakba in 1948 and was emptied of its inhabitants. They were not allowed to return even though they continued to live in the area. Some still live today in nearby Jerusalem neighborhoods.
Lifta is one of the few Palestinian villages in which many buildings remained standing. About two weeks ago the Israel Lands Administration published a tender offering lots for sale in the village. If the plan is implemented, Lifta will be demolished and an expensive neighborhood established in its place.
As part of the Jerusalem Nakba study group, we will conduct a tour of Lifta on Friday, 11 February 2011, led by Yaqub Ouda, a resident of Jerusalem who was born in the village. He’ll describe life in the village, its forced abandonment, and what the village’s refugees think about the construction plans.
The tour will be conducted in English, and is open to the public.
Here’s a link to recent article in Hebrew about the plan
The tour will begin at 9AM at the upper entrance to Lifta, and will end approximately at 12 noon.
By car: Take Begin Boulevard past the Golda Meir interchange. Pass the Electric Company’s facility. Turn right before the Giv’at Shaul interchange. There’s a small sign to “Mei Naftoah.”
Transportation from Paris Square (Terra Sancta), next to the Kings Hotel in Jerusalem at 8:30 AM, is available for those registering by Wednesday, February 9.
To register send your name and cellphone number to Efrat:
efrat.even-tzur@mail.huji.ac.il
Or by phone: 052/612-3965
The tour was postponed in one week exactly (all the other details stays the same), due to the weather. We apologize for any inconvenient that was caused. Please register to receive notification in case the tour will have to be postpone again: send your name and cellphone number to Efrat: efrat.even-tzur@mail.huji.ac.il
Transportation from Paris Square (Terra Sancta), next to the Kings Hotel in Jerusalem at 8:30 AM, is available for those registering by Wednesday, February 16.
When: 18/02/2011 09:00-12:00
Where: Start at the Upper entrance of Lifta
The village of Lifta, at the entrance to Jerusalem, was attacked a number of times during the Nakba in 1948 and was emptied of its inhabitants. They were not allowed to return even though they continued to live in the area. Some still live today in nearby Jerusalem neighborhoods.
Lifta is one of the few Palestinian villages in which many buildings remained standing. About two weeks ago the Israel Lands Administration published a tender offering lots for sale in the village. If the plan is implemented, Lifta will be demolished and an expensive neighborhood established in its place.
As part of the Jerusalem Nakba study group, we will conduct a tour of Lifta on Friday, 11 February 2011, led by Yaqub Ouda, a resident of Jerusalem who was born in the village. He’ll describe life in the village, its forced abandonment, and what the village’s refugees think about the construction plans.
The tour will be conducted in English, and is open to the public.
Here’s a link to recent article in Hebrew about the plan
The tour will begin at 9AM at the upper entrance to Lifta, and will end approximately at 12 noon.
By car: Take Begin Boulevard past the Golda Meir interchange. Pass the Electric Company’s facility. Turn right before the Giv’at Shaul interchange. There’s a small sign to “Mei Naftoah.”
Transportation from Paris Square (Terra Sancta), next to the Kings Hotel in Jerusalem at 8:30 AM, is available for those registering by Wednesday, February 9.
To register send your name and cellphone number to Efrat:
efrat.even-tzur@mail.huji.ac.il
Or by phone: 052/612-3965
Wednesday, February 09, 2011
The Lifta that never will be
Instead of building luxury homes over the abandoned village, Israel could use the hillside ruins to preserve Arab memory and heal a rift. Don't hold your breath
By Esther Zandberg, Haaretz - 3/02/11
The first Arab residents have begun to enter their new homes in the village of Lifta at the western approach to Jerusalem. Many of them are descendants of Palestinian families who lived there until the eve of the Israeli War of Independence in 1948. When they left the village, it remained abandoned for decades and its ruins became a symbol of the destruction of the Palestinian community in Israel.
The village has been reconstructed according to a building plan advanced by the Israel Lands Administration in cooperation with residents' families. The streets teem with life and tourism and commerce are flourishing; boutique hotels, bed-and-breakfasts, souvenir shops and a colorful market have opened.
The old mosque has been rebuilt. Fifty-five historical buildings have been restored and converted to new uses. One of them serves as a historical museum.
Jewish and Arab high school and university students visit as part of their civics courses, studying the Palestinian narrative in local history. The newer buildings are constructed in a blend of the many different styles characteristic of Arab communities, and more than a little of their traditional character was lost. But even the strictest adherents of preservation admit that the historical justice carried out here was worth the price. On second thought, it is a kind of authenticity in itself and a thread that connects history to our time.
None of this ever happened nor will it ever; it does not jibe with current Israeli reality.
The Israel Lands Administration has in fact advanced a new building plan for the decade, and has just issued a tender for the acquisition of plots of land in Lifta. But this plan is light years away from the vision above, and chances that descendants of refugees from Lifta will ever step foot there are nil.
The plan calls for 212 apartments and a commercial and tourist center; it will turn into a luxury complex in the style of David's Village in Mamilla or the Yemin Moshe artists colony.
Although it is termed a preservation effort, it is in effect, paradoxically, an erasure of all memory of the original village. And there is also no chance that a Palestinian museum will be erected there.
Urban building plan number 6036 for the ruins of the village was authorized about five years ago after opposition by a number of non-profit groups, including Zochrot and Bimkom, was rejected. They called on the village to be developed as a preserve of Palestinian memory and in this way contribute to reconciliation between Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel. In its opposition to the plan, Bimkom emphasized every nation's right to memory, and wrote that the issues of preservation and memory "should be the basis of common cultural knowledge for every element of the population in Israel."
But all of this is a distant dream. Unlike the designers' fantasies, the voices of village refugees and their families were not heard at the discussion of the plan, which was not meant for them from the beginning. Many of them live in East Jerusalem, not far from the homes they were not allowed to return to, and where they are to this day not allowed to build homes.
Frozen memory
Lifta is a place frozen in time. It is unpopulated and has not turned into an artists' colony, like Ein Hod or Old Jaffa. The core of the village remains almost in its entirety, with dozens of original buildings and a landscape which has not been covered with JNF forests, and not styled by landscape architects - the fate now expected to befall the village according to the new plan.
Behind all this beauty lies all the elements of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the refugee problem, the demand for the right of return, denial of memory and so on.
The building plan for Lifta cannot be considered innocent. There is no reason to slaughter this beautiful piece of land for 200 homes for the rich; it answers no vital need and does not solve any of the housing problems in Jerusalem, and it will not contribute to reconciliation, but rather deepen the conflict and erase more proof that someone was here before us.
The only justification for the development of Lifta, and it too sounds like a fantasy today, is building that will serve Palestinian refugees and create a kind of historical justice with a symbol, a tribute.
This kind of effort would also be political and perhaps lack planning logic, but justice and ethics and the chance to turn the village from a memorial to destruction into a symbol of a shared future stand in its favor.
Because such an alternative is out of the question, there is nothing left to do but act to stop the plan, and raise funds to do the necessary work to strengthen existing buildings until a suitable solution is found.
It is to be hoped that such funds will be sufficient for an investigatory commission. This is the place to repeat the conclusions of the Or Commission on the events of September 2000, quoted by Bimkom in its opposition to the building plan and more relevant now than ever.
"The establishment of the state of Israel, which the Jewish people celebrated as the realization of the dream of generations, is connected to [the Palestinians'] historic memory, the most difficult trauma in their history, the Nakba," the Or Commission report said. "The programs and symbols of the state are also anchored in law that praises the victory in the conflict ... which is seen by the Arab minority as a defeat. It is appropriate to find ways to strengthen Arab citizens' feeling of belonging to the nation without hurting their connection to their culture and community."
Instead of building luxury homes over the abandoned village, Israel could use the hillside ruins to preserve Arab memory and heal a rift. Don't hold your breath
By Esther Zandberg, Haaretz - 3/02/11
The first Arab residents have begun to enter their new homes in the village of Lifta at the western approach to Jerusalem. Many of them are descendants of Palestinian families who lived there until the eve of the Israeli War of Independence in 1948. When they left the village, it remained abandoned for decades and its ruins became a symbol of the destruction of the Palestinian community in Israel.
The village has been reconstructed according to a building plan advanced by the Israel Lands Administration in cooperation with residents' families. The streets teem with life and tourism and commerce are flourishing; boutique hotels, bed-and-breakfasts, souvenir shops and a colorful market have opened.
The old mosque has been rebuilt. Fifty-five historical buildings have been restored and converted to new uses. One of them serves as a historical museum.
Jewish and Arab high school and university students visit as part of their civics courses, studying the Palestinian narrative in local history. The newer buildings are constructed in a blend of the many different styles characteristic of Arab communities, and more than a little of their traditional character was lost. But even the strictest adherents of preservation admit that the historical justice carried out here was worth the price. On second thought, it is a kind of authenticity in itself and a thread that connects history to our time.
None of this ever happened nor will it ever; it does not jibe with current Israeli reality.
The Israel Lands Administration has in fact advanced a new building plan for the decade, and has just issued a tender for the acquisition of plots of land in Lifta. But this plan is light years away from the vision above, and chances that descendants of refugees from Lifta will ever step foot there are nil.
The plan calls for 212 apartments and a commercial and tourist center; it will turn into a luxury complex in the style of David's Village in Mamilla or the Yemin Moshe artists colony.
Although it is termed a preservation effort, it is in effect, paradoxically, an erasure of all memory of the original village. And there is also no chance that a Palestinian museum will be erected there.
Urban building plan number 6036 for the ruins of the village was authorized about five years ago after opposition by a number of non-profit groups, including Zochrot and Bimkom, was rejected. They called on the village to be developed as a preserve of Palestinian memory and in this way contribute to reconciliation between Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel. In its opposition to the plan, Bimkom emphasized every nation's right to memory, and wrote that the issues of preservation and memory "should be the basis of common cultural knowledge for every element of the population in Israel."
But all of this is a distant dream. Unlike the designers' fantasies, the voices of village refugees and their families were not heard at the discussion of the plan, which was not meant for them from the beginning. Many of them live in East Jerusalem, not far from the homes they were not allowed to return to, and where they are to this day not allowed to build homes.
Frozen memory
Lifta is a place frozen in time. It is unpopulated and has not turned into an artists' colony, like Ein Hod or Old Jaffa. The core of the village remains almost in its entirety, with dozens of original buildings and a landscape which has not been covered with JNF forests, and not styled by landscape architects - the fate now expected to befall the village according to the new plan.
Behind all this beauty lies all the elements of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the refugee problem, the demand for the right of return, denial of memory and so on.
The building plan for Lifta cannot be considered innocent. There is no reason to slaughter this beautiful piece of land for 200 homes for the rich; it answers no vital need and does not solve any of the housing problems in Jerusalem, and it will not contribute to reconciliation, but rather deepen the conflict and erase more proof that someone was here before us.
The only justification for the development of Lifta, and it too sounds like a fantasy today, is building that will serve Palestinian refugees and create a kind of historical justice with a symbol, a tribute.
This kind of effort would also be political and perhaps lack planning logic, but justice and ethics and the chance to turn the village from a memorial to destruction into a symbol of a shared future stand in its favor.
Because such an alternative is out of the question, there is nothing left to do but act to stop the plan, and raise funds to do the necessary work to strengthen existing buildings until a suitable solution is found.
It is to be hoped that such funds will be sufficient for an investigatory commission. This is the place to repeat the conclusions of the Or Commission on the events of September 2000, quoted by Bimkom in its opposition to the building plan and more relevant now than ever.
"The establishment of the state of Israel, which the Jewish people celebrated as the realization of the dream of generations, is connected to [the Palestinians'] historic memory, the most difficult trauma in their history, the Nakba," the Or Commission report said. "The programs and symbols of the state are also anchored in law that praises the victory in the conflict ... which is seen by the Arab minority as a defeat. It is appropriate to find ways to strengthen Arab citizens' feeling of belonging to the nation without hurting their connection to their culture and community."
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Israel moves to turn deserted Palestinian village into luxury housing project
Israelis and Palestinians dedicated to the village Lifta's preservation have called the plan to build 212 luxury units and a small hotel the end for the last Arab village of its kind.
By Nir Hasson, Haaretz 21.01.11
Yakub Odeh, 67, walks among the ruins of the Arab village of Lifta at the entrance to Jerusalem and is oblivious to the new neighborhoods and freeways that surround it. He doesn't see the train tunnel being dug above it or the secret escape route for the country's leaders being dug below.
Odeh doesn't see the "Death to the Arabs" graffiti at the entrance to the village or the Arabic version of the name that someone blotted out on the sign there. He sees a village and an area as it existed until March 1948, before it was abandoned by its Palestinian residents.
"Ali Badr's family lives here, and here's Salah Mohammed's house," he says on a walk through Lifta. The village for him is not limited to the houses left standing around the well-known village spring. For him, it is also the remnants of houses in the Romema neighborhood of Jerusalem. the land on which new housing in Ramot was built. It is also the village school, which now serves as an ultra-Orthodox educational institution, at the entrance to Jerusalem.
"My roots are here. My whole mentality is from here. I will never be able to forget," he says.
Now, the remains of the village are threatened by changes to the special character of the
place. Two weeks ago, the Israel Land Administration published a public tender for
construction in Lifta, which is to transform an abandoned Palestinian village on the edge of Jerusalem and a popular location for hiking into a luxury residential neighborhood. The developers have committed to preserve the houses and meticulously restore them. Plans call for the houses to become restaurants and galleries.
Odeh calls the redevelopment plan a second Nakba, Arabic for "catastrophe" and the word the Palestinians use to speak of the events surrounding the establishment of Israel in 1948.
Architect Gabriel Kertesz, who designed the new development in Lifta, together with Shmuel Groag and Shlomo Aronson, said the redevelopment is the best thing that could happen to Lifta.
"There is one approach that nothing should be done, which means the disappearance of the village. Our approach is one involving preservation and revival. The plan requires the most meticulous preservation rules and permits construction only after the historic buildings are preserved and everything is done under the supervision of the Antiquities Authority and a conservation architect," he said.
Odeh is now involved in human rights work, but he is a former member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine who served a lengthy prison term. He was eight when his family fled Lifta. His former house overlooks the spring in the center of the village.
Lifta is an anomaly. Among the hundreds of Palestinian villages abandoned in 1948, it is the only one that was neither destroyed nor reinhabited. The villages of Ein Karem and Ein Hod, for example, remained standing but were inhabited by Jews.
Odeh and others see the remaining 55 homes in Lifta and the surrounding terraces as a kind of memorial to Palestinian society before Israel's War of Independence. After the village was abandoned, the ceilings in the buildings were deliberately destroyed to deter intruders, however the homeless and others on the margins of society took up residence there.
One of the buildings houses a successful program for young drug addicts, which has been operating there for 20 years. The program's director said yesterday that he doesn't know what will become of the program once the redevelopment of the village begins.
In open areas around the existing homes in the village, plans call for 212 luxury housing units and a small hotel. Israelis and Palestinians dedicated to Lifta's preservation have called the plan the end for the last Arab village of its kind.
Odeh said: "Our dream is that there be peace, and that we be able to return to our village.
There is enough room in Palestine for everyone. These are our homes. We were born here. We breathed the air here, and we are entitled to return here."
Not all of the opponents of the proposed development share Odeh's aspiration that he and descendents of other villagers return to live in Lifta. Architect Gadi Iron envisions Lifta as a world heritage site that should be preserved. He called it a "Garden of Eden" of streams and fruit trees and beautiful landscapes and a site containing important Palestinian architecture.
Iron said: "Lifta is more important than the Taj Mahal, from the standpoint of its beauty and for its Mediterranean heritage. The Taj Mahal is kitsch. In Lifta, there's no kitsch." He proposed the village be preserved as an architectural museum.
Israelis and Palestinians dedicated to the village Lifta's preservation have called the plan to build 212 luxury units and a small hotel the end for the last Arab village of its kind.
By Nir Hasson, Haaretz 21.01.11
Yakub Odeh, 67, walks among the ruins of the Arab village of Lifta at the entrance to Jerusalem and is oblivious to the new neighborhoods and freeways that surround it. He doesn't see the train tunnel being dug above it or the secret escape route for the country's leaders being dug below.
Odeh doesn't see the "Death to the Arabs" graffiti at the entrance to the village or the Arabic version of the name that someone blotted out on the sign there. He sees a village and an area as it existed until March 1948, before it was abandoned by its Palestinian residents.
"Ali Badr's family lives here, and here's Salah Mohammed's house," he says on a walk through Lifta. The village for him is not limited to the houses left standing around the well-known village spring. For him, it is also the remnants of houses in the Romema neighborhood of Jerusalem. the land on which new housing in Ramot was built. It is also the village school, which now serves as an ultra-Orthodox educational institution, at the entrance to Jerusalem.
"My roots are here. My whole mentality is from here. I will never be able to forget," he says.
Now, the remains of the village are threatened by changes to the special character of the
place. Two weeks ago, the Israel Land Administration published a public tender for
construction in Lifta, which is to transform an abandoned Palestinian village on the edge of Jerusalem and a popular location for hiking into a luxury residential neighborhood. The developers have committed to preserve the houses and meticulously restore them. Plans call for the houses to become restaurants and galleries.
Odeh calls the redevelopment plan a second Nakba, Arabic for "catastrophe" and the word the Palestinians use to speak of the events surrounding the establishment of Israel in 1948.
Architect Gabriel Kertesz, who designed the new development in Lifta, together with Shmuel Groag and Shlomo Aronson, said the redevelopment is the best thing that could happen to Lifta.
"There is one approach that nothing should be done, which means the disappearance of the village. Our approach is one involving preservation and revival. The plan requires the most meticulous preservation rules and permits construction only after the historic buildings are preserved and everything is done under the supervision of the Antiquities Authority and a conservation architect," he said.
Odeh is now involved in human rights work, but he is a former member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine who served a lengthy prison term. He was eight when his family fled Lifta. His former house overlooks the spring in the center of the village.
Lifta is an anomaly. Among the hundreds of Palestinian villages abandoned in 1948, it is the only one that was neither destroyed nor reinhabited. The villages of Ein Karem and Ein Hod, for example, remained standing but were inhabited by Jews.
Odeh and others see the remaining 55 homes in Lifta and the surrounding terraces as a kind of memorial to Palestinian society before Israel's War of Independence. After the village was abandoned, the ceilings in the buildings were deliberately destroyed to deter intruders, however the homeless and others on the margins of society took up residence there.
One of the buildings houses a successful program for young drug addicts, which has been operating there for 20 years. The program's director said yesterday that he doesn't know what will become of the program once the redevelopment of the village begins.
In open areas around the existing homes in the village, plans call for 212 luxury housing units and a small hotel. Israelis and Palestinians dedicated to Lifta's preservation have called the plan the end for the last Arab village of its kind.
Odeh said: "Our dream is that there be peace, and that we be able to return to our village.
There is enough room in Palestine for everyone. These are our homes. We were born here. We breathed the air here, and we are entitled to return here."
Not all of the opponents of the proposed development share Odeh's aspiration that he and descendents of other villagers return to live in Lifta. Architect Gadi Iron envisions Lifta as a world heritage site that should be preserved. He called it a "Garden of Eden" of streams and fruit trees and beautiful landscapes and a site containing important Palestinian architecture.
Iron said: "Lifta is more important than the Taj Mahal, from the standpoint of its beauty and for its Mediterranean heritage. The Taj Mahal is kitsch. In Lifta, there's no kitsch." He proposed the village be preserved as an architectural museum.
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