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.

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 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."

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.

This short video extract conveys a vivid account of how changes brought about by the 1948 Palestinian Nakba catastrophe also severed the reality for the minority native arab Jewish occupants of Palestine.

Having to come to terms with the tumultuous effect of forced seperations within their culture, dividing a longstanding socio-ethnic coexistence shared with the Arab Muslims and Christians of their society. A new reality depicting what is acceptable to acknowledge in their new homeland - and what should be erased from memory - somehow did not fit comfortably with some.

The landscape's scars of a forced forgetfulness have remained, profoundly and poignantly comforting to those who accept the fact that here lies, in this land now defined as Israel, a neurosis of forbidden truth - of what had been shaped and the discord that has followed, what has been oppressed and the existence that it denies.


(...thanks Abe for the video)

Anil Korotane, Belonging

Saving Lifta Event





BELONGING have posted the first part of the brief for an event we are arranging in Lifta (the timetable for the event will be announced at a later date); it will form the first encouraging advance of activism for the Saving Lifta project-campaign in the Jerusalem region.

The first part of the brief will focuss on Lifta as a 'Space for Conciliatory Dialogue'. Although explained in a very short, simple, clear and straightforward way, the brief is highly sensitive as it will involve issues and necessary actions that will be very challenging - it will require the involvement of both Palestinians and Israelis to focus on the issue of the Nakba in Lifta, but also to focus on the wider issue of displacement that occurred around that particular time in history.

The ideas and issues presented in the brief have been very carefully articulated and the strategy presented has been mainly derived from the continuation of a discourse based on principles and values of Lifta's significance as a place that can be found in the 2007 entries of posts on this blog. Ultimately the agenda for the Saving Lifta project-campaign is that by presenting Lifta's historical truth and narratives as a place, it will enable us to show the potential of her value for the wider region. Inevitably, through the activism for alternative planning we are maintaining a real case for her protection.

Although the first part of the brief was articulated a few months prior to the knowledge of a bill just recently approved by the Knesset that undermines the commemoration of the Nakba inside Israel, the strategy for activism not only sets itself against the bill but also proposes a challenge that counter-acts its by endeavouring to show what is possible through preserving places such as Lifta.

The brief is derived to show the potential of Lifta becoming both a space of encounter as well as a space of the possible - where not only is it possible to preserve a memory that portrays the catastrophe of the Palestinian people which requires justice and recognition of its truth, but also to have a tangible place in the region that can allows Israelis to address the narrative of the 'other' whilst also allowing them to reach out and across to the Palestinians through the narratives of displacement.

Lifta can be in part preserved as a place to recognise, share and deal with the intricate task of confronting existential narratives, histories and identities for the purposes of conciliation. The brief for the first event pushes the boundaries on this task only so it can show the potential of possible opportunities in cultural-production by preserving memory of places such as Lifta. Both representatives of Zochrot and the regional Ramallah Lifta Commitee recognize that the brief is potentially a 'one day scenario' for civil-building using both the regional community and resources. The first event therefore begins to set out a 'proto-type' of a place and process towards healing for an imagined-future for this region.

In due time we will post the second part of the brief - it will focuss on Lifta as a 'Space for Habitation'. The brief will draw upon holding an event (at the same time and in concession to the first event) for a site investigation to gather the necessary contextual information to redetermine Lifta of how she once was as a place, and then to portray Lifta in the present and future context as a space for habitation in justice of recultivating her memory, the international law of the 'right of return', and equal living.



Saving Lifta Event (Brief - Part 1)

Announcement of the first stage of the Saving Lifta project-campaign in the Jerusalem region.


To begin the first stage of the project-campaign in the region, our first objective will be to hold a series of events in Lifta. The purpose of the events is to demonstrate why the heritage of Lifta is potentially invaluable and necessary for future peace in the region. And we will convey this possibility by orchestrating a series of events that engage into the potential of Lifta’s spaces and demonstrate what can be possible.

The aim of holding an event will be to demonstrate the potential of Lifta’s space as a place for conciliatory dialogue, followed by assessing and re-imagining her space for the purposes of habitation. All stages of the events will be loosely based around exercises capable of reconstructing the memory of Lifta. All work conducted in the events will be creatively and critically devised to ascertain the necessary information needed for the 2nd stage - to derive with the design of a master-plan for Lifta. The 3rd stage will be to lobby the master-plan, both regionally within the Jerusalem municipality and internationally, in a case aimed to protect Lifta.


Working towards a new narrative, a new history, and a new space.

The overall objective of the project-campaign will be to try and save Lifta by engaging her upon a theme that demonstrates her potential to become an innovative ‘space of reconciliation’. As a space of reconciliation Lifta has the potential to transform into a place for the purposes of conciliatory dialogue and habitation. A potential gateway to a space seeking a goal to confront and reconcile narratives of histories, otherness and conflict whilst, demonstrating possibilities of a place that promotes healing, pluralism and inclusiveness.


Task 1 of the event - A space for conciliatory dialogue:

The first task will focus on Lifta as an ‘origin’ to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The aim is to convey the memory of the Nakba catastrophe through eye witness accounts from the displaced people of Lifta. We aim to demonstrate and document that an encounter between an intangible memory and a tangible place allows a displaced people and community to confront their trauma and their tragedy. A poignant encounter nevertheless vital because firstly it establishes an authentic relationship of a bond existing between a people and a land; and secondly, it can play a vital role towards the healing of a people and the larger regional community.

Through observance of the memories of the displaced people, during this encounter, we aim to record and document the individual memories creating a mapping of a narrative of the Nakba catastrophe in Lifta. This information will be later used (in stages 2 & 3 of the project-campaign) as evidence demonstrating that this village has the potential to convey, in part as a memorial, a story of the origins of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

The next task of the event will continue to focus on observing Lifta as an ‘origin’ of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Again, during the observance of the memories of the displaced people that unfold the narrative of the Nakba in Lifta, we will use these observations to demonstrate that Lifta has the potential to become a place for the creation of dialogue between the uprooted people of Lifta, as well as all Palestinians in general, with the Israeli public.

Engaging into the memory of the 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 Palestine/Israel region that has the capacity to make accessible an open dialogue and encounter a sense of shared-values through the issues of ‘displacement’, ‘victimhood’ and ‘tragedy’. Themes that not only resonates throughout the Palestinian narrative since 1948, but are 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, reaching beyond rivalry, and consoling upon the seeds of despair.

Lifta is also accessible to the ‘other’ because she allows us to re-imagine communities. Although her community consisted of an ethnic-religious majority of Muslims, the community still shared a religious diversity that consisted also of Christians and Jews. The uprooting of Lifta was a tragedy for the Palestinian community of the village however, the Nakba in Lifta was a catastrophe for the Palestinian Muslims, Christians and Jews. The Jewish Hilo tribe, who were part of one of the five main tribes in Lifta, apparently were given the option by the pervading force to remain in the village, decided to share the same fate with their community and vacated the village.

And now 60 years have gone by, enabling enough time to take a step back and reflect at histories. Histories, that are usually referred to in their own unique set of circumstances and disparate narratives, can be engaged together in one space. In this task of the event, we will orchestrate an encounter between the Israeli public and the people from Lifta, engaging into the real memories of displacement set against the tangible backdrop of the valley landscape of Lifta. We will demonstrate that Lifta can become a space of encounter; a necessary place where both Palestinians and Israelis can come together and share a dialogue and speak of their narratives of tragedy, victimhood and displacement. An encounter made admissible because there still stands and exists a place in the region that is virtually desolate; where memory concealing a narrative of displacement can be reconstructed and sustained from a bond between a people, who can recount and relive their tragedy, and this place. 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. During the event, we will demonstrate and document these encounters on the space of Lifta, drawing upon the potential of this place for the purposes of invaluable capacity-building for the regional civil society. And the information gathered and collected will be used to inform and towards the case for the alternative master-plan.

Anil Korotane, director - BELONGING

Saving Lifta in the current political context







Whilst we make steps forward with the Saving Lifta project-campaign it is also important to keep you informed with the political context that is concurrent and has bearing on the cause. In light of the fact that the village of Lifta is located in West Jerusalem, and within Israeli territory, the following three articles address the current political nature of the Israeli government and measures setout by this government that ultimately challenge the project-campaign.

The first and third articles discuss a bill approved by the Knesset created potentially to obstruct Israeli Arabs the right to commemorating the Nakba whilst making them place allegiance to a polarized Jewish Democratic State of Israel, the implications of which are utterly devasting for those whose seek a reality of a democracy for 'all its people' within Israel. If the bill is approved, it potentially has the ability to obstruct future potentialities of conciliatory processes inside Israel. Looking further a field and bearing in context the Lifta, the bill can hinder any protection of the Palestinian cultural heritage inside Israel - especially if the heritage bears any connection to the palestinian collective narrative of 1948, again obstructing the potential of places of historical interest that have recognition to the 'other' playing part of any future concilatory role between identities and equal living.

Already the early ramifications of the bill is challenging the work of peace activists and educational organisations. The second article concerns an educational kit on the Nakba that is is being disseminated among teachers throughout Israel. It was developed by Zochrot, a non-government organization, and is meant to serve the Jewish educational system for pupils aged 15 and above, and includes history plus literary and personal views on the Nakba, as well as discussion of the ways the issue has been sidelined in public discourse. (The education kit can be found on the Zochrot website - http://www.nakbainhebrew.org) In light of the newly approved bill, also supported by the Israeli Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar the Education Ministry, a compromise bill is also being prepared, which would ban government bodies or any organization benefiting from state funding, from organizing or funding activities related to the Nakba.

Very shortly, FAST will post the first part of a brief highlighting the next phase of activism of an event that will take place in Lifta. Although articulated through the gradual build up of a inquiry setout by FAST well in advance of these new revelations of the approved bill, on the contrary, the strategy for activism not only sets itself against this bill but also proposes a challenge that counter-acts its necessity by endeavouring to show what is possible. Hopefully once we illuminate this strategy of activism we can, with your support, deliver something to the particular needs of this region and period that is totally relevant and essential.

Anil Korotane, FAST




As Israel Prepares Laws to Deepen its Discrimination, the World Must hold Israeli Racism to Account


4 June 2009, Bethlehem, Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights - For decades Israel has practiced discrimination and forced displacement against its Palestinian citizenry with impunity. But now it seeks to impose consent for its crimes upon its Palestinian victims.

Three bills currently making rounds in the Israeli Knesset reveal an obscene and dangerous targeting of the individual and collective rights of Palestinian citizens.

One bill seeks to prohibit marking the day Israel declared its independence as a day of mourning. A second prohibits negating the existence of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. The third requires Israeli citizens to sign oaths of loyalty to the state, its flag and national anthem, and to perform military or civil service. Though still at an early stage, if the bills pass, violators could face harsh sentences including imprisonment and revocation of citizenship.

Palestinian citizens of Israel are part of the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine who were made a minority in their homeland through the expulsion of two thirds of their people in 1948 by Zionist militias during Israel's establishment – events Palestinians commemorate as the Nakba (Arabic for Catastrophe.)

Their leaders have likened the potential approval of the bills to a declaration of war. The bills "require the Arab minority to deny its history and Arab-Palestinian identity on one hand and to identify with Zionist values that negate its national identity on the other," in the words of Mohammed Zeidan, head of the Higher Arab Follow-Up Committee, an informal collective leadership body of Palestinian citizens.

Attempts to force compliance with the Zionist narrative, character and practice of the state is equivalent to demanding that Palestinians sanction their own historical dispossession while rubber stamping their contemporary second-class citizenship as "non-Jews" in the Jewish state.

Moreover these attempts come in the context of an escalating campaign against this community that seeks to paint it as a "demographic time bomb" and a "fifth column." Yuval Diskin, Director of the General Security Service has described Palestinian citizens' demands for equality as constituting "a strategic danger to the state", that must be thwarted "even if their activity is conducted through democratic means”; Israeli politicians and "peace proposals" speak openly of "population exchanges" between Palestinian citizens and Israeli settlers in the West Bank; and the Hebrew press has even made recent revelations that the Israeli army is engaged in training special units to occupy Palestinian towns and villages inside Israel in the event of a regional war, to prevent protests and access to highways.

A broader campaign of incitement is at play here. These laws aim to polarize the situation between Jewish and Palestinian citizens, while justifying the quashing of legitimate Palestinian demands. Israel also appears intent to extend elements of its military practices against Palestinians in the OPT to those who are its citizens.

Given Israel's historical record of repeatedly dispossessing Palestinians – be it beneath the 'fog of war' or through incremental bureaucratic means - the initiation of these laws can only be seen as strengthening Israel's de jure policies of apartheid to compliment its de facto apartheid practices on both sides of the Green Line.

In this context, instead of trying to engage the new Israeli government, it is time for the world to boycott, divest and sanction the Israeli regime until it abandons all racist policies and practices and implements international law.




Are teachers introducing Nakba to students against state's wishes?
By Or Kashti - Haaretz 04/06/2009


An educational kit on the Nakba [catastrophe] - the Palestinian term for what happened to them after 1948 - is being disseminated among teachers throughout the country. It was developed by Zochrot, a non-government organization, and is meant to serve the Jewish educational system for pupils aged 15 and above, and includes history plus literary and personal views on the Nakba, as well as discussion of the ways the issue has been sidelined in public discourse.

Some teachers have reportedly been making use of the kit, even though it has not been approved by the Education Ministry. A meeting next week in Jerusalem aims to introduce the kit to educators. The kit's materials were developed over three years and involved school teachers as well as lecturers at teachers' colleges. Its 13 units deal with the Palestinian communities before and after 1948, a historical probe of the period's events, personal stories of Palestinians, a discussion on the "right of return" and a tour "of a destroyed Palestinian village with a refugee as a guide."

The kit's fourth unit offers an "initial introduction to the history of the Nakba" with numerical data about "how Palestine was prior to the Nakba" and "a historical study presenting the main reasons for the departure and expulsion of the Palestinians, incorporating testimonies and quotations [from sources]." There is also a discussion on the "methods used to prevent the return of the refugees."

The kit is modular and designed so teachers of different subjects may use it in classes on history, literature, civil studies, social studies, etc.

Amia Galili of Zochrot says nearly 100 teachers have been introduced to the kit, and it has been sent to 160 other educators.

"The purpose of our work is to include the Nakba in the educational system, from a viewpoint that the minute the pupils study about it, it will be possible to begin talking about a process of reconciliation," Galili said. In the Jewish educational system many teachers are hesitant to teach the subject of the Nakba. In upper-level secondary school history reference is made to the "cease-fire agreements and the creation of a Palestinian refugee problem," said Galili, but in practice the subject is taught in a very limited way, if at all.

Many subjects in the curriculum are inevitably left behind for lack of time, but there is also an element of "too few teachers who are willing to enter this minefield of a subject," as one history teacher put it.

Two years ago, former education minister Yuli Tamir was criticized when a geography book meant for the Arab schools referred to the Nakba. The Education Ministry at the time said the book had been based on curriculum materials that had been approved during the tenure of Limor Livnat and Ronit Tirosh at the ministry.

Ten days ago, the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee approved a bill proposed by MK Alex Miller of Yisrael Beiteinu, "forbidding by law the commemoration of Independence Day or the establishment of the state as a day of mourning." The bill was supported by Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar. As a result of the ruckus that resulted from the proposal, a compromise bill is being prepared, which would ban government bodies or any organization benefiting from state funding, from organizing or funding activities related to the Nakba.

One of the teachers who began using the kit, Avital Spivak, says that "the Palestinian side of the story is missing completely from the educational system." She teaches civics to 11th and 12th graders at the Reali School in Haifa, and says "there is a complete blind spot, which leads to ignorance and racism and blocks the possibility of understanding and dialog. There is no need to agree to the right of return to talk about the Nakba, and there is no contradiction between being a Zionist and refusing to be blind and deaf to the pain and the story of the other side."

Spivak says initially "the pupils express all the usual opposition such as denial, justification of the Jewish side and sometimes even calls to kill the messenger - in this case the teacher. The pupils find it very difficult to accept there is no one truth to the story. Spivak says there is no 180-degree change in the pupils' views but "I can see that there is the start of questioning."

The Education Ministry responded: "The education kit was not approved by the ministry. Teachers using materials not approved by the ministry are acting against ministry procedure and policy." The ministry also said it would conduct "an immediate investigation, including into this case."




“Racists for Democracy” - Uri Averni's Weekly 30/05/09


HOW LUCKY we are to have the extreme Right standing guard over our democracy.

This week, the Knesset voted by a large majority (47 to 34) for a law that threatens imprisonment for anyone who dares to deny that Israel is a Jewish and Democratic State.

The private member’s bill, proposed by MK Zevulun Orlev of the “Jewish Home” party, which sailed through its preliminary hearing, promises one year in prison to anyone who publishes “a call that negates the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State”, if the contents of the call might cause “actions of hate, contempt or disloyalty against the state or the institutions of government or the courts”.

One can foresee the next steps. A million and a half Arab citizens cannot be expected to recognize Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State. They want it to be “a state of all its citizens” – Jews, Arabs and others. They also claim with reason that Israel discriminates against them, and therefore is not really democratic. And, in addition, there are also Jews who do not want Israel to be defined as a Jewish State in which non-Jews have the status, at best, of tolerated outsiders.

The consequences are inevitable. The prisons will not be able to hold all those convicted of this crime. There will be a need for concentration camps all over the country to house all the deniers of Israeli democracy.

The police will be unable to deal with so many criminals. It will be necessary to set up a new unit. This may be called “Special Security”, or, in short, SS.

Hopefully, these measures will suffice to preserve our democracy. If not, more stringent steps will have to be taken, such as revoking the citizenship of the democracy-deniers and deporting them from the country, together with the Jewish leftists and all the other enemies of the Jewish democracy.

After the preliminary reading of the bill, it now goes to the Legal Committee of the Knesset, which will prepare it for the first, and soon thereafter for the second and third readings. Within a few weeks or months, it will be the law of the land.

By the way, the bill does not single out Arabs explicitly – even if this is its clear intention, and all those who voted for it understood this. It also prohibits Jews from advocating a change in the state’s definition, or the creation of a bi-national state in all of historic Palestine or spreading any other such unconventional ideas. One can only imagine what would happen in the US if a senator proposed a law to imprison anyone who suggests an amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.

THE BILL does not stand out at all in our new political landscape.This government has already adopted a bill to imprison for three years anyone who mourns the Palestinian Naqba – the 1948 uprooting of more than half the Palestinian people from their homes and lands.The sponsors expect Arab citizens to be happy about that event. True, the Palestinians were caused a certain unpleasantness, but that was only a by-product of the foundation of our state. The Independence Day of the Jewish and Democratic State must fill us all with joy. Anyone who does not express this joy should be locked up, and three years may not be enough.This bill has been confirmed by the Ministerial Commission for Legal Matters, prior to being submitted to the Knesset. Since the rightist government commands a majority in the Knesset, it will be adopted almost automatically. (In the meantime, a slight delay has been caused by one minister, who appealed the decision, so the Ministerial Commission will have to confirm it again.)

The sponsors of the law hope, perhaps, that on Naqba Day the Arabs will dance in the streets, plant Israeli flags on the ruins of some 600 Arab villages that were wiped off the map and offer up their thanks to Allah in the mosques for the miraculous good fortune that was bestowed on them.

THIS TAKES me back to the 60s, when the weekly magazine I edited, Haolam Hazeh, published an Arabic edition. One of its employees was a young man called Rashed Hussein from the village of Musmus. Already as a youth he was a gifted poet with a promising future.

He told me that some years earlier the military governor of his area had summoned him to his office. At the time, all the Arabs in Israel were subject to a military government which controlled their lives in all matters big and small. Without a permit, an Arab citizen could not leave his village or town even for a few hours, nor get a job as a teacher, nor acquire a tractor or dig a well.
The governor received Rashed cordially, offered him coffee and paid lavish compliments to his poetry. Then he came to the point: in a month’s time, Independence Day was due, and the governor was going to hold a big reception for the Arab “notables”; he asked Rashed to write a special poem for the occasion.

Rashed was a proud youngster, nationalist to the core, and not lacking in courage. He explained to the governor that Independence Day was no joyful day for him, since his relatives had been driven from their homes and most of the Musmus village’s land had also been expropriated.

When Rashed arrived back at his village some hours later, he could not help noticing that his neighbors were looking at him in a peculiar way. When he entered his home, he was shocked. All the members of his family were sitting on the floor, the women lamenting at the top of their voices, the children huddling fearfully in a corner. His first thought was that somebody had died.

“What have you done to us!” one of the women cried, “What did we do to you?”

“You have destroyed the family,” another shouted, “You have finished us!”

It appeared that the governor had called the family and told them that Rashed had refused to fulfill his duty to the state. The threat was clear: from now on, the extended family, one of the largest in the village, would be on the black list of the military government. The consequences were clear to everyone.

Rashed could not stand up against the lamentation of his family. He gave in and wrote the poem, as requested. But something inside him was broken. Some years later he emigrated to the US, got a job there at the PLO office and died tragically: he was burned alive in his bed after going to sleep, it appears, while smoking a cigarette.

THESE DAYS are gone forever. We took part in many stormy demonstrations against the military government until it was finally abolished in 1966. As a newly elected Member of Parliament, I had the privilege of voting for its abolition.

The fearful and subservient Arab minority, then amounting to some 200 thousand souls, has recovered its self-esteem. A second and third generation has grown up, its downtrodden national pride has raised its head again, and today they are a large and self-confident community of 1.5 million. But the attitude of the Jewish Right has not changed for the better. On the contrary.

In the Knesset bakery (the Hebrew word for bakery is Mafia) some new pastries are being baked. One of them is a bill that stipulates that anyone applying for Israeli citizenship must declare their loyalty to “the Jewish, Zionist and Democratic State”, and also undertake to serve in the army or its civilian alternative. Its sponsor is MK David Rotem of the “Israel is Our Home” party, who also happens to be the chairman of the Knesset Law Committee.

A declaration of loyalty to the state and its laws – a framework designed to safeguard the wellbeing and the rights of its citizens – is reasonable. But loyalty to the “Zionist” state? Zionism is an ideology, and in a democratic state the ideology can change from time to time. It would be like declaring loyalty to a “capitalist” USA, a “rightist Italy”, a ”leftist” Spain, a “Catholic Poland” or a “nationalist” Russia.

This would not be a problem for the tens of thousands of Orthodox Jews in Israel who reject Zionism, since Jews will not be touched by this law. They obtain citizenship automatically the moment they arrive in Israel.

Another bill waiting for its turn before the Ministerial Committee proposes changing the declaration that every new Knesset Member has to make before assuming office. Instead of loyalty “to the State of Israel and its laws”, as now, he or she will be required to declare their loyalty “to the Jewish, Zionist and Democratic State of Israel, its symbols and its values”. That would exclude almost automatically all the elected Arabs, since declaring loyalty to the “Zionist” state would mean that no Arab would ever vote for them again.

It would also be a problem for the Orthodox members of the Knesset, who cannot declare loyalty to Zionism. According to Orthodox doctrine, the Zionists are depraved sinners and the Zionist flag is unclean. God exiled the Jews from this country because of their wickedness, and only God can permit them to return. Zionism, by preempting the job of the Messiah, has committed an unpardonable sin, and many Orthodox Rabbis chose to remain in Europe and be murdered by the Nazis rather than committing the Zionist sin of going to Palestine.

THE FACTORY of racist laws with a distinct fascist odor is now working at full steam. That is built into the new coalition.

At its center is the Likud party, a good part of which is pure racist (sorry for the oxymoron). To its right there is the ultra-racist Shas party, to the right of which is Lieberman’s ultra-ultra racist “Israel is our Home” party, the ultra-ultra-ultra racist “Jewish Home” party, and to its right the even more racist “National Union” party, which includes outright Kahanists and stands with one foot in the coalition and the other on the moon.

All these factions are trying to outdo each other. When one proposes a crazy bill, the next is compelled to propose an even crazier one, and so on.

All this is possible because Israel has no constitution. The ability of the Supreme Court to annul laws that contradict the “basic laws” is not anchored anywhere, and the Rightist parties are trying to abolish it. Not for nothing did Avigdor Lieberman demand – and get – the Justice and Police ministries.

Just now, when the governments of the US and Israel are clearly on a collision course over the settlements, this racist fever may infect all parts of the coalition.

If one goes to sleep with a dog, one should not be surprised to wake up with fleas (may the dogs among my readers pardon me). Those who elected such a government, and even more so those who joined it, should not be surprised by its laws, which ostensibly safeguard Jewish democracy.

The most appropriate name for these holy warriors would be “Racists for Democracy”.

"The Eye of Lifta" by Aida Qasim

Foreword by Anil Korotane -

Aida Qasim, regards herself as a 1st generation descendant of Lifta born out of Palestine, in Exile. She is also a 2nd generation poet who perceives her task is to purposefully create alchemy of oneness between her poetry and Palestine. A purpose initially brought to the fore and epitomized by the late great Mahmoud Darwish, a figure who she commemorates in the opening lines of her Poem: 'The Eye of Lifta':


O, beloved swallow of the Galilee:
I (too) belong there—


The first line of my poem addresses Mahmoud Darwish, he is the swallow of the Galilee and he wrote the poem: "I belong there"; hence Aida's affirmation and retort. I asked Aida, paraphrasing 'I (too) belong', did she really? Or more precisely, knowing she was an American Palestinian - born on another land - and now resettled to a life in the affluent Abu Dhabi with her family, in what sense? Is it a sense of an injustice that has been passed down into her own experience, therefore yearning for justice to a past inherited? Or as a Palestinian American now living in Abu Dhabi, is it about sustaining a sense of 'origin' to something identifiable to a place?


She concurs - "In fact on all counts - yes, I think it is the injustice of it all the experience of being 'othered', the rootlessness...it breeds anger, rage in fact, if not self loathing as a result of being dehumanized, made invisible. And also, I (too) belong there, because I am a recipient of that history and were it not for the Nakba, I too would have been there. I am nostalgic for that which never was. My experience as a refugee-exile who was born out of Palestine and not of that era is intertwined with the Nakba. In fact it is intertwined with the history of Palestine.


An imaginative Gardner
tends to her fragmented umbilical cord
and I am vessel for her obsessions
over your aborted dreams and my still birth.


“The Nakba generation's dreams have been aborted, while mine are still birth. I don't know which is more agonizing!" To make clearer this enunciation she goes on by referring to the next lines of the poem:


A parasite scavenges the remains of you
from my scattered shards,
and then escapes like an elusive acrobat.


She explains, "Here the parasite and acrobat are nostalgia. If you are familiar with post memory which was observed with descendants of the holocaust, it's a sort of post traumatic stress disorder, where the survivors carry the trauma and grief which gets communicated in different ways, even subversively by those who have witnessed it to subsequent generations." "Even as a child it’s as though I had an antenna that picked up on the pain and I felt it - like an open wound, and still is.


Aida's poetry is a new visitation into the postmodern experience and she is grateful that she can use her writings as a vehicle to turn the energy into something constructive, "I write to make a case for a disenfranchised people and gather strength from a universality of the Palestinian cause as it enables me to channel my rage at and be engaged by all forms of oppression and subjugation."


“Like the title of Edward Said's Memoir: Out of Place; I, like many who have experienced the kind of displacement and injustices visited upon the Palestinian people, have always felt out of place. "And yet, I never quite allowed myself to assimilate. It was a decision I made as a young child growing up in predominately middle class Anglo American neighborhood at the height of American Xenophobia in the early seventies. I suppose even then, I was aware that I had inherited a most noble cause and so I felt compelled to defend it by asserting my identity, with painful consequences in the form of peer rejection.


I think, also my rebellious nature precludes me from ever truly belonging anywhere. And if Palestine were to be liberated today, I would surely be opposed to the ruling government and stifling social conventions. Perhaps it’s the temperament of the poet, perhaps it’s the feminist, or the disenfranchised native carrying the weight of centuries of colonization or all those things.
But I also see my exile as a profoundly postmodern experience. And that's why, the poet can be a metaphor too for the stateless and disenfranchised: in a perpetual state of moving, not quite belonging anywhere and yet everywhere. I (too) belong there (inside) and I belong (to) there (outside) positions at once...one exists in many states. I think limbo is a state that always seems to hover right beneath the surface, where home is neither here nor there, alternating between searching and waiting... But then at times, one comes to terms with one’s exile and home becomes exile and exile--home, and yet when all is still... a dormant desire for paradise lost, gently erupts and reminds us..."

In commemoration to the 61st Nakba Day -



“The eye of Lifta”

O beloved Swallow of the Galilee,
I (too) belong there—
where old men are boys
and fig trees
­­—mothers birthing memories like moss
in the valley of a mischievous mulberry tree.

There—
where a desolate kingdom of an eternal spring
fortified with an unwearied wind
pollinated Sixty-One autumns
with Sixty-One offerings:
to consummate a reunion with an almond seed.
Sixty-One offerings:
rebuffed by an unbending river
that flows neither here nor there;
Sixty-One offerings:
overruled by obstinate threads
luring a dying metaphor into a river of limbo;
Sixty-One offerings:
exiled for hijacking a glimpse
of the Golden Dome;
Sixty-One offerings:
frozen at nostalgia’s salon.

Nostalgia passes over infertile soil
like a punitive teacher
passes over an absentminded student.
An imaginative gardener
tends to her fragmented umbilical cord
and I am vessel for her obsessions
over your aborted dreams and my still birth.
A parasite scavenges the remains of you
from my scattered shards,
and then escapes like an elusive acrobat.
Nostalgia is for nostalgia’s sake
and the scorn of time her bed-mate.
This coveted mistress bleeds mosaic memories
and dwells deep in the cervix
of splintered selves.

Memories born of the same womb (wound):
Do BATTLE!

O weeping Goddess of Canaan,
Rise up from your grief!
Accept this poem sculpted from clay
of words and tears;
all is constructed and destroyed
with words and tears!

There—
where a jury of motherless cacti
is witness to Franks taking refuge
from the peddlers of forgetfulness
in a dome of dancing Byzantine terraces
and ululating golden Aleppo threads
celebrating an agnostic olive tree’s
mutiny against false prophets
of an unyielding harvest.
A paperless traveler scales walls
of indifference
and a nameless peasant paints green kohl
in the eyes of stone monuments,
with the devotion of a pilot sowing mines
on the edges of orphaned cities,
while a pensive sky archives maps and resolutions
under the pillow of a banished raindrop.
--
A poet collects her belongings:
a duffle bag;
a rain coat;
the scribbled lines to an unfinished poem:
I belong (to) there—
written on the back of an unpaid bill,
in the smoking lounge of an airport.


Aida.Qasim@gmail.com

A Poem and Writing by Aida Qasim, a poet and Lifta descendant, and her father Isa's memories of Lifta.





Aida, the youngest of her father's children recognizes the value of her father's stories and feels a sense of urgency to record them. She realized whilst reflecting on Lifta that her father Isa, who will be 80 next december, never told her stories of Al Nakba; the stories had always been about the Lifta of his childhood and Aida wanted to capture that in a poem which will be forthcoming. Aida, who will participate with FAST in forthcoming events for the Saving Lifta Project, has generously contributed a poem she had written last year- "Neruda's blue rose"- in commemrotation of the passing of 60 years since Al Nakba. The other piece illustrates a parable of the very poignant and personal ressurgent affect that the Nakba has through the generations and onto the present zeitgeist. FAST would like to thank Aida and Isa for their contributions and we will continue to post their writings on the blog.



Nerduda’s Blue Rose


My dreams are not enchanted springs of jasmine
Laced with the musings of romantic artists

Or utopian meadows
Where gazelles fall in love with lions under starry skies

They are not safe havens for tilled soil
Sanctioned by a punishing rain

But are hungry children
Luring a nostalgic pilgrim into the narcissistic desert night

Restless bats taunting a gentle swallow
Armed with a warm blue silence

Muted witnesses to your fleeing echo
And to the seagull’s yearnings for Neruda’s blue rose

O repentant kings of a bygone moon
Weep not for blind men of the Imposturous Setback

Weep for your beloved son
Born again in the cradle of another Catastrophe!

Aida Qasim



Isa's Memories of Lifta


The prevailing notion, among those who are not intimately familiar with Lifta is that it is the old village down the valley west of Jerusalem. True Lifta is that village, but it is in fact much wider and larger.

That old village, romantic and beautiful whose houses are very old and which contains the famous water spring, is the original village. All Liftawis come from there. But early in the twentieth cencury many Liftawis started spreading around. Why not when those vast areas of land to the west and north of the old city of Jerusalem belonged to them. Sheikh Jarrah, Romema, Sheikh Badr, to name but few, belonged to the people of Lifta. If fact much of what is now west Jerusalem belonged to Litawis.

As you approach Jerusalem, coming from the west along Jaffa road, you will see two rows of nice and elegant houses on top of a hill on your left. Those are the houses of my extended family - my father's and my uncles' etc. We moved to that house when I was about five years old. At that time we had our first radio set, and the first radio set in the area, a big His Master's Voice and had electricity.

To me, most memorable was a big mulbrry tree that was standing majestically in the front yard. That tree was my friend. Many a time had I played around it and climbed high in it, ostensibly to collect its delicious fruit but in fact trying to do what Sammy now does best: to climb for the sake of climbing and to jump for the sake of jumping. And that tree was very tolerant and wise. I believe it still stands after over seventy five years. For, some years ago I went there and from some distance I could see it. Sad, maybe, but it still stood in its place. Is it waiting for me to go back?



Narratives intersect at the crossroads of memory


Though life’s circumstances have been the stated reason for my procrastination, there was a sense that to begin my journey towards a PhD, I needed geographical and emotional space from my place of enduring exile. Conversely, my father’s approaching eightieth birthday left me with a compelling need to register his narrative before it was lost to oblivion, and in so doing, discovered my own.

In reviewing the literature, I came across Mahmoud Darwish’s poem, “To my mother”. The line: “I love my life, because if I died, I would be ashamed of the tears of my mother”, made me weep. Never had those familiar words resonate so deeply; until then, the metaphor of an idealized mother was a stranger to me. My earliest memory at the age of three, informed my understanding of this construct, subsequently orchestrating the assimilation of successive losses into my repertoire of being.

She stood wailing near the television screen as though intent on entering the box and rearranging the scenes. The defeat of the Arab armies and ensuing occupation of the rest of Palestine, including her birth place –Jerusalem- unraveled my mother like a forgotten sweater who had not been mothballed. A three year old little girl looked on, mesmerized by the histrionics of a strange woman who up until then had been her proverbial anchor.

Queasy at any perceived unruliness of emotions, my father urged her to calm down for his sake as much as mine. My mother’s tattered edges came together in a crescendo of uncharacteristic fury as she shot back a perfectly lucid proclamation: “Let her know the truth!” And for countless nights thereafter, I lay anxiously in the “truth”, overwhelmed by an insidious feeling that the world was an intensely unsafe place.

More than three decades later, I watched helplessly as American tanks rolled into the West Bank while the Israeli army waged its merciless war on Palestinians with its “incursions”. My husband, concerned for our three year old son urged me to take hold of my feral emotions which vacillated between despair and rage. His seemingly treacherous request prompted me to summon the freighted and bemused little girl that remained accessible. Resurrecting the intensity of an earlier time, I reiterated the same maternal sentiment with equal conviction. Palestine had become my abducted child; innocence usurped. And as the notion of abandoning a three year old girl seemed inconceivable, so was deserting a sixty year old boy standing defiantly in the squalor of a refugee camp, with both hands behind his back- patiently observing history unfold- awaiting liberation.

That moment’s idiosyncratic reading of an iconic poem jolted me. No longer did my invention live in the context of the defiant daughter I had always been, but rather experienced through the forgiving Mother I have become. I paced through the vacant rooms of the second floor to our rented villa; the bare walls and furniture that seemed sparse in relation to the size of the place gave it an air of aloofness. Slothfully, I inched towards the hard edge of our oversized bed and covered my head under the inviting sheets. Failed attempts at commanding my body to travel the bed’s full splendor prompted me to surrender with un-bashful abandon my somewhat trusty resolve. Tears that were not mine alone or solely of this time and place commandeered the day’s agenda; a creative process unfolded, derailing what had set out to be an academic exercise.

Aida Qasim

Commencement of the Saving Lifta project-campaign in Jerusalem




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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Anil Korotane, FAST

An announcement to the people from Lifta -







Dear Liftawa,

We call upon you for your help and support.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Peace be with you.

Anil Korotane, FAST.

The Reconstruction of Memory and Architecture as Activism.





The Reconstruction of Memory.


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

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

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

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

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

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

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



Architecture as Activism.


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

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

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

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

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


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

1. The Reconstruction of Memory.

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. A Memorial and Conservation MasterPlan.

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

3. Advocacy.

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

4. Civil Action.

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

posted by Anil Korotane, FAST.

Episode 4.


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






Photo: The wadi spring - the 'eye of Lifta' & 'spring of Mei Neftoah'.


Many of the structures cultivated into the landscape remain as ruins, however the spring and part of the pathway leading to it has been slightly refurbished. The spring, known as the 'eye of Lifta' still brings fresh water to its well. Once the focal point of the village, the wadi spring was used by the village ladies to wash their clothes and fill their pitchers with fresh water. Families would sit, in the long afternoons and mild evenings, telling each other of their sorrows and joys. The communal relationship that exists between the spring, the graveyard and the mosque still remains. Villagers would take the bodies of their deceased relatives to the spring where they would be washed under the trees by the spring, then taken to the mosque which was very close, and then onto the graveyard to be buried which was also in close proximity. Today, the spring is a haven for all venturing to enjoy the coolness of her water and is also encouraged by a sentiment to fulfil a purpose of ceremonial use as a Mikvah. The wadi-spring has also an historical reference as a border landmark between the tribes of Judah and Benjamin in the bible 'Joshua 15:9' and 'Joshua 18:15' as the spring of Mei Neftoah.

From the official Israeli outlook the ruins on the landscape are merely oriental remains interwoven with the mystique of the ancient past. The valley has had several incarnations and names through out her history. There are archaeological findings of a Canaanite settlement from the Bronze era. The name Lifta means corridor in Aramaic, Naftoh was its Roman name, which was then renamed Kabesta by the Crusaders. It was during the second Islamic era that it regained its Aramaic name. A few attempts have also been made to transform the valley in some form or another since the creation of Israel. Such as the use of the buildings to house immigrants from Arab countries, such as the Yemenites during the 1950s, or conserving the buildings and transforming the village into the headquarters of Israel's National Parks Protection Authority. And now the valley has been given a another incarnation under the approved plan to conserve and transform the village into a commercial edifice allocated under the guise of Mei Neptoah. The Mei Neptoah approved plan will consist of a commercial center with shops, hotels, bus stations and with land sold for individual housing on the western slopes.

Coupled by the biblical reference of Mei Neftoah the valley is attracting symbolic value amongst the Israelis. Nonetheless, even with this symbolic association one cannot override and dismiss the place is still tangible through memory and a bond that still exists with Lifta. However to have multiple values, such as recognizing ruins in association to the legacy of Lifta, is currently implausible to identifying a role with the existing context, traditions and narrative of the Israeli State. The only possibility of Lifta attaining such a value will be if she can demonstrate her necessity as invaluable and engaging at a level akin to a progression and goodwill for the region. Therefore, any value has to be able to penetrate the imagination of the Israeli consciousness and National narrative. However, in her current form, Lifta only sustains a relative value as a place with an identity through memories held together by a bond. By acknowledging that the principle agent and influence sustaining the place is the bond, it will be necessary to demonstrate if this bond can also redefine its location within a definable context of the Nation State.

The potential to demonstrate the accessibility of this bond is possible through further examination of the location. Currently, the ruins on the landscape lies disparately as if frozen in time between two epochs, two histories, and the two dominant cultures of the region; a place in-between and connecting two paradigms. The event that occured during the uprooting of the Palestinian and the establishment of the Israeli is inextricably tied together by a context which needs reason behind one historical event to explain the other. Traces of the event are preserved and made tangible only through the memory sustained by a bond to the ruins. Lifta reveals a dissonance and conflict that arose in the uprooting of this village is inextricably tied together to the creation of the Modern State. She is a contextual origin whereby the struggle of the Palestinian people that has perpetuated from the events of 1948 and the genealogy of Israel's history can be traced back to her location as a point of departure. The current issues of dissonance between Israel and the Palestinians seen unfolding in the present context have their origins traced to a place whereby the source of the conflict becomes tangible.

This conflict that defines this particular moment in history has essentially unfolded into the current existential values of today. Part of the influence of their constructions are achieved through a protagonist quality of dissonance, a staging of a conflict of values, constructing differences and establishing the 'other'. If the State allowed the removal of the signs of history, that is still tangible, it would be detrimental in erasing an historical location that forms part of their current existential truth. A place that reveals the creation of the two dominant existential identities of the region; a 'point of departure' of the two current narratives of the Israeli and the Palestinian. Lifta is a unique insight into truths that are crucial to understanding part of the nature and construction defining identities. The two existential narratives opposed in conflict share the same story through the same language of a reality through the given context of Lifta. What the narratives oppose of one another is also brought together by this place. The language of history of the Palestinian and the Israeli are bound and concealed by a place. To fail to recognize Lifta is to also to deny both Palestinian and Israeli history.

The importance of the relationship of the bond connecting memory and place here is that the common history is sustained through an origin. It is a common history that is tangible and a particular history that needs to be re-visited as well as engaged by both parties inextricably tied together to the conflict. Lifta as an apparatus can allow us to contemplate and attend to issues involving dissonance and history by stabilizing memory through a duality. Memory is an invaluable resource and a principle reason for officially wanting to have this place recognized. Memory can provide a stage of communication for those confronting the undeniable raw emotion of trauma and a denied sense of anguish and loss. Memory thus re-inventing a place that has the opportunity to deal and tangibly confront the tragedy. It is through such a common-ground that a gathering involving both sides represented in the conflict can in some instance be imagined. Creating the capacity of a space for the sake of openly redeeming rather than reservedly confining the existential natures of identities. The bond provides the capacity to engage with a space envisaged to create acknowledgement for the purposes of reconciliation.

The consequences of the situation today can be understood by a place that locates its entirety into a context. An historical point of origin that has the capacity to engage at the tangible constructions of the making of confrontation, differences and narratives. Locating Lifta in this particular historical context, confronting the real experiences of the conflict of 1948, is important for acknowledging the tragic events of history. Insubordinate and vulnerable with current reality it may shamelessly be however, the necessity to give insight into this place is not conceivable unless it seeks to create an opportunity from the definable differences. As a common-ground Lifta verges onto a space of encounter, but can she continue to voyage further into a space of the possible? For instance, can reciprocation of the bond between memory and the ruins have the capacity to sustain an all-encompassing sense of justice and truth towards the lost temporal landscape? Or in the pursuit to illuminate genealogy, can the common past be used to resort to reconcilable narratives and situations? So by contesting history can a challenge be set against the moving spirit of dissonance notably characterized within the current situation of the region?

Lifta's last moment during the upheaval of her cultivated platform lay besieged to a conflict. Thus creating an origin that perpetuated into the region's struggle between the two existential narratives of the Israeli and the Palestinian. Either of the cultural narrative's intent and actions can have the effect of creating a counteraction synonymous to a dissonance producing 'otherness'. For instance, attitudes and outlooks of a cultural narrative can interpret situations or a version of events performed by the 'other' as inconsistent and contradictory. The eventual action of response between the narratives can have an effect of reproducing values of difference and discord thus sustaining a potential conflict. The question remains can a likely removal of this central character of dissonance be accomplished if the desolate valley that is an origin of the conflict and two narratives was to stage a meeting with the 'other'? Can using a common-ground enable the possibility of a reality to be accessible to both narratives with the same mutual acknowledgement? And can the common-ground be capable of contesting the events of a particular poignant moment in history whilst encouraging a dialogue towards an all-embracing judgment?

The central character of dissonance can be interrupted if the prominence of the conflict of narratives is reduced by converging on truths that readdress traditional conceptions. The idea and impression of Lifta as a contextual genealogical power origin to the Modern State of Israel is an argument tended towards addressing the creation of dissonance. The interaction of people with a memorial preserving a specific historical period plays with the idea of relevant cultural objects that evoke a new interplay between histories, cultures and place. A need for this particular intervention serving as a place of observation creates an opportunity to question and examine cultural assertions. Demonstrating to educate people about the past for the urgency of reconciling discordant situations in the present context of civil society. Nonetheless, reinforcing history can prove to be an obstacle especially if it required officially acknowledging Palestinian memory about the origins of the conflict. The challenge is finding approaches that can make communicating to broader audiences compatible and acceptable. And the memory of Lifta has evidently more to impart with to allow such a capable intervention.

Language can make realities accessible. Language processes experiences through recognition and interpretation, therefore allowing us to ascertain realities. Israel has a traceable genealogical power origin that recognizes an identifiable character within the current identity of the State. A place where language can recognize contextually and interpret the legacy of the divide of the two main existential narratives is tangibly accessible and can be absorbed, but nonetheless is not immune from being interrupted. This point is significant as the same language has the capability of making other realities accessible and therefore accessible to a same narrative. The bond to the ruins bears testimony to a quintessential form of civil behaviour, allowing a memory of civil equality to be evoked whilst sustaining a unique insight into the origin of a lineage of historical conflict. Both the genealogy and ontology directly connected to this place offer an ideal and significant opportunity towards providing an historical foundation for reconciling conflict. Memory can be utilized for ascertaining realities to introduce the possibility of new constructions; consequently, the possible ramifications might enable a power origin to be subverted through the common-ground.

Genealogies are important because they can also be identified and distinguished as power systems. Power as control or force can commonly be interpreted within historical social conditions as motivations and attitudes. Genealogies as power systems contain and carry belief systems that define the very nature of our behaviour or nature of being; ontology. Genealogical origins sustained within histories, memories and tangible traces have the capacity to nurture and cultivate future successions of behaviour. (for example, the relationship between the creation of a genealogical origin of the Modern State of Israel and the creation of dissonance.) Nonetheless, rather than resuming specific modes of reproductions as a linear series of ongoing motivations, genealogies can also have the capacity to restore alternative modes of behaviour previously retracted and deemed unnecessary; evolving the ongoing ontology of a lineage. The idea of Lifta as a contextual genealogical origin to the Modern State of Israel is that the argument can be used to create an observation of place that can prove important to the current context and social values. Civil equality as an ontological value can serve to break down obstacles whilst contributing on it's own qualities to readdress a social heritage.

Upon reflection, the uprooting of the village was a tragedy for the palestinian community of the village however, the community encompassed multi-ethnic groups. The Nakba in Lifta was a catastrophe for the palestinian muslims, christians and jews. The jewish Hilo tribe, who apparently were given the option by the pervading force to remain in the village, decided to share the same fate with their community and vacated the village. There is historical evidence that gives reason to believe that this event encompassed a discord for all ethnic groups associated to it. These insights fully deserve to be accounted, recognized, as well as expressed; they provide significant opportunities for suggesting outlooks that provide alternative views upon the region's history and place. What is interesting is that new insights can begin to create a working of a new narrative, a new history, and a new space. The creating of this space which recognizes experiences of both the conflict and of civil equality begins to contests its' own history. The fact that the same language, through and because of a memory, sustaining a history of civil equality 'meets' with the reconstructive language of the conflict means that the acknowledgement of this connection of histories can possibly have influence on a new consciousness making. Where one is aware of their environment and of a space for the re-imagined.

There has to be some form of social upheaval that is constantly reminding the environment of truths such as civil equality, so to bring some form of contradiction and ambiguity of power contesting the ideology of the environment. Again, through investigative examination into Lifta's memory and juxtaposing truths such as that this place unfolds a story of a tragedy, or is relatively a contextual origin for Israel, and where a multi-ethnic community once thrived - may allow further contestable narratives to be obtainable. Memory can influence the necessary negotiation needed to sustain a dialogue on the recognition of truths underlining currents of genealogical and existential constructions. Again this is significant as it can allow the potential capacity to address issues that fundamentally seek reconcilable possibilities. 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. 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. So rather than asking who officially gets the right to choose or imply history and heritage, a need to preserve and develop instruments that actively seek to contest truths can be envisaged as a devisable method for this common-ground.

So what is the objective? Is the objective to sustain the preservation of Lifta so that she can be clearly recognized as a place, or is the objective also to introduce a monument into the environment whom's equivocal workings is aimed at addressing the conflict? Both. The valley landscape should be noted for her many encarnations, from the early Canaanite settlement from the Bronze era, and including the present practices such as the attraction of her natural spring that fulfills the ritual as a mikvah. Nonetheless, there is also a credible history that is invaluable to the present situation and context of identities in the region. 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 reevaluate relationships for the sake of the regional community. Symbolism of place can confirm power and control over the environment; identities can be inclusive and foundational just as they can be exclusive and oppressive. 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. In prospect, an attainable value through the reconstruction of heritage; aiming to bridge worlds together by creating mechanisms out of a bond between memory and place.


Next time.....the tools devised for action will be highlighted, thus unfolding the manifesto and taking the next step into the journey of the grassroots activism.


written by Anil Korotane, Architectural Activist, FAST.