#SaveLifta: One of the Last Palestinian Villages Left Standing After the Nakba
Opinion analysis by Roa Daher, Featured Writer
June 29th, 2021
The Palestinan village of Lifta in Jerusalem is often described as the ‘Palestinian Pompeii’, but in reality, there could not be a worse and inaccurate way to describe it. While Pompeii in Italy was buried under the ash of the erupted volcano Mount Vesuvius due to a natural disaster, the population of Lifta was forced to flee under threats of violence from Zionist terrorist groups in early 1948. Just a few days earlier, israeli terrorists had murdered 6 Palestinians in the village coffee house, and by February of 1948, the remaining population was forcibly removed and sent off to East Jerusalem. One thing that differentiates Lifta from the other 418 Palestinian villages and towns that were violently depopulated by Jewish terrorist groups is that Lifta was emptied by February of 1948, which is three whole months prior to the formation of the genocidal state of israel. The mass exodus seen in Lifta occurred all over Palestine in different towns and villages, with varying degrees of violence, all in line with the goal of ethnically cleansing Palestinians from their land. The ruins of Lifta have remained, evidence of the 2,550 people who previously lived in the wealthy village that depended on agriculture. In fact, Lifta is one of the last Palestinian villages left standing after the Nakba, and has historically valuable unexcavated archeological evidence of Palestinians who lived there in previous centuries. Lifta is one of 25 endangered monuments according to the World Monument Fund, and is also on the UNESCO tentative world heritage site list for its rich history. However, israelis do not seem to be deterred by its historical or cultural value, and would prefer eliminating any evidence of historic Palestine. During the Nakba, David Ben-Gurion instructed his men to force Palestinians to flee their villages and towns and to seize and destroy what was left behind. In Lifta, Jewish terrorists made holes in the roofs of Palestinians homes to render them unlivable.
While the ethnically cleansed village remains standing today, the houses are deserted, and Palestinians are afraid to visit their old homes or the cemeteries where their ancestors are buried because of the dangerous Jewish settlers who roam around the area. The israeli Land Authority, that claims ‘authority’ over all stolen and ‘deserted’ Palestinian land in the Occupied Territories, has redevelopment plans for Lifta. They want to demolish the Palestinian houses left standing to instead build more than 200 villas for Jewish settlers, in addition to a hotel, museum, and synagogue. The heart of Lifta will be transformed into a mall for settlers to shop in, while Palestinians from Lifta see their own homes being demolished and see their village destroyed to make room for more white Jewish settlers who come from all around the world, most notably from the US and Europe. People come from all over the world, anywhere from Long Island, like Yakub Fauci who is infamously living in a stolen portion of the El-Kurd home in Sheikh Jarrah, to Kiev and Warsaw. Unfortunately, this is an adequate summary of the apartheid state of israel: a settler colony for white Jews, with well-documented discrimination against black Jews, and one built on the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands Palestinians from 1948.
In israel, the debate surrounding Lifta is highly focused on objections that the planned project is for luxury real estate rather than low-cost housing that is accessible to all settlers. One of the proposed solutions has been converting Lifta to a tourist site. Yet, all the concerns of settlers are misplaced: instead of worrying about the accessibility of a refurbished Lifta to poor settlers, Palestinians from Lifta and every other Palestinian village and town should be granted the Right to Return to their homes. On colonial Jerusalem day, an israeli national holiday commemorating the occupation of Jerusalem, member of the far-right Likud Party, Yair Gabay, re-initiated the plan for a public auction that would allow private developers to begin the construction for the settler colonial project in Lifta. By demolishing Lifta, israeli politicians are hoping to continue their plan to judaise Jerusalem and make it the capital of israel that is void of Palestinians, while simultaneously robbing Palestinians from Lifta of their Right to Return. The occupation and apartheid state is continuing the project it started in 1948, built on the idea that Palestine is ‘a land without a people for a people without a land’, thus perfect for establishing a Jewish homeland. However, the land is Palestinian, and Palestinians will continue to exist and resist the occupation.