Jerusalem's Lifta faces threats from destruction, development

Commercialization of abandoned Arab village may be the only way to save the historical homes, but is the price too high?

Yacoub Odeh stands in front of the tanur, the community stone oven, next to his old house and closes his eyes. "Our house was right here," said the 71-year-old former resident of Lifta, pointing to a pile of stones that forms the outline of the foundation of a house. "As a little kid, I used to grab onto my mother's skirts when she went to make bread at the tanur. I'd hide in her skirts, and then my favorite thing in the world was to eat the fresh bread right out of the oven, with a little zaatar and olive oil."

Odeh was eight years old in 1947 when the residents of Lifta, an Arab village at the entrance to Jerusalem, fled. The strategic location of the village, climbing up a steep wadi and stretching towards the Old City, looking down on most of modern-day Jerusalem, meant it was one of the first villages to experience violence leading up to the siege of the city.

Today Lifta is in the middle of a different struggle, one that not only pits Arab history against Jewish history, but delves into the question of how much the city needs to preserve as it grows and develops.

In January, the Israel Lands Authority published a tender to build 212 luxury apartment villas and a hotel in the area of Lifta, turning the crumbling stone houses into lavish residences.

A coalition of activists successfully petitioned the Jerusalem District Court to halt the tender in March. The petition, filed by former Lifta residents, Rabbis for Human Rights, and Jafra, a Palestinian heritage organization, calls for the courts to freeze the bidding process and for the ILA to require that an independent monitoring organization complete a survey of the area to determine what should be preserved and what can be developed.

The activists argue that contractors performing a survey of the land, as is currently required, will be inadequate since the contractors have a commercial interest to preserve as little as possible. The court granted a temporary freeze until a trial is held to determine if the ILA can move forward with the bidding process. The court date at the Jerusalem District Court, which has been delayed by more than two months, is now set for July 7.

But the current legal impasse seems miles away from the peacefulness of Lifta, which has stood abandoned but largely intact for 64 years. It is the only completely abandoned Arab village that was not destroyed or inhabited by Jews after 1948, though its empty buildings have provided a haven for drug dealers, prostitutes and the homeless...

Read more: http://www.liftasociety.org/news/jerusalems-lifta-faces-threats-from-destruct...
Source: Jerusalem Post

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