Palestinian ‘Pompeii’ in Isreal could face demolition

JERUSALEM — A 10-minute walk from the bustle of Jerusalem’s central bus station, Lifta’s crumbling remains are a sanctuary of silence.

Residents of the former Palestinian village on the western edge of the city fled during the war surrounding Israel’s independence in 1948, and today it is one of the few depopulated Palestinian villages that was neither demolished nor re-inhabited. Now, the overgrown skeletons of buildings face a new threat: luxury apartments. Opponents want to preserve the town as an historic site.

Until 1948, Lifta was an affluent Muslim Palestinian village of around 2,500 abutting the main road connecting Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Fighting between Jewish and Palestinian militias took place in and around Lifta in December 1947, including an attack on a cafe that left seven dead, prompting its residents to flee, according to historical accounts.

After the war, the village was incorporated into the state of Israel, and residents were not allowed to return.

For reasons that remain unclear, Lifta was never demolished. After the war it briefly housed Jewish refugees, but most of its houses were abandoned again in the late 1960s.

The village and its natural spring were later declared a nature reserve, and the rocky slope is covered in vegetation. Trees grow through some of the 55 remaining houses built before the war.

But in 2011 a redevelopment plan was advanced to bulldoze the village ruins and the nature reserve — which today are part of one of the largest undeveloped tracts of land in the Jerusalem municipal area — into luxury residences, a hotel and shops. A group of Israeli and Palestinian activists pushed back against the plan, arguing Lifta should be preserved as a living monument.