Lifta - لفتا: Ha'aretz Daily: Unofficial monument to a decisive time in history

By Esther Zandberg

Yakub Odeh points at the cluster of stone houses in the middle of Lifta, the abandoned Arab village on the western outskirts of Jerusalem, and says that here, in the place he was born 64 years ago and where his family lived until 1948, is where he would like to build his home.

Odeh, who now lives in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, is holding Construction Plan No. 6036 for the village of Lifta that was initiated by the Israel Lands Administration (ILA). The plan has now been submitted to the district planning and building committee. Odeh is indignant about what he calls the liberty the ILA took in appropriating hundreds of dunams of village lands in order to build new residential housing, rebuild, renovate and demolish the existing original buildings, and build a commercial center, synagogue, museum, roads and pathways, and public areas.

The ILA is doing all this, Odeh continues, without consulting him or other descendants of the village's residents, the legal owners of the land, as he describes them - and against their will. Odeh has added this gripe to the written objection to the plan that he recently submitted to the district committee.

He wrote, in part, that "land in the compound that is designated for residential use should be planned such that it will be appropriate for the housing of the original residents of Lifta and their descendants, whose property was taken from them through no wrong of their own. This would enable the purchase or return of the land to them, and would constitute a rectification of the wrongs done to the place and its residents, and not only provide land to people of means who never had the slightest connection or link to the place."

Frozen in time

Lifta, situated in a valley at the foot of Jerusalem's Romema quarter, is easily visible from the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway and is a popular site for Israeli day-trippers. It is a picturesque place, frozen in time, protected by difficult terrain conditions. Lifta looks like an illustration from a colonial-era travelogue or a lost paradise over which hovers a peaceful tranquillity.

This tranquillity, however, is superficial. The remains of the village hold in them all of the elements of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - the refugee problem, the right of return, national memory and identity - all of which have now come to the surface with all due intensity in light of the drafting of the construction plan. The plan has spurred objections that have been filed with the regional committee by a variety of individuals and organizations, both Israeli and Palestinian, on architectural, cultural, procedural and other grounds.

For centuries, Lifta was home to Arab residents who became refugees after the establishment of the State of Israel. Their descendants, whom Odeh estimates at around 30,000, are scattered through the neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and other countries of the world. Most of the homes in the village were destroyed during the War of Independence, and many others suffered the same fate following the establishment of the state. Odeh's parents' home, which was destroyed in 1948, is situated on the village's Street of the Spring, which would become the main commercial and tourism thoroughfare in the new Lifta. His grandfather's home was destroyed 10 years ago. Many other homes went through a natural or intentional process of wear and tear or disintegration.

However, as opposed to hundreds of other Palestinian villages in Israel, Lifta was not completely destroyed. It remained largely intact, with 55 original stone houses still standing, a spring with flowing waters and a reservoir, with agricultural terraces, olive trees and sabra cacti that were never covered over by forests of the Jewish National Fund, and vistas from which you cannot help but be amazed.

The village has never been repopulated - most of the homes are abandoned or serve as refuge for eccentrics and other marginal characters - and has "against its will become a unique museum of a building culture that is becoming extinct," as architectural historian David Kroyanker writes.

On a tour of Lifta in the company of Odeh last week, he said that if his request to build a home was denied, he would ask to leave the village in its current state and to declare it a nature and cultural reserve, a monument to Palestinian life there. Similarly, he wants the mosque and the cemetery in which members of his family are buried to be preserved.

However, as he learned from a detailed review of the plan, not only would the character of the village be altered beyond recognition, but the site on which the mosque now stands is designated to be a commercial and residential zone; the cemetery is not even marked. In his objection to the plan, Odeh writes that it ought to be preserved "as befitting an enlightened country that respects or is supposed to respect itself, its residents and citizens, even if they are not among the majority."

The issue of "the right to memory" of those who are not among the majority is also at the hub of objections to the Lifta plan submitted to the district committee by Zochrot and Bimkom, two non-profit organizations that engage in fundamental issues of design of national memory through planning.

Bimkom notes that "the right to memory" is conceived by the governmental, planning and cultural establishments in Israel as the exclusive right of the Jewish nation. For example, there is no reference in the planning guidelines for Lifta, which were published in a special booklet, to the fact that this is a Palestinian village. Historical memory of the village is associated exclusively to its ancient Jewish past, to the "historic layers identified with the biblical Mei Naftoah."

Excerpts from the conclusions of the Or Commission report, which investigated the causes of the riots in the Arab sector in October 2000, are quoted in the written objection filed by Bimkom. "The role of the state is not reduced to material matters alone," it states. "Governing authorities must find ways that will enable Arab citizens to express in public life their culture and identity in an appropriate and respectful manner."

Nevertheless, neither the conclusions reached by the Or Commission nor any other like-minded beliefs held by both the Palestinian and Jewish publics are expressed in the plan, even though its declared objectives are preservation and restoration of culture and identity.

The program includes detailed guidelines for the preservation of the existing fabric of the village and for types of construction, and the use of local architectural motifs and building materials. There is even reference to the terraces being built with a "patina" that looks old and authentic.

Yet this is physical preservation - merely architectural and aesthetic - that caters to aficionados of Oriental exotica. "The plan does not offer a proper solution to the inclusion of memory elements of Palestinian history, which have in effect been almost totally expunged," notes urban planner Nili Baruch of Bimkom.

Focus for reconciliation

Perhaps thanks to the fact that it was frozen in time, in the eyes of many Israelis Arabs and Jews, Lifta has become an unofficial monument to a decisive chapter in the history of the two peoples, the War of Independence and the Palestinian Nakba. Zochrot views the preservation of the village as a reverential nod to the Palestinian residents of Lifta, even if it is an unconscious nod, as it puts it.

In its objection to the construction plan, its expresses concern that the plan "would erase the village's significance as an important memory site for its refugees."

Zochrot stresses that although the plan "tries to show off, giving the appearance of professional preservation," it is in essence a program that bears political significance - "of the continued domination of the State of Israel over the Arab expanse of the country."

There is nothing new about the repopulation of Palestinian settlements abandoned in 1948 with Jewish residents. Lifta is, nevertheless, the only case in Israel in which a Palestinian settlement would be repopulated with a Jewish population after having been left half-destroyed for the past 56 years, as Bimkom's objection notes.

Zochrot, which is opposed in principle to any construction in Lifta, believes that its repopulation with Jews would aggravate any future solution of the problem of the Palestinian refugees. On the other hand, Bimkom is not opposed to construction, and does not relate to the refugee issue or the legal ownership of the land.

"The planning must relate to the attributes of the community that lived on the site for hundreds of years," states the association's objection, which asks that the plan be reassessed. Bimkom also requests that a detailed historical survey of Lifta take place, including the taking of testimony from former residents.

The nonexistence of any such survey in the current plan perhaps explains the contentions of architect Gabriel Cartes of the Groug-Cartes firm, which collaborated with Ze'ev Temkin of TIK Projects in its preparation. They did not find the mosque or the cemetery on the site. Both Zochrot and Bimkom, in differing emphases, view the preservation of the mosque and the cemetery, and the preservation of Palestinian memory at Lifta in general, as a focus for reconciliation between the peoples instead of a focus of latent conflict still humming under the surface.

In this spirit, the construction plan that has been under discussion since 1996 is a cause for wonder with regard to why it was ever commissioned. On such a emotionally charged and politically symbolic site, with terrain conditions that are difficult for modern construction, on a site on which the development of road, water or sewage infrastructure would require immense technological effort and heavy monetary expenditure, in a landscape in which any intrusion could be the source of perpetual regret, and on land on which there are no real estate pressures that might have provided an easy excuse, the plan seems opposed to all common sense, harmful to the interests of all of the parties on both sides of the conflict, and perhaps an attempt to conceal evidence of the existence of a people living in a "country without a people."

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