Lifta - لفتا: Israel to erase Arab homes in Lifta to build luxurious Jewish neighborhood

From palestine-info.net Occupied Jerusalem: Palestinian sources in Jerusalem said today a group of American Jewish immigrants to Israel were planing to build a luxurious Jewish neighborhood on seized Palestinian land at the depopulated Arab village of Lifta in West Jerusalem. The sources said the planned neighborhood would include three hundred luxurious flats, a large hotel, a big mall, and a large tourist resort. In the process of carrying out the scheme, hundreds of Palestinian homes, all of which predated the creation of Israel in 1948, would be erased to obliterate any reminder that the area was once a prosperous Arab village. The Israeli decision to destroy the remaining Palestinian homes in Lifta has infuriated the original inhabitants of the village, most of whom now live in Rmallah and East Jerusalem, as well as in Jordan and North America. "This theft in full daylight, this brash usurpation of our rights what they are doing defies linguistic description," said Rabei Hussein, Head of the Lifta Society, a body encompassing the villagers of Lifta and their progeny, during an interview today with the PA-run radio "Voice of Palestine" Hussein said the "dangerous Israeli decision coincided with what he called concomitant vicious plots against the just cause of the refugees." "They want to obliterate the remaining reminder of what they did to us fifty years agoso that their future generations would get away with it, but they won't," he said. Hussein pointed out that there were still over 300 fully-intact Arab homes in Lifta and that the name of the proprietor were engraved at each home. All in all, Hussein said, the inhabitants of Lifta, who were expelled at gun point by advancing Zionist gangs in 1948, were still owning over 10,000 various real estates at the village. "One day we'll return, and if not us, our children will" he said in an embittered tone.