The ghost town between Palestine's past and its future

[Violet_Crumble]

Walking through the abandoned Palestinian village of Lifta, Yacoub Odeh is transported back to a time more than 63 years ago when as a child he would play in these streets before his carefree existence came to an abrupt end.

As he points out the old mosque and olive press, names come tumbling back, events, memories – a life before 1948, the fateful year that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled their ancestral homes during Israel's war of independence, most of them never to return.

All that remains of this once-prosperous village are the shells of dozens of houses dotted throughout the valley, their outer walls largely intact but now overgrown with wildflowers and weeds.

How much longer the village will remain in this state is anyone's guess. It is at the centre of a wrangle over whether it should be preserved in its current state as a reminder of the Palestinian dispossession or redeveloped into luxury housing. The Israel Land Administration, now the legal owner of the land, is marketing plots to developers to construct an upscale neighbourhood based on the buildings that already exist.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/the-ghost-town-between-palestines-past-and-its-future-2276864.html

[oberliner]

1. Nonsense and lies from a passionate hater of Israel

Once you've included quotations from Ghada Karmi in your article it's hard to take any of the rest of it too seriously.

Throw in a fake Ben Gurion quote for good measure to seal the deal!

[Violet_Crumble]

2. Feel free to attempt to give a coherent rebuttal...

Does that village not exist? Was the old bloke who used to live there lying?

on edit: Great Shoot The Messenger moment there, btw. Catrina Stewart is not a 'passionate hater of Israel'...

[King_David]

9. So only half the article is credible?

as Oberliner said

'quotations from Ghada Karmi '

and ' a fake Ben Gurion quote'

is certainly enough to render the whole article non-credible.

[Violet_Crumble]

10. I asked for a coherent rebuttal to the article...

If you want to try to dispute that this village exists or that old guy was lying, feel free to give it a try seeing as how yr trying to claim it's all non-credible...

btw, do you have any idea why Obie called the author of this article 'a passionate hater of Israel'? Even though it's a case of attempting to shoot the messenger, I am curious...

[parkia00]

5. Look What I found!

A picture of a village that does not exist! This picture is a lie! Anyone that sees a picture of an abandoned Palestinian village is a passionate hater of Israel? I support Israel's right to exist but I am also troubled that I see the village. I guess I'm flip flopping fanny.

[pelsar]

3. i've always liked the village....

as you enter jerusalem its on the hillside on the left...an abandoned arab village. Always a good reminder of the history of the region, the integration of the past with the land, the inhabitants etc

and of course the idea of putting up condos on the hillside as the entrance to Jerusalem will be rather ugly...

[Violet_Crumble]

4. I hope they do preserve the village...

Especially if it's the last that exists, and especially so for the reasons you mentioned....

:hi:

[Ken Burch]

12. I hope you don't like it BECAUSE it was abandoned.

There were real people who lived there, and they didn't deserve to have their town die.

[azurnoir]

6. you'd think Israel would not let a 'PR' moment as good as this pass

from the article

"Many places in Israel were abandoned," says an official from the Israel Land Administration, pointing out that Jerusalemites are leaving the city in droves due to a shortage of housing. "If we waited for all the refugees to come back, we wouldn't have a country."

Some argue that Israel could nevertheless seize an historic opportunity by allowing a symbolic number of refugees to return to Lifta, a move that would create goodwill at little cost.

"If we do destroy it, this would send a very bad message on many levels to the Palestinians," says Eitan Bronstein of Zochrot, an Israeli organisation that has meticulously recorded all the pre-1948 villages. "It sends a message that we don't care and will continue with this plan to this country only for Jews."

preserving this village could be used as proof Israel is not at present trying to ethnically cleanse Palestinians

[shira]

7. Israel preserving the village would only be a PR stunt, right? n/t

[azurnoir]

8. It's odd that you would choose to think of it that way

but it would be a chance for Israel to disprove the charges of ethnic cleansing wouldn't you agree?

eta " Israel preserving the village would only be a PR stunt, right"

if you say so

[Scurrilous]

11. Israel and Palestinians have conflicting visions for village's future

Lifta is the last intact pre-1948 Palestinian village in Israel. The Israelis want to put apartments there, but Palestinians want the area preserved as an open-air museum.

"It's easy to conjure the village that once was, hidden deep in a picturesque valley at the western gateway to Jerusalem, almost buried by blooming almond trees, tangled grapevines and a carpet of yellow wildflowers.

The roofs and window shutters are long gone from the old stone houses, but decorative brickwork around the doorways and broken staircases bears witness to a bygone prosperity.

The freshwater spring was paved over years ago, but the water still gurgles down the main road, just as it did more than 60 years ago.

Homeless addicts sleep in the former mayor's house and sunlight floods through arched mosque windows, illuminating trash and debris.

They called it Lifta. Today, the abandoned village is the last intact pre-1948 Palestinian town in Israel. Hundreds of similar Palestinian communities were razed after residents fled during Israel's 1948 war for independence.

For reasons lost to history, Lifta's homes, cemetery and olive press were left standing, though its farmland was confiscated and is now the site of Israel's Supreme Court; its parliament, the Knesset; and Hebrew University.

After being forgotten for decades, Lifta is now the focus of conflicting visions of its future, and of its past. Israel wants to develop luxury apartments at the old village, while Palestinians hope to turn the ruins into an open-air museum devoted to their mass displacement in 1948, an event Palestinians call the nakba, or catastrophe.

The ghost town has become an embodiment of one of the most intractable issues in Mideast peace talks: whether Palestinians should have the right to return to ancestral homes inside Israel and what this would mean for Israel's survival as a Jewish state."

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/apr/07/world/la-fg-palestinian-village-20110407