Lifta (; ) was a Palestinian village on the outskirts of Jerusalem. The village's Palestinian Arab inhabitants were expelled by Zionist paramilitary forces during the 1948 Palestine war.
During the Ottoman period, the village was recorded to have a population of 400 Arabs, all Muslim households. In 1834, a battle took place in the village during the Palestinian Peasants' Revolt. A British 1922 census registered Lifta's population at 1,451, all Muslims.
Prior to 1948, the village had orchards, several olive presses, a winepress, in addition to a modern clinic, two coffeehouses, two carpentry shops, barbershops, a butcher, and a mosque. In the 1945 statistics the population of Lifta was 2,250; 2,230 Muslims and 20 Christians. In addition, a small number of Jews resided in the village, and one former Jewish inhabitant described the relationship her family and the Palestinian Arab majority as 'excellent'.
During the 1948 Palestine war, a massacre occurred on 28 December 1947, when a Jewish militia launched a machine-gun and grenade assault on a cafe in Lifa. The mukhtar's home was also incinerated by the Zionist forces and 20 buildings were blown up as the village was put under siege. The village's Palestinian Arab inhabitants were expelled, and the abandoned village was later repopulated by Jewish immigrants until the 1970s. In July 2017, Israel declared Lifta (called Mei Neftoach) as a national nature reserve. It has been referred to as the "Palestinian Pompeii".Palestinian ‘Pompeii’ in Jerusalem could face demolition
History Antiquity A perennial spring located in the channel's upper section is believed to be the site where the village first developed. Surrounding this spring, artifacts including a burial cave and pottery shards from the Middle Bronze Age II and Iron Age II periods were uncovered.
Archaeological remains dating as far back as Iron Age II have been found in the village.Lifta and the Regime of Forgetting: Memory Work and Conservation, Daphna Golan, Zvika Orr, Sami Ershied, Jerusalem Quarterly, 2013, Vol. 54, pp 69-81 Lifta Documentation and Initial Survey (in Hebrew), 2013, Israeli Antiquities Authority]Lifta, Archaeological Annex to Development plan, 2003 Israeli Antiquities Authority
Biblical identification The site is considered by some to be identical with biblical Mei Neftoach. It was populated since ancient times; "Nephtoah" (Hebrew: נפתח, lit. spring of the corridor) is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible as the border between the Israelite tribes of Judah and Benjamin, and was the northernmost demarcation point of the territory of the Tribe of Judah.Nephtoah Bible Dictionary Other scholars hold the identification to be plausible but by no means certain. Kitchener and Conder found the identification with Nephtoah unsatisfactory, and preferred to identify Lifta with Eleph of Benjamin (Joshua 18:28).Conder and Kitchener, 1881, SWP III, p. 18, 47
Roman and Byzantine empires The Romans and Byzantines called it Nephtho, and the Crusaders referred to it as Clepsta.Heritage conservation in Israel: Lifta
Crusaders The remains of a court-yard home from the Crusader period remains in the centre of the village.Pringle, 1997, p. 66
Ottoman Empire In 1596, Lifta was a village in the Ottoman Empire, nahiya (subdistrict) of Jerusalem under the liwa' (district) of Jerusalem, and it had a population 72 Muslim households, an estimated 396 persons. It paid taxes on wheat, barley, olives, fruit orchards and vineyards; a total of 4,800 akçe. All of the revenue went to a waqf.Hütteroth and Abdulfattah, 1977, p. 115. Quoted in Khalidi, 1992, p. 301
In 1834, a battle took place here, during the revolt of that year. The Egyptian Ibrahim Pasha and his army fought and defeated local rebels, led by Shaykh Qasim al-Ahmad, a prominent local ruler. However, the Qasim al-Ahmad family remained powerful and ruled the region southwest of Nablus from their fortified villages of Deir Istiya and Bayt Wazan some due north of Lifta.Khalidi, 1992, p. 301 In 1838 Edward Robinson noted Lifta as a Muslim village, located in the Beni Malik area, west of Jerusalem.Robinson and Smith, 1841, vol 3, Appendix 2, p. 123Robinson and Smith, 1841, vol 2, p. 140 Robinson hired muleteers from Lifta, noting that in Lifta "every peasant keeps his mule and usually accompanies it".Robinson and Smith, 1841, vol 2, p. 321
In 1863 Victor Guérin described Lifta as being surrounded by gardens of lemon-trees, oranges, figs, pomegranates, alms and apricots.Guérin, 1868, pp. 252-256 An Ottoman village list of about 1870 indicated 117 houses and a population of 395, though the population count included men, only.Socin, 1879, p. 157Hartmann, 1883, p. 118, also noted 117 houses
The PEF's Survey of Western Palestine in 1883 described it as a village on the side of a steep hill, with a spring and rock-cut tombs to the south.Conder and Kitchener, 1883, III:18. Quoted in Khalidi, 1992, p. 301
In 1896 the population of Lifta was estimated to be about 966 persons.Schick, 1896, p. 126
In 1907 the German historian Gustav Rothstein was invited to Lifta by his Arabic language teacher, Elias Nasrallah Haddad. Rothstein wrote a 20-pages article describing the marriage celebrations and religious festivals in Lifta.Rothstein, 1914, pp. 102 -123
British Mandate
In 1917, Lifta surrendered to the British forces with white flags and, as a symbolic gesture, the keys to the village.Gilbert, 1936, pp. 157-68
In the 1922 census of Palestine, Lifta had a population 1,451, all Muslims,Barron, 1923, Table VII, Sub-district of Jerusalem, p. 14 increasing in the 1931 census (when Lifta was counted with "Shneller's Quarter"), to 1,893; 1,844 Muslims, 35 Jews and 14 Christians, in a total of 410 houses.Mills, 1932, p. 41
During the 1929 Palestine riots, according to one Israeli source, some villagers from Lifta were among gangs that participated in a number of robberies and attacks on nearby Jewish communities.
In the 1945 statistics the population of Lifta was 2,250; 2,230 Muslims and 20 Christians,Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics, 1945, p. 25 and the total land area was 8,743 dunams, according to an official land and population survey.Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 57 3,248 dunams were for cereals,Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 103 while 324 dunams were built-up (urban) land.Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 153
Prior to 1948, the village, with a population of some 2,500 people, had orchards, several olive presses, a winepress, in addition to a modern clinic, two coffeehouses, two carpentry shops, barbershops, a butcher, and a mosque. A small number of Jews resided in the village, and one former Jewish inhabitant described the relationship her family and the Palestinian majority as 'excellent'.
1948 war and depopulation
In the 1947–48 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine Lifta, Romema, and Shaykh Badr which were strategically located on the road leaving Jerusalem to Tel-Aviv, were an operational priority for Jewish forces. Some families had already left the village after a decision had been made somewhat earlier on 4 December, to evacuate its women and children, in order to host a military company, and on 4 December 1947 some Arab families left.Morris, 2004, pp. 119-120 By mid-December irregular Arab militia took up positions in Lifta to defend the site. Hagannah patrols engaged in firefights with the village militiamen while Irgun and Lehi were even more aggressive.
On 28 December 1947, the village suffered from what survivors called the Lifta massacre when a Jewish militia launched a machine-gun and grenade assault on the café of Salah Eisa. In order to warn residents that they should evacuate, the mukhtar's home was incinerated, and 20 buildings blown up as the village was put under siege. The attack left seven dead, and more women and children left the village.
The village was suffering from food shortages in the beginning of January. Subsequently, a number of the villagers returned home, with Benny Morris reporting "some, or most" doing so. Subsequently, Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni, while visiting the village, ordered the women, children and elderly to evacuate and the men to stay put. On 29 January, a Lehi raid blew up 3 houses in the village. By early February the village was abandoned by the irregular militia. Benny Morris lists the cause of the depopulation of the village as being a military assault on the settlement.
According to one resident, interviewed in 2021, there were are around 40,000 descendants of the original refugee population, dispersed in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Jordan and the Palestinian diaspora. Several families still retain their Ottoman period property deeds, attesting to their ownership of parts of Lifta.
Israel 20th century After the expulsion of its Palestinian villagers, of Lifta's 410 homes, 60 stone houses, some three stories high, remained, together with its mosque, an olive press, and a tiled pathway to a spring.Gideon Levy, Alex Levac, 'The Saddest Village in Israel,' Haaretz 23 July 2021:’Each floor of the buildings, fashioned from stone and graced with arches, tells the story of a different period and a different style of construction. Lifta is a rare architectural gem, a monument to what was once here in this country, mute testimony to a way of life that was abruptly cut off. A mosque, olive presses and a flour mill, remains of picturesque balconies, a tiled path leading to the spring, which was one the village’s throbbing heart and whose waters are now in use by yeshiva students and “hilltop youth” in the “between the times” vacation that follows Tisha B’Av.’ It is listed by Unesco as a potential World Heritage Site, and in 2018, the World Heritage Fund registered the village among a list of 24 heritage sites that were endangered.
Lifta was used for Jewish refugee housing during the war, and following the war the Jewish Agency and the state of Israel settled Jewish immigrants from Yemen and Kurdistan in the village, totaling 300 families. However ownership of the houses was not registered in their name. Living conditions in Lifta were difficult, the buildings were in poor repair, poor roads and transport, and lack of electricity, water, and sanitation infrastructure.Jerusalem 'Squatter' Discovers That His Home Is Rightfully His, Ha'aretz, 10 February 2012The Kenesset discusses eviction of Lifta residents: "the immigrants from Arab countries were called squatters and the Kibutniks - settlers" (in Hebrew), TheMarker, 25 January 2016 In 1969-71 most of the Jewish inhabitants of Lifta chose to leave as part of a compensation program by Amidar. Holes were drilled in the roofs of the evacuated buildings to make them less inhabitable, so that squatters wouldn't take up residence. 13 families, who lived in the portion of the village close to Highway 1 and didn't suffer from transportation issues chose to remain.from Settlers to squatters - the classification of residents in absentee property as squatters is injust, Lifta as an example (in Hebrew) , Black Labor, Yoni Yochanan, 11 September 2016
In the 1980s, Lifta was declared a municipal nature reserve under the auspices of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority.INPA Raises Lifta Security to Prevent Willow Theft, Jerusalem Post, September 19, 2011Mei Neftoach (Lifta) (in Hebrew , Mapa, encyclopedia entry