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Lifta

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Summary

Large Palestinian village at Jerusalem’s western entrance, home to 2,500 people, attacked on 28 December 1947 and finally expelled and mostly blown up on 11 January 1948 — in Pappe’s account one of the very first villages to be ethnically cleansed in Palestine.

Details

  • Lifta was a large, relatively prosperous village of 2,500 people, most of them Muslims with a small number of Christians, with new houses and roads from the Second World War era, a girls’ school built jointly with neighbouring villages in 1945, and a shopping centre with a club and two coffee houses that attracted Jerusalemites; it had been the residence of Qasim Ahmad, leader of the 1834 rebellion against Ibrahim Pasha (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.94-95).

  • According to Hagana intelligence, Lifta had never attacked any convoys; its petrol-station owner was killed by Hagana troops on a pretext Sasson reported as false, after which the village retaliated against a Jewish bus (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.94).

  • On 28 December 1947 the Hagana sprayed a Lifta coffee house with machine guns while the Stern Group stopped a bus nearby and fired into it randomly — the first Stern Gang operation in rural Palestine (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.95).

  • The Hagana High Command first condemned the attack, then, realising it had caused flight, ordered another operation on 11 January 1948 to complete the expulsion; most houses were blown up and all remaining people driven out (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.95).

  • On 7 February 1948 David Ben-Gurion visited the emptied village and reported to the Mapai Council that entering Jerusalem through Lifta and Romema ‘there are no Arabs. One hundred percent Jews’ (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.96).

  • The Lifta mosque at the western entrance to Jerusalem has become a mikweh (Jewish ritual bath for women) (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.254).

  • Sitta’s register lists Lifta at S 403: depopulation date 31-12-47 with the note “IZL”, Exodus Causes M, Arab Population 48 of 2,958 on 8,743 dunums (The Palestinian Nakba 1948 — The Register of Depopulated Localities in Palestine, PDF p.13). Pappe dates Lifta’s first attack to 28 December 1947 and its final expulsion to 11 January 1948; the register gives the single date 31-12-47, and both accounts are kept as printed.

The Palestinian Nakba 1948 — The Register of Depopulated Localities in Palestine, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Consultancy, Stern Group, Haganah

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