Jerusalem Drops Luxury Redevelopment Plan For Historic Palestinian Village

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By Daniel J. Solomon August 11, 2017

Jerusalem’s city government has set aside plans to redevelop the abandoned Palestinian village of Lifta, with its historic stone homes, into a luxury development featuring 200 McMansions.

“The plan has been taken off the agenda so that it can undergo additional professional consideration,” the municipality said in a statement after a planning committee turned down the proposal.

The statement, carried in Haaretz, continued: “After this examination ends, it will be resubmitted for consideration by the local planning and building committee.”

Lifta sits to the west of Jerusalem, and was abandoned by Palestinians during Israel’s War of Independence. It was subsequently used to house Jewish refugees coming into the new country.

Preservation advocates, families of the original residents of the town and members of the Jerusalem city council made common cause to sink the proposal.

Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon

Daniel J. Solomon is the former Assistant to the Editor/News Writer at the Forward. Originally from Queens, he attended Harvard as an undergraduate, where he wrote his senior thesis on French-Jewish intellectual history. He is excited to have returned to New York after his time in Massachusetts. Daniel’s passions include folk music, cycling, and pointed argument.

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