The ghost town between Palestine's past and its future

Catrina Stewart visits an abandoned settlement, frozen in time 63 years ago, that may soon become a luxury housing development


The village of Lifta in 1938, 10 years before Palestinians fled 
during Israel's war of ethnic cleansing.

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.

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