Lifta

Lifta is not a ghost story, and it is worth saying that first. It is a village on the slopes of the al-Shami valley at the western entrance to Jerusalem, and the people who lived in it were displaced in January 1948. The houses they left are still standing.

That is the reason it matters. Hundreds of Palestinian villages were depopulated in 1948 and most were later built over or cleared. Lifta was not. Its stone houses remain on the hillside more or less as they were, with domes, arches, carved stonework and calligraphic inscriptions still legible, which makes it the most complete surviving example of a pre-1948 Palestinian village anywhere.

It is a lesson in building with a slope rather than against one. The houses step down the contours of the hill, the lanes curve to follow them instead of being cut straight, and the whole settlement is organised around its water. A spring feeds a pool that is still there. The site has been inhabited for something on the order of four thousand years and is generally identified with Mey Neftoah, a water source named in antiquity, which is the practical reason anyone settled this particular hillside at all.

Its future is contested. Development schemes for the site have been proposed repeatedly and fought in the courts and in public by former residents, their descendants, architects and conservationists.

The valley below is a nature reserve and people do walk in and swim at the pool. Go quietly if you go. These are somebody's family houses, and there are people alive who were born in them.