We were only wearing the clothing we had on because we are coming back tomorrow. We are coming back. Now we just want to be far from the shooting.
An eight-year-old when Lifta was emptied in early 1948, he recalls fleeing with nothing but the clothes his family wore, certain they would be back the next day.
Yacoub Odeh was born in 1940 in Lifta, a prosperous village of some 3,000 people at the western entrance to Jerusalem. After months of attacks by Zionist militias — including a December 1947 gunfire and grenade assault on one of the village’s coffeehouses — his father put him, his mother and his siblings on a truck to Ramallah in late February 1948, staying behind to defend the village. Lifta was one of the first villages in the Jerusalem district to be depopulated.
Odeh, who heads the Lifta Cultural Heritage Protection Commission, still leads tours through the village’s ruins — the one depopulated Palestinian village Israel did not demolish after 1948 — and campaigns against plans to build a luxury development over its remains. He gave this account to journalist Jessica Buxbaum of MintPress News in July 2021.
Sources
Source
Quoted exactly as published by MintPress News (republished by Aletho News). Visit the archive for the full testimony.
MintPress News (republished by Aletho News)Connected in the archive
3 connected records3 records elsewhere in the archive are linked to this one, each by a piece of evidence you can read below.
the village this testimony is about — 1 record
- Liftaلفتا
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: village: "Lifta, Jerusalem" → Lifta (Jerusalem)
named in this record — 2 records
One record names the other. A pointer for reading, not a claim that they belong to each other.
- Jerusalemالقدس
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Yacoub Odeh was born in 1940 in Lifta, a prosperous village of some 3,000 people at the western entrance to Jerusalem.
- Ramallahرام الله
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: After months of attacks by Zionist militias — including a December 1947 gunfire and grenade assault on one of the village's coffeehouses — his father put him, his mother and his siblings on a truck to Ramallah in late February 1948, staying behind to defend the village.
Cite this page
Every claim above carries its sources — citation is the point.
- Chicago
“Yacoub Odeh — Testimony.” Testimonies, FALASTEEN.AI. Accessed 22 August 2026. https://falasteen.ai/testimonies/yacoub-odeh-lifta.- MLA
“Yacoub Odeh — Testimony.” Testimonies, FALASTEEN.AI, 2026, https://falasteen.ai/testimonies/yacoub-odeh-lifta. Accessed 22 August 2026.- BibTeX
@misc{falasteen-yacoub-odeh-lifta, title = {Yacoub Odeh — Testimony}, howpublished = {\url{https://falasteen.ai/testimonies/yacoub-odeh-lifta}}, organization = {FALASTEEN.AI — A Living Archive for Palestine}, year = {2026}, note = {Accessed 2026-08-22} }