Lifta, nestled in the hillside on the outskirts of Jerusalem, was once a Palestinian Arab village.

Between 1947 and 1948 the population was driven out by the Civil War in mandatory Palestine. After the war it was settled in by Jewish families, most of which then left between 1969 and 1971. Parts of the village were then used as a drug rehabilitation clinic and a high school. In 2012 plans to rebuild the village as an upscale neighbourhood were rejected by the Jerusalem district court. In 2017 the last Jewish residents left and it has now become a nature reserve.