NABLUS, February 11 (IslamOnline.net) – “I was born here in 1924 and my father was buried in the village’s cemetery only 6 months before people were forced out back in 1948. The few signs remaining of the village’s Arab and Islamic identity are under attack, who would help?”

The speaker is 81-year old Mohamed Sulaiman Abu Leil and the village is Lifta, located at the northern and western entrances of Al-Quds (occupied East Jerusalem).

Lifta, from where most Palestinian residents had been forced out after the creation of Israel in 1948, is the second largest village in Al-Quds, according to 1945 statistics.

Abu Leil was speaking, through his tears, to IslamOnline.net about Israeli plans to wipe out the few remaining Arab marks of the village.

He was speaking just after spotting two Israeli youths stepping out of a house, with a girl holding a video camera hot on their heels.

The girl has just ended shooting a pornographic film inside the house.

The scene was part of what local inhabitants describe as “an Israeli attempt to reverse its true Arab Islamic identity”.

For its part, Al-Aqsa Society of the Reconstruction of Islamic Shrines said Israelis had turned the old houses of the village into nightclubs and private property for Jews only.

Every house has a “Private Property. No Entry” sign emblazoned in Hebrew on its façade, according the Society, based in Umm Al-Fahm, part of Arab lands seized by Israel in 1948.

Even Lifta mosque was not spared. It is daubed with graffiti on love affairs and has empty bottles of wine inside.

Israeli Al-Quds Municipality, for its part, has declared a plan to build a new Jewish district at the village, which is feared to lead to the destruction of many old buildings that still defy Israeli plans, in order for the new constructions to take place.

The decision raised fury among the inhabitants of the village.

“The plotted constructions in the village (on the debris of the cemetery) is no less than an extreme degree of oppression,” Abu Leil said tearfully.

Complaints were lodged against the Israeli construction plans, Al-Aqsa Society said in a statement, a copy of which was obtained by IOL Thursday, February 10.

Israeli authorities responded to the protest, considering the village mosque and cemetery as holy sites – which means they could not be demolished for the new plan.

The Society refused a compromise for turning the two sites into public places for fear they would be turned into restaurants, museums or exhibitions - as was the case in other 400 villages forcibly evacuated after the creation of Israel.

The Israeli plan would also ban the return of local inhabitants massively expelled from the village despite winning court rulings in favor of their comeback.