 In the 1980s, Lifta was declared a municipal nature reserve under the auspices of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority.In 1984, one of the abandoned buildings in the village was occupied by the "Lifta gang", a Jewish group plotting the blow up the mosques on the Temple Mount, who were stopped at the gates of the temple mount with 250 pounds of explosives, hand grenades, and other armament.Following the departure of the Jewish residents, some of the buildings in the village were used for Lifta drug abuse rehabilitation center for adolescents, which was closed in 2014, and from 1971 for the Lifta high school, an open education school, which relocated to German Colony, Jerusalem in 2001.