Please help me figure out .htaccess redirects

Dear friends,
Yesterday I changed a static html website with a MODx driven site. The problem is that I need to redirect calls from oldwebsite/homeita.html to the main page of the new MODx site. I tried to add either lines to the .htaccess file:

a)
RewriteRule ^homeita.html /index.php [L,NE,R=301]

b)
Redirect permanent homeita.html http://www.newsite/index.php

I have also tried every conceivable combination, but the redirection simply doesn’t work.

Does anybody have an idea on how can I make that redirection work on my site?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Did you try:

Redirect permanent /homeita.html http://www.newsite.com/index.php

? (I mean the "/" slash at the beginning)

Yes, it makes my browser point to "www.newsite.com/index.php?q=homeita.html" and then it does give me a 404 error (page not found).
Any idea?

Well, I think you have to redirect to an existing page like

Redirect permanent /homeita.html http://www.newsite.com/index.php?id=1

where id=1 is your starting page. I´m not sure, but it is worth a try.

Yeessss!!! That worked at last - thank you so much!