‘Urbicide’: Erasing Palestinian memory beyond Gaza’s ruins

Living in Gaza means enduring a landscape stained with blood. That’s how Yousri al Ghoul describes his hometown, where death is lurking around every street corner.

“We have even lost the paths to our homes. We don’t know where our streets or houses or any building that we knew before are,” Al Ghoul, a Palestinian author and founder of the Shaqaf Cultural Initiative, tells TRT World.

Israel's aerial bombing and ground offensive has destroyed over 35 percent of Gaza’s urban infrastructure, systematically wiping out historic neighbourhoods, cultural landmarks, medical facilities, educational institutions, and vital systems for sewage, water, and electricity.

For many city planners, an ‘urbicide’ — the deliberate annihilation of a city – has been unfolding since October 7 2023. It has turned Gaza, a home to 2.3 million Palestinians, into a ghost town that smells of death. In the past seven months, Israeli forces have killed at least 33,700 Palestinians and wounded 76,300 others in this troubled land of 365 square kilometres, while imposing famine and disease on the surviving population.

Murdering the city

The grim toll is evident in satellite imagery analysed by the United Nations Satellite Center (UNOSAT) in March, revealing the wanton destruction of over 88,868 structures — equivalent to more than a third of Gaza's total edifices.

The hardest hit are the governorates of Gaza City, Khan Younis, and North Gaza, accounting for over 80 percent of the total damage, according to Gaza Interim Damage Assessment conducted by the World Bank, European Union, and United Nations.

Yet, the devastation transcends the material margins – it represents a profound cultural and social catastrophe, experts say.

“The face of the city has changed and become very old, older than ancient generations, it became dark places that represent a dark view of life in Gaza,” laments Yousri.

For him, the built environment is not merely a collection of structures but a tangible embodiment of a community's history, traditions, values, and aspirations.

Speaking to TRT World, Fatina Abreek Zubiedat, an assistant professor at Tel Aviv University Azrieli School of Architecture, stresses that Israel's interminable siege of Gaza has likewise besieged collective decisions and actions of Palestinians on the territory. It indicates that the erasure of their culture, architecture, archives, and universities as bastions of knowledge on Palestine reveals Israel's intention to reduce Gaza to nothing.

Making of "ahistorical" entity

Pulverised Al Omari Mosque and its library, Pasha's Palace, Gaza’s upscale Rimal neighbourhood, the Rashad Shawa Cultural Center, Central Archives, Greek Orthodox Saint Porphyrius Church, Palestinian Legislative Council, Al Aqsa University, and plenty of other spatial components of the city shows how Israel’s destructions of shared spatiality indicate its attempt to the erasure of Palestinians' identity, culture, and heritage.

In light of the significant role urban centres play in preserving people’s identity, Mohammad Ibrahim, a political researcher in Gaza, asserts that one of the goals of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, including Gaza, is to fuel chaos, anger and frustration among the city’s inhabitants, making them feel rootless in the face of destruction around them.

For instance, he says the night prayer at Al Omari Mosque during the month of Ramadan holds a special place in the hearts of Palestinians. With the occupational forces levelling the historic site founded by the 7th-century Muslim Caliph Omar bin Khattab, one of the close companions of Prophet Muhammad, the people of Gaza found it hard to come to terms with the loss of this sacred place.

Dr.Fatina says that Israel intends to reduce Gaza into an ahistorical entity, “something present outside modernity and global experience”.

According to her, the right to the urban history of Gaza is violated for the sake of the absolute right to conceive Gaza as a territory for refugees- the 'res nullius,' or property that belongs to no one and can be reinvented as a new real estate entity without any past or history.

“Israel destroys everything, not only the archaeological and historical sites or places, they do not care about humanity. They are even killing babies in cold blood. So of course they would not care about our heritage, our community, our history or any other kind of our identity,” Yousri says.

During an interview with Türkiye’s Anadolu news agency, Yahya al Sarraj, the mayor of Gaza's municipality, states that “the turning of the archival documents representing an integral part of our history and culture into ashes was a purposeful act aimed at erasing a large part of our Palestinian memory.”

Wiping the city off the face of the earth

From the rubble of devastated buildings and levelled hillsides to the flattened vegetation, Israel has erased almost every essential component constituting the urban identity of Palestinians in Gaza.

“This is to further prevent the Gaza Strip from being a livable amalgamation of cities, towns, villages, and camps; and to continue to be an object of violence,” Dr. Fatina says.

Dr. Fatina highlights that the war undoubtedly marks a turning point—the transformation of Gaza from the world’s largest ‘open-air prison’ to the largest refugee camp.

But Palestinians in Gaza continue to exude the spirit of life and progress. Yousri is astonished to see so many people rebuilding their homes despite the ongoing bombings ripping apart towns and villages.

“People here have a relentless will to rebuild their country, their community, and their identity,” Yousri says.