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Gaza is not what it used to be. The term "indiscriminate" is often used to describe the recent destruction, but it is inaccurate. In this essay, Mahdi Sabbagh identifies the flattening of everything from sidewalks to universities as sharply deliberate. He writes about his grandfather who could still recognize his village of Sajra in photographs years after being displaced through the familiar sights of a well and trees from his youth.
The obliteration of Gaza's urban fabric, its tangible markers of heritage and identity, is not "indiscriminate" destruction. It is a calculated attempt to construct an obscene colonial fiction through violence, theft, and the concealment of a rich, lived history of Palestine.
غزة لم تعد كما كانت من قبل. غالباً ما يُستخدم مصطلح "عشوائي" لوصف الدمار في الأشهر الأخيرة، لكن هذا الوصف غير دقيق. في مقاله، يُشير مهدي صباغ إلى أن تدمير كل شيء، بدءاً من الأرصفة وحتى الجامعات، هو عمل متعمّد و مدبر بعناية. ويروي لنا قصة جده الذي كان قادراً على معرفة قرية سجرة في الصور بعد سنوات من تهجيره منها، بفضل المشاهد المألوفة من شبابه مثل البئر والأشجار.
إن تدمير النسيج الحضري والتراث العمراني في غزة ليس "عشوائياً". بل هو محاولة جوفاء لإنتاج تاريخ استعماري مزيف بواسطة العنف والسرقة ومحو التاريخ الغني والحي لفلسطين.
"The history of architecture and of cities is often told in terms of what gets built. But reading the rubble in Gaza reveals much more. Israel’s relentless flattening of buildings and infrastructure in Gaza has rendered it not only uninhabitable, but also unrecognizable. This severs people’s connections to the land and clears it for resettlement. This is not a hypothetical argument. In recent weeks, Israeli officials, including its minister of intelligence, have called for the removal of all Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, framing ethnic cleansing as an “opportunity.” According to an Israeli news report, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had also assigned his minister of strategic affairs the task of “thinning” Gaza’s population “to a minimum” and persuading neighboring Arab countries to accept refugees. And most recently, 12 ministers from Netanyahu’s party and two cabinet members attended an ultranationalist conference in Jerusalem, where participants called for the Israeli resettlement of Gaza. The images from 1948 and the images from the present conflict converse with one another."