Israel surrounds itself with ruins in Gaza for the sake of ‘the land of Israel’
Palestinians inspect the site of an Israeli strike on a mosque in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip in February 2024
Raphael Greenberg and Alon Aradwrite in Haaretz on 5 March 2024:
Amid all the devastation and ruin that Israel has brought to the Gaza Strip, the intentional and methodical destruction of cultural institutions, historic buildings, art collections, and archaeological artifacts stands out.
The many sites damaged or entirely destroyed in the current assault include, to name just a few, the Great Mosque of Gaza, a 1,300-year-old building constructed on the remnants of a Byzantine-era church; the old Hammam al-Samra, recently renovated and opened as a public bathhouse; the 800-year-old Pasha’s Palace, which served as a cultural institution and a museum; Gaza City’s historical archives; Rafah’s museum; the Khoudary family hotel and museum; and the remains of Anthedon, the ancient port of Gaza.-
The specific targeting of these historical sites, which forms part of the case filed against Israel in the International Court for Justice, suggests that they were destroyed not for military reasons, but because they testify to the Palestinians’ profound attachment to the places they inhabit.
The destruction of these sites is part of the battle over perception and memory. We Israelis seem to believe that the land belongs to whoever controls its past; if we deny the Palestinians their memory of the past, we can also deny their attachment to the land and thus pave the way for their expulsion. This is not a new idea.
Even before the advent of Zionism, Western scholars and politicians considered the antiquities of the Holy Land – particularly those associated with the biblical and New Testament periods – as its primary resource and as the basis of their claim to it. They viewed the indigenous communities – Muslims, Christians, and Jews – as an encumbrance, a layer of decay that hid the true nature of the land. At best, the inhabitants of Palestine were defined as unknowing stewards of places, names, and customs that had survived from biblical times. At worst, they were unwanted guests, interlopers who should be shunted aside.
Although this attitude was grounded in European racism, political Zionism fully embraced it. Since its establishment, Israel has been engaged in the assiduous destruction of the physical remains of Arabs’ presence and the denial of the existence of the Palestinian people. Hundreds of villages have been destroyed, and thousands of houses in various towns have been looted and appropriated. Arabs in Israel have been treated as a collection of individuals, members of no national community who possess only a weak connection to their place of residence. As such, they are under constant threat of deportation, of being stripped of citizenship, and, especially, of denial of their historical existence.
In Israel, there is no statutory protection for buildings, cultural objects, or historical landscapes belonging to the past 200–300 years. Israeli archaeology has generally limited itself to periods associated with a Jewish or biblical past, with a few exceptions.
Rubble and devastation in Rafah, February 2024
Archaeological excavations have removed dozens of Palestinian cemeteries and layers of post-1700 CE settlement, often hastily and with inadequate documentation. In university curricula, in the Nature and Parks Authority, and in the popular arts, almost no space is allowed for Muslim, Christian, or Palestinian history and culture.
The denial of Palestinian peoplehood has been accompanied by the erasure of the material evidence of their presence. These acts of willful destruction and the cultivation of ignorance and intentional forgetting have, indeed, obscured the memory of Palestinian continuity. But they have also encouraged a Palestinian countermovement that promotes documentation, historical research, and creative reconstruction.
On the Israeli side, we have raised generation after generation of people who are ignorant of extensive chapters in our country’s history. As a result, Israelis’ perception of the past – as well as of the land – is riddled with gaps concealing repressed sites and memories.
Denying the existence of the Palestinians as a people makes it possible to fight them without defining who is being fought – the war on Gaza is termed “intense ground maneuvering” by the IDF – and to call for committing war crimes without paying a price (you can’t destroy a people that doesn’t exist, right?).
Some might claim that there’s nothing to see here: for thousands of years, the various conquerors of the land tried to erase the memory of their predecessors. But anyone familiar with the history of Israel and Palestine can testify that these attempts at ethnic cleansing have failed, and both the land and the people living on it preserve the memory of all who came before.
Archaeology shows that Canaanite culture emerged from its local predecessors and all the cultures with which it came into contact – in Syria, Egypt, or the Mediterranean. The ancient kingdoms of Israel adopted Canaanite traditions; Hasmoneans emulated Hellenism; early Muslim culture absorbed Byzantine Christianity; and so on until today.
Israelis all embody these stratified cultures. Observe the buildings that surround us, the music blaring from cars, the food stalls in the shopping center, and the human landscape itself, and you’ll see it’s true.
The attempt to erase entire chapters in a country’s past, as well as the erasure of places and people from the landscape, creates a scarred terrain and a collective memory riddled with holes. In an individual, the suppression and loss of memory fragments the sense of self. This is also the fate of a country that represses its past and erases whole chapters of its history.
These gaps, the white spaces on the map and in memory, also make the present Israel flawed, unstable, and lacking continuity. It’s impossible to connect the roots of a tree to its branches if we sever part of the trunk.
Israel is surrounding itself with ruins with the aim of producing an imagined “Land of Israel,” cleansed of anything that isn’t Jewish. With seven million Israeli Jews and seven million Palestinians currently inhabiting the land, this effort is both a fantasy and a death wish. It’s a mirror image of Hamas’ version of Palestinian nationalism, which seeks to obliterate the memory of Jews and Israelis.
What will it take for a new cultural and political reality to be born from the ashes? How will we learn to accept the multiplicity embodied in this land? Will we manage to create a new cultural synthesis that can echo the inspiring syntheses of the past, or will the legacy of the State of Israel be epitomized in the smoking ruins in and around it?
There is no question that we, both Israeli Jews and Palestinians, must return to the path of mutual recognition – a deep recognition of peoples belonging in this place, on all levels. This is the path we had embarked upon before acts of mass terrorism, an assassin’s bullets, and the frenzy of settlement and hyper-nationalism blocked it like an avalanche cutting off a mountain road. But if we don’t return to it, despite all its difficulties, the Israeli-Palestinian dance of death will continue, and mere ruins will once again be the glory and shame of this country.
Prof. Raphael Greenberg teaches archaeology at Tel Aviv University. Alon Arad is an archaeologist and executive director of Emek Shaveh, an organization that promotes heritage justice.
This article is reproduced in its entirety