A Mediapart investigation said that the scale of the devastation in the Gaza Strip has led experts to call for the systematic destruction of cities – known as the “massacre of the cities” – to be classified as a crime of genocide, because the Israeli claim that the aim of the war was to eliminate the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) is not enough to explain the massive and systematic destruction of buildings, infrastructure and even memory.
In a lengthy investigation titled “The Massacre of Cities in Gaza: They Want to Make Us Forget That We Ever Lived Here,” the French website wrote that the bombing of the Rafah municipality building and its aerial filming was just one of hundreds of recordings showing the destruction of buildings, and sometimes entire residential blocks and infrastructure, by Israeli soldiers, or by bombs and missiles that turned residences, official buildings, city water tanks, factories, water treatment plants and schools into rubble.
The United Nations Development Program said in a report last May that “rebuilding the severely damaged public infrastructure requires foreign assistance unprecedented since 1948,” when the United States launched the Marshall Plan to help rebuild Western Europe after World War II.
The report predicted that it would take 28 years to rebuild the destroyed housing units, even if the amount of building materials entering Gaza was 5 times greater. It is estimated that 6 out of every 10 buildings in Gaza were destroyed during the first nine months of the war.
Massacre of cities
Mediapart said that this massive and systematic destruction led experts to introduce the term “urban massacre” that appeared in 1960 to describe a political will to destroy a city on a large scale, and even made them introduce the term “domiciled,” which is the deliberate destruction of the foundations of life.
The website recalled an interview with the New York Times conducted by Balakrishnan Rajagopal, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing, at the end of last January, in which he said that whoever destroys Gaza “is erasing the past, present and future of many Palestinians… It is a complete crime: it is ‘Domicile’. It is no exaggeration to say that a large part of Gaza is no longer fit for living.”
Rajagopal is campaigning for the “domiciliation” to be officially classified as genocide, as he called for in a report on the massive destruction Russia caused in Mariupol, Ukraine.
Mediapart wrote that the destruction of urban centers and the foundations of life is as old as cities and wars themselves, and in modern times it has afflicted Sarajevo, Grozny, Aleppo and Mariupol.
old plan
But Francesco Ciudili, professor of urban and political geography at the University of Turin in Italy, recalls that the matter in Gaza did not begin with the “Al-Aqsa Flood” attack, but rather with the siege imposed on the Strip in 2007 (following Hamas’s takeover of power there), and Israel’s goal was not to eliminate the leaders of Hamas or the rest of the Palestinian factions as much as it was to eliminate the physical structure of the Strip.
“This is collective punishment aimed at keeping the people of Gaza in a very miserable situation in order to force them to get rid of Hamas,” Chudeley told Mediapart.
Even before the current war, the small strip had been subjected to five devastating campaigns since 2008, from which its residents could not escape due to the blockade imposed by land, air and sea.
Mediapart quoted Dean Sharp, professor of urban geography and researcher at the London School of Economics and Political Science, as saying that the “massacre of cities” is not limited to physical destruction by bombing or bulldozing, but also includes preventing reconstruction. “Before October 7, and because of the blockade, Israel had no shortage of ways to prevent reconstruction, by severely restricting the entry of building materials and the movement of people.”
However, what has been happening in Gaza for the past 11 months is unlike anything that has happened anywhere in history, and it is worse – according to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing – than what happened to Rotterdam, Dresden or Tokyo during World War II, or to Homs and Mariupol recently.
“The amount of bombs dropped on Gaza and the amount of rubble they caused is more than any other conflict researchers have studied,” Rajagopal said.
“massive revenge”
Chudeli noted that the raids in previous conflicts targeted specific government buildings and structures, in addition to some industrial facilities such as power stations. “However, in Gaza, the destruction has completely gotten out of control. The Israeli army spares nothing, and it seems that the goal is to bring down a major catastrophe on Gaza from which the residents will not escape, and to return the Strip to square one.”
In response to Mediapart’s questions, the Israeli army simply said that its combat doctrine prohibits it from harming civilian infrastructure outside of military necessity, and that its operations comply with international law.
He added that he is trying to prevent Hamas from threatening Israeli citizens, and is also seeking to build a plan to protect southern Israel, and accused the resistance of positioning itself in densely populated civilian areas, to the point that entire neighborhoods have been turned -according to him- into combat complexes.
However, Mediapart says, this claim, which the Israeli army constantly puts forward, does not stand up to the scrutiny of experts, including Balakrishnan Rajagopal, who points out that the indiscriminate destruction of buildings remains prohibited even if the claim that it occurred only because of the presence of command and control centers in these civilian areas is true, not to mention that Israel has never proven the truth of this claim.
Dean Sharp, a professor of urban geography, points out that international law requires armies to protect civilians, their homes and their neighbourhoods, even if they live in areas from which shells are fired, and also requires them not to let them be caught in the line of fire. In Gaza, Israel is also targeting people’s homes and neighbourhoods. Here, “we are not talking about battles taking place in military sites and trenches; rather, barbershops, workplaces and, in many cases, schools are being destroyed.”
Sharp described what was happening as “a massive revenge that no one can control anymore” and as “the perfect embodiment of the term urban massacre”.
Memory and Document
Mediapart says that the current war goes beyond being a military operation to an attempt to destroy Palestinian awareness and consciousness, which is what made the South African delegate, Thembeka Ngcukaitobi, speak in his pleading before the International Criminal Court last January about the logic of a war of extermination carried out on the direct orders of Israeli leaders who ordered the obliteration of Gaza from existence.
The website recalled recordings presented by the South African delegate showing the destruction of entire neighborhoods with dynamite, and also showing testimonies of soldiers who admitted their involvement in this comprehensive destruction and sometimes took souvenir photos of themselves in front of the devastation they had caused.
It is worth noting that a famous investigative website called “Bellingcat” was able to track the activity of an Israeli engineering battalion, and showed that it resorted to destroying several 10-story buildings just because it discovered a drone and two vehicles carrying weapons.
“What the Israeli army is trying to erase is people’s memory,” said Chudeli, a professor of urban geography. “Home is where one’s family and relatives are,” he said. “What is happening is the annihilation of people’s intimate life. They are destroying everything connected to people’s lives.”
For example, Nour Al-Asi, a student of English and French literature who lived with her retired father, mother and younger sister in the Shujaiya neighbourhood of Gaza City before being forced to flee to the centre of the Strip, left her home carrying nothing but a book and a little make-up.
Nour describes her home to Mediapart: “It was beautiful and peaceful. It had a garden with lemon trees, olive trees and roses that my mother took care of. It wasn’t easy because of the electricity rationing and water scarcity, but I had my own room, where I studied, combed my hair, slept and sometimes even ate my meals.”
“I loved sitting on the balcony, and I never missed a sunset or a rain shower in the winter. They stole all of that from me,” Nour added.
What Nour misses most in Gaza City is the Al-Rimal neighborhood, known for its cafes and artists, and also “the lights of Ramadan are coming soon to us in Shuja’iyya.”
Nour is filled with sadness and anger at Israel, which “wants to make us forget that we ever lived here, wants to uproot our entire lives and erase from existence this place called Gaza,” but she has nothing but hope that she will live long enough to see the Strip rebuilt when the war ends.
“Fine memories are not all that are erased in Gaza,” Mediapart concludes, “but also what really matters to people in their present and future, such as important administrative documents.”
Journalist Rami Abu Jamous told the French website that “the Israeli army blew up the Palace of Justice, where the judicial archives were located, and destroyed the building housing the real estate registry,” and thus the residents of Gaza lost what proved their ownership of a home or a plot of land.
“All they have left are memories,” the Palestinian journalist adds.
